Atrios linked approvingly to a clip of David Shuster interviewing Fouad Ajami about his bizarre op-ed in the WSJ defending Scooter Libby. The op-ed is from early June, but I didn’t comment on it then because, in addition to it’s abject hypocrisy, some were creating an inflated controversy about Ajami’s metaphor of Libby as a fallen soldier. I think the metaphor is weak, but I hate turning every issue into a question of patriotism or “supporting the troops,” a phrase that itself has become a metaphor, codeword, and partisan slogan all wrapped into one. There are legitimate cases of people not supporting soldiers (e.g. the fiasco at Walter Reed, medical care for wounded vets, etc.). This isn’t one of them.

This is, instead, a case of flawed thinking and hypocrisy. He demonstrates his own hypocrisy in the op-ed by making a clearly political case for the pardon of Scooter Libby. There is no legal principle offered, nor is there a case built on logic. Instead, he appeals to Bush’s sense of loyalty, and essentially opines that because the verdict could be interpreted by some as a verdict on the war, and Ajami feels the war is honorable, Bush should pardon him. He is, therefore, doing what he accuses opponents of the war of doing, substituting his opinion of the war for the justice before the law.

That’s the flawed thinking, and I’m quite frankly ashamed that Ajami is a professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS (I have an International Studies BA from Hopkins). The op-ed is riddled with poor logic and a fallacious metaphor. For example, Ajami uses the Soldier’s Creed as a way to describe the nobility of Libby’s crime, thus missing the point of the creed. The creed is noble because it represents real sacrifice on the part of soldiers. When soldiers refuse to leave a fallen comrade behind, they are risking their life to help one of their own. The fallen soldier, and all of our fighting men and women, are sacrificing time with their families, the comfort of home, and careers to do their duty.

What is Libby’s sacrifice? For Bush, who would be the one coming back for his fallen comrade, what is his sacrifice? Without that sacrifice, this metaphor is simply absurd.

More importantly, Ajami makes a simple error of logic. The leak, for which Ajami erroneously points at Armitage alone, was one issue, but the acts of perjury and obstruction were their own crimes. They stand on their own, as they did with Clinton. While I would agree that Clinton should’ve never had to answer questions about his personal sex life, the fact that he lied under oath was wrong and criminal.* Ajami glosses over the crime committed and tries to blur Libby’s act and the leak of Plame’s name into one crime. They are not.

So, while I don’t like the Hardball format, or Shuster’s odd (mis?)statement that Ajami should declare he’s using a metaphor in his piece, he was right to challenge Ajami’s editorial. After all, let’s be honest here. Ajami used this particular metaphor and wrote this piece to place Libby in a noble light for the public. It was a cheap emotional trick in a piece empty of specific claim or any evidence for why Libby was wrongly prosecuted.

If he was simply doing his job, he shouldn’t have lied, just as Armitage, Rove, and others had managed to do. It’s really that simple. Tell the truth. Follow the law. There’s nobility in that, and folks like Libby and Mr. Ajami would be good to remember it.

* Yes, I think it was criminal. Did it rise to “high crimes and misdemeanors?” No. Censure, sure, impeachment, no. As I said yesterday, he would’ve probably been given a very light sentence had he been a regular official and not President and actually gone to trial.

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Chris Matthews rightly criticizes Kate O’Beirne, writer for the uber-partisan conservative National Review for her hypocrisy for supporting the impeachment of Clinton and her approval of Bush’s commuting Libby’s sentence. Watch this clip:

That’s refreshing, but then Matthews goes off a bit on criticizing Democrats about their hypocrisy letting Clinton slide “in our hearts” while criticizing the Libby situation. That’s utterly ridiculous.

There’s a critical difference. Clinton was impeached and investigated as part of a clearly partisan witch hunt. He perjured about a personal matter that had no bearing on his job or the health of the nation. In other words, his penalty, had he been in front of a regular judge, would probably have been light, perhaps only a fine and probation. And that would’ve been fair.

Libby, on the other hand, perjured himself in an investigation into national security issues, in an investigation with no partisan political interference. The U.S. Attorney was a Republican and by all accounts, he and his team pursued the investigation with honor and fidelity to their oaths and duty. He believed this crime to be serious, and the judge agreed.

That’s the difference. And that’s why it’s both logical and morally sound to think two different things about the Clinton impeachment and the Libby sentence.

Chris Matthews simply falls into that trap that both sides are doing it and both sides are equally bad no matter what reality says. It’s simply not true in this case, and both Matthews and Kate O’Beirne should be called on it.

While it sometimes seems like I’m a hyperpartisan Democrat, I’m really not… I just believe that the Republicans have lost their way, completely and utterly. Von, a conservative writer at Obsidian Wings, hits the nail on the head:

VIOLATE THE LAW, get a reduced penalty?  Scamnesty!  How dare you disrespect teh rule of law!  Blah blah blah.

VIOLATE THE LAW, get a reduced penalty? Hooray!  It’s not a real crime anyway! Blah blah blah.

