Politically Motivated Independent Prosecutor?

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald made another major error when he claimed that Bush and Cheney deliberately distorted a crucial intelligence estimate on Iraq. (The first major error was when he claimed that Libby was absolutely the first person to use Valerie Plame's name to a reporter, when in fact, Bob Woodward had already used it.)

The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, claimed in a court filing last week that a former White House aide facing criminal charges for obstructing the probe, I. Lewis Libby, said he was told by Mr. Cheney to inform a New York Times reporter that one of the key judgments of a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq was that the country was "vigorously trying to procure" uranium.

While the intelligence report indeed alleged that Iraq was aggressively seeking nuclear materials, that finding was not among the key judgments contained in the document's early pages. The allegation that Mr. Cheney told Mr. Libby to misstate that fact to the Times journalist, Judith Miller, was noted prominently in some news accounts and contributed to an uproar that threw the White House into a tailspin last week.

...However, in a letter yesterday, Mr. Fitzgerald advised the judge overseeing the case, Reggie Walton, that the government's April 5 filing was inaccurate...

The details here have a significant impact on the intentions of the Bush Administration. These crucial and deliberate errors bring up questions about whether Fitzgerald has political motivations. Dan Riehl and Uncorrelated seem to think so.

The most interesting thing about the whole case is that President Bush hasn't uttered a single disparaging word about Fitzgerald, despite his potentially purposeful mistakes. Compare that with what the Clinton Administration said about Kenneth Starr on a daily basis.