Scooter

Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s sentence last night. Libby will still have to pay the $250,000 fine and a felony will remain on his record, but no jail time. Bush stated that he felt the sentence was unduly harsh.

Why now? And why commute his sentence at all? Libby was about to go to jail. The courts were not cooperating. They were not permitting Libby to stay out of jail while his appeal ran its course. The court did not feel that the ground for Libby’s appeal was strong enough to permit him to delay the sentence until the appeal was heard.

This put Bush on the spot. If Libby sentence had been delayed until his appeal had run its course; Bush would have been able to deal with the issue on his way out the door, But Bush still has a year and a half in office. Every day that Libby served ran the risk that he would attempt to make a deal with the persecution – Libby knows where all the skeletons are buried. Moreover, the neo-conservatives are in a major snit over Libby’s conviction. For some unexplained reason they are unable to see the reason for the conviction. Libby lied to the grand jury; he clearly lied and repeatedly lied. No reasonable person would argue the point. The neoconservatives respond that no charges were ever brought on the allegation that originated the investigation. True, and that’s the point. Fitzgerald, the Special Persecutor (a Bush appointee by the way) believed that Libby had crippled his investigation by lying to the Grand Jury. The law requires clear intent. Revealing the identity of a CIA agent is not enough; the persecution must demonstrate intent to reveal the identity of a CIA agent. So, if the identity is reveal accidentally, no crime is committed. But lying to a grand jury is a felony. Libby always had the option of taking the fifth.

We should remember that this was not a political trial. The trial was initiated, staged and conducted by Republicans. The Bush administration requested a special persecutor at the request of the CIA. The Special Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, was appointed US Attorney for Chicago by Bush. Reggie Walton, the judge hearing the case, was a Republican appointee of Reagan. If the trial had come out another way, I’d be tempted to suspect that the whole trial was a set-up.

All the legal points are all well and good – just the way a civilized society must deal with these issues, but we must not let a discussion of the mechanism for dealing with the problem obscure the issue. The issue is simple and clear. Did Libby out a CIA agent, thus destroying her career and endangering the people that she worked with over the years as an act of political revenge? Was Libby’s lies motivated by a desire to protect the Vice President?

If the answer is yes to these questions, Libby is guilty of a moral crime far worse than the one that which he has been convicted. That kind of morality goes far beyond hardball politics. That brings me to the question, why am I so incensed about Libby’s lie and forgiving of Clinton’s lie to the grand jury regarding the Monica Lewinski affair?

The answer is simply, Clinton lied over a private matter, and not an issue involving the national security, Libby’s lie involved abuse of power, Clinton personal peccadilloes. Clinton’s lies justify divorce not impeachment. Libby’s lies justify prison time.

Yet it is a minor example of the moral corruption of the Bush Administration. I disagree with the Bush Administration on practically everything. I feel that the initial victory was wrong, I even suspect election fraud, but the final outcome was determined by the courts, clearly a wrong decision but by the book. Torture, secret prisons, ignoring the rules and regulations on wire tapping, lying about the reason for war are all signs of empty morality, fear and of a weak country – a country that I neither know nor understand. I hope the country has finally awakened and is in the process of righting itself, but we still have many dark months ahead.

I’m going to make a prediction. Libby has had his jail time commuted, he will continue the appeal. The appeal will run through the remaining days of the Bush administration. As Bush leaves office he will pardon Libby. In his last days in office he will free Libby of the conviction and the fine.