The Scooter Libby Case

I have an interest in US politics, as should everyone in the world. What happens in the US affects us all - which can be a bit of a worry since we have no direct say in it.

Many of my readers are American, and most will be aware if the trial involving who revealed the not so secret identity of a CIA office worker (and former field agent), whether Iraq sought Uranium from Niger (not Nigeria), and who leaked what to who and when.

The rest of the world isn't aware of this : it is, after all, a manufactured witch-hunt to try to bag some big-name Republican scalps, but it was obvious the Republicans could delay and obfuscate past one election and even two, even if they were guilty.

Anyway, I finally came across an excellent explanation of the whole affair, one that covers all the salient points. It's over in Ann Althouse's comments, by one Stephen B. Waters.

...in the end, the whole enchilada appears to be that Joe Wilson, a State Department has-been so obsessed by his own vanity that he outed his own wife and who a year earlier said uranium was sought by Iraq in Africa before he said it was not sought by Iraq, was used as a cheap, throwaway dirty trick by the Kerry campaign to dupe lazy pseudojournalists from the NYTimes, Newsweek, WaPo, Time, and NBC, which led Senate Democratic politics-is-a-dirty-game-players like Chuck Schumer, to push for a rabid, unfettered special prosecutor like Fitzgerald, who, in a previous life bested by attorney Scooter Libby, then broke all the DOJ rules in fruitless a hunt to bring down Dick Cheney, and whose investigation immunized the wrong people and didn't follow up the simplest leads that would have lead to Richard Armitage, the original leaker of non-covert operative Valarie Plame Wilson's identity, who likely leaked Plame's relationship to several journalists because of a turf war with the CIA, an organization that, like State, also has leaked like a sieve whenever the bureaucrats disagreed with the administration, and that, like State, has yet to be held accountable by the equally irresponsible Department of Justice.

Exactly. It reflects little credit on anybody, and also tends to explain some of the bogosity and mishandling in US political and economic affairs.