BUSH, CHENEY WANT CONGRESS TO GO ALONG THAT U.S. IS STILL "AT WAR"

Eric Lichtblau has an important article in today's The New York Times on the machinations of the Bush administration aimed at codifying that the U.S. remains "at war" with Al Qaeda.

Reports Lichtblau:

"Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush’s advisers assert that many Americans may have forgotten that. So they want Congress to say so and “acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.”

"The language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism. Echoing a measure that Congress passed just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, it carries significant legal and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and political analysts say."

This proposal smacks of Cheney and his diabolical assistant David Addington. By having congress go along and reaffirm that the U.S. is "at war," Cheney and Addington hope to put up an extra buffer between themselves and those who feel they must be held accountable for the introduction of "harsh interrogation methods," read "torture."

Writes Lichtblau:

"Mr. Mukasey laid out the administration’s thinking in a July 21 speech to a conservative Washington policy institute in response to yet another rebuke on presidential powers by the Supreme Court: its ruling that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay , were entitled to habeas corpus rights to contest their detentions in court.

"The administration wants Congress to set out a narrow framework for those prisoner appeals. But the administration’s six-point proposal goes further. It includes not only the broad proclamation of a continued “armed conflict with Al Qaeda,” but also the desire for Congress to “reaffirm that for the duration of the conflict the United States may detain as enemy combatants those who have engaged in hostilities or purposefully supported Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations.” "

Congress must not go along with this. The Bush regime of using waterboarding, harsh methods of interrogation, sleep deprivation, long hours of forced standing, psychological punishments - these must not be allowed to become institutionalized because the U.S. is "at war." Cheney, Addington, Rice, Chertoff, Libby and Bush must all face trial as war criminals after their term of office comes to an end. Only another five months!

YOU'RE A FRIEND OF BUSH - GET OUT OF JAIL FREE

The president claims Libby's 30-month sentence was and is "excessive. But he has given no reasons why he thinks that. The length of the sentence is within the federal sentencing guidelines. Libby was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI after a jury trial in federal district court. So why does Mr. Bush think the sentence is "excessive"?

Could it be that the 30 months is really not excessive, but that Bush wants to keep Libby silent about the involvement in leaking Valerie Plame's CIA status by Bush himself and Cheney? In other words, Bush's commutation of Libby's jail time is just "hush money" to prevent Libby from implicating the president and vice president in the sordid affair of extracting retribution from Joseph Wilson for reporting that Saddam had not purchased yellowcake from Africa, as Bush falsely claimed in the run-up toward the war.

So Bush's campaign promise of making the White House a place of pride for Americans has become just another hollow campaign slogan. Because with Bush's White House, we have a president and staff that thinks nothing of violating the rule of law by demonstrating that federal sentencing guidelines apply only to the little guys who commit crimes, but do not apply to Libby and the rest of Bush's friends. The latter can do anything they want, notwithstanding any laws to the contrary, because they know that they will receive a commutation or pardon from Bush in the end.

COMPARE SCOOTER'S 30-MONTH SENTENCE WITH WELDON ANGELOS, 55 YEARS

The inequality and injustice of George Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's jail time is put in bold relief by recalling the case of Weldon Angelos, the 25-year old who was sentenced to 55 years in federal prison in 2004 for owning a firearm at the same time that he was dealing marijuana.

Bush thinks a sentence of 30 months is "excessive" for committing perjury, obstructing justice, and lying to federal authorities. Here's poor Weldon Angelos who is sentenced in effect for life for drug charges. Talk about lack of equal treatment under the law!

Writes Nick Madigan in The New York Times in 2004:

"In a case that has spurred intense soul-searching in legal circles, a 25-year-old convicted drug dealer, who was arrested two years ago for selling small bags of marijuana to a police informant, was sentenced on Tuesday to 55 years in prison.


"The judge who sentenced him, Paul G. Cassell of the United States District Court here, said that he pronounced the sentence ''reluctantly'' but that his hands were tied by a mandatory-minimum law that required the imposition of 55 years on Weldon H. Angelos because he had a gun during at least two of the drug transactions."

If fifty-five years is a "fair" sentence for dealing drugs under the minimum mandatory sentencing guidelines, thirty months seems like a good deal for Scooter Libby. Yet Bush says he has suffered enough.

We can all see through Bush's specious reasoning. He commutes Scooter's prison time because he and Cheney are the ones who are the real actors in having Scooter lie to authorities. And Scooter, ever the good soldier, does what he is being asked by Bush and Cheney. How could Bush allow Scooter to go to jail when Scooter did what he did to protect W and Vice?

Yet it is people like Bush and Cheney who made it a point to clamor for increase prison sentences, especially for little people like Angelos, whom they consign to to some prison cell for the rest of his life for drug possession.

