The Real Issue in the Libby Trial

Byron York over at National Review Online has an interesting column regarding the Scooter Libby trial.

From NRO:

"Today the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, begins in federal court in Washington. The opening arguments follow a week of wrangling over seating a jury, a fight that went on significantly longer than either prosecution, defense, or judge estimated. And nearly every scuffle in the courtroom, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and chief defense lawyer Ted Wells argued over each prospective juror’s possible bias, served to emphasize the intensely political nature of the case. Does this potential juror believe Cheney is a liar? Does that one think the Bush administration can’t be trusted? What do they think about the case for going to war in Iraq?"

"As the selection process went on, it became clear that the biggest difference in the prosecution and defense approaches to the case can be summed up in this question: Does the most impassioned political argument of the day — the war — lie at the periphery of the case, as Fitzgerald contends, or at its heart, as Libby argues? By the end of voir dire, it was hard to deny that Libby’s argument is the more persuasive. No matter how much the prosecutor tries to frame the case as a simple question of lying under oath, this case is about the war, about people’s feelings about the war, and about the administration’s credibility over the war."

Read the rest here and do yourself a favor and visit York's archive for his coherent columns regarding the whole Plame/Wilson/Yellow Cake/Mint Julep sipping episode.