Guilty on 4 counts

Today the jury convicted Libby on four counts. The reactions vary greatly. The
President said he was sorry for Libby. The Vice President said he was disappointed.
Sen.Reid said he does not want the Pres. to pardon Libby. MSNBC spent two hours of "special programming" to report (gloat over) the details. Fox, as per usual, fairly tripped over itself in condemning the whole trial.

To me the significance of the trial was not so much Libby's guilt over lying and obstruction of justice as what the background was and is. The scenario began four years ago as the Administration was making its case for going to war with Iraq. The claim was made, among many other spurious claims, that Saddam was purchasing Yellow cake from Nigeria to use for nuclear weapons. Cheney, whose distrust of the CIA and FBI was very strong had been camping at Langley in order to get the intelligence reports before the CIA analysts because he felt he could detect meaningful data better than they could.The notion that yellow cake was being sold to Iraq came from an unreliable source in Germany. Cheney urges the CIA to check it out. It was a strong argument for the war. The British considered it but rejected the idea.
Former Ambassador to Nigeria, Joseph Wilson was asked to go there informally to determine the truth. The CIA was skeptical from the beginning. His report (not found)
was negative. No such deal.
In spite of that and over the objections of the CIA the President stated in his State of the Union Address that indeed Iraq was getting the material from Nigeria and the ability to make nuclear weapons was immanent. He conjured up the image of a mushroom cloud.
Ambassador Wilson wrote an op-ed piece to the NYTimes stating the fallacy of that claim. When Cheney read that, he was very upset and he and Libby discussed means of discrediting Wilson. Wilson's wife worked at the CIA as a counter terrorist special agent. It was decided to leak specially declassified information to certain news reporters concerning Wilson's wife. One of the selected reporters was Robert Novack.
Being a war hawk himself he put his conscience on hold and published the information.
This led to the CIA requesting an FBI investigation into the outing of its agent.
In the prolonged investigation and trial Libby lied about who knew what, and when.
Obviously he was protecting his boss,Cheney. A cloud hangs over the whole administration. The story is far from over.
Wilson is suing Cheney for his part in the ruination of his wife's career and is hopeful that in the discovery phase of the trial evidence will be forthcoming that will shed light on the Rove, Cheney,Bush, machinations that misled the country into this disasterous war. I only hope!!!!!