The Scooter Libby Affair: Clemency for the Lamb.
Yesterday the announcement filtered down from on high that "Scooter" Libby will never have to serve a day of his sentence's imprisonment for lying about the Bush administration's cover-up in its outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Libby's punishment of 30 months in prison has been commuted by the head of the very administration responsible for the cimes in the first place. President Bush has stated that he has "carefully weighed (the) arguments and circumstances surrounding this case". Bush also said in a press conference that he respected the jury's verdict, but he "has concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive". The president has not yet given Libby a full pardon, and so the convicted still faces a $250,000 fine and probation. In the eyes of our Commander-in-Chief, Libby has suffered enough, merely through damage to his own reputation.
Reaction from the right to these events contains two separate components. In one breath they decry the investigation into the Plame affair as a "witch hunt" targeting influential members within the Bush Administration, including V.P. Dick Cheney and presidential advisor Karl Rove. They subsequently bleat (with a scornful air of smug self-satisfaction) that the Dems couldn't even make the damn charges stick to the freely offered scapegoat. Meanwhile, out of the other side of their smirking mouths they spit the age-old platitudes about MonicaGate. Why didn't Bill Clinton have to pay for his perjury? I heard a local AM talk radio host (the ludicrous Kevin Miller) actually say that Clinton's lie hurt the American people more than the entire Plame affair put together.
Never mind the GOP's insistence that it is the law-and-order party and/or the side the American people can trust to lead the fight in a "War on Terror". For those of you who know little about Valerie Plame, she was a CIA operative on the forefront of investigating "Weapons of Mass Destruction" development in the third world backwaters of Northern Africa and the Middle East. But she became a political pawn in the struggle to justify (or evade responsibility for) the War on Iraq- which was (we were told) simply another front in the "War on Terror". When her husband (James Wilson) came back from a government-sponsored fact-finding mission with a report claiming that reports of Saddam Hussein's attempted acquisition of nuclear bomb components were falsified- someone in the Bush administration decided that Plame would pay for her husband's indiscretion. They leaked her identity to the press.
After a Special Counsel was finally set up to investigate this bit of political retribution, Lewis "Scooter" Libby (Cheney's inner deputy) threw himself on the sword so that his superiors could eccape justice. This isn't about a "white lie"... it's about the obstruction of justice in a case of high crimes and misdemeanors. But Libby has "suffered enough", poor man. Is there any single reader who sincerely believes that some GOP-supporter hasn't already arranged to pay Libby's fine? It's just a small portion of the "hush money" that Libby is due for being the Administration's sacrificial lamb.
An interesting side note to this situation is the ongoing unconventionality of the Bush Administration's interpretation of the US Constitution. Astute legal experts have pointed out that our founding document does not give the head of the executive branch the power to commute sentences, but rather grants him the ability to extend pardons. One must wonder why Bush believes that he can single-handedly change a sentence handed down by US federal courts. Claims to support strict constitutionalists for the highest bench notwithstanding, Bush and company regularly display a flagrant disregard for the powers of law and the Constitution. It's ironic (but definitely not surprising) to see all the black-and-white "moralists" on the right bend over backwards to accommodate the president.
"And the flag-wavers say...
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Little Scooter never once gave it away
Everybody had to pay and pay"
(My apologies to Lou Reed for the unfortunate association.)
Reaction from the right to these events contains two separate components. In one breath they decry the investigation into the Plame affair as a "witch hunt" targeting influential members within the Bush Administration, including V.P. Dick Cheney and presidential advisor Karl Rove. They subsequently bleat (with a scornful air of smug self-satisfaction) that the Dems couldn't even make the damn charges stick to the freely offered scapegoat. Meanwhile, out of the other side of their smirking mouths they spit the age-old platitudes about MonicaGate. Why didn't Bill Clinton have to pay for his perjury? I heard a local AM talk radio host (the ludicrous Kevin Miller) actually say that Clinton's lie hurt the American people more than the entire Plame affair put together.
