libbyology

* christy:

"But, until then, it is worth thinking long and hard about what this trial has laid out for everyone — inside and outside the courthouse — to see in the full light of day. In political terms, it is this: the Vice President of the United States has been running a shadow national security agency, that has had broad and irrefutable impact on the day to day operations of our intelligence and military policymaking, at all levels of government. And I have never, ever seen something at this level from the Vice President's office — an office that generally is more concerned with attending funerals and making trips on behalf of the President's interests.

It is worth asking, over and over again, was this power formally delegated to Dick Cheney by George Bush, a sort of abdication of the national security portfolio — a tasking, if you will, to someone else? Or was Dick Cheney doing this all on his own? Oughtn't we start asking those questions. Soon. Because it seems to me that there are an awful lot of clouds over the Bush Administration, and a bunch of them appear to have Dick Cheney's name written all over them. "

* jeralyn:

"Due to the length of Scooter's grand jury testimony and the voluminous exhibits introduced, I would not be surprised if this jury doesn't come back before Friday. I'm not going to make a prediction for conviction or acquittal. But, I do think a very fast verdict means acquittal and a very prolonged one means a split (compromise) verdict or a hung jury."

* jeralyn:

"The smartest thing the defense did at trial was not to put Libby on the stand and subject him to what surely have been a withering cross-examination by Fitzgerald. The dumbest thing the Government did was charge too narrow a case and not indict Cheney along with Libby.

In other words, Fitzgerald missed the forest for the trees. Maybe he thought the case wasn't there. But in charging such a stripped down version solely against Libby, I have to believe at least one juror, like me, will have a reasonable doubt and refuse to convict.

Will I be disappointed if there's an acquittal? Yes, but in Fitzgerald, not the system. And if there's a conviction? Then I'll be disappointed in the Judge, for refusing to allow a memory expert to testify at trial. As much as I might prefer it otherwise, this case was about memory and reasonable doubt, not about the conspiracy that was proven to exist at the Administration's highest levels of power."

* scribe at jeralyn's:

"It's been quite clear throughout that one of the targets Plame and her subordinates were hunting was A.Q. Khan and his network. You remember him. He was both the mastermind of the Pakistani (soon to be Al Quaeda) nuclear bomb program and the nexus of the black market for a lot of nuclear-capable technology (to countries like Iran and North Korea, no less). You also no doubt remember that Scooter's successor, who came in to testify about all the weighty issues that crossed Scooter's desk (in contravention to the feathery-light issue of Wilson and Plame), to buttress the idea he was entitled to have forgotten. What was one of the weighty topics on the list of items testified to?

A.Q. Khan.

I find it incomprehensible that people who have spent the last quarter century totally immersed in national security - like Scooter, Deadeye and Addington, to name three - would not make a connection between the deep concern and interest the USG had and has in A.Q. Khan, on the one hand, and the fact that the wife of someone they were putting a hit on was in charge of running (part of) the intelligence war against that same A.Q. Khan, or that (at a minimum) she worked in the section of the CIA concerned with just that issue, on the other.

Particularly when Khan was on the list of Very Serious Topics.

Nor do I find it comprehensible that Very Important People like Deadeye and Scooter, who would go over to Langley themselves or by proxy (like Newt) to walk into an analyst's cubicle and demand answers they liked, would fail to make the connection. I have little doubt they had the ability to find out exactly who Plame and Wilson were, and what they did."