Bush commutes Scooter's prison termFollow

Never and for the same reason as they won't charge Rove -- even if you assume there was a crime committed, there's not enough evidence to build a case that there was a knowing and deliberate effort to out an undercover operative. It wouldn't get through the grand jury so no one is going to waste the effort.

Red said


I would love to have heard the conversation where Libby told the prez, that if he spent evn one single day having his **** reamed out in a stinking jail cell how he was gonna write a book about how he took the fall for Cheneys and Roves misdeeds.

Sure, it was never going to come to that unfortunately. And while I do think that Libby took the fall, because it had to be seen that someone did. I think its a rotton shame that that is all thats going to happen. The blatant dishonesty, manipulation of intelligence by the administration and the complicity of the media, in this whole filthy business that has led to the situation the US now finds itself in needs to....I was going to say 'be bought out into the open', but thats the mad thing, It already is out in the open!

The sad fact is that Paris Hiltons DUI case got more coverage than this sordid episode. Why? Because this farcical War on Terrror has been going on for so long now, and so many lies have been told and repeated again and again, that the attention span of the average Joe has been exhausted.

Seven Gi's have been killed in the last 2 days, as well as about 150 Iraqis (the ones reported that is). Who gives a shit? No-one?

Meanwhile the same paranoid ***** who were in charge of getting you guys into this mess are busy getting ready to bomb Iran.

They sussed it out long ago that if they just carried on regardless, people would lose interest and they could do as they please. Invade Iraq? no problem. Iran? Why not?

As long as there is some percieved threat (real or not, usually not) the people will be clamouring to be led to safety.

Libbys trial, his commuted sentence, and his eventual pardon are just one dirty little episode amongst a litany of lies, deceptions and actions driven by the greed and paranoia and belief of their own infallability of a comparatively small number of individuals, who managed to subvert the relatively good reputation of the USA.

Libby being let off (for that is what has happened) is yet another sad day, in a very long line of sad days for the reputation and good name of the US.


If theres a bunch of speeling misteaks in here, tuff. If I cant preview my posts in a proper fashion, then they are coming out as is.

It supports part of it, namely that sentencing in perjury cases goes deeper than the simple charge of perjury. However......was dead wrong per the article. The sentence was within the "explicit instructions of the U.S. Sentencing Guideline[s]" for the charges.

Which was my entire point.

Edit: One "u" in perjury

Edited, Jul 3rd 2007 3:24pm by Jophiel

Even Bush didn't say he believes Libby is innocent of the charges on which he was duly convicted.

In fact, he pretty much stated that he believes Libby is guilty, but will be sufficiently punished by the fines and the public humiliation.

Those of us who anticipate seeing Libby in a cushy job before the year is out tend to view that latter statement with a jaundiced eye.

He hasn't exercised that right very much tho has he? Until yesterday, that is.

Um... Given that the investigator already knew who leaked her identity at the time he charged Libby, this is a somewhat bogus argument, don't you think?

The problem here is that in order to assume that he's covering up a larger crime, we must make assumptions that simply aren't supported by any evidence at all. We know that Armitage leaked the information to Novak, who then wrote his article which outted her. There is zero evidence that Armitage obtained this information from the VPs office (where Libby worked). In fact, he presumably knew this from the DoD and their direct connection with the trip to Niger (information Fitzgerald presumably knew about before even pursuing Libby).

We can guess that there was a second "source" of the leak occuring at the exact same time. We can guess that if Armitage hadn't leaked the information to Novak that resulted in Plame's outting, that maybe Libby's converstations with Miller and other reporters might have resulted in the same information becoming public. But that's *not* what happened. We can't play "what if" games here. We have to act on what actually happened.


The underlying crime was the leak that occurred, not another leak that might have happened if that one hadn't happened. Sentencing Libby for covering up a leak that he didn't cause is somewhat silly...

Link




Still say he's lookin after his own interests.

No, the quoted article wasn't actually supported by any passages from any guidelines, despite the authors mentioning that such guidelines were "explicit". The argument of the prosecutor seemed more a generic argument than one supported explicitly and hence I choose to disagree with its merits. If the author of the above passage would like to actually cite these "explicit" passages and not rely on what seems a series of subjective interpretations, I'd certainly reform my opinion.

A couple questions related to this:

On CNN and other news sources they claim/ed that Bush was under "great pressure" to pardon Libby. I've been confused as to where this pressure is coming from; liberals certainly not, the public no, and even the republican debate indicated that not all conservatives think he should be pardoned. So what is this great pressure? Karl Rove?

Anyone else think Valerie Plame is totally hot?

Well, if I cared more about politics at this point I'd research the actual guidelines themselves to form my opinion. But if all we're citing in this matter are this guy's somewhat arbitrary and contradictory claims, yeah I'll be skeptical without direct reference.

Thanks, looks like the sentencing decision was valid.



Contradictory: vs.

Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction, not perjury relating to X and obstruction related to X. If the latter portion of the above quote is true, the first portion is not, or is lacking in depth. The first portion has no asterixes or footnotes attached, implying that it's true of itself, or that it did and the author chose to later explain them without fully disclosing the text. This can be explained by the qualifier "main" in "main factors", but I qualified "arbitrary and contradictory" with "somewhat" so I'm simply saying without the full text of the guidelines, it can seem that this is contradictory. Too, the guideline text itself may be semantically contradictory, legal verbiage certainly isn't beyond that.

Arbitrary: IMO anyone who claims something is "explicit"/ly stated but doesn't provide a full source text can be seen as arbitrarily selecting from such text and/or paraphrasing to suit his agenda. Just look at arguments surrounding the Geneva Convention--such arguments without citing the actual text are not much more than opinion of what the text means. Even someone citing a certain section of its text as a basis for argument may be arbitrary in his selection, if he ignores another section that would more properly define the issue or further explain it, or even seem to contradict it. Without reading the entire cited text, one can't be sure the selection used by an arguer is the whole story.

Also, he didn't provide a counterargument to defend against, or what the defense attorney had argued. He provided what the prosecutor argued, so it makes me skeptical that he ignored a defense that would also use the guidelines as a reference. But I'm too lazy to follow the link, maybe he did elsewhere.

Basically I just found it a bit lacking in detail and suspicious in the author's choice of paraphrase(opinion?), use of "explicit" with no text, felt he may be in error and the prosecutor's argument wasn't specifically mentioned in the guidelines despite his assertions (and in contradiction to the first "main factor"). Felt it could be his interpretation rather than a dry explanation of the guidelines. And got a woosh comment. Whatever.

Libby sucks, Bush sucks, I hate the administration, but I'm not going to accept something that seems odd just because accepting it would make my detest more valid.

EDIT: i suck at quotes and italics

Edited, Jul 3rd 2007 8:20pm by Palpitus

Just before someone pulls out the " Fitzgerald chased down Libby in a case thats purely political' card,.....

Bush political appointee James Comey named Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Fitzgerald filed an indictment and went to trial before Bush political appointee Reggie Walton. A jury convicted Libby, and Bush political appointee Walton sentenced him. At sentencing, Bush political appointee Judge Walton described the evidence against Libby as “overwhelming” and concluded that a 30-month sentence was appropriate.