Prosecutor Pat for AG? It's never gonna happen, of course. But have you ever wondered about the schmuck who first proposed him as special counsel?

I've just been reading through the mess of comments on Firedoglake in response to their heroic coverage of the Libby trial and (now) verdict, when I came upon a suggestion so delicious I had to pass it on, from Veritas78:

"Fitz for Attorney General"

While I can't imagine anything less likely to happen, I also can't imagine anything more appropriate. And the job should be open momentarily, what with Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales surely packing his dainties for a quick overnight slither back to Texas as the scandal of the Bush regime's political purging of U.S. attorneys closes in on him.

You know who I feel most sorry for right now? Think back to the time when then-AG "Honest John" Ashcroft became the last person in the U.S. to realize that he and his Justice Dept. couldn't conduct a conflict-free investigation of potential White House criminality. There has to have been a meeting where somebody said, "We've got to find somebody we can trust to conduct an [in air quotes] 'independent' investigation." And then some schmuck said something like:

"Uh, we got this guy in Chicago--Fitzwilliam, Fitzpatrick, something like that. Supposed to be some kind of Boy Scout. Job would be a feather in his resume, and I bet he's smart enough to get the [more air quotes] 'result' we want."

Ironically, you realize that now, given that the poor schmuck must surely be persona non grata chez the Justice Dept., he doesn't even have a shot at getting into the witness-protection program.


ON SECOND THOUGHT . . .

You know, in some ways the choice of Prosecutor Pat didn't serve the Bush regime all that badly. Sometimes people with no regard for the law can take advantage of the very scruples of people with an obsessive regard for it. Our Pat is such a stickler for the spirit and letter of the law that it took him all this time to get a case into court, and with (incredibly) absolutely no potentially embarrassing-to-the-regime leaks along the way. Sure, it's embarrassing for the regime now--and for me the case that's been laid out against Vice President Cheney is simply devastating, both morally and legally, and we should all be demanding his immediate resignation.

But what if the special counsel had been a tad less professional than Prosecutor Pat? After all, he must have known in a matter of a couple of weeks that Valerie Plame's CIA identity was revealed for deliberate political purposes on order of the vice president of the United States. It's just that "knowing" and "proving beyond a reasonable doubt" are very different things. What if, however, the job had gone to someone who thought this was just a simple fact-finding assignment--and got the same basic facts out in time, say, for the 2004 election?