Q: After stabbing Scooter Libby in the back, how will Dick Cheney wash the blood from his hands?
A: As I'm sure you've heard, Bush administration scapegoat I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was found guilty on four of five counts today. The conviction — for perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice — mandates a prison term of 1.5-to-3 years (barring retrials, appeals and/or pardons).
Meanwhile, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, the prime architects of the scheme on behalf of which Libby lied, receive no punishment, aside perhaps from the downgraded political status they'd already suffered as the scandal unfolded.
So will Cheney, Scooter's old boss, be haunted by his own act of betrayal? Will he be left to wander the halls of the White House in a maniacal haze, ever disturbed by visions of symbolically blood-soaked hands?
Well. Probably not, T.A.M.S.Y. supposes.
Thing is, Cheney's got real blood problems to worry about.
RELATED: While taking stock of the fallout from PlameGate, the Washington Post's Andrew Cohen says "Cheney gets my vote for the biggest loser in all of this...
Cheney's friends and opponents alike now have to concede that he was also in this instance at least a meddling, petty bureaucrat who spent time at his undisclosed secure location worrying about how the White House would get back at [Joseph] Wilson, a penny-ante operator in the high-stakes game of politics over Iraq.Me, I'd still go for the dude bound for prison as the biggest loser in all this, but hey, I like the attempt. And I particularly appreciate Andrew Sullivan taking it one step further and asking Should Cheney resign?
His health is rough; he has been the most disastrous vice-president in history; he has lost two wars; he has lost every ally; he is despised in much of the country; he is now going to be the center of all the questions that the Libby guilty verdict raise. Why did he get so exercized about a two-bit critic during a critical time in the Iraq war? Why would he risk losing his most trusted aide by coordinating a media sting on a minor political opponent?Um... because he's a total dick?
Why would he risk committing a crime to pursue Wilson unless he had something very serious to hide?Oh, well, also that. But Cheney's been lying and manipulating media and redefining "legality" so constantly for so long, he probably just lost the ability to gauge which crimes were worth committing to protect which secrets. That's the thing about compulsive lying; it's as corrosive to one's greater sense of logic as is, say, power. Or greed. Or being a total dick.
FOR THE RECORD: It's generally against T.A.M.S.Y. policy to make light of our subjects' critical health problems, but we're willing to make an exception for the truly evil. Which includes, obvs, the Antichrist.
