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(Photo credit to Rentahamster.  What a cutie patootie pooch!)

The article about the Libby trial's broader implications that Sydney Schanburg has written in the NYObserver is a tightly crafted indictment of the entire malignant neocon cabal.  To wit:

Day by day, witness by witness, exhibit by exhibit, Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the trial of Dick Cheney’s man, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, is accomplishing what no one else in Washington has been able to: He has impeached the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Of course, it’s an unofficial impeachment, but it will also, through its documentation, be inerasable. The trial record—testimony, exhibits, the lot—will be there, in one place, for investigators, scholars, reporters and Congress to pore over. It goes far beyond the charges against Mr. Libby. It is, instead, a road map to the abuses of power that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and their shadow government of neoconservatives have committed as the neocons carried out what they had been planning for years: an invasion of Iraq—and other military excursions—for the purpose of expanding American dominion….

Besides the damning notes from Mr. Cheney, accounts of conversations between Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby and Mr. Libby’s subsequent conversations with other pivotal administration officials, there is at least one document, in Mr. Cheney’s handwriting, that suggests the President had direct knowledge of the campaign to discredit Mr. Wilson.

The trial and its record was always all about the unnecessary war—a war created by massive and deliberate lying about an imminent security threat that wasn’t there. That’s why the President and his men were desperate to shut Mr. Wilson up.

He was the imminent threat—to their delusional empire-building.

But the neocons are not the only folks with muddy paws in this case. I think Mary hits the nail on the head with this comment from yesterday:

I liked the Syndney Schanberg article. To me, it’s the only one that has clearly acknowledged the real import of the limited investigation – the President’s responsiblity and direct “misstatements” to the public about his knowledge.

Although it is not the crime charged, with the Miller/NIE scenario, the Special Prosecutor walked responsibilty for covert domestic propaganda efforts, involving leaks of misleading cherry picked portions of classified intelligence, directly back to the President of the United States.

In case anyone was wondering, covert domestic propaganda planted by the Executive — not all that likely to be a legal use of covert information under the existing statutes. Aside and apart from the common law and statutory overlays of abuse and misuse of discretion, covert domestic propagandizing was not really a function ascribed to the President by the Consitution or any Constitutional scholar.

Win, lose or draw on Libby, putting into the public domain the information that the President himself engaged in authorizing covert domestic propaganda.

Add the now public domain information that, before Libby gave his “Aspens” letter to Miller, the President was, in effect, delivering his own “Aspens” pep talk to his nicknamed press corps. The Presidential wink and nod about how we may never know who leaked, bc Stretch & Co. had such a great reputation for not outing their sources stood as a pretty clear direction.

The White House press corps did a remarkable sit/stay, waiting for “sources” in the White House to plant the next pro-war, pro-Bush piece of disinformation firmly on the nose of the favored few reporters. Who needs a Pravda with so many Rovers?

Having sat through hours of testimony in the Libby trial, especially the intricate details of the PR machinations from the White House and the Vice President's Office as detailed by Cathie Martin from the stand, I keep going back in my mind to something that Eric Boehlert wrote in Lapdogs, because it is startlingly applicable:

Journalists are being actively undermined, yet reporters and editors won’t even put up a fight. Rather than pushing back by pointing out the absurdity of the conservative press attacks (most MSM members politely ignored the Schiavo memo blunder, for instance), or at least ignoring the haters’ endless stream of baseless accusations, MSM jouornalists, anxious to prove they are not liberal, toast the press haters’ tenacity, gloss over their radical rhetoric, and pretend they’re adding something to the public dialog.

When we had Sam Seder and Stephen Sherrill on to discuss F*U*B*A*R, we were all talking in the comments about how cowed the media had become on certain topics during the Bush Administration. At the time, I characterized it as "battered press syndrome." The more I think about the Libby trial testimony, the more I think that was an even more apt description than I had thought at the time.  The way the Bush Administration — Vice President Cheney's office in particular — sees the media is as a tool for their increasing power dominion and nothing more.  One need only look at the interviews with Cheney that Dan Froomkin cited yesterday to see that, in the full glare of daylight.

I think Mary's comment just brings to the fore a whole lot of questions that serious journalists, and their editors, ought to be asking themselves.  Because I can guarantee you that we in the public will definitely be asking them.

Enough with the biscuits aplenty.

(If you missed our FDL Book Salon with Eric about Lapdogs, you can read it here.  Great stuff!)