NRO Editors beg Chimp: "Pardon Libby"

[npincus]

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDk4ZWM0N2RiZWZkZjE4NzFmMWEyYzM4ODYzMTQ3Mzc=

:nopity: :rofl:

Booo Frickin'- Hoooooo... WAAAA WAAAAA WAAAAA




President Bush should pardon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The trial that concluded in a guilty verdict on four of five counts conclusively proved only one thing: A White House aide became the target of a politicized prosecution set in motion by bureaucratic infighting and political cowardice.

When partisans pounced on Bob Novak’s July 14, 2003, revelation that the wife of administration critic Joe Wilson worked at the CIA, they adopted Wilson’s paranoid persecution theory. Then a scandal-hungry media joined in. Novak’s unidentified administration sources were widely accused of criminal wrongdoing: having “outed” a covert agent.

The alleged motive for the leak was to punish Joe Wilson, whose account of his mission to Niger supposedly unmasked the administration’s manufactured case for the war in Iraq. The victim in this set piece was Valerie Plame Wilson, and the villains were Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby.

From the very beginning of the ensuing spectacle, petty agendas subverted justice. The CIA, at war with the White House, and in particular with the vice president’s office, referred the leak to the Justice Department, even though the agency certainly knew that there had been no criminal violation since Plame wasn’t “covert.” (According to the relevant statute, only the leak of a covert agent’s identity is a criminal act.) The CIA’s spokesman had also confirmed Plame’s employment to Novak, without sounding any alarms over the revelation of classified information. The referral to Justice—leaked to the media—was the act of an agency more concerned with shifting the blame for faulty Iraq intelligence than with protecting a supposedly vulnerable agent.

[peacetalksforall]

1. National Review - the motive was to shut down Brewster-Jennings. n/t

[Horse with no Name]

2. Uh we'll take that under advisement.

:rofl:

[in_cog_ni_to]

3. politicized prosecution ??? Huh? The repukes were in power when this case started. Someone needs to

pay attention.

[fryguy]

4. what was their opinion on Starr's tactics?

i don't recall them having any problem with a "politicized prosecution" fueled by a "scandal-hungry media" resulting in an "ensuing spectacle, petty agendas subvert justice"

on edit: not that accept their premise that that was what occurred here.