If you ever wanted some assurance that the free-ride is finally over for our beloved bubble boy, the reaction from left to right is bound to make you smile. While there’s a thick fog surrounding the most vehemently childish portion of the right-wing and James Carville’s bald head, it isn’t going to spread so easily anymore. This is the United States of America. In this country you cannot swear to tell the truth, and then lie under oath. It is against the rules. To argue against that logic, in my mind, makes you an unethical shill. Now I’ll share the opinions of some political writers who, unlike the child-cons I just described, will still be relevant in 10 years:
Frank Rich – A Profile in Cowardice: “There was never any question that President Bush would grant amnesty to Scooter Libby, the man who knows too much about the lies told to sell the war in Iraq. The only questions were when, and how, Mr. Bush would buy Mr. Libby’s silence. Now we have the answers, and they’re at least as incriminating as the act itself. They reveal the continued ferocity of a White House cover-up and expose the true character of a commander in chief whose tough-guy shtick can no longer camouflage his fundamental cowardice.”
Andrew Sullivan – Why The Perjury?: “It means of course that they knowingly exaggerated the causes for war. That’s why this story still rankles, because it’s the closest the outside world has really gotten to the real nexus of decision-making on Iraq that obviously took place in Cheney’s circle. I can still just about believe that Bush thought the WMD case was sound. I can’t believe, given all that we now know, that Cheney did. He’s too smart. The data he read, we now know, was far more equivocal than the data the public was provided with. He’s not new at this. He probably never wanted to make the WMD argument anyway, put it in to appease the UN crowd, and certainly wasn’t going to query its validity. We may never know, of course, because Cheney will have destroyed the evidence, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s obvious Cheney knew all along that the WMD line was a cover, not a real threat, but realized by the summer of 2003 that any hint of this leaking (even from a two-bit blowhard like Wilson) needed swift and brutal rebuttal. They were embarrassed enough by the WMD bust, but if it was revealed that they had ignored all the caveats beforehand, it could get really dicey.” (Response posts 1, 2)
Pat Buchanan – How Scooter Skated?: “Will the student deferments for these fellows never end?”
Matthew Yglesias: “Is ‘I broke the law to help my boss cover-up embarrassing but non-criminal conduct’ a reasonable case for lenience? No. Is ‘he broke the law to help me cover-up embarrassing by non-criminal conduct’ a reasonable case for granting someone clemency? Also no.”
Here are the numbers (h/t Andrew Sullivan)
Oppose Pardon = RED
Posted by Al Swearengen in politics