The President Should Pardon Scooter Libby Immediatly

A travesty of justice in every sense of the word. The President should pardon him immediately, and if he doesn't I (and I'm sure many more in his own camp) will loose all respect for him. Call the White House comments line at 202-456-1111. I also urge folks to contribute to the Libby Legal Defense Trust.

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.
None of this was a profile in courage on the administration's part, but the true insanity of the situation was withheld from the public until years later, when we learned that, long before the Justice Department had appointed Fitzgerald, it knew who had leaked to Novak. Early in the investigation, deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage informed investigators that he had told Novak about Mrs. Wilson (although he left out the fact that he had also leaked to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward). But like the savvy bureaucratic infighter that he is, Armitage kept quiet publicly, allowing the vice president's office to take the heat for something he had done.

So why did Fitzgerald go forward? Maybe someday he'll tell us, but we're not betting on it. Reasonable people can conclude that it was only Scooter Libby's imperfect memory-not willful deception-that gave rise to the charges of lying under oath and obstruction of justice. Among the supporting players-including CIA officials, Bob Novak, Woodward, and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, and Time's Matthew Cooper—no two participants in any conversation about Valerie Plame had the same recollection.

Whatever his motivations, Fitzgerald adopted the discredited Wilson's script and focused his three-year investigation on Cheney, Libby, and Rove-and not, inexplicably, on others. Not on Armitage. Not on Ari Fleischer, either. The recent trial revealed that the former White House press secretary was granted immunity from prosecution, and that he admitted to telling two reporters about Plame's employment. Those reporters were never even questioned. Nor did any charges arise from Fleischer's faulty memory, even though a third reporter (Pincus) testified that Fleischer had told him too about Plame-something that Fleischer denied under oath.

There should have been no referral, no special counsel, no indictments, and no trial. The "CIA-leak case" has been a travesty. A good man has paid a very heavy price for the Left's fevers, the media's scandal-mongering, and President Bush's failure to unify his own administration. Justice demands that Bush issue a pardon and lower the curtain on an embarrassing drama that shouldn't have lasted beyond its opening act.

NRO: Pardon Libby
Libby Verdict: Making sense of legal nonsense
The Libby Travesty of Justice
Libby Legal Defense Trust

France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence
Report: Missing Iranian general in US
Dead Russian reporter was investigating arms sales to Iran, Syria
Wired Iraqi man triggers scare at L.A. airport