And the question of the week is this zinger from, of all people, David Brooks on The NewsHour:

Why did Cheney, Libby, Rove and everyone obsess so much about Wilson in particular? What is the part of the story we don't realize that we don't know?

Obviously there's a lot we don't know. And there's a lot the reporters know but aren't telling us, for whatever reasons.

Meanwhile, there's been nothing short of a gloat-fest going on in the liberal blogosphere for the past two weeks, and now there's a sense of Let's take our win to the bank and call it a win.

One person indicted. It seems like a disappointment.

But let's take this out of the legal realm for the moment, and put it into political context: This indictment over an effort to discredit a critic of the "evidence" that supposedly justified attacking Iraq ends up cracking open the rationale for the war itself.

And we wonder, If the bad intelligence was supposedly just an honest mistake, why the attacks on Wilson's credibility? And why the cover-up of such attacks? Is this Nixon all over again? Remember, Watergate happened in a White House effort to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, who, um, published documents that questioned the rationale for an expensive and unpopular foreign war.

In Watergate, the message from Deep Throat was, "Follow the money." Well, if we follow the money today, it seems to lead to Vice President Dick Cheney, whose holdings in his former company Halliburton have skyrocketed since Halliburton raked in more than $10 billion in no-bid contracts, courtesy of the Bush Administration.

It's rather disgusting to think that Dick Cheney pushed for the war on Iraq so he could rake in more big bucks.

One thing is for sure: The spin from the right will go on. It will be interesting to see if they continue to assert that lying under oath is not a crime, let alone important or having anything to do with honor and integrity. I wonder if they will ever, at some point, realize that making such a claim only indicates that they do not value honesty.

The Heretik has a good rundown of reactions to the indictment.

About author

media girl also blogs at other places.