My initial reaction is Scooter Libby is in BIG trouble. Fitzgerald in his press conference made a devastatingly effective case against the Vice President's Chief of Staff. At first, that may seem like bad news for the Bush administration, and while it certainly is bad news for Mr. Libby, the fact that Fitzgerald came across as such a competent, aggressive and in control prosecutor makes the fact that he did not charge anyone with the original alleged crime and the fact he did not charge Karl Rove or anyone else, that much more powerful.

In his answer to the first question Fitzgerald makes it pretty clear that he is basically done and these five counts against Libby are likely the only charges we will see in relation to this entire investigation.

Question: Mr. Fitzgerald, this began as a leak investigation but no one is charged with any leaking. Is your investigation finished? Is this another leak investigation that doesn't lead to a charge of leaking?

Fitzgerald: OK, is the investigation finished? It's not over, but I'll tell you this: Very rarely do you bring a charge in a case that's going to be tried and would you ever end a grand jury investigation.I can tell you, the substantial bulk of the work in this investigation is concluded.

And then later on in response to another question:

Question: A lot of Americans, people who are opposed to the war, critics of the administration, have looked to your investigation with hope in some ways and might see this indictment as a vindication of their argument that the administration took the country to war on false premises.

Does this indictment do that?

Fitzgerald: This indictment is not about the war. This indictment's not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

This is simply an indictment that says, in a national security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person -- a person, Mr. Libby -- lied or not.

The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified. This is stripped of that debate, and this is focused on a narrow transaction.

And I think anyone's who's concerned about the war and has feelings for or against shouldn't look to this criminal process for any answers or resolution of that.

Of course the indictment of the Vice President's Chief of Staff is not a trivial matter, but politically the bar had been set much, much higher by the press and the left; and at the end of the day given the realm of possibilities I suspect the White House is feeling very relieved.