Let's cut through the crap here. Scooter Libby may have been found guilty in Federal court for lying to investigators about circumstances surrounding the outing of a CIA operative who was married to a high-profile war critic, but you know that the rot and stench lies at the top of the mountain: Bush and Cheney.

What Libby did was serious. When Joe Wilson, a former U.S. Ambassador, investigated claims that Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction, he discovered that it was false. He wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post claiming that the reasons for war in Iraq were bogus. The Bush White House panicked and decided to retaliate against Wilson by exposing the identity of his wife, who worked undercover for the CIA. That is illegal, thanks to a law passed in the 1970's when leftists were trying to fight U.S. imperialism by outing CIA operatives. When investigators asked Libby under oath when he learned about Wilson's CIA wife, he lied repeatedly. The guilty verdict means that Scooter Libby will spend time in the big house.

Uncle Dick will continue managing affairs at the Bush White House. He will escape prosecution because Presidents and Vice Presidents don't get charged with crimes these days. But the way I see it, when Cheney's chief of staff is convicted for lying to investigators, that reflects on the whole enterprise. The most powerful advisor to the de facto President will go to jail for participating in a cover-up.

Libby's crimes were not the worst offenses of the Bush White House, but it's good enough to destroy Bush's credibility once and for all. Those of us who dispaired in November 2004 when Bush was re-elected never thought we'd see George W's popularity ratings sink ito the 20 percents, but it's been shooting down ever since Hurricane Katrina, as television images of stranded and poor New Orleans residents living in squalor at the Superdome and Bush's emergency apparatus failed everyone were on display for all to see.

Impeachment is probably not necessary. Better to let the Bush White House die a slow death. Cheney is regarded as total scum, a liar and ruthless operative who will do anything -- and deny anything -- to advance his nefarious agenda. Bush is seen as a clown who never really got his bearings after six years at daddy's desk in the Oval Office. People yearn for the days of Clinton, when the worst offense in the public mind was lying about oral sex. Now the President is caught lying about war.

A weakened Bush will weaken the Republican Party, clearly the worst of two evils in our two-party system. When Bush was re-elected, I wondered if the Republicans would over-reach and do the kinds of things that would destroy the Party. Things like that happen after resounding victories which create unbridled arrogance. It happened in 1964, when LBJ won a landslide and abandoned his re-election campaign a few years later, when the public soured on the Vietnam War. It happened in 1972, when Nixon won a landslide and resigned in disgrace two years later, his hands caught in the cookie jar of Watergate. It's happening right now. Bush is a lame duck with no credibility and no smarts to wiggle out of this. Only capturing bin Ladin would save him, and six years after 9/11, he's nowhere to be found. I speak for many when I say that its a good thing that the the lame duck is limping and destroying the party, hopefully for the foreseeable future. If Dick Cheney had a gun and took George W. duck hunting, he'd probably shoot him. He would if he could.