Scooter gets 30

SpeedoGuy

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Lewis "Scooter" Libby, convicted of perjury and obstructing justice in the Valerie Plame outing case, was given a 30 month sentece today, more than was recommended in sentencing guidelines.

Why?

The judge excercised discretionary sentencing powers because prosecutor Fitzgerald's brief included "...the revelation that the CIA did consider Plame's identity classified, at least for 18 months." This would appear to be contrary to what Libby apologists have claimed all along.

Why Libby's Sentence Was So Tough | TIME

Let this be a lesson: Never allow your high school nickname to accompany you into professional life.
 

Chuck64

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Do you think he will get a pardon?

If he does, I'd be really suprised if Dems didn't go after Bush directly.

I really feel sorry for the guy, but I guess in politics, you're expected to take the fall for your superiors sometimes.
 

agnslz

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If he does, I'd be really suprised if Dems didn't go after Bush directly.

I really feel sorry for the guy, but I guess in politics, you're expected to take the fall for your superiors sometimes.
How would they go after him, though? If he does give him a pardon, it'll most likely be at the end of his term. What I'd like to see is presidential pardons done away with, or at least able to be overturned by the other branches of the government. Perhaps they served a real purpose at one time, but now it seems they're only used by presidents to let their cronies and buddies off the hook.
 

madame_zora

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How would they go after him, though? If he does give him a pardon, it'll most likely be at the end of his term. What I'd like to see is presidential pardons done away with, or at least able to be overturned by the other branches of the government. Perhaps they served a real purpose at one time, but now it seems they're only used by presidents to let their cronies and buddies off the hook.

I think it's probably always been the case, and I agree that it's time to do away with them.

Libby is not just a fall guy, he actually did what he is accused of and probably more. I believe that Rove was also complicit, and bush was at the very least aware. Of course, since they lied about it, it's okay.:rolleyes:

bush first said that IF he found out who leaked the name, he'd see that they were fired himself. Then when it became clear that the leak was either Libby, Rove or himself, he changed the story to "privileged information".

Lying about knowing who leaked the info doesn't mean that he did it himself, but it does prove him to be a liar. How can we accept as a leader a man who would lie about issues of national security, such as leaking the identity of a CIA operative, clearly in a covert position? They tried everything they could to claim that she was just an office worker, so it didn't matter, that it "wasn't me" so they weren't responsible- it's just disgusting.

People will have to forgive me for being so goddamned angry at these slimyshitfucks who don't mind manipulating (yes, that means lying for you slow ones) the truth to suit their purposes, manipulating religions to rile up a gathering of troops (can you imagine how low enlistment would be if he'd told the truth?) or manipulate the law so as to avoid it. If I have to hear about how someone can't forgive Clinton for lying under oath about a blowjob, but claim the verdict's still out on the piece of inhuman waste currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave who has caused the death of over a half million people, I'm going to explode. Orgasm vs. mass murder.

I don't feel sorry for "scooter" any more than I do for "brownie" or any of the other underqualified cronies bush has placed in office, at the expense of the well being of the American people. On the other hand, the American people are not really deserving of a better government, because we won't demand one and we really shouldn't be tolerating this kind of crap from the one we have. The shame is on us all, I'm not storming the whitehouse either, but there's a lot of tea that needs to be dumped into the ocean if we ever expect things to get better.
 

rawbone8

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Shoot. I was waiting to see if his sentence would be 30 months of community service working with Alzheimer sufferers.

The likelihood of a pardon is pretty high. What has Bush got to lose? His popularity can't go much lower. It will be seen as the right thing to do, to retain conservative loyalists. As far as timing goes, the sooner the better, before Libby enters prison, so the issue is not attached to the next Republican presidential candidate. The public's memory is short, and a lot of people don't know much about the Plame story or the issues.
 

earllogjam

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Yes, there is mildew and dryrot throughout the White House. I am suprised it hasn't caved in yet. It is well on its way.

I suspect that there has been a huge exodus of very important leaders and personel from agencies like the CIA, State Department, Pentagon, and Justice Department - just out of sheer disgust and having to work under such incompetent W appointed leaders. I do know some in the State Department who have said they have quit because the loss of faith under the feable leadership of Rice. The CIA must have had important spies quit due to the Plame case or at least question why they should be loyal to this administration. I know it has happened at the Pentagon, Colin Powell being one of the prominent ones. This loss of thinking people in the bureaucracy must be staggering. Not to mention having the added benefit of leaving our country even more vunerable to terrorist attacts. Thank god Harriet Miers is not a supreme court justice. If you hire an incompetent manager you can be sure he will hire incompetent employees.

