Buckley: Free Libby Now!
One of the greatest political (/conservative) thinkers of the last century William F. Buckley, wrote a column for National Review in which he calls on Bush to pardon Libby. Buckley essentially argues that although Libby broke the law, he should be pardoned, because, here it comes, he caused no real harm and he is not a bad guy. O, and the ones who say that Libby should go to jail do not care about justice, they simply want to “damage the Bush administration.”
Of course, all of the above is no reason to pardon someone. Libby, Buckley admits, broke the law, lied and, by doing so “he hindered the execution of justice.” The logical, and legal result: jailtime.
It surprises me that an intellectually honest traditional conservative like Mr. Buckley - who is a firm believer in the Rule of Law - would argue that Libby should be pardoned for before mentioned ‘reasons.’ They are not ‘reasons,’ they are excuses.
Libby caused, thus writes Buckley, no damage at all, to no one. I wonder whether Mr. Buckley watched Plame’s testimony before US Congress?
I greatly respect William F. Buckley Jr., but I would hope that he would be above overly partisan politics like this.
You expect hard core right wing (or left, it doesn’t matter) ideologues to be above politics?
Ha!
Thanks for the Sunday laughs.
I heard an interesting comment saying that a pardon would be accepted more easily if Libby showed contrition.
Saying he’s sorry has not been part of the defense strategy so far, maybe because it might imply there is something to be sorry about.
If I were Libby’s lawyer (hahaha), though, I would start working on a statement expressing regret about how this affected Plame and the intelligence community.
He’ll be pardoned but not before Nov. 2008. His only hope for reprieve before then is overturn on appeal.
If they pardon before then it will cost them votes and pardoning him will create none.
I personally don’t care. I’ve said it before, throw the small fish back.
Not sure why so many conservatives value partisanship over principle on this, unless they’ve really convinced themselves that Libby is a faithful public servant who was just caught up in some illegalities due to his dedication to preserving the rationale for the Iraq War. Which is pretty much the truth.
Both he and Cheney are zealots who thought their ultimate purpose was more important than our laws. They were wrong. The only possible reason that Libby, one of the smartest lawyers in Washington, would have done something this stupid is if he believed wholeheartedly in his cause, and was protecting the VP, who believes in it even more.
The chorus of Libby defenders include most of the conservative Washington establishment (including the punditry) and the neocons who pushed the war in the first place. They are also zealots who believe that the law can be circumvented if the cause is just. Bob Novak (who is unfailingly partisan) even wrote that Libby, of course, had to be sorry for what happened. But, Libby never said so in court where it counts, and it is inappropriate for his allies in the press to say it for him. Those allies have done nothing but disparage the reputations of Plame, Wilson and Fitzpatrick with false innuendo since Wilson wrote that infamous NYT’s editorial.
I find it rather disturbing that while all of these people seem to have unlimited passion in pushing for Libby’s pardon, none of them has expressed outrage or apologized for the damage that was done to Plame or her work at the CIA, which given the reason that we went to war, should have prevented the leak in the first place.