Submitted by phantomunmasker, Mar 9, 2007 03:23

Mr. Tyrrell begins by assuming his readers have no knowledge of the fact that Scooter Libby was found guilty--in a court of law, by a jury of his peers--of lying to investigators in a criminal case about matters material to the investigation, whereas Joe Wilson was alleged--by certain partisan critics, in a Senate inquiry presided over by the administration's Republican allies--to have lied in newspaper accounts about aspects of his inquiry into Niger's alleged uranium sales to Saddam Hussein. Tyrrell trusts his audience to put unproven partisan allegations against Wilson on the same footing with a criminal conviction of Libby--which shows Tyrrell's utter contempt for his readership.

Further evidence of the low esteem in which Tyrrell holds his readers shows up in his remarks about Harry Reid's and Nancy Pelosi's responses to Libby's conviction: "...what is the Democratic leadership's response? ...it is more lies." Tyrrell follows this stark accusation immediately with a quote from Reid that no one in his right mind could possibly construe as a lie. Indeed, Tyrrell no sooner types the closing quotation mark on Reid's comment than he downgrades his "lies" charge to "deception," apparently thinking that his reader's have the attention span of a gnat and will not notice his backpedaling.

But Reid's remark was not even deceptive. Scooter Libby's conviction did, in fact, hold him, as a member of the Bush administration, accountable for the administration's campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics. Libby's own attorney argued as much to the jurors, pointing out that Libby was in fact the fall guy for Cheney, Rove, and Armitage, whom sworn testimony indicated were guilty of even more serious crimes than those of which Libby was convicted. In interviews the jurors revealed they, too, saw things that way, but were still compelled by the law and evidence to convict Libby of the lesser crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice.

The crowning expression of Mr. Tyrrell's contempt for his readers comes when he quotes Pelosi's response to the Libby conviction and follows it with the claim, "Ms. Pelosi is as extravagant a liar as Mr. Wilson." In fact, anyone who has followed all the developments in the Plame outing knows very well that Pelosi's comment is neither lie nor deception, but rather a concise summary of what the testimony in the Libby case showed about 1) the administration's abuse of classified information, and 2) its Nixonian readiness to smear war critics from behind the cover of executive privilege.

If you can read Tyrrell's article and come away without a sense of having been treated as though you were dumber than dirt, then you must, indeed, be dumber than dirt!

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