Libby probably will get a pardon but probably after super super Tuesday. W will just go down in history as the worst president ever. Yeah, how can his popularity get any worse if he pardons Libby. He always helps his friends afterall, that has been the pattern. Loyal, blind, deaf and dumb.
 

amiegrrl

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Interesting article; I've not read much from Bill Moyers, but I think I like him. :smile:

~Amie
_____________________________________________________

Begging His Pardon
By Bill Moyers
t r u t h o u t | Guest Columnist

Friday 15 June 2007

We have yet another remarkable revelation of the mindset of Washington's ruling clique of neoconservative elites - the people who took us to war from the safety of their Beltway bunkers. Even as Iraq grows bloodier by the day, their passion of the week is to keep one of their own from going to jail.

It is well-known that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - once Vice President Cheney's most trusted adviser - has been sentenced to 30 months in jail for perjury. Lying. Not a white lie, mind you. A killer lie. Scooter Libby deliberately poured poison into the drinking water of democracy by lying to federal investigators, for the purpose of obstructing justice.

Attempting to trash critics of the war, Libby and his pals in high places - including his boss Dick Cheney - outed a covert CIA agent. Libby then lied to cover their tracks. To throw investigators off the trail, he kicked sand into the eyes of truth. "Libby lied about nearly everything that mattered," wrote the chief prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. The jury agreed and found him guilty on four felony counts. Judge Reggie B. Walton - a no-nonsense, lock-em-up-and-toss-away-the-key type, appointed to the bench by none other than George W. Bush - called the evidence "overwhelming" and threw the book at Libby.

You would have thought their man had been ordered to Guantanamo, so intense was the reaction from his cheerleaders. They flooded the judge's chambers with letters of support for their comrade and took to the airwaves in a campaign to "free Scooter."

Vice President Cheney issued a statement praising Libby as "a man ... of personal integrity" - without even a hint of irony about their collusion to browbeat the CIA into mangling intelligence about Iraq in order to justify the invasion.

"A patriot, a dedicated public servant, a strong family man, and a tireless, honorable, selfless human being," said Donald Rumsfeld - the very same Rumsfeld who had claimed to know the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction and who boasted of "bulletproof" evidence linking Saddam to 9/11. "A good person" and "decent man," said one-time Pentagon adviser Kenneth Adelman, who had predicted the war in Iraq would be a "cakewalk." Paul Wolfowitz wrote a four-page letter to praise "the noblest spirit of selfless service" that he knew motivated his friend Scooter. Yes, that Paul Wolfowitz, who had claimed Iraqis would "greet us as liberators" and that Iraq would "finance its own reconstruction." The same Paul Wolfowitz who had to resign recently as president of the World Bank for using his office to show favoritism to his girlfriend. Paul Wolfowitz turned character witness.

The praise kept coming: from Douglas Feith, who ran the Pentagon factory of disinformation that Cheney and Libby used to brainwash the press; from Richard Perle, as cocksure about Libby's "honesty, integrity, fairness and balance" as he had been about the success of the war; and from William Kristol, who had primed the pump of the propaganda machine at The Weekly Standard and has led the call for a presidential pardon. "The case was such a farce, in my view," he said. "I'm for pardon on the merits."
One Beltway insider reports that the entire community is grieving - "weighted down by the sheer, glaring unfairness" of Libby's sentence.
And there's the rub.

None seem the least weighted down by the sheer, glaring unfairness of sentencing soldiers to repeated and longer tours of duty in a war induced by deception. It was left to the hawkish academic Fouad Ajami to state the matter baldly. In a piece published on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, Ajami pleaded with Bush to pardon Libby. For believing "in the nobility of this war," wrote Ajami, Scooter Libby had himself become a "casualty" - a fallen soldier the president dare not leave behind on the Beltway battlefield.

Not a word in the entire article about the real fallen soldiers. The honest-to-God dead, and dying, and wounded. Not a word about the chaos or the cost. Even as the calamity they created worsens, all they can muster is a cry for leniency for one of their own who lied to cover their tracks.

There are contrarian voices: "This is an open-and-shut case of perjury and obstruction of justice," said Pat Buchanan. "The Republican Party stands for the idea that high officials should not be lying to special investigators." From the former governor of Virginia, James Gilmore, a staunch conservative, comes this verdict: "If the public believes there's one law for a certain group of people in high places and another law for regular people, then you will destroy the law and destroy the system."
So it may well be, as The Hartford Courant said editorially, that Mr Libby is "a nice guy, a loyal and devoted patriot ... but none of that excuses perjury or obstruction of justice. If it did, truth wouldn't matter much."

Bill Moyers is managing editor of the weekly public affairs program "Bill Moyers Journal," which airs Friday nights on PBS. This essay appears on tonight's program.
 

SpeedoGuy

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Thanks, Amie.

His friends are sure Scooter was just an honest guy and a patriot who got framed in the Plame affair by an overzealous independent counsel. My, how the pendulum swings!. Further, someone here tried to make the case Libby was on trial merely for "forgetting his notes" or some such apologist baloney.

I'd shudder to think what would have happened to Libby had he received a blow job!