The Libby Verdict -- Scooter Gets Off Scot Free

“Our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable.” – George W. Bush

If hypocrisy if the tribute vice pays to virtue, then George Bush is lavishing double standards with as much gusto as a shopaholic who just won the lotto. Cheney’s “Cheney,” as Lewis “Scooter” Libby was known, was undoubtedly the fall guy for the vice-president. That’s the conclusion the jury reached when they reluctantly convicted Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice. It was clear they believed that Cheney, Rove, and Bush deserved to be in the prosecutor’s crosshairs.

Libby’s crime, as prosecutor Fitzgerald characterized it, was like throwing sand in an umpire’s face (a new twist, incidentally, on the notion that justice should be blind). Which is why Fitzgerald asserted, “there is a cloud hanging over the vice-president’s office.”

Actually, the sandstorm that is hanging over the entire White House is Iraq: how America was led to war under false pretenses, how the administration slimed its critics, and how the administration rigged the system to circumvent the Constitution.

The Libby case encapsulates the Bush Administration’s relationship to justice: it uses legalities to undermine the law. Cheney’s office, for instance, was responsible for crafting the dubious legal rationales that justified the use of torture against enemy combatants. These unprecedented interpretations of executive authority were fashioned, at least in part, to immunize leaders like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush from being charged with war crimes. Of course, if there was any serious chance of Bush being held to account for violating the Geneva conventions you can be sure he’d find a way to preemptively pardon himself.

Eliminating the possibility that Libby might spend time behind bars ensures that he won’t cut a deal with Fitzgerald in exchange for leniency. Thus, the commutation makes certain that Cheney, Rove, and Bush will not be implicated in any further proceedings relating to the improper disclosure of a CIA agent’s identity. Bush’s commutation is a self-serving obstruction of justice that undermines the idea that all citizens are equal under the law.

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