Indictment casts harsh light on Bush

US: George W Bush was unusually skittish yesterday morning as he left the White House for Virginia, grinning at reporters and pulling comic faces. By then, Mr Bush knew that vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was about to be indicted by a grand jury investigating the leaking of a CIA agent's identity.

The president also knew that his own closest aide, Karl Rove, had escaped an indictment - although Mr Rove remains in legal jeopardy and could face charges later.

For the White House this was not the worst possible end to Mr Bush's most difficult political week since taking office, during which the US death toll in Iraq passed 2,000 and the president's nominee for the supreme court, Harriet Miers, withdrew her nomination.

For now, the White House is keen to look on the bright side and to seize on every gleam of hope in an ocean of adversity.

Although Ms Miers's withdrawal was a slap in the face for the president from his conservative allies, it has spared him the prospect of a more drawn-out destruction of the nomination during senate hearings next month.

Mr Bush will seek next week to relaunch his second term with a new nominee to the Supreme Court and a renewed focus on domestic issues such as the reconstruction of the Gulf of Mexico region following this summer's hurricanes.

Emboldened by their success in forcing Ms Miers's withdrawal, conservatives are pressing for an ideological, right-wing replacement in the mould of justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Having chosen a woman last time, Mr Bush may be under less pressure to confine his search to women and minorities this time but it will be a challenge to find a nominee acceptable to conservatives without provoking a backlash from Democrats.

Some Republicans are thirsting for a fight in the senate, warning that if Democrats try to block a nominee by filibustering, they will trigger the "nuclear option" - a change in senate rules to allow a simple majority to end the filibuster.

But Mr Bush chose Ms Miers in the first place in an effort to avoid such a confrontation and he is unlikely to seek a senate battle now. Besides, many conservatives are eager to get back behind the president after the stand-off over Ms Miers, not least because divisions within the Republican party can only benefit Democrats in advance of next year's mid-term elections.

Mr Libby, who is unknown to most Americans, might be obscure enough for his indictment to leave Mr Bush untainted and there is no suggestion that the president had any prior knowledge of the leaking of the CIA agent's name.

When Mr Libby goes on trial, however, a harsh light will be cast on the internal workings of Mr Bush's administration and on how the case was made for declaring war on Iraq.

Before the war, the White House made claims about Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capacity which have proved to be baseless.

The administration points out correctly that most western intelligence agencies, including those of countries opposing the war, believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

But the indictment against Mr Libby portrays a White House that was so determined to make the case for war that at least one of its most senior figures was prepared to expose a covert CIA agent in order to discredit her husband's evidence that some administration claims were untrue.

As calls get louder within America for a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, the public is asking tougher questions about the reasons behind the war.

The US invasion of Iraq was not only a war of choice, it was the signature event of Mr Bush's presidency and history's verdict on the war will be its verdict on the president.

Yesterday's indictment against Mr Libby means that such a verdict may come sooner than Mr Bush would wish.