Just want to remind everyone of why Scooter Libby matters and maybe give a few people some ammunition in the battle of memes. Scooter Libby does not deserve a pardon. If anything, he got off light as treason might have been a better charge for what he did.
Lest we forget: The real crimes went unpunished, and the full extent damage that resulted from those crimes will probably never be entirely known, but it is safe to say that it was substantial, affecting more than one dedicated CIA NOC officer's life.
More below the fold.
So the rat wing has circled the wagons and begun the drum beat for Scooter Libby's pardon. What a surprise. The funny thing is that this same mob was calling for Clinton's head over lying about a few blow jobs. Libby was convicted of obstructing justice. Big deal, right? Wrong. Libby's obstruction derailed an extremely important investigation that would have blown the lid off outright treason at the highest levels of government. Let me explain.
Leave aside for a moment that the Bush administration lied outright in promoting the invasion of Iraq. Let's just leave that out for now.
Libby covered up and took the fall for a dirty tricks campaign orchestrated from the highest level of our government, but this wasn't any dirty tricks campaign. This wasn't exposing somebody's affair or questioning the validity of their Purple Heart. The vindictive blowing of Valerie Plame's CIA cover was payback for Joseph Wilson's New York Times op-ed that exposed the administration's flagrant lies about Saddam's fictitious attempt to procure yellowcake uranium from Africa. You can see why the administration would be upset about that. Bullies and liars never react well to public exposure of their bullshit.
Ironically enough, under legislation passed under the Reagan administration, it is a federal offense to expose the identity of an undercover agent (which Ms. Plame most assuredly was, despite rat-wing claims to the contrary. Rat wingers never let the facts get in the way of a good delusion.). There is good reason for this law. Human intelligence (HUMINT) networks take years or decades to build. Exposing one member of such a network can undo years of meticulous cultivation of assets. Such exposure can and does get people killed, dedicated people who have spent their lives in the service of their country. (If you don't believe this, imagine how betrayed you would feel if a good friend or trusted business associate turned out to have been spying on you since the beginning of your relationship.)
Ms. Plame's exposure undid an important HUMINT network: that orbiting Brewster-Jennings and Associates. Ms. Plame was not any old CIA agent -- her group was charged with monitoring WMD proliferation in the Middle East. Just digest that for a moment. During a time of war and fear, when the administration was selling WMD as the most important national security issue, they blew to smithereens an entire undercover operation dedicated to that very field, undoing years of work.
People got killed, too, most likely. Indeed, the CIA's Book of Honor includes four stars for 2003 -- each denoting an agent killed in the line of duty -- a total that equals that of the six years prior to 2003. Non-agent assets were also undoubtedly compromised by their association with Ms. Plame whose specialty was recruitment of foreign assets, as reported by the NY Daily News, quoting Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA counterterrorism operations chief.
[irony]Thanks, Scooter Libby, for doing that and for covering your bosses' asses by obstructing the investigation. You're a real hero. You deserve every bit of a pardon for your service to our country.[/irony]
Libby went down like a wise guy: lying and obstructing justice so that the prosecutor could not get to the don. He was the primary reason the real crime -- outing a covert CIA operative -- went unpunished. Throw away the fucking key, and haul in the rest of 'em while you're at it. They deserve a fair trial. Put the facts in front of a jury. Let's not give these crooks a chance to pardon themselves.