Scooter Goes to Jail?
WASHINGTON, June 6 – If you were Scooter Libby and had spent your life pushing neo-Nazi ideals in a democracy now as brittle as America’s, and had been the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, and one of the few men who could – with a straight face – claim to have been one of the chief creators of George W. Bush’s indigestible foreign policy, would you not now be joyful to be on your jail for a few years?
Mr. Libby, convicted of lying upon lie, had the nerve to deliver a brief statement to his trial court, asking the presiding judge, Judge Walton to “consider, along with the jury verdict, my whole life.”
Egad! If Judge Walton had done that, Libby would have gotten life with no possibility of parole.
If I was Mr. Libby, I would be happy to rat-scamper to Club Fed – simply from mortification at his “whole life” and his resumé, which truthfully stated in a nutshell might read:
• Worked and studied under “Fast Paul” Wolfowitz
• Planned an invasion of Iraq a decade before I helped convince the idiot son of a former President to actually do it
• Pretended that Vice President Cheney was not one of the foremost crooks in or out of American political history
• Took some time to cover up for a nitwit known, at least to himself, as a ‘political genius’: Karl Rove, who sold me out to save his own crash-diving reputation – whatever is left of it
• Followed up by lying to the FBI, the grand jury and whoever else would listen”
Yes friends, “Scooter” Libby learned, the other day, that he was in line to ‘go directly to jail’ – do not pass go, do not roll the dice to escape for 30 months (minus six months for “good behavior”) unless he and his cohorts could convince President George W. Bush to ‘pardon’ Mr. Libby even though a jury, respected prosecutors, fine judges and most of the rest of world had known he was guilty – some for years before he was indicted, went to trial, and was found guilty.
The question is not whether Libby deserves to be in prison. Of course he does, notwithstanding the fact that he attempted to destroy the reputation of a man, Ambassador Joseph Wilson – who stood between Libby and his “fun” war – and perhaps to destroy the very life of that man’s wife, a high level CIA agent, Valerie Wilson.
No. Libby deserves to be in prison because he is a liar of such magnitude that he happily and with a smirk sent 3,500 boys and girls to their deaths, another 40,000 American soldiers to Iraq to be maimed and wounded, and perhaps 500 thousand innocent Iraq civilians to their graves. And for what? To “bring democracy” to a nation sure to be under the control of some fanatic ayatollah sooner rather than later. Let us never forget that Libby also lied, over and over again, about why.