Certainly perjury and obstruction of justice are worse crimes than drug possession if only because they are more intentional, more deliberate, more filled with what lawyers call a mens rea, a guilty mind.

Of course, Angelos' sentence is ridiculous for its excessiveness, and made even more so now by the president of the United States calling a sentence of only 30 months "excessive."

WHERE ARE ALL THOSE REPUBLICANS WHO WANTED TOUGHER PRISON SENTENCES AND "LAW AND ORDER"?

What ever happened to all those Republicans who clamored for tougher prison sentences for felons? Those same guys who wanted judges to be meting out hard time to those in the lower economic and social strata of society who smoked crack or who entered the country without documents. I am talking about the Tancredos and the Hatches. The Duncan Hunters and the James Sensenbrenners?

Here we have Scooter Libby convicted of felonies, not just misdemeanors. A jury in federal district court found Libby guilty of perjury, of obstruction of justice and of lying to the FBI. Yet Bush feels the sentence imposed by Judge Reggie Walton, a judge appointed to the federal bench by Bush 41, was too lenient? How about looking at the harsh mandatory sentences handed out in federal court to those who possess a certain amount of cocaine or marijuana, those who receive 10 years or more of hard time, where there is no parole allowed. And how about even Enron president Jeffrey Skilling? I know he lied to investors and because of his mismanagement Enron went down the tube. But Skilling is now serving 24 years.

Yet Scooter Libby walks free after committing perjury and obstruction of justice? The answer is because Libby did what Cheney and Bush told him to do. And Libby was the good soldier, covering the tracks so that Fitzgerald could not pursue his boss Cheney or even Bush. What we have in effect is Bush pardoning himself. Someone commits a crime for the benefit of Bush and Cheney, then Bush commutes his sentence so that Libby serves not one day in jail.

So let those Republicans who defend George Bush and Dick Cheney, who always in the past clamored for "law and order" and harsh prison sentences, speak up now against this miscarriage of justice.

There are many lessons from this commutation for Libby. But the principal one is that you deserve a harsh prison sentence if you are just one of the hoi polloi. But if you are a friend of Bush or Cheney, then any sentence you receive for committing perjury or obstruction of justice is too harsh, too excessive.

BUSH PARDONS SCOOTER LIBBY!

Word just in from the AP on The NY Times web site that Scooter Libby will go scot-free and avoid jail time thanks to a pardon this afternoon by George Bush.

Bush acted after the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit refused to stay Libby's jail time pending an appeal of the original jury trial in federal district court.

Here we see Bush pardoning one of his own (Libby was Cheney's special assistant) after Libby was convicted of committing perjury and obstruction of justice, which many people think Cheney and Bush had ordered Libby to do.

This is like Bush pardoning himself.

What does it say about the rule of law and the saying that no one is above the law? This is certainly going to provoke a huge anti-Bush/Cheney fire storm.

COURT OF APPEALS REJECTS SCOOTER LIBBY'S PLEA TO STAY OUT OF JAIL

Cary O'Reilly of Bloomberg is reporting that Scooter Libby has lost his case with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay out of jail during his appeal of his conviction for lying, perjury and obstructing justice in the matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, ex-agent of the CIA.

"Libby may be behind bars within weeks under the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which denied his request for release during his appeal. The decision will increase pressure on President George W. Bush to decide soon whether to pardon Libby, 56, as the former White House official's supporters have urged."

WEAK ARGUMENTS AGAINST SCOOTER'S SENTENCE

Here's something almost beyond imagination from Richard Cohen writing today in the Washington Post. He defends Scooter Libby and says prosecutor Fitzgerald was wrong in prosecuting him.

"As Fitzgerald worked his wonders, threatening jail and going after government gossips with splendid pluck, many opponents of the Iraq war cheered. They thought -- if "thought" can be used in this context -- that if the thread was pulled on who had leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to Robert D. Novak, the effort to snooker an entire nation into war would unravel and this would show . . . who knows? Something. For some odd reason, the same people who were so appalled about government snooping, the USA Patriot Act and other such threats to civil liberties cheered as the special prosecutor weed-whacked the press, jailed a reporter and now will send a previously obscure government official to prison for 30 months."

First of all, what is Cohen talking about when he denigrates those of us who suspect and believe the whole casus belli was a set-up led by Bush and Cheney?

Second, I admit, I cheered upon hearing of Scooter's conviction. If Libby had not lied to the FBI, the federal grand jury and to Fitz, maybe we would all know the full extent of the web of deceit spun by Bush and Cheney in taking the United States to an unjustified war.

Third, the fact that no one was charged with leaking Valerie Plame's CIA identity has nothing to do with the propriety of Scooter being sentenced to 30 months. His deserved sentence show what matters is telling the truth under oath and in court.