Yup, it totally makes sense for the party of small government to punish workers and praise perjurers.  You see, we don’t want a path to citizenship for workers, but we do want more convicted perjurers.  Because perjurers are, like, completely oppressed and stuff by massively unfair partisan witchhunts — even partisan witchhunts undertaken by the convicted perjurer’s own partisans!  (How frightfully rude of them.)

Grownups:  Please come back.  The party misses you.

The rest of the nation misses you, too.

US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who prosecuted this case, who is also a Republican appointee, responds to Bush’s statement. Listen to what he says, it pretty much lays out why Bush justification (as usual) was wrong.

I’m breaking tradition here and putting several clips in this slot. What Bush has done is that bad.

One more:

I hate these people. Will someone please rescue the Republican party from these corrupt, evil, self-centered idiots?

As the pundits and op-ed columnists get their reactions out to Bush’s actions yesterday, common themes are beginning to emerge. There are the stupid comparisons to Clinton (see Tim Noah at Slate, for example). Then, there are the ridiculous claims that what Libby did wasn’t actually that bad.

So, a brief reminder of the issues at hand. Scooter Libby was part of an effort to discredit evidence that might’ve kept us from going to war. Our nation is in Iraq today in part because of the efforts of people like Libby to discredit anyone who might create credible doubt in the eyes of the American public about the case for war.

None of that is illegal on its face, but it is disgraceful. On the scale of things that have harmed our country, I think it’s clear that it’s a bit more serious than a blowjob. So, let’s get the Clinton comparisons out of here.

Libby then lied repeatedly and deliberately to an investigation into whether anyone revealed Valerie Plame’s covert status. This, even though he claims to have not broken the law. He lied, in other words, simply for political gain and protection of his bosses and his party.

What more serious breach of public trust is there than a high government official who lies to an investigator who is attempting to protect the national security of the nation, especially when such lies are meant only to further a candidate’s political fortunes. What act of perjury could be worse?

Don’t get spun. The sentence was what the judge believed fair. It is justifiable in the face of the depth of the crime and the sensitivity of his role. When Tim Noah says, “Walton … erred on the side of severity not in spite of Libby’s high position in government but because of it” as a criticism, I see that as valid justification. Libby attempted to subvert a lawful, focused investigation into a national security matter. For a high government official, what act of perjury could be worse?

For those saying that Libby will have to bear the burden of his $250,000 fine, I offer the following prediction: the Lewis Scooter Libby defense fund will pick up all of the tab and little will come out of his pocket.

Finally, for those claiming that Amb. Joe Wilson’s findings about Iraq and Niger were discredited, I offer you Josh Marshall’s response. He is easily one of the most knowledgable journalists on this topic and he assembled much of the information about the Iraq/Niger/Italian forgery/etc. online. He points out that none of it has actually been discredited even though Republican hacks like David Brooks would like it to be.

Don’t get spun. What Bush did was wrong, it was wrong no matter what you compare it to and how you spin it. Commuting Libby’s sentence is a slap in the face of anyone who believes in the rule of law or in any form of government oversight. Our government officials aren’t above the law, no matter what King George wants.

Update: Forgot to mention that the sentence was reviewed by the appeals board and judged to be fair. Remember that’s what triggered Bush’s actions. The appeals judges rejected the defense arguments earlier the same day. How pathetic.

For anyone that believed anything the President has ever said about dignity, honor, and honesty, his commuting of Libby’s sentence is an obvious and clear reminder that he is, fundamentally, an unaccountable, spoiled brat. He has never faced the consequences of any of his own actions, from cocaine to alcohol addiction to his failed businesses to what will surely end up recorded as his failed presidency.

He has no honor, no dignity and no respect for our country and for the laws that govern it. None.

This is a man who said repeatedly he would fire the person who leaked Plame’s name to the public. Hilzoy runs down some key public statements:

remember this?

“At one point, McClellan vowed: “The president has set high standards, the highest of standards, for people in his administration. He’s made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.”
Bush replied “yes” when asked in June 2004 if he would fire anyone who leaked the agent’s name.”

Why not go even further back, to this?

“During the year and a half that I covered George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, I must have heard his stump speech a thousand times. The lines changed little over the months, and the ending almost never changed — Bush would raise his hand, as if taking an oath, and promise to restore honor and dignity to the White House.
He also vowed to restore civility to the poisonous atmosphere of the nation’s capital, declaring at a GOP fundraiser in April 2000 that “it’s time to clean up the toxic environment in Washington, D.C.”

A few months later, Bush told voters at a campaign event in Pittsburgh that his administration would “ask not only what is legal but what is right, not what the lawyers allow but what the public deserves.”"

He is a liar and a hypocrite. I cannot see how anyone can look at what he did today and what he’s said in the past and reconcile them to any other conclusion.

I realize he hasn’t broken any law in this and it isn’t quite a complete pardon, but I am ready to take the next proverbial blowjob and bounce him and Cheney out of office. Impeachment would be the right outcome for both of them.

