Why Lie?

Why would Scooter Libby lie? That’s the question everyone was asking this weekend. After all, they point out, the transmission of classified information from Vice President Cheney to Libby wasn’t against the law. Why lie about it?

Here's what the pundits were missing.

First, though Republicans love to say that the entire world, including Democrats--even the Clinton administration--knew that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the truth is, they were thinking chemical and biological WMDs--NOT NUCLEAR. This distinction is essential. Nobody thought Iraq had nuclear WMDs. But the Bush crew understood that the way to scare America into war was to assert that Iraq was in the process of acquiring nukes. Which is why the White House was so obsessed with Joe Wilson and his claim that the Niger uranium transactions were bogus. Wilson was the biggest threat to the nuclear WMD fiction, a fiction nobody had made or assumed before.

Second, Scooter Libby’s statements to investigators were so blatantly opposed to the established facts that they transcended mere mistake. And because lies are usually made in proportion to the misdeeds they attempt to hide, Libby must have been hiding something big. Keep in mind that the Bush Administration had faced withering criticism about its use of underhanded backroom smear tactics against its critics and opponents, secret backroom deals to shape energy policy and shady backroom deals to give no-bid contracts to campaign contributors, etc. They denied these criticisms, and nobody could find hard evidence to contradict them.

I bet Libby lied to hide the fact that his boss, Cheney, directed him and others, likely including Karl Rove, to conduct a systematic and coordinated smear campaign against Wilson, which may or may not have included the deliberate outing of Valerie Plame. Either way, should their effort ever become public it would confirm what many were saying about dirty administration tactics, including the claim that Dick Cheney was a nasty, mean spirited, vengeful, back stabbing, underhanded, deceitful, dishonest scum-bag willing to do anything to advance administration policies except defend them on their merits. Nothing illegal about that. Just unethical, sleazy and potentially immoral.

For a group of “family values” blabbermouths, disclosure of these tactics might have destroyed the “values” façade they so carefully misled the nation into accepting. Scooter Libby, it appears, told blatant lies to try to keep that façade from crumbling.

Regardless of the legality, what he and others did was disgraceful, and a confirmation that our executive branch is in a pitiful shambles, staffed by angry, scheming, incompetent ideologues. Many voters couldn’t believe this a year ago. But they are starting to believe it now.