Distinguished?

I guess I'm glad that after relentlessly propagandizing on Scooter Libby's behalf, Fred Hiatt has decided that commuting the entirely of Libby's sentence was the wrong thing to do, but I would have traded that small concession to reality for them not making reference to Libby's "long and distinguished record of public service." What record? What distinction? As best I can tell, Libby has done exactly two things in government service -- he's worked for Paul Wolfowitz and he's worked for Dick Cheney.

Wolfowitz performed so poorly at the job of Deputy Secretary of Defense that George W. Bush decided to bump him to the World Bank in order to get him out of his administration, from which post he was later fired due to a combination of corruption and mismanagement. Hilariously, of Libby's two patrons Wolfowitz is the less embarrassing one. Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Libby were all, of course, intimately involved in the fraudulent selling of the Iraq War and the idiotic "planning" for the post-war occupation of Iraq. In their most noteworthy previous collaboration, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Libby all collaborated on the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance that proved to be so addled that President George H.W. Bush disavowed it.

There's a record of service here, but it's not distinguished. Indeed, at 11-12 years it's not even all that long. Joe Wilson had a long career of distinguished service. Valerie Plame had a long career of distinguished service. Libby had a medium length career that mostly lacked distinction and involved the occasional -- but extremely accute -- lapse into catastrophe, before he found himself resigning because he'd been caught breaking the law.

Comments

Good point. I guess when they say distinguished, they mean he was a loyal foot soldier, the perfect apparatchik. It’s the ‘you are either with me or against me’ mentality. If you are with me and better still are willing to take one for the team, you are distinguished and noble.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | July 3, 2007 4:19 PM

Libby was plugged into the same network that helped get his client Marc Rich a pardon.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 3, 2007 4:19 PM

Maybe the WaPo was referring to Libby's distinguished public service at the forefront of the bear-on-underage-girl legalization movement.

Posted by max | July 3, 2007 4:21 PM

But but but but .... he was so polite!

Posted by dcbob | July 3, 2007 4:26 PM

And he was nice to James Carville's children! Won't somebody please think of the children?

Posted by Glenn | July 3, 2007 4:40 PM

I can't improve on Glenn, above, but I'll point out that in the GOP lexicon, "distinguished service to the government" translates to "screwing up the government while enabling GOP policies and corporate payoffs as much as possible." The modern GOP hates government (except for the defense dept), and only values civil servants who help them turn government into a mass corporate patronage scheme, and advance the GOP cause of endless war everywhere. By this standard, Scooter's a stud, and Wilson and Plame are traitors.

Posted by beckya57 | July 3, 2007 5:21 PM

I couldn't agree more, Matt.

Here's the part of this whole business that's still not clear to me (I'd love to be enlightened if somebody has the answer). Why didn't Fitzgerald go after Armitage? Did he, in the end, conclude that leaking Plame's name was not a crime? (if so why not?) From what I understand, everybody in Washington loves Armitage, so I don't expect the MSM to stir the pot on this one. But to the extent that the outrage over the Scooter situation has to do with the large Wilson/Plame/hype-the-Niger-story narrative (and not just the perjury), why does Armitage get a free pass?

Posted by e-dawg | July 3, 2007 5:27 PM

Why didn't Fitzgerald go after Armitage? Did he, in the end, conclude that leaking Plame's name was not a crime?

I don't understand how anyone who has been following the story could still not understand the answer to this question. I blame the right-wing efforts to obfuscate the issue with as much noise as possible.

The answer is that the reason why Armitage, Libby, and the other leakers weren't prosecuted under the IIPA is that the IIPA requires proof, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the leaker had actual knowledge that the CIA agent's employment was classified at the time of the leak.

To prove that, you need to be able to prove how the person found out about the fact of CIA employment. In the case of Armitage, it was clear that he didn't know; he found out from a document that said nothing about Plame's covert status. In the case of Libby, it was less clear what he knew, but Fitzgerald nonetheless concluded that he couldn't prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt.

