I am firmly in favor of a pardon for Scooter Libby; the sooner the better. It's not that I think perjury and obstruction of justice are insignificant crimes, but clearly we have bigger fish to filet, and I am actually persuaded by the argument that at the bottom of this is a political confrontation that the American people need to resolve politically.
Also, I think that a pardon will be a fitting coda to the ruthless political expediency that has come to define the administration, particularly in regard to the Iraq war, but evident now everywhere. (The firing of the U.S. attorneys makes one wonder, yet once more: "Who are these people?")
The offenses of which Libby has been convicted pale in comparison with the high crimes that have gotten us trapped in Iraq and that, even now, remain unacknowledged and largely unpunished. It's hard to get that worked up about Libby's lies to the grand jury when every reason we were given for invading Iraq turned out to be a lie. With that as a backdrop, Libby is almost beside the point -- almost.
The Bush administration rode onto the world stage six years ago, touting its moral clarity with a complete lack of irony. Now, ironies are all we have left. In their book Hubris, David Corn and Michael Isikoff write about an episode in which Bush talks about why he was so obsessed with Saddam Hussein. In May 2002, faced with a series of pointed questions from White House reporter Helen Thomas about all the rationales for invading Iraq, Bush seems to lose it when he's briefed by his communications staff.
"Did you tell her I don't like motherfuckers who gas their own people?" Bush said,"Did you tell her I don't like assholes who lie to the world?"
Assholes who lie to the world. Ah, the irony.
To reiterate, Libby lied, but his lies don't come close to being the most important ones we have been dealing with. (Though, of course, he was part of those as well.) In some ways, I echo those Libby supporters who discount the significance of the Libby perjury and obstruction of justice convictions when set against the backdrop of the "underlying crime." Where we part ways is on what constitutes that underlying crime. Libby defenders say if there was no indictment regarding the outing of a covert agent, there was no crime and therefore there was no justice to be obstructed. And therefore the president should pardon Libby.
"This is a case that never should have been brought, originating in the scandal that never was, in search of a crime -- violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act -- that even the prosecutor never alleged," writes Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post. "That's the basis for a presidential pardon. It should have been granted long before this egregious case came to trial. It should be granted now without any further delay."
But in fact, the real underlying crime is not the leak, but the merciless propaganda machinery that this case exposed and its cost so far in dollars, credibility, and innocent lives – more American lives, remember, than were lost on 9/11.
The trial testimony revealed an administration manic about control and manipulation --newspaper stories clipped and highlighted and prominently placed on the vice president's desk, a dictum from Dick Cheney himself that his staff had to watch every television show on which his named is mentioned, and on and on. And now we're learning that, if you're a U.S. attorney who is unwilling to toe the White House line, they will simply replace you and threaten you with destruction if you complain about it.
Pardon me, but who acts like that? Who are these people?
Pardon Libby so the country can get on to the bigger fights and bigger fish.
Terence Samuel is a political writer in Washington, D.C. His weekly TAP Online column appears on Fridays.
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