The narrow question that went to the jurors centered on whether Libby lied to the FBI and a federal grand jury, but the real question always was: Did the Bush administration take America to war in Iraq knowing that its confident assertions of the threat of weapons of mass destruction were not backed up by the facts?
Evidence from Libby provided an unequivocal yes.
It also provided the motive for Cheney and Libby - and White House political operative Karl Rove - to leak the name of a CIA operative in order to embarrass a critic who could undermine their credibility. They needed to keep secret the shaky case for war, at least until the next election.
That mission was accomplished. Big time.
A recap: In June 2003, when the administration's case for the Iraq war seemed to be falling apart, Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times. Wilson reported that in February 2002, he was sent by the CIA to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein was trying to purchase uranium in Niger. Wilson concluded that the claim was highly unlikely, but a year later President Bush repeated it in his State of the Union speech in the run-up to the war.
Within a few weeks of the op-ed, columnist Robert Novak reported that Wilson's wife, a CIA operative, had recommended him for the trip, implying nepotism. Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert operative and the revelation ended her career. We may never know if it ended the lives of any people she had recruited.
The Libby trial revealed that Novak was only one of several household-name journalists who had been leaked the information. It also showed that Cheney had gotten President Bush to declassify other information in order to leak it for political purposes.
What emerged from the sworn testimony was a portrait of a vice president obsessed with hurting a critic and mobilizing the power of the government to do it.
In his closing argument, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald - a man who appears to know exactly what he is saying when he is saying it - maintained that there was a cloud over the vice president. A juror from the trial reported that members of the jury believe that Libby was indeed a "fall guy" for members of the administration.
So no matter what happens to Scooter Libby, this case must not end here.
If Libby can draw out his appeals past the November 2008 election, he very well could get a presidential pardon, and that's an excellent incentive for him to stay silent. That shouldn't stop Congress from finally doing what it should have done when Joseph Wilson first wrote his op-ed piece - investigating fully how this country rushed into war without the facts.
And the role Cheney played in that. *
