Obsolete

Well, it's happened. After two years of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, a grand jury had indicted Lewis 'Scooter' Libby on numerous charges, including lying (perjury). Karl Rove is not being indicted today, but remains under investigation.

Lawyers were reportedly told there still were matters to resolve before the prosecutor "decides what he is going to do, so Mr Rove will not be indicted today".

We shouldn't perhaps read to much into that, but it seems difficult to see how Rove can escape being indicted on either obstruction of justice or false statements, knowing what we do now. That Libby has been indicted may be the start of the breaking of the neo-conservative cabal which Colin Powell's ex-chief aide Lawrence Wilkerson admirably but much too late spoke out about. What is even more important about this indictment though is that will show the true nature of the Bush administration: nasty, vindictive and hostile to any criticism. Joseph Wilson was right to speak out about the blatant falsehoods which George Bush himself used in his speeches before the Iraq war. That his wife, a undercover CIA officer was exposed through the leaking to sympathetic journalists of her name, an exposure that began at the very top of the Bush administration with Cheney himself, should not disgrace this administration is bad enough. That they have spent the last two years lying and misleading jurors is even worse.

Again though, we should not get ahead of ourselves.. Some have compared this case to the David Kelly affair here on this septic isle. The Hutton inquiry, hyped up for months as to lead to stinging criticism or even the resignation of if not Blair, then definitely Geoff Hoon, turned out to be such a sloppy whitewash that the anger felt in the country was palpable. The BBC's director general and head of the board of governors were forced out for a report that was almost entirely correct. A year and a half on, although the Labour party itself seems moribund, the Blairite cabal is just as strong as before. As bad as it looks now, who is to say that Bush will yet emerge relatively unscathed from this? It does not directly affect him, although it does his confidant, Rove. To underestimate the power of regeneration of some politicians would be naive.