'Lucky Libby By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t Columnist
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been convicted by a federal jury of two counts of perjury, one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice. He faces, due to federal sentencing guidelines, a term of between one and one-half and three years in prison.
There will be an appeal, of course, and the potential for a presidential pardon - recall the slew of convicted Iran-Contra characters pardoned by Bush Sr. way back when - remains ever-present, leaving open the possibility that Libby will serve no time at all. Even so, this conviction "culminated the seven-week trial of the highest-ranking White House official to be indicted on criminal charges in modern times," according to the Washington Post.
Mr. Libby is a damned lucky man.
The acts he was convicted of - perjury, false statements and obstruction - were crimes in themselves, to be sure, but were crimes committed to cover up, obscure and bury the truly serious crimes that got this ball rolling in the first place. In short, he was convicted for the cover-up of the actual crimes.
In a nation that prides itself on living by the rule of law, Mr. Libby should have been tried for treason. Whether he could have been convicted of this is an open question, one dependent upon the veracity of witnesses and the availability of evidence. But "treason" is the operative word, and the lies he has been convicted of telling were told in the first place to avoid that potent charge.
Mr. Libby - along with Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Stephen Hadley, Condi Rice and a slew of others - was an instrumental member of the cadre that sold the American people an outrageous raft of lies regarding the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Mr. Libby - acting on behalf of Dick Cheney - went down to CIA headquarters at the behest of his boss to lean on intelligence analysts in order to pry "forward-leaning intelligence" out of them regarding Iraq.'
Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030807J.shtml
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