Barone on Libby.

Michael Barone, in his angry, rambling post about Scooter Libby's conviction, writes,

Still, the "Bush lied and people died" mantra resonates. Yet there was no lie. Given Saddam Hussein's previous use of weapons of mass destruction and his refusal to cooperate with weapons inspectors, George W. Bush had to assume he had WMDs, just as Bill Clinton had before him -- as we were reminded by Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech in favor of the Iraq war resolution.

Did George W. Bush "have to assume" there were Iraqi flying drones capable of spraying chemical weapons on Washington, DC? Did George W. Bush "have to assume" that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program? Did George W. Bush "have to assume" that Iraq was trying to get yellowcake from Niger? Did George W. Bush "have to assume" that Saddam had operational ties to al Qaeda and may have even been responsible for 9/11?

And, for the record, the Bushies blew off the findings of Hans Blix and his team, claiming that because they hadn't found WMD, that just meant Saddam was hiding them.

Tellingly, Barone never argues whether Libby was actually guilty of the crimes he has been convicted of, as if that doesn't matter at all. And we know from the Clinton years that Republicans consider perjury and obstruction of justice to be high crimes.

Barone simply doesn't want to face the fact that Scooter is the highest-ranking White House official convicted of a felony since Iran-Contra, so he just calls Joe Wilson a liar, Democrats propagandists, and rewrites history in the process.