Better than the Bard

dr. elsewhere here

I swear, this story is better than soaps!! Better than Survivor!! And it just keeps on giving.

If you have not yet read the latest from Murray Waas, don’t fail to do so. Although CHS at FDL does a great synopsis/analysis, as per usual; it's all about Bush's role in the smear Wilson compaign. (Recall that similar details of Bush’s interview with the feds were also reported by Jason Leopold in early April of this year.)

The upshot of Murray’s piece is that, when Bush was interviewed by the Feds in June of 03, he claimed that he called for the declassification of an NIE to discredit Wilson’s assertions, and that he placed Cheney in charge of this little project to “get the facts out.”

Christy then maps out an interesting scenario of Rove’s motives – clearer now that we have so much more background information – that resembles the back-biting den of thieves scenario I speculated about recently.

The upshot of Christy’s take is that, given that Bush has pointed the finger at Cheney, who gave Libby this dirty work to do but has denied to the feds that he himself as VP ever leaked anything, Rove and Libby appear to have also been the designated fall guys. Neither balked at any of this dirty work, mind you, but it’s their fingers that are now in a vise, not Bush or the Dick (eeyew; ouch). So of course Rove would not hesitate to turn on the guy who set him up, protecting his boss and his own sorry ass in the process.

In so many fewer words, like I said.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

This logic may be one reason why Team Libby went suddenly and so uncharacteristically silent on their obsession with Rove’s notes and testimony the last time they stood before Judge Walton. They’ve been demanding to have access to everything about Rove, who is not even a witness for the prosecution, but their own witness, exposing their nervousness about what he might have to say. Now that Rove is suddenly “free,” despite what they know (which is at least as much as we do) about Rove’s guilt, Team Libby is likely getting a pretty clear picture what Rove’s new situation could mean for their defense.

Now emptywheel has chimed in with a couple of posts, the more recent – and by far the more compelling – is her analysis of Fitz’s case against Libby. At least Libby. Fitz appears to have caught Libby in a lie that exposes the probability that he actually leaked Plame’s identity to Judy Miller on July 8th, 03. Emptywheel makes a great case that Libby has testified in two conflicting ways about that meeting, such that there is at least one lie. And their notes betray them both, as well. That noose sure is tightening around Libby’s neck, and snaking toward Cheney's.

All these new data and perspectives raise some curious points, not least of which is the fact that the President has – wittingly or not – made his own VP the fall guy in this mess, who has then made his COS his fall guy. This was my hunch, based as much on the psychologies of the players as the facts before us, that they'd all turn on each other when the chips went down.

I’m going to guess now that Bush was unwitting, and not only because Bush lacks wits on so many levels. Cheney had been managing the entire Iraq enterprise, from soup to nuts, and it makes perfect sense to me that Dick would have kept Bush in the dark on what he was doing. Dick so loves the dark. It makes no difference really what Dick’s reasoning was; plausible deniability maybe, but just as easily control freak, who needs the rules? Who cares, it only matters for the screenplay, because Libby testified that Cheney told Libby that Bush had directed the declassifications, presumably to give his actions some authority. We may never know if that included Bush's approval of leaking Plame’s identity, unless Fitz caught Bush in a lie, too. The point right now is that Fitz does appear to have Libby’s goose ready for the oven, with a little help from his stool pigeon friend Karl, and may even have a bead on Cheney for a second course. (Going after Cheney is a little dicier since he's a Constitutional officer; he'd have to be impeached, or resign. But not impossible.)

This whole picture raises a serious question in my mind. Consider: Libby must be obsessively wondering if it is really worth it to fall on his sword for the likes of the Big Dick, especially in light of the fact that his boss actually handed him the sharpened blade and then shoved. Also, knowing – or at least suspecting – that Rove has turned on him, what the hell is he left with? If even Bush is willing to point the finger at Cheney, who will then point it at Libby, what are the odds now that Rove would risk perjury to loyally protect either one of them? Libby must be losing serious sleep trying to read all the writing on the wall.

So I wonder if he’s also considering this: If there is no other way to spin the public perception of all these facts that Libby went way out of line in a rogue action beyond Bush’s directive, then everyone close to Bush must also wonder how they would spin Libby’s getting a pardon?

The whole prospect of pardons gets even stickier if one tries to make the case that Libby went beyond Cheney’s directive, what with that marked up paper clipping and all. “All” here including but not limited to Cheney’s role not just in the Wilson smear, but in the manufacturing of this godforsaken invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation, ruination of our international reputation, and near complete destruction of the Constitution. And his own demonic personality, and all, shooting friends in the face and all. All of that, too, and his accompanying abysmal approval ratings.

These two characters, Libby and Cheney, would thus become, as I’ve asserted previously, just so much chum in the murky waters of WH power wars.

Without speculating on intent or leaks or any of that, it’s still worth considering just what and whose purposes Murray’s reporting will serve. Not that he was party to that as a plan; I’m just wondering what the players – and us spectators – will be able to take away from this new stuff. Some thoughts.

First, it reminds everyone that the investigation remains ongoing. Second, it reminds us that Bush early on admitted to a plan to disqualify Wilson, but not to any illegal leaks (of course, given their history, why should we trust them? and given Bush's legal team, how would they know?). Third, it supports our assumption that Karl cut a deal. Fourth, it also presents to Libby the rather bleak outlook for his defense, and for a pardon. All of which serves to make Libby, if he’s as smart as they all say he is, exquisitely sensitive to the relative benefits of cooperating with the investigation. Which, in Fitz-speak, must mean to turn on Cheney.

Not a bad day’s work.

One last thought: Rove might well advise Bush to cut out the “cancer on this Presidency” and leave Cheney and Libby to fend for themselves, without benefit of pardon. But it seems to me that will ultimately reveal a no-win reality for the Dubya. As the truth comes out on this deadly scandal, it will become increasingly clear just how much power Cheney has really held in this WH. (As a brief aside, in this week’s New Yorker, Jane Meyer writes about David Addington’s role in increasing the power of the executive. On Rachel Maddow this morning, Meyer told of interviewing an old friend of Addington's; this friend stated that Addington told him after the 2000 SC decision for Bush that they were going to consolidate the power of the P and VP in the WH. Scary thought. ‘Splains a lot.)

In any case, the bottom line is this: However much power Dick has had only means how little power Bush has had by comparison. On the one hand, Bush can now blame the Dick for everything that’s gone wrong, but so much has gone wrong, this approach would backfire because he’ll be assigning power even as he assigns blame. There may thus be no way out of this whole mess for Bush without his being exposed as very very weak.

Yup; ultimately reality bites the big no-win for the Chimp.