The Weird Logic of the Scooter Libby Scandal

Throughout the Scooter Libby trial, which I will assume you are at least vaguely familiar with, I have been troubled with one particular illogical argument. It is the argument which the Bush Administration used to launch their ill fated counter attack on Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame. Apparently, there was dubious information that Saddam Hussein was trying to purchase yellow cake uranium from Niger to process for building a nuclear weapon. Which incidentally made little sense because he already had over 500 tons of yellow cake uranium in his possession. At any rate, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger and quickly returned to report that the information was false. Despite his findings, the Bush Administration continued to use this false information to make their case for war. Eventually, he revealed the information to the public and the Bush Administration was incensed that their lies were exposed. This is where they lost me.

The Bush Administration then decided to push the story that the only reason he was chosen for the Niger trip was because his wife, who was a CIA operative, pushed his name into the mix. Therefor, he was chosen to go on the trip because of nepotism and his findings should be dismissed. Please read the last two sentences again and explain the logic behind their argument. He went to Niger and his investigative findings were unquestionably correct. In fact, the original documents included with the allegations were found to be forgeries. But by their twisted logic, we should disregard his findings, not because of the information which he used to reach his conclusion, but because his wife sent him. Oh by the way, that was proven to be incorrect also. I guess if a police investigator who is investigating a murder is sent by a relative, who happens to work for the same police department, to look into the crime and he is able to get a signed confession from the perpetrator. We must disregard the confession because his relative sent him to get it. Where is the logical connection between who sent him and whether his investigation resulted in an accurate finding.

Obviously they based their plan on the argument "you can fool some of the people all of the time" and those are the ones we are focusing on.