Asia Times Online :: South Asia news - US ally Musharraf in a tangle over Iran

Asia Times Online :: South Asia news - US ally Musharraf in a tangle over Iran

A Corrupt Endeavor- by Justin Raimondo

A Corrupt Endeavor- by Justin Raimondo: "A Corrupt Endeavor
Who lied us into war? Libby trial verdict points the way for future probes
by Justin Raimondo

If you want to know why and how the vice president's chief of staff came to be convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice and now faces up to 20 or so years in jail and a hefty fine, then let's go back to the winter of 2005, when prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald announced Scooter Libby's indictment and took questions from the media. Asked why he wasn't indicting under the terms of the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to give classified information to persons not entitled to receive it, Fitzgerald explained by giving his famous baseball analogy:

'Let's say a pitcher winds up and hurls a fastball at a batter's head, you have to ask, why did the pitcher do it? Was it an accident? Did he do it out of a grudge or did his fingers slip? Did he hit the target or did he aim for the chin and miss? You'd have to look beyond the field, find out what happened in the dugout, see if it might have been retaliation (did the batter trash-talk the pitcher's mama?), or at the end of the day was it just a bad pitch, get over it?'

The problem, said Fitzgerald, is that sand had been thrown in the umpire's eyes. That's what Scooter Libby did when he lied to a grand jury and to the"