SCOOTER SCOOTS FREE

Kudos to President Bush for issuing a Get Out of Jail Free Card to Scooter Libby, sparing him a thirty month prison sentence for lying and obstructing justice in the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation. Coming from the President, this commutation of Scooter’s prison sentence cannot be trumped.

There is absolutely no connection that Libby committed his crimes in furtherance of President Bush and Libby’s boss Vice President Cheney made up and failed criminal enterprise in Iraq. It is inconceivable that Bush would keep Scooter out of jail simply to buy his silence about all the valuable work he did on behest of Cheney in fabricating evidence to blunder America into war, and then smearing former ambassador Joe Wilson who had credible evidence of this fakery.

So what that this smear required the outing of Wilson’s wife, Valerie, of a covert spy whose career was destroyed, and the endangerment of all covert spies she was working with overseas. This was a small price to pay for revenge against the Muslim world for their attacks of September 11, 2001, even if it involved a Muslim nation having nothing to do with those attacks.

And those half million Iraqi casualties, four million others fleeing Libby’s handiwork, and 3,575 dead Americans should absolutely not influence our need to punish Scooter further.

Libby’s loyalty and zealousness in serving our noble rulers are traits that should keep this brilliant, dapper and urbane public servant from having to mingle with murders, rapists, bank robbers and drug barons for even a single day.

Now Scooter, whose public career appears over, can retire to his mansion to write more of his trashy potboiler novels in peace.

Besides, jail should be reserved to really bad actors (pun intended) like Paris Hilton.

Originally published in Glen Ellyn News, July 11, 2007
Also published in Wheaton Leader, July 12, 2007