No, I’m not talking about Scooter Libby. I’m talking about George W. Bush. I’m talking about Dick Cheney. Those are the criminals who have laughed in the face of the American people and scoffed at the myth of American justice over and over again.
Who cares that Scooter Libby’s sentence was commuted. Scooter was the fall guy. He took the hit for his crime bosses, and he will be paid handsomely for it. A corporate vice presidency or chief executive job is probably waiting for the publicity to die down. I’m sure there are publishers already lining up to pitch that multi-million dollar book deal so the victors can rewrite history.
The REAL criminals are Cheney and Bush. It was Cheney and Bush who authorized the violation of yet another federal statute by outing Valerie Plame in the first place. It is Cheney and Bush who are guilty of over a half dozen other federal crimes.
Surely the Democratically led Congress will finally express their outrage, and work feverishly to bring down the White House Mafia. Certainly even the punk Democrats will be spitting fire and brimstone over such an egregious abuse of power.
“Libby’s conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq war,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone.”
That’s outrage? What are you going to do about it Mr. MAJORITY LEADER? Trent Lott would never have spoken in such polite terms.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush’s decision showed the president “condones criminal conduct.”
“Condones criminal conduct”? Hell, Bush is GUILTY OF CRIMINAL CONDUCT!!! These fools are going to let the pirates off again.
Bush has wiped his nose (and other nether reaches of his body) with The Constitution once again. God save America, because it looks like the Democrats won’t do it.
The Huffington Post: Bush Commutes Libby Prison Sentence
The only thing that Scooter Libby did was have a different rendition than Tim Russert of a phone conversation they had. In his own testimony, Russert said that he could not have broached the subject of serial lier Joe Wilson’s wife’s employment because he (Russert) did not know of that employment, despite testimony of Russert’s various peers stating that they already knew of this due to the revelation of Armatige.
I don’t understand how Libby rather than Russert got charged with perjury.
The only thing that bothers me about Bush’s clemency (besides not making it a full pardon, which I hope he does later), is that he has not used this power of his for people even more deserving than Libby, such as those Mestizo-American border cops who shot the drug smuggler, and the many people that the public knows about with wrong convictions, including Genarlow Wilson.
Politically Bush should have been pardoning people like Wilson over the past few months in order to give himself some coverage when pardoning / commuting Libby.
Bush ordered the political attack on Joe Wilson’s wife, and Cheney carried out the order. Whether you agree with the politics, Paul, wasn’t that illegal?
And I’m not sure why you feel Bush is capable of reasoned and moral decisions like pardoning Genarlow Wilson. First of all that would lose votes for his party in the conservative Georgia that put Wilson in jail in the first place.
You don’t seem to realize that politics and money trump morality for the Bushies.
No it wasn’t illegal, and the attack was not on Wilson’s wife, it was on Wilson. Wilson misrepresented himself in the NYT article in many important ways, including his supposed singular expertise and association with Cheney’s inquiry. Showing that Wilson got his unpaid assignment via his marriage connection undermined his claim of singular expertise. Plus he has provably lied (unlike Libby) on such matters as when he first read the forged for-pay document.
Genarlow Wilson is receiving lots of support from whites in Georgia; I can find no evidence of any popular opposition to him. Please provide me any such evidence.
Bush has severely disappointed me in many areas, such as his failure to use his pardoning powers to obtain justice for people like Genarlow.
What made the political attack illegal was that the Bushies revealed a covert operative’s identity. The attack on Wilson by revealing his wife’s identity and calling his qualifications into question had the effect of making his wife ineffective in her job. As a result, she left the post. I would say that is an attack on her as well, not just on Wilson.
The other Wilson, Genarlow, was denied a bail hearing by a judge, meaning he will rot in jail for additional months. The conservatives who prosecuted him in the first place, and those like the judge who have worked to keep him in jail may not represent popular support, but they are certainly the same type of people who elected conservative Democrat Zell Miller to the Senate, crossed over in 4th district primaries to oust Cynthia McKinney, and put laws like the one that keeps Genarlow Wilson in jail.
I don’t deny that there is white support for Genarlow. I didn’t say he didn’t have white support. I said Bush would lose conservative votes for Republicans if he pardoned Wilson.
Do you equate “conservative” with “white”? What about your heroes – both Uncle Thomases – Clarence and Sowell? Do they no longer qualify under that term?
Genarlow not only has white support, he has support from white replubilcan / conservatives. And the law that he’s getting beaten down with is one of those women-never-lie-about-rape lefty laws, such as the one that clinton first advocated and then got hoisted with ala Monica Lewinski.
Once Wilson wrote his attack piece in the NYT, including boasting over his independent and obvious expertise, the important and final-word importance of his conclusion, and his association with Cheney’s official inquiry, how the heck can you expect the Bushey’s to simply sit there and keep mum that Wilson only got his assignment via an official suggestion by his wife? …
…who instantly declared herself ruined by the “leak”, and started posing for national magazine covers proclaiming her “blown cover”. In any case, the only evidence you or the special prosecutor have that Libby revealed this non-secret employment status is the differing renditions of a phone call between Libby and Tim Russert. Libby testified that Russert asked for confirmation of this info, and Russert testified that although many of his colleagues already knew of this info from the revelation of it originally by Dick Armatige, he didn’t know at the time and so could not possibly have broached the subject. Russert testified that Libby broached the subject… yet why would Libby do this when the info is already circulating amongst Russert’s colleagues? Chris Mathews is just one of Russert’s collegues who has testified that he already knew this info at the time of this phone call.
For this, Nadir, you are absolutely 100% beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt certain that Libby revealed this info to Russet? If the prosecutor shares your conclusion here, then why did he not additionally charge Libby with “blowing Plame’s cover”? Answer: it was not illegal to have revealed Plame’s employment status. That’s why Armatige, the original revealer of this info (not that people didn’t already know this info, but he was the first Bush employee on record stating this to a media rep) didn’t get charge with violating the law that you say got violated here.
Bush shames me by not using his pardon power to help people that you and agree deserve pardoning, plus people like those Mestizo-American border agents who shot the Mexican drug smuggler.
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