Hitchens writes that Patrick Fitzgerald "determined" that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act "had not been broken." On the contrary, what Fitzgerald "determined" was that his efforts to build a beyond-a-reasonable-doubt case involving one or more underlying crimes had been substantially hampered by Libby's perjury and obstruction of justice, which he likened to a baseball player kicking sand in the umpire's eyes.

Is there anybody who thinks Hitchens doesn't know this? Is there anybody at this point who thinks that the problem is that Hitchens is genuinely confused about this issue?

I agree. This is one of the less intellectually honest columns that I have seen from Hitchens. There might be honest arguments for the pardon of Libby, but Hitchens has decided to not engage in honest discussion here. His piece is pure partisan puffery, without regard to any need for truth.

An honest discussion of the Libby pardons starts with the fact that Libby's trial proved beyond all practical and reasonable doubt that Libby committed perjury on a substantive issue and by his silence continues to lie today.