What Do Scooter Libby and Joe Lieberman Have in Common?

What do Scooter Libby and Joe Lieberman have in common? A lot of rich friends, apparently.

Following closely on the news that Joe Lieberman’s biggest public apologist, Marty Peretz, had joined Libby’s Defense Fund, we learn that the Chair of Libby’s Defense Fund, Mel Sembler, is hosting a pricey fundraiser for Holy Joe. Sembler, you’ll remember, also happens to have been the Ambassador to Italy when SISMI started sending bogus Niger claims to the CIA.

In his post explaining his ambivalent views toward Libby, Marty seems to capture of the angst of Neocons everywhere.

Let me concede: I am a friend of Scooter Libby. But I do not like hisboss. And I do not like his boss’s wife. I know this gets me no creditwith the all-or-nothing crowd. Still, I like Scooter, who is quitebrilliant, very honest, and brave. Also funny. I’ve contributed to TheLibby Legal Defense Fund and have joined the fund’s advisory committee,which is not large because in Washington old pals dessert when eventheir college roommate gets into trouble. In a time when self-styledcivil libertarians are giving money to defend Muslim terrorists, I amhappy to help defend an American patriot, some of whose politics I donot share and some of whose politics I do, from a cynical onslaught ofthe special prosecutor who put journalists into jail for not tellinghim what he already knew.

Shorter Marty: I don’t like Dick, I don’t even agree with Libby, but when the Neocon ship is sinking, we all have to band together and "dessert." Let them eat cake.

The Sembler fundraiser was closed to the press, so I don’t know if he made similarly ambivalent statements about Joementum. Nor do I know if he accused Democrats supporting Democratic candidate Lamont of being cake-eaters. But it deserves mention that the warmongers seem to be mounting a common defense.

War, apparently, trumps ideology when your war’s under attack.