Bush Commutes Libby’s Perjury Sentence

Yesterday, President Bush commuted the sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby so that the former chief of staff to the Vice President of the United States and convicted perjurer wouldn’t have to spend any time in jail. He had been facing 2 ½ years along with 2 years of probation and a $250,000 fine. The probation and fine remain because Mr. Libby was not pardoned. Nevertheless, the fine will get paid by his legal aid fund, and his probation will be nowhere as severe as Paris Hilton’s. The right is gratified, the left is outraged, and the real question is why anyone is surprised by any of this.

The felony conviction for perjury is the only legal prosecution that came out of Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the “Plame Affair.” This ugly little incident was the revelation in the press that a CIA undercover operative, Valerie Wilson nee Plame, was just that – such a revelation is a violation of US law. Moreover, there are charges that this so-called outing was deliberately done in retaliation for her spouse’s trip to Africa that essentially proved that one of Mr. Bush’s grounds for attacking Iraq-Nam was false. The left believes that the whole thing started in Dick Cheney’s office and that Mr. Libby is the fall guy for the eminence diabolique of the administration

Over on the right, the law-and-order crowd seems to be napping. The argument that there was no underlying crime (i.e., that there was no prosecution for the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity) is irrelevant. Lying to a federal investigator, or if one wishes, avoiding letting him get to the truth in such an inquiry, wastes taxpayers’ resources and can have the effect of preventing a prosecution from ever being brought. A badly tainted investigation is unlikely to convict, and without a likelihood, few prosecutors will bring a case. What is essential here is that Mr. Libby was convicted by a jury of obstructing justice. Rapper Li’l Kim did a year in the pokey for that very thing.

The charge that the case was political is made by both sides, so neither should be surprised when the resolution is political as well. Mr. Bush, and probably with requests bordering on demands from the vice president, was not going to let Mr. Libby go to jail. He did nothing until an appeals court decided Mr. Libby needed to enter the prison system while his appeal was heard. Up until then, the White House was happy to let the thing take its course. When Mr. Libby got his inmate number, Bushevik loyalty (which trumps even competence) finally kicked in, and he walked away from prison time for a felony. Of course, Mr. Bush waiting until right before the mid-week July 4 holiday to make the move by press release, in as chicken shit a move as this administration has ever made.

Mr. Libby is now free to start writing his book, which will get him a seven-figure advance. It won’t be ready for publication until after the 2008 election, and it probably won’t contain any more truth than George Tenet’s self-serving memoir. All the same, he has been a good soldier in the service of the neo-con cause, and he has been rewarded accordingly. And the Republic is that much closer to its own First Settlement, and America is merely waiting for its Octavian to arise. If there is more depressing news for July 4, one has not yet heard it.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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