Winston Churchill was no perfect human, no perfect politician for that matter, but Bush the Lesser isn't even worthy of fetching Churchill's vermouth (inside joke: Churchill was famous for mixing a martini so dry the vermouth was simply in the same room as the gin, paraphrased). Bush the Lesser now considers himself better than Churchill because Jesus talks directly to the Dauphin via that earphone device and tells him to kill people, rob the poor, and so on. I'm sure the Augean Stable fools have a ready rebuttal to my false moral equivalence, but life is short enough already.
Sidney Blumenthal has the details
Libby and the White House book club | Salon.com :
...President Bush held one of his private book club sessions that Karl Rove organizes for him at the White House. Rove picks the book, invites the author and a few neoconservative intellectual luminaries, and conducts the discussions. For this Bush book club meeting, the guest was Andrew Roberts, an English conservative historian and columnist and the author of “The Churchillians” (sic, actually Eminent Churchillians ) and, most recently, “A History of the English-Speaking People Since 1900.”
The subject of Winston Churchill inspired Bush's self-reflection. The president confided to Roberts that he believes he has an advantage over Churchill, a reliable source with access to the conversation told me. He has faith in God, Bush explained, but Churchill, an agnostic, did not. Because he believes in God, it is easier for him to make decisions and stick to them than it was for Churchill. Bush said he doesn't worry, or feel alone, or care if he is unpopular. He has God.
Yeesh. How pathetic and childlike.
Mr. Blumentahl goes on to recount highlights (lowlights?) from the Libby Trial
Even as Scooter Libby sat at the defendant's table silently wearing his fixed, forced smile, and Vice President Dick Cheney was revealed by witnesses as the conductor of the smear campaign against former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Bush and Rove felt free to hold forth in their salon, removed from anxiety. Rove had narrowly escaped the fate of Libby by changing his grand jury testimony just before he might have been indicted for perjury. Bush, who proclaimed that he would fire any leaker found in his administration, is apparently closer to Rove than ever. The night before the Libby verdict, the president had dinner at Rove's house, and Rove sent to the reporters shivering outside a doggie bag filled with sausage and quail wings.“Where's Rove? Where's, you know, where are these other guys?” wondered a juror, Denis Collins, standing on the courthouse steps after the Libby verdict was delivered. Collins said that he and other jurors came to think of Libby as a “fall guy,” someone who had certainly committed the crimes of which he was accused but who also was hardly acting on his own.
The opening statement of Libby's attorney seemed to augur a presentation of the “fall guy” scenario. “They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb,” Theodore Wells said, recalling Libby's words to Cheney. “I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.” Rove, after all, had disclosed the identity of Wilson's wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, to two reporters, conservative columnist Robert Novak, who first put her name into print, and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. Rove told MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews that Plame was “fair game.” And he offered as his motive for attacking Wilson to another reporter: “He's a Democrat.”
In a note entered as a trial exhibit, Cheney expressed his concern that his chief of staff was being thrown to the wolves while Rove was being protected. “Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder,” the note read. Despite the dramatic opening, Libby's defense made no reference to the note during the trial. In yet another mysterious lapse, although Libby's lawyers repeatedly gave every indication to Judge Reggie Walton that both Libby and Cheney would testify, neither did. In a perjury trial, if the defendant does not look the jury in the eye and say he did not lie or that he made an honest error, it's difficult to win. But Libby never appeared as a witness on his own behalf; Cheney was not called; and the defense rested on the thin reed of Libby's weak memory and the supposed impeached credibility of journalists. The feeble defense amounted to a verdict foretold.
But why was Libby virtually passive? If Libby knew he was going to offer the barest defense, why didn't he do as Rove did, amending his grand jury testimony to reflect the truth? Why didn't Libby do as former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer did, turning state's evidence and being granted immunity in exchange for his testimony? What stopped Libby from risking indictment? What prevented him from making more than a minimal defense that invited conviction?
Libby could not plead the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. Had he done so he would not have been able to continue in his position as Cheney's chief of staff; he would have been compelled to resign. But why didn't he testify? Why didn't he make the case of Rove's perfidy that his lawyer suggested?
