Jun 28 2007
Roll CALL! Will inmate No. 28301-016 step forward?
I am continually astonished that Libby was convicted at all for perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby was convicted of crimes that didn’t have anything to do with the prosecutor original charges. The fact that he was sentenced to two and a half years on top of this obscene miscarriage of justice just makes matters worse.
Everyone knows this is a political hanging.
The judge knew it when he sentenced Libby. The jury knew it when they convicted him. The prosecutor knew it from day one after his cursory question of Richard Armitage, the then Deputy Secretary of State. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell knew if after Armitage told him that he leaked Valerie Plame’s name, if “leak” is the appropriate word here— Valerie Plame was NOT a covert CIA agent according to the law. The news media sure as hell knew it since they were the ones stoking up the flames toward this lynching.
Now Libby is given an inmate number: 28301-016. Just another step toward the gallows.
Libby, who was convicted in March of lying and obstructing an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s identity, faces 2 1/2 years in prison.
The assignment of an inmate number by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons represents another step on the road to prison. Inmate numbers stay with prisoners even after their release.
Libby, however, is hoping that an appeals court will intervene and put the sentence on hold before he is ordered to surrender.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has not indicated how quickly it will rule. Lawyers in the case said Libby had not yet been assigned to a prison or given a date to surrender.
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald opposes Libby’s bid to delay his prison term. He says Libby does not have a good chance of having his conviction overturned and should begin serving prison time immediately.
Libby’s friends have asked President Bush to step in and pardon him, a request that Bush has sidestepped while the legal case drags on.
Libby, 56, is the only person charged in the leak scandal, which erupted after CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity was revealed in a 2003 syndicated newspaper column. Libby was not the source for that leak and neither of the two Bush administration officials who provided the information were ever charged.
It almost feels like President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney threw him to the wolves for the sake of political expediency. I am sure they thought that the federal prosecutor could touch him since Libby didn’t do anything wrong.
But now that he’s been convicted and sentenced, I hope the President will now do the honorable thing and pardon a man who should never have been at the butt-end of this injustice.