Re: The Scooter Saga

I am constantly amazed at how we seem so willing to brand someone as guilty
(or innocent) before they had a trial that will decide by a jury if they
were guilty or innocent. It is as if we only give lip service to the
concept "innocent until proven guilty". You seem to fall into the category
of those who believe that since you belive they are guilty, that by
definition they are guilty as soon as they are charged with committing a
crime. If that were true, then we could save the taxpayers a whole lot of
money and just throw the rascal in jail and not spend the money on a trial.

"Gary James" <gnajmes43@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:6emrn1lc820m2gs8mgditgi72c2uh9ndcr@xxxxxxxxxx
>
> In a nutshell ---
>
> "...What he (Fitzgerald) has achieved, whether he meant to or not, is
> to strengthen the impression that the executive branch is being run by
> sneaky people. .."
>
> --- (Says Bush ) -- "the job the American people
> elected me to do." At moments of crisis, our leaders
> always hear the call of duty summoning them away from the
> distractions of the moment...."
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The Reactionary Utopian
> November 1, 2005
>
> THE SCOOTER SAGA
> by Joe Sobran
>
> The involved plot of "Scooter" Libby, *** Cheney,
> and Karl Rove is, as Huck Finn would say, too many for
> me. Libby has been indicted for lying about something or
> other, under oath, to a grand jury, which the special
> prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, assures us is a matter of
> national security and puts us all at risk. Libby and his
> lawyer say they are "confident" that he will be
> "exonerated," though he has already resigned as Cheney's
> man Friday. If convicted, Libby could face 30 years in
> prison and $1.25 million in fines -- a stiff price for
> lying.
>
> Rove may also be the unnamed "Official A" (as
> Fitzgerald calls him) who is still under investigation
> but hasn't been indicted, at least not yet. It all has to
> do with who illegally leaked the fact that Valerie Plame
> Wilson was an undercover CIA operative. The Cheney
> circle, including Libby, were upset with her husband, the
> former diplomat Joseph Wilson, for publicly disputing one
> of its chief pretexts for war with Iraq, that Saddam
> Hussein was trying to get materials for nuclear weapons
> from an African government, that of Niger.
>
> Such a high-level indictment is, of course, bad news
> for an administration whose war (not to mention its other
> initiatives) is going badly and whose rationales for war
> are now defended by few this side of Rush Limbaugh. Bush
> partisans contend that Libby did nothing seriously wrong,
> but that mere "policy differences" are being
> "criminalized" by all these frivolous indictments.
>
> You'd think, to hear these folks, that "policy
> differences" were innocent opinions, like the debate over
> Shakespeare's authorship, even if they are battles over
> life-and-death exercises of military force. Libby, even
> more than his boss Cheney, has been part of the
> neoconservative cabal that was hankering for war with
> Iraq long before George W. Bush was even a candidate for
> the presidency. It comes as no surprise that they should
> resort to underhanded tactics against anyone they regard
> as an enemy.
>
> Nevertheless, it's hard to see how Libby -- or
> Cheney, or Rove -- could have told any lie warranting an
> effective lifetime in prison. They have told really
> enormous lies to the public, but these aren't criminal;
> at least not technically. Anyway, the indictments aren't
> made for moral enormities, but for narrow violations of
> law. And Fitzgerald appears to be extremely scrupulous
> about that sort of thing. He avoids any suggestion of
> moral resonance or of his own views on "policy
> differences."
>
> What he has achieved, whether he meant to or not, is
> to strengthen the impression that the executive branch is
> being run by sneaky people. Bush himself reacted at once
> to Libby's indictment by praising Libby for having
> "sacrificed much" in his country's service, et cetera.
> Meanwhile, Bush said, "I got a job to do," echoing Bill
> Clinton's refrain, during the Lewinsky scandal, that he
> was determined to keep doing "the job the American people
> elected me to do." At moments of crisis, our leaders
> always hear the call of duty summoning them away from the
> distractions of the moment.
>
> Bush himself appears unlikely to be directly
> implicated in whatever his underlings were up to. The
> question is whether he was even aware of their mischief,
> or, to put it another way, whether they kept him informed
> of their furtive doings. Maybe not. It probably seemed to
> them, at the time, a matter of minor corner-cutting,
> without much consequence. If the boss wanted a war, well,
> so did they -- did they ever! -- and they were only too
> willing to see that he got one.
>
> A little infighting, with timely leaks to punish
> Mr. Wilson, would just be part of the operation. Who knew
> it might blow up in their faces? Did Richard Nixon's
> underlings see any great risk in a "third-rate burglary"
> of which the boss probably had no advance knowledge?
>
> But minor crimes don't always stay minor. Once Judge
> John Sirica started handing out tough sentences for that
> burglary, Nixon became guilty, so to speak, of being
> innocent of it. He was responsible for what his people
> did. When he realized that, he became more seriously
> guilty by trying to conceal it.
>
> That was Nixon's great mistake. I can't see Bush
> repeating it. But he may make the opposite mistake of
> trying to remain innocent. In his position, there is no
> such thing as innocence.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Read this column on-line at
> "http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/051101.shtml";.
>
> Copyright (c) 2005 by the Griffin Internet Syndicate,
> www.griffnews.com. This column may not be published in
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> of Griffin Internet Syndicate. You may forward it to
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>
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