Libby perjury trial puts spotlight on US Vice President Cheney

Cheney himself will take the stand later in the trial, the first time that a sitting vice president has testified under oath in a criminal proceeding. Despite the best efforts of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Judge Reggie Walton to narrow its focus, the trial has already begun to shed light on the gangster-like methods of the Bush administration.

The opening statement by the defense has already raised the claim that Libby is being used as a scapegoat to protect more politically powerful members of the administration, particularly Bush’s chief political aide, Karl Rove. Attorney Theodore Wells, Jr. read an excerpt from a note handwritten by Cheney, declaring that he was “not going to protect one staffer” [i.e., Rove] and “sacrifice the guy [i.e., Libby] that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.” And the first few witnesses have painted a picture of Cheney as the directing force in the administration’s efforts to use the media to smear and discredit critics of the war.

The mounting political pressure on the administration, and on Cheney in particular, has been expressed in a series of increasingly intemperate outbursts from the vice president, particularly his interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN last week. Cheney declared that the US intervention in Iraq had produced “enormous successes,” while dismissing as “hogwash” any suggestion that the administration had lost credibility because of its false claims about weapons of mass destruction and its constantly shifting rationale for the war.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/libb-j31.shtml