From David Broder’s column today:

Now, many conservatives are up in arms about Walton “throwing the book” at Libby.

…

Their bigger complaint is that the White House official’s conviction on felony counts of lying and obstruction of justice was a byproduct of a “leak” investigation that itself was unnecessary.

…

Despite the absence of any underlying crime, Fitzgerald filed charges against Libby for denying to the FBI and the grand jury that he had discussed the Wilson case with reporters. Libby was convicted on the testimony of reporters from NBC, the New York Times and Time magazine — a further provocation to conservatives.

I think they have a point. This whole controversy is a sideshow — engineered partly by the publicity-seeking former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife and heightened by the hunger in parts of Washington to “get” Rove for something or other.

I have two words for Broder and conservatives who are complaining about the unfairness of what happened to poor Scooter Libby:

Bill Clinton

I have two more words, F*** Y** to these people who would pardon their friend only because he’s their friend but wouldn’t go to bat for anyone else. As for David Broder, this is the same guy who, when Bill Clinton was getting excoriated for perjury about a blow job in an investigation stemming from a supposed crooked land deal (for which no evidence was found), called Clinton’s selfishness “staggering.” All because he felt that a personal affair wasn’t something Congress has any business prosecuting.

Take a look at this 1998 editorial from Virginia Postrel in Reason Magazine:

The public is right about this much: Bill Clinton the man has indeed become embroiled in a scary and fundamentally unjust process. It is wrong to let prosecutors loose to pursue individuals, rather than crimes, until they find something that sticks. It is also wrong, except in extreme cases, to force people to testify about the intimate details of their private lives. Both practices severely erode the protections citizens expect to enjoy in a free society.

But Washington is also right. Clinton is not just a man. He is president of the United States. As I’ve noted in an earlier editorial, Clinton the president actively supported the very laws and procedures from which he now demands exemption. (See “License to Grill,” April.) In all his appeals for sympathy, the man who cruised into office hailing “the year of the woman” and condemning Clarence Thomas has never suggested that what has happened to him should never happen to another American. He has not even suggested that we dump the independent counsel law. His defense has been completely self-centered; his selfishness is, as Broder notes, “staggering.”

It’s amazing people can write these things then turn around a mere few years later and say, well, Scooter Libby is a good man, he was prosecuted wrongly, and should be let go. With Bill Clinton, Washington was “right” to go after him, but with Scooter Libby, also a public official with an oath and a duty to do what’s right for the public, hey, he made a mistake but he’s a good guy.

So, let’s set this straight. Scooter Libby originally committed acts he was asked to testify about that were part of an effort to discredit Joseph Wilson, former Ambassador who was sent to Niger to determine whether Saddam Hussein was buying uranium from the African nation. Because the White House didn’t like the conclusion Wilson came to, they attempted to discredit Wilson by claiming his wife, a covert CIA agent, chose Wilson through nepotism and not because he was qualified, implying that perhaps CIA had an agenda they were pushing.

Libby lied about that. He lied about attempting to discredit someone who would’ve slowed down our march into war. I consider that serious, in fact, and almost by definition a political act. He abused his power, including the knowledge he had of Plame’s covert status and employment, to use that as a political tool. Not only did he do this, but he was dumb enough then to lie about it. Unlike Bill Clinton’s error, there is no understandable reason why he would lie about it. As Kevin Drum wrote:

Take Bill Clinton. He lied too when he denied having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, but in his case everyone knew exactly why he had lied: because he didn’t want anyone to know he was getting blowjobs in the Oval Office. And most of us took that into account. First, because it plainly had nothing to do with the official exercise of executive power, and second, because pretty much everyone figured they might very well have done exactly the same thing in his position. It was understandable human weakness. So while we might not have approved, most of the public decided it wasn’t a hanging offense.

But Libby is a different case entirely. The conservative community wants us to believe that Valerie Plame wasn’t really undercover at all. They also want us to believe that outing her was, in fact, part of an entirely legitimate effort to explain that Dick Cheney hadn’t been responsible for sending Joe Wilson to Niger. And finally, they want us to believe that none of this was part of a coordinated plan. Plame’s name was merely mentioned in an offhand way here and there when reporters brought up questions about Wilson’s trip.

But if that’s the case, then why did Libby lie? Deliberately and repeatedly? Richard Armitage fessed up almost immediately. Ari Fleischer fessed up. Karl Rove had to be pushed, but eventually he fessed up too. Only Libby lied.

Why? If nobody actually did anything wrong, what was he hiding?

I don’t understand either, and I wish his defenders would take a moment to explain the difference between the two cases. Ultimately, there isn’t any and by my measure, what Libby did is worse and, quite frankly, inexplicable. We will probably never know the extent to which there was a coordinated effort to smear Wilson, and we will never know what actually transpired, since most of it is sealed with the grand jury.

Or, as Virginia Postrel wrote, they could argue to change the law. They’re not doing that, though, so clearly Libby must be guilty. That’s a clever argument to impugn anyone you disagree with. She’s smart, that Postrel lady.