Never mind the GOP's insistence that it is the law-and-order party and/or the side the American people can trust to lead the fight in a "War on Terror". For those of you who know little about Valerie Plame, she was a CIA operative on the forefront of investigating "Weapons of Mass Destruction" development in the third world backwaters of Northern Africa and the Middle East. But she became a political pawn in the struggle to justify (or evade responsibility for) the War on Iraq- which was (we were told) simply another front in the "War on Terror". When her husband (James Wilson) came back from a government-sponsored fact-finding mission with a report claiming that reports of Saddam Hussein's attempted acquisition of nuclear bomb components were falsified- someone in the Bush administration decided that Plame would pay for her husband's indiscretion. They leaked her identity to the press.
After a Special Counsel was finally set up to investigate this bit of political retribution, Lewis "Scooter" Libby (Cheney's inner deputy) threw himself on the sword so that his superiors could eccape justice. This isn't about a "white lie"... it's about the obstruction of justice in a case of high crimes and misdemeanors. But Libby has "suffered enough", poor man. Is there any single reader who sincerely believes that some GOP-supporter hasn't already arranged to pay Libby's fine? It's just a small portion of the "hush money" that Libby is due for being the Administration's sacrificial lamb.
An interesting side note to this situation is the ongoing unconventionality of the Bush Administration's interpretation of the US Constitution. Astute legal experts have pointed out that our founding document does not give the head of the executive branch the power to commute sentences, but rather grants him the ability to extend pardons. One must wonder why Bush believes that he can single-handedly change a sentence handed down by US federal courts. Claims to support strict constitutionalists for the highest bench notwithstanding, Bush and company regularly display a flagrant disregard for the powers of law and the Constitution. It's ironic (but definitely not surprising) to see all the black-and-white "moralists" on the right bend over backwards to accommodate the president.
"And the flag-wavers say...
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Little Scooter never once gave it away
Everybody had to pay and pay"
(My apologies to Lou Reed for the unfortunate association.)
Labels: George W. Bush, Hack Radio, James Wilson, Political Rant, Republicans, Scooter Libby, Valerie Plame
posted by Merge Divide at 3:24 PM
6 Comments:
Outgoing presidents always seem to make some really odd pardon/commutation choices. Bush the Elder, Clinton, Nixon, Carter - they all did it. This was a very poor decision, however, in my opinion. I'm actually surprised that there are those who are mad at Bush for not giving him the full pardon.
I've grown too old to be surprised, apparently.
dagrims,
I don't know that this incident has a precedent. When has a president commuted a sentence for a cover-up of a crime committed by an employee of his administration while in the position of his official capacity? If this has happened before, I don't know about it.
Dubya's decision is tantamount to saying, "Well sure... Scooter obstructed justice, but he did it for my administration. He shouldn't have to pay harshly for that."
Gerald Ford with Nixon?
Gerald Ford was never Nixon's superior within the executive branch. The crucial distinction here is that Libby was working for Bush when he committed obstruction of justice. Whomever revealed Plame's status as an undercover CIA operative also worked within the Bush administration.
Besides, when Ford pardoned Nixon the American public already had discovered the full nature of Nixon's crimes. We still don't know exactly who ordered Plame's outing, and Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence can be seen as another attempt to reinforce silence. Bush is now officially a conspirator in the initial scheme.
I think if you'd look at the pardons given by presidents (especially right before leaving office), you'd conclude there are many questionable ones. I've wondered how many (or, how few) of these are done because they seemed the right things to do, or if they were mostly politically motivated, such as friends and families of politicians and or large campaign contributors. The press usually makes some stink about it for a couple of days, and then it goes away. It's somewhat ironic that Hillary has jumped on it with such criticism, given some of the pardons issued by hubby. In any case, this one does seem to give off a particular odor which begs whether the whole kitchen is clean.
What's most illuminating to me is the justifications people use in an attempt to mitigate the perception of wrongdoing. Until people begin to criticize these incidents on a case-by-case basis, without making comparisons based on the most basic and over-generalized similarities- we are sunk in a perpetual cycle distinguished most by a total lack of accountability.
It's true that the entire system of presidential pardons needs to be re-examined. But that's not likely to be a possibility in the midst of a controversy over a particularly egregious case. It's just another layer of abstracted distraction at this point.
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