This has to be one of the best articles I've read by Glenn Greenwald, who is one of the finest political writers on the web today. It's unusually snarky for Glenn, but so on the mark it's stunning. I wonder if Richard Cohen will get around to reading it. When I first read Cohen's column I was going to leave a comment myself, but balked at creating yet another account at another website. Then I read Greenwald, and I'm pretty confident that a person could not have crafter a more apt response.
It should be noted that Cohen is what the Washington Post calls a "liberal." This is, on its face, ridiculous, but there you have it. In his current column he calls for a Scooter Libby pardon.
With the sentencing of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald has apparently finished his work, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, to make a mountain out of a molehill. At the urging of the liberal press (especially the New York Times), he was appointed to look into a run-of-the-mill leak and wound up prosecuting not the leaker -- Richard Armitage of the State Department -- but Libby, convicted in the end of lying. This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off.
This was the paragraph that set me off. And it's the one that got Greenwald going as well.
The Libby prosecution clearly was the dirty work of the leftist anti-war movement in this country, just as Cohen describes. After all, the reason Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate this matter was because a left-wing government agency (known as the "Central Intelligence Agency") filed a criminal referral with the Justice Department, as the MoveOn-sympathizer CIA officials were apparently unhappy about the public unmasking of one of their covert agents.
In response, Bush's left-wing anti-war Attorney General, John Ashcroft, judged the matter serious enough to recuse himself, leading Bush's left-wing anti-war Deputy Attorney General, James Comey, to conclude that a Special Prosecutor was needed. In turn, Comey appointed Fitzgerald, the left-wing anti-war Republican Prosecutor and Bush appointee, who secured a conviction of Libby, in response to which left-wing anti-war Bush appointee Judge Reggie Walton imposed Libby's sentence.
But the phrase that really got to me (and Greenwald as well) was this one: "(Politics) As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off."
What do you think about that? Is government to you just a sausage factory you'd rather not see in action? (Or real estate? Or sex, for that matter?)
Greenwald knocks this one out of the park. I have seen this linked to on several sites, but as of yet I have not seen any mention that it is truly one his best yet. I've been reading him for a while. It is. This is Greenwald gold.
(Note: You may have to watch a short ad at Salon to read this business. It's worth it.)
One More Thing: I'll just say this, if Scooter Libby did nothing wrong then why did he lie? And yes, he DID lie, according to the (pretty sympathetic) jury. And one more thing, to those who say that his only crime was lying about a crime he wasn't guilty of (ala Martha Stewart), his lying directly obstructed an investigation into the outing of a CIA operative who's principle job was working on weapons of mass destruction proliferation in the Middle East. Anyone who says she wasn't a covert operative should please call the CIA, who will tell you otherwise. And anyone who doesn't think it's a big deal to obstruct an investigation into the leaking of this agent's identity doesn't give a shit about national security.
And George Bush had NO intention of getting to the bottom of this EVER. He lied about that. And he lied about holding whoever was responsible accountable. Even those of you who now support a Libby pardon, he lied to you too. Did you know he was lying? When he promised accountability again and again (in vaguer and vaguer terms) did you catch a secret wink that none of the rest of us saw? Did you wink back?
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