Dana Milbank recounts the strange behavior of Scooter Libby’s defense attorney during yesterday’s closing arguments. In many ways, Ted Wells’ performance was a metaphor for how the neoconservatives feel about George W. Bush and their whole excellent imperial adventure.
For a brief moment yesterday, Scooter Libby was not a former White House aide on trial for perjury. He was an orphan in need of a loving home.
“He’s been under my protection for the last month; now I’m entrusting him to you,” defense lawyer Ted Wells told the puzzled jurors.
His voice breaking, the $700-an-hour lawyer pleaded: “Give him back! Give him back to me!”
Wells sobbed loudly and went back to his chair, where he sat staring at the floor and emitting the occasional sniffle.
Exactly what Wells was trying to achieve with this outburst — if he intended it at all — was a mystery.
I’ve read similar outbursts recently from William Kristol and Frederick Kagan. This site has been, from the beginning, all about frog-marching members of this administration and the Republican Congress out of the halls of power. We’ve had some successes with Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham, Dusty Foggo, and Larry Franklin. Bill Frist retired, Dennis Hastert lost his leadership position, George Allen, Conrad Burns, and Rick Santorum were voted out of office. But we have not yet landed a truly big fish. I don’t know how long it will take the jury to deliberate in the Scooter Libby case. But I am hopeful that they will not take too long. Scooter Libby is guilty…and guilty of a lot more than he has been charged with. And when he goes down it will be the first real indication that America has begun the process of calling this administration a criminal administration.
And then it is on to bigger fish….to fry.