The real issue is what Cheney knew and when he knew it. Libby's lies were intentionally designed to keep Fitzgerald from getting a closer look at Cheney and determining what role Cheney had in the leak campaign and whether he knew Plame was covert. That's why the obstruction was a big deal. That's why no one was charged; the IIPA requires that you prove knowledge and Fitzgerald couldn't.

Posted by Steve | July 3, 2007 5:42 PM

Steve, thanks for that summary. (I actually hadn't known about the document from which Armitage learned about Plame.)

Posted by Matt Weiner | July 3, 2007 5:56 PM

The real issue is what Cheney knew and when he knew it. by Steve

Why didn't Fitgerald ask Cheney those questions?
If he did what was the answer.

Posted by langs | July 3, 2007 6:13 PM

"Distinguished" = member in good standing of the Town Club.

QED

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra | July 3, 2007 7:55 PM

... what was the answer?

Second verse, same as the first: GFY.

Posted by rapoli | July 3, 2007 8:28 PM

They, like Bush, live in the Neo-Con-- Fascist bubble echo chamber where they clink their glasses and dismiss reality and the outrage of the American public and military.

However, they are doing the Democrats a great favor by slitting the throat of the Republican party— or what is left of it.

They are the enemy to America’s way of life and the safety and security of our children.

They are happy to sacrifice and exploit the deaths and injuries of American troops.

Fascist, corrupt, anti-democratic, anti-constitution, anti-American foreign policy interests.

Posted by erict | July 3, 2007 8:34 PM

Joe Wilson deserves prison for perjury, not Libby, scumbags

Libby will be exonerated on appeal as many legal scholars (including a few honest left liberals - a rare breed)

As for the smears of Wolfowitz, your gang would fit in well in 1930's USSR. (and as Nazis as well, since the jew-baiting of Wolfowitz is so transparent)

Posted by Jozef | July 3, 2007 8:54 PM

Ok, I thought Glenn would have the best response, but clearly Jozef wins hands-down.

Posted by eriks | July 3, 2007 9:06 PM

That is indeed some fine trolling; I can smell the Thorazine from here.

Posted by calling all toasters | July 3, 2007 9:50 PM

Yeah, I gotta agree. Jozef has a certain, I don't know...detachment from reality that I just can't match up to.

Posted by Glenn | July 3, 2007 10:04 PM

Who knew that having a blog on the Atlantic would be so classy?
It's 'sounding' like a CSPAN call in show sometimes.

Posted by jonnybutter | July 3, 2007 10:05 PM

Come on, Matt,

Scooter Libby was Marc Rich's lawyer, remember?

How can you bemoan his lack of public service with accomplishments like Rich's pardon under his belt?

Posted by teknozen | July 3, 2007 10:29 PM

I have a friend who's good friend's with Libby (they play squash together), from what I understand, he was a speechwriter for Reagan, and wrote a North Korean DMZ speech, which got him involved with the CIA, and then a few other government agencies. This was in 83 or so.

So it seems he's been in government longer than 11 or 12 years.

Posted by jal | July 4, 2007 2:57 AM

"which got him involved with the CIA..."

I'd be careful with that sort of talk. I've learned from this case that unless you're also friends with Bush or Cheney, it could have some bad consequences.

Posted by Doug T | July 4, 2007 9:23 AM

I think we have proven incontrovertibly that Fred Hiatt is not an actual person, but a line, or perhaps a tradition, of illiterate bards reciting their epics from memory to the edification of feudal lords who provided them with patronage.

According to a book on Homer and other epics that I have read, the tell-tale sign of oral poetry is the usage of long-winded epithets that are often used with no regard on context; by stringing together such phrases a bard can in the same time recite the poem and improvise the subsequent stanzas.

"Long and distinguish record of public service" in definitely used in that manner.

Posted by piotr | July 4, 2007 12:44 PM