Scoot, Scoot, Scooter

"Progressive" US bloggers have had a field day recapping the Libby guilty verdicts. Ever since last summer, at the lead up to the indictment, they've been saying that that a Libby trial & verdict would bring the end of Bushdom. As fucking if.

I agree with The Tomb -

All this tells you a lot about how things are done in Washington. The criminal enterprise that Wilson tried to expose is left well alone, while his wife made redundant, and he is repeatedly attacked and slandered by stampeding hordes of buffoons. Libby goes down because he was caught telling fibs to protect his masters, but no one cares who he was protecting or why, and no one will try to find out. The Iraq war will, on some estimates, cost between $1 trillion and $2 trillion by the time it's finished. It looks as if the imperial strategy is failing badly and is causing some alarm in segments of the American ruling class. However, no one in the current administration will suffer serious or permanent damage as things presently stand - the costs of empire are largely externalised to its victims - and quite a lot of people close to the administration have done rather well out of the venture. The Democrats are still largely convinced of the legitimacy of the effort, are determined to support it more intensely and may even try to take it further afield. They will appreciate this conviction because it hurts the Republicans, as it should. But they would no more seek further indictments or probe further into the issues than they would participate in a daisy-chain of arse-kicking, since one runs the risk of establishing troublesome precedents. So it's all coming down on Lewis Libby. According to Libby, he got the name 'Scooter' because his Daddy noticed how fast he could move across his little crib when he was a baby. He has a new crib to scoot around in for a few years.

And, who forged the Niger documents in the first place?