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This post, written by Larisa Alexandrova, originally appeared on at-Largely
The US public has had to watch an heiress prance out of accountability for her criminal activities and government officials in the Bush administration do the same. Up until now, however, we have not watched the President actually take part in a crime. The crime here is a cover-up of a criminal conspiracy.
I know there are many who would eagerly correct me on the assertion that the President has not engaged in illegal activity, but the facts are not definitive with regard to Bush. It is absolutely clear that the Vice President has engaged in criminal activity, that Alberto Gonzales has, that Karl Rove has, indeed, likely the entire administration might end up indicted when all is said and done. But there has never been enough evidence that pointed directly to the President... that is, until now. While the Presidential pardon is in fact completely legal and left to the discretion of the Executive - the moral and reasonable argument here, however, shows that the pardon is part of an ongoing cover-up of criminal activity.
"Please don't kill me, don't kill me.."
I will not get into the argument of the sentencing guidelines because others, better schooled on the law in question, have already done a superb job in laying out why the President's legal reason for the commutation of Libby's sentence is pure nonsense. I would rather focus on a subset of that reason, the more subtle suggestion, that the President believed Libby's sentence to be too harsh. Let's begin with George W. Bush's compassion for the victims of harsh sentences. From Amnesty International: "The state of Texas executes more people than any other jurisdiction in the Western world. The death toll is astounding: of the 74 executions carried out in the United States of America (USA) during 1997, one-half (37) occurred in Texas, a record number since the reintroduction of the death penalty. Between the resumption of executions in 1977 and the end of 1997, the USA put to death 432 prisoners nationwide, with Texas alone accounting for one-third of the total (144).
In 1997, the Board received 16 applications for clemency in capital cases. Not one of the 18 Board members voted for commutation in any of these cases. In six cases, some Board members failed to vote while one member abstained in 15 of the cases. The Board does not meet the inmate filing the request nor does it meet to discuss a pending application or provide written reasons for rejecting an application." (AI)
The governor of the state of Texas during this massacre was George W. Bush. Bush has always demanded and defended the harshest of sentences, even if the convicted person is, for example, a war veteran who may have experienced brain damage do to his military service. Louis Jones Jr. was a decorated Gulf War veteran, who seemed to have experienced a personality change upon his return into civilian society:
"Jones appealed to President Bush to commute his sentence to life in prison, based on disclosures since his 1995 trial about allied exposure to nerve gas during the 1991 conflict and ailments collectively known as Gulf War Syndrome."
A war veteran whose exposure to nerve gas may have altered his brain chemistry is put to death, because then governor Bush did not think the sentence was too harsh, even if there was a mental impairment on the part of the accused.
What about the case of born again Christian, Carla Faye Tucker, was her case worth a second look by the born again Bush? From Wiki:
"Before Tucker was executed, there were pleas for clemency from Waly Bacre Ndiaye, the United Nations commissioner on summary and arbitrary executions, the World Council of Churches, Pope John Paul II, and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, among other world figures. Unusual pleas came from conservative American political figures such as Newt Gingrich and Pat Robertson, interceding on her behalf. Tucker did not ask for a pardon, only commutation of her death sentence to life in prison. Huntsville Prison's warden testified that she was a model prisoner and that, after 14 years on death row, she likely had been reformed. Despite these pleas, Bush signed her death warrant. In 1999, during the 2000 Republican Presidential primary race, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson interviewed Bush for Talk Magazine (September 1999, p. 106).
Bush did not commute her sentence, even going against the conservative base and the Pope. Does this sound like a man who cares remotely about tough sentences? I won't even remark on his sense of humor regarding something as serious as a person's life. These are but two examples of the harshest of sentences where a failure to commute the sentences of those in question carried profound and irreversible consequences. This world view has not changed and we are only now watching the horror of the world as the severe doctrine employed at Abu Ghraib and at Gitmo are being slowly uncovered and its victims identified. The remaining question is clear: Why is Libby the exception for an otherwise stone-cold heart?
The Victims:
But before we get into the why, let me address what I know Libby enablers will likely say, "there was no crime committed." That is not true. Libby committed perjury and obstructed justice in a case in which their were human casualties and a high crime was indeed committed. I would even say treason, but for this administration, treason was passed several years and two wars back.
There were victims. On this point, I give you my word. We don't know particulars with regard to these victims because that information remains classified. We don't know if these victims were killed, tortured, or both. We don't know if any of them were Americans. What we do know is that there were CIA officers who were compromised in some fashion and foreign assets compromised in some fashion. Beyond that, we don't know because in order for us to know would open others to exposure in life and death situations.
What we do know, however, is that there were human casualties in a crime that thanks to Libby's obstruction, continues to go unpunished. While the agency has officially allowed for the public to know and discuss Valerie Plame's work in the CIA in reference to Iraq, not a mention of her work with regard to Iran can be found in the Congressional record. She was not asked about it during her testimony and Congress will not likely ask about it. I will let you figure out why that question has not come up, at all, in public. But perhaps in 30 years, the CIA will declassify what the public needs to know, although by that time, the victims of the crime for which Libby went to such lengths to lie and obstruct justice, will be long forgotten by the American public.
But because that question has not come up, in public, you will never get an understanding of what the damages were of this crime committed on the orders of the Vice President by Scooter Libby and others in the Bush administration. And because you don't have names for the people compromised, nor faces to put with those names, the crime appears to be without a victim, therefor somehow making it appear not so damning.
Of course there is the other group of victims of this crime, the United States of America and the security of her citizens. But the American people have shown over and over that they prefer to go against their own best interests. So I will simply let this collection of victims speak for themselves, as they do, unlike the silent victims, have a voice. Make no mistake, there was a real and deliberately executed crime, in which Libby participated and for which Libby lied and obstructed justice - also a crime and one for which Libby was convicted. Anyone who says anything to the contrary is a party loyalist not remotely interested in the rule of law as long as their own interests are served. Anyone who continues to pat Libby on the back as some sort of hero is nothing short of an enabler of a high crime against the United States of America. They can spin it. They can play politics with it. They can march like good soldiers to the tune set for them by their political clerics. None of that will change the facts or the way history will judge them, as history always does, with extreme harshness.
Commuting to Cover-Up
So how does this tie into Bush's seeming guilt and why I think impeachment is likely back on the table? Because the argument about commuting an excessive sentence does not stand up to scrutiny and neither does the argument made about following Justice Department guidelines for sentencing. So what is the real reason for this commutation for Libby? In my opinion, it is two-pronged:
1. For me this shows a direct interest on the part of the President to cover his own ass in the Plame leak, but by far, the more pressing and important implication is this... 2. In light of subpoenas flying, this is Bush's way of showing his loyal soldiers that he will indeed take care of them if they lie to Congress in order to protect the administration. Nancy Pelosi may have taken impeachment off the table, but as I have said before, it is not something she can do in a vacuum and for political reasons. Impeachment is a legal tool, not a political one, despite the GOP doing their best to politicize impeachment in the past as a deterrence for Congressional interest in carrying out the legal and sometimes only tool available to them against a criminal administration.
Bush just opened up a can of worms, however, that may have likely been buried for years to come. In commuting Libby's sentence, he has directly raised the question of his own role in the Plame outing, in the cooking of intel to go to war, into the Niger forgeries and he can no longer claim to be out of the loop on the illegal dealings of his underlings. He cannot claim that, because he is enabling it.
Tagged as: impeachment, plame, libby, bush, cheney
Larisa Alexandrova is the Managing Investigative News Editor for Raw Story.
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