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Bush Commutes Libby's Sentence
An anonymous reader notes that President Bush has decided to commute Scooter Libby's sentence after numerous appeals failed. Libby was convicted in March of obstruction of justice in connection with the Valerie Plame affair. The President's action spares Libby from 30 months behind bars."
Nice try with the right-wing spin.
c le/2007/06/08/AR2007060802478.html
1. There could have been more than one leaker.
2. Plame was indeed covert. Read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
Libby and Cheney and probably Bush sold out a cia op... thats treason
And yet you're still wrong. Those pesky facts again. From the article:
"The CIA report said that Plame had worked overseas in the previous five years and that the agency had been taking "affirmative measures" to conceal her CIA employment."
Seem pretty clear to me. Unless you know better than the CIA...?
Oops. Well, thanks to the runaway modding, that totally incorrect description is totally burned into the record. Suck.
Oh well. To further clarify, the pardon basically gives back any rights that were lost as a result of the conviction. It looks like courts have ruled that it carries with it an assumption of guilt and the record continues to exist, but no confession needs to be made. What's interesting about the whole situation is how many decisions on the topic were rendered relatively recently after the initial precedents were set a long time ago. It looks like Iran-Contra served to clarify a few things. Older decisions said basically that the crime magically went away, but that has gone by the wayside and now you're guilty in the eyes of the law, but just not punishable.
The next interesting question is, if you're technically guilty but not really because you were pardoned, what implications does it have in issues where your status as a criminal might not have legal implications but definitely has practical ones (e.g. getting a security clearance)? Not surprisingly, it looks like there are a lot of interesting legal opinions on this one. It looks like the prevailing wisdom is, "You got caught being bad and everybody knows it. Suck it up."
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
The reason why the Judge wanted Libby to go to jail NOW is to force the President to pardon him now. [...] You could also say this is a move by the Democrats to bring more bad press from Libby in any way they can.
You could say that, but you'd be wrong. Walton, the judge who ordered immediate prison, was appointed to the bench by Bush himself during his first term. If memory serves, two of the three appeals court judges were also Republican appointees, one considered the most conservative judge sitting on that circuit.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The portion of the act grabbed onto by many right-wing radio talk show hosts in the past few years has been the extra-US service portion. It states that in order to qualify as covert, an agent has to have served outside the US in the 5 years previous to the outing.
Well, news flash, Plame did serve overseas in the 5 years prior to her outing. She traveled overseas at the specific behest of the CIA many, many times during the 5 years prior to her outing. Sometimes she even traveled under an assumed name.
Plame worked as an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations and was assigned to the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in January 2002 at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
"The employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame, "engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business." The report says, "she traveled at least seven times to more than ten times." When overseas Plame traveled undercover, "sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias -- but always using cover -- whether official or non-official (NOC) -- with no ostensible relationship to the CIA." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924679/
Plame was not only covert at the time of her outing, by working overseas for the CIA whilst under cover, she was most definitely covert under the terms of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
it's not the rape thats funny. it's samir's unfounded fear of it, and his delivery that's so funny.
In point of fact, Bill Clinton was not convicted of the same crime. The reason being that he technically did not perjure himself. Yes, there was a "lie of omission", but that is not perjury. So really there's no decriminalization due to Clinton since there wasn't an actual crime.
(The bar association has ethics rules that DO ban "lies of omission". Hence Clinton's disbarrment)
Many out outraged over this because the people campaigning for and cheering Libby's pardon were the same people who were claiming perjury and obstruction of justice were serious enough to impeach Clinton, when he hadn't been charged with either crime. Now that a "loyal Bushie" has been convicted of these crimes, it's no big deal.
What we were looking for specifically being nuclear WMDs weren't there, but there were still chemical (sarin) WMDs that he should not have had.
Keep in mind that we helped him get the chemical weapons in the first place and then provided intelligence to him when he tested his chemical weapons on the Kurds. Also keep in mind that these weapons have a short shelf life. The stuff we finally found had already degraded into useless bombs.
Every president before him tried diplomacy, and every president before him was summarily ignored. While it's not our job to be the world police I think it would be far more regrettable in the long run to stand by and do nothing. I think the war could have been better executed, but to some extent we have been hindered by the lack of support from the international community.
This isn't entirely true. We helped keep Saddam in power. The Reagan administration helped Saddam with WMD and intelligence. Not only that but we lied about our intelligence in the lead up to war. It's interesting that the very reasons Bush Sr. gave for not marching into Baghdad have come to pass.
This war was never about getting rid of a Tyrant. He was our guy until he over reached and the Saudis, our allies who supply oil and terrorists, freaked out over the invasion of Kuwait and insisted we do something about him.
Hell, we even gave Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait. So why should the international community help us clean up a mess of our own making?