Libby's defense team has a point. Memory is one of the most trickiest and dangerous things in a criminal trial. Like eyewitness identification, the mind has strange ways of playing tricks on us. Just as we see what we want to see, we also recall what we want to recall.

However, the defense argument, of threats and plots and Al Quaida, fortunes of war and that sort of thing, clouding the mind of this unfortunate defendant may have opened a door to the one thing all of us really do want to learn from this trial: Just what was the Veep's office spending its time doing between the runup to the war and the months following. If Scooter Libby is to claim his days were spent how best to foil assassination plots and more planes flying into buildings, shouldn't Fitzgerald's team get to look at the minutes of all meetings Libby had between February and June of 2003? Shouldn't he get to read the minutes to see what it was that Scooter Libby was wracking his brain over when that unimportant and easily forgotten conversation over Valerie Plame interrupted his efforts to save our POTUS? Who else was Scooter talking to? And why?

How else can the prosecutor rebut Scooter's claim of "I had more important things to think about" if he doesn't get to investigate, or at least force the defense to set out in great detail, what those "important things really were" and the evidence to back it up.

I am sure Libby's team will trout out some memo's, intel estimates, daily briefings of a sort to support his case. But they shouldn't be allowed to cherry pick his schedule. So far it looks like the defense of a corporate exec who claims he forgot all about the e-mail from an insider telling him to dump his stock, because he was too busy dealing with all those e-mails from representatives of important people in Nigeria needing investment help and a bank account.

If Fitzgerald really is an independant and zealous prosecutor in this matter, he will demand full disclosure of all of Libby's activities and not just let Libby's defense team dictate what Libby's days were like, without corroboration. Subpeonas should be flying right now.

eat those words you bastards monitoring my e-mails. This man should be beheaded and his head put up on a pike.

He is evil incarnate and our sons and daughters are dying to protect his stock options. That is as horrible as it gets.

I guess this falls into the "be careful what you wish for" department. It was bad enough that this brush chopping yahoo left all the decision making to incompetent, wrongheaded, and downright evil underlyings, but now this?

Bush has no military experience, no diplomatic experience, no idea of the politics, religious or social history of the Middle East, let alone Iraq, and not one day of experience at actually running something let alone successfully. Now the guy who didn't even "sleep at a Holiday Inn" will be flying the plane.

This will make a great Greek tragedy/farce some century.

Ok, I've vacillated. I've offered alternative ideas on how to prosecute this war. I've even wondered if maybe this administration or the Pentagon, knowing more than I do, deserved the benefit of the doubt. I've read all the books, the articles, listened to too many Meet the Press sound bites.

Please count me officially in the camp that says: Pull all troops out now! Pull them back. Not just to armed camps in Iraq, pull them out of Iraq and let the Iraqis get a chance to put Humpty Dumpty back together. Honestly. If Bush woke us up tomorrow to say "Mission accomplished. The Iraqis are free to create their own government and to assist them we have withdrawn all troops to neighboring countries or Diego Garcia. We tell them "You're welcome." for removing a tyrant and stand by to assist them as soon as they decide to stop killing eachother and start looking for reconstruction aid. If not, well it's not our place to determine how your glorious democracy my play out, but if it plays out across the borders of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria or Turkey, well we are coming in to kick your self immolating asses back into your own territory. But we cannot make you what Richard Perle demands you should be. That is totally up to you and the best thing we can do for you is to get out of your way. That is why if you want our troops you will have to dial one before you dial our number. We are now long distance.

We need to leave and leave now.