Bill Moyers On A Libby Pardon

image credit: Bill Moyers' Journal

Emptywheel spotted this gem of an essay by Bill Moyers. Marcy's article quotes the early part of the article, which mentions the impassioned plees on behalf of Scooter by Adelman, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, et. al. Moyers then concludes:

None seem the least weighted down by the sheer, glaring unfairness of sentencing soldiers to repeated and longer tours of duty in a war induced by deception. It was left to the hawkish academic Fouad Ajami to state the matter baldly. In a piece published on the editorial page of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Ajami pleaded with Bush to pardon Libby. For believing “in the nobility of this war,” wrote Ajami, Scooter Libby had himself become a “casualty”—a fallen soldier the President dare not leave behind on the Beltway battlefield.

Not a word in the entire article about the real fallen soldiers. The honest-to-God dead, and dying, and wounded. Not a word about the chaos or the cost. Even as the calamity they created worsens, all they can muster is a cry for leniency for one of their own who lied to cover their tracks.

There are contrarian voices: “This is an open and shut case of perjury and obstruction of justice,” said Pat Buchanan. “The Republican Party stands for the idea that high officials should not be lying to special investigators.” From the former Governor of Virginia, James Gilmore, a staunch conservative, comes this verdict: “If the public believes there’s one law for a certain group of people in high places and another law for regular people, then you will destroy the law and destroy the system.”

So it may well be, as THE HARTFORD COURANT said editorially, that Mr Libby is “a nice guy, a loyal and devoted patriot…but none of that excuses perjury or obstruction of justice. If it did, truth wouldn’t matter much.”

Begging His Pardon

Sorry, Bill, that was just so beautiful I couldn't bear to quote less of it.

Many of us, in one way or another, have tried to describe what heinous little shits these people are. I think Moyers, with his careful, civil tone, has captured that view of them as well as anyone.