Lewis "Scooter" Libby's Political Usefulness 1981-2007

Lewis "Scooter" Libby’s Political Usefulness as assistant to President Bush and Chief of Staff to Dick Cheney was legally terminated yesterday when it was found guilty on four counts of obstruction of justice and perjury in the cover-up of the leaking of the name of a CIA operative, and one count of being named after a character in The Muppets.

Scooter Libby’s Political Usefulness was born in 1981, the offspring of a legal career defending dodgy businessmen and military-industrial corporations and a job offer from his friendly old Yale professor, Paul Wolfowitz, who always likes to help out someone in need, provided that someone is already a hugely successful, go-getting, higher-rate-tax-payer and not some welfare-guzzling schmo who might actually be in, er, need.

The Usefulness quickly proved its worth at the State Department, specialising in East Asian and Pacific affairs, before moving to the Pentagon in 1989, as Principal Deputy Under-Secretary Of Defense For Strategy And Resources And Making Up Stuff About Foreign Countries As An Excuse To Start A War With Them.

By the end of the century, The Usefulness had become part of George W Bush’s core security team, along with Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Mr Wolfowitz – a network of neo-conservatives known as “The Vulcans”, completely devoid of human emotion, able to kill a liberal with their “death grip” but, strangely, singularly unsuccessful in achieving a mind-meld with the President.

In 2001, The Usefulness was made Vice-President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff becoming so close to the Vice President that it was known as “Dick Cheney’s Dick Cheney”. At the same time, it also became an assistant to Mr Bush (“Dick Cheney’s Dick”) and national security adviser, shaping policy on Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and other countries neocons thought the US could easily whup in a fight that posed a threat to world peace.

It was during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq that the seeds of The Usefulness's demise were sown, when former US ambassador Joseph Wilson publicly cast doubt on the President’s insistence that Saddam Hussein had the ability to develop nuclear weapons. Why Mr Wilson should have cast such doubt no one can say, perhaps it was out of envy of Mr Bush, perhaps a deep and abiding hatred of freedom or perhaps even because Saddam Hussein was not developing nuclear weapons. Nonetheless it was at this time that The Usefulness's nemesis arrived, in the guise of some shadowy figure - who may or may not have loved hunting quail and septuagenarian lawyers - authorised the leaking of the fact Mr Wilson’s wife, Victoria Plame, was a CIA operative and – far, far worse – the owner of several Joni Mitchell albums, details which were both capable of putting her life in danger and ending her career.

With the hunt for this shadowy figure on in Capitol Hill and among the press and indictments being threatened, The Usefulness entered its last moments, nobly allowing itself to be cast into the path of the ravenous pursuing lawyers, who set upon it with glee. Even as it was being devoured the Usefulness strove to protect those who had cast it aside, unwilling to call on its former masters even to speak in its favour. Found guilty of covering-up the Plame leak, The Usefulness was useful no more. It blinked its last and died yesterday in Courtroom 17.

Scooter Libby’s Political Usefulness will be buried at the Lee Majors Church of the Fall Guy. It is survived by Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, Paul Wolfowitz and a pardon from George Bush just before he leaves office in January, 2009.