Pardon him.

THE Left has developed an elaborate fantasy about Scooter Libby. The Bush administration supposedly leaked the fact that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA to retaliate for the public criticisms of the administration that her husband, Joseph Wilson, had made. Libby then--the story continues--lied to a grand jury in order to hide the evidence that his then boss, Vice President Cheney, had manipulated intelligence to manufacture a case for the Iraq War. In securing a conviction of Libby for perjury, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald more or less adopted this theory, speaking of a "cloud" over the vice president. Senate majority leader Harry Reid crowed that the conviction held the administration "accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics."

The Silberman-Robb commission has determined that no such campaign took place. The errors in pre-war intelligence, although real and grievous, were not the result of administration pressure on analysts. The Plame leak was the fault of an internal critic of the administration, Richard Armitage, and was not an illegal act. Libby had nothing to hide. And if his intent was to shield the vice president, why did he turn over notes indicating that Cheney was concerned about Wilson?

There ought to be a cloud over Fitzgerald's reputation. His investigation didn't focus on Armitage's role. It didn't focus on that of Ari Fleischer, the former White House press ...