None of this has stopped critics of the war from trying to blow this entire case into something far larger. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hailed the conviction as proof that the White House tried to "manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics." But the charges against Mr. Libby had nothing to do with intelligence, and Mr. Wilson was himself so discredited by summer 2004 that the John Kerry campaign dropped him as a spokesman once the Senate exposed his deceit.

What Mr. Reid and others are doing is showing how much all this really has been about a policy dispute over Iraq. The fact that they are now demanding Mr. Cheney's head is further evidence of the political nature of this entire episode. But it should also be a warning to Mr. Bush and his advisers that they too bear much responsibility for Mr. Libby's conviction.

Rather than confront Mr. Wilson's lies head on, they became defensive and allowed a trivial matter to become a threat to the Administration itself. They allowed Attorney General John Ashcroft to recuse himself and Mr. Fitzgerald to be appointed even though Justice officials knew that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had been the first official to leak Ms. Plame's name to reporters. Mr. Libby got caught in the eddy not because he was dishonest but because he was a rare official who actually had the temerity to defend the President's Iraq policy against Mr. Wilson's lies.

As for the media, most of our brethren were celebrating the conviction yesterday because it damaged the Bush Administration they loathe. But they too will pay a price for holding Mr. Fitzgerald's coat. The Bush Administration will soon be history, but the damage Mr. Fitzgerald has done to the ability to protect media sources and to the willingness of government officials to speak openly to reporters will last far longer.

Mr. Bush will no doubt be advised to wait for the outcome of an appeal and the end of his Administration to pardon Mr. Libby. We believe he bears some personal responsibility for this conviction, especially for not policing the disputes and insubordination in his Administration that made this travesty possible. The time for a pardon is now.

I'd complain about Harry Reid's cynicism in making a perjury trial a political stepping stone, but the man is turd and turds stink. The only thing to do about it is get upwind, or throw a shoveful of dirt on him.

We're going to have a day or two of the kind of fever swamp idiocy that surrounded the original leak investigation and the anticipation of having Karl Rove "frogwalked" for the cameras. Yet ultimately the facts are clear--it was Wilson who lied. Its also clear that Democrats remain in the pinch--unable to stop the war in Iraq, they dread having to deal with the success of the escalation in Baghdad and Anbar province. "Fortunately", at least in the eyes of the Democrats, terrorists were able to kill a large number of Shiite pilgrims. "Hopefully" we can still lose in Iraq.

Yet the real question elicited by this editorial is a pardon for Libby.

Notably, the preponderance of lefty opinion I've been reading concurs that Libby's conviction is a miscarriage of justice, or perhaps a better of way of characterizing it is disappointment that its not Karl Rove on the way to prison.

Still, while the conviction is ridiculously besides the point in what was supposed to be a leak investigation, it was nevertheless a result of due process. A quick pardon would be tantamount to saying that administration officials are above the law. Bill Clinton's end-of-administration pardon sale to a class of Democrat criminals did not go down well with anyone and may in fact still be a considerable liability for Hillary Clinton's campaign.

The Bush administration should at least wait for the outcome of the appeal--then pardon him if its still necessary.

UPDATE: A blast from the past--Plame and Wilson discredited by the Senate Intelligence Committee Report.