Well, yes. The story here would be that Scooter lied about where he heard the name and that's it. I don't think there's much to the potential fact that it was Cheney who told him about Valerie Plame, in and of itself. There would be nothing odd or otherwise illegal about the VP keeping his Chief of Staff in the loop on everything he knows, particularly presuming that both of these men have clearances and all that.

The story would be if Cheney told Scooter to start the smear campaign and release the name, but we will never know that. Scooter will fall on that sword rather than implicating Cheney, knowing that at worst he'd spend a few years in prison until pardoned by the outgoing President.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 the US Ambassador, April Glaspie was recalled to Washington. Joe Wilson became Head of Mission in Baghdad. Bush 41 commended his work protecting US citizens, getting human shields released and finally getting them all out of Iraq. He was tough with the Iraqis. At that time Cheney was Sec of Defense. Wilson reported regularly to State. Was Cheney out of the loop? Did he not know who was looking after US interests?

BP

If or when Libby lied about Wilson/Plame is not the real issue. What we know for a fact is that Dick Cheney and George W. Bush KNOWINGLY lied about the Niger connection with Saddam in Iraq. They lied about Iraq being connected to 9/11. They lied about a connection between Saddam and Osama. It seems to me that we should be pursuing the lies we know for certain to be fact. I think it would be very appropriate for Mr. Fitzgerald to indict both Cheney and Bush since they are the essential liars.

Does anybody know if the aspens also go to jail in clusters?

Liars and hypocrites, hypocrites and liars, the whole damn bunch of them. Is there even one honest person in the entire Bush administration? It's hard to imagine there is.

What bothers me most about this story -- and many more like it -- is the attitude taken by the right-wing True Believers. When Bill Clinton lied about a blowjob, they were up in arms as one, claiming that it wasn't about the sex, it was about the lying under oath. Now when one (or more likely some) of their own is revealed to be less than truthful, they shrug their shoulders and sniff, "Oh, no, politicians not telling the truth? *Yawn* Tell me another one."

Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican. Mendacity... hey, you too.

If there truly is nothing wrong with the Plame outing, as dependable conservatives note, why is

everyone lying about what was known and when they knew it?

The post by B. Pillay hits the nail right on the head. It is almost inconceivable that Cheney would not have known Wilson from the GHWBush administration, making Cheney's plausible deniability in the Plame outing affair rather implausible. I don't expect our lame MSM to pick up on it, but a timely e-mail to the Daily Show might get that point across to an even larger audience.

I've mentioned elsewhere on the net the fact that on the same weekend that Bush announced he had consulted a personal lawyer in the CIA leak case, George Tenet announced his resignation from the CIA. Novak has said that he talked to the CIA and that there was no objection to printing Plame's name. Could it be that "the CIA" was Tenet?