Libby Shouldn’t Have Asked Judge to ‘Consider His Whole Life’
Just before the judge sentenced I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby for his role in the revenge exposure of a CIA agent by the Bush administration, Libby asked him to look at the big picture.
Libby did not admit to any mistakes, but said, “I ask that you consider my whole life.”
And maybe the judge did, which is why Libby is now facing a total of 30 months in jail and a $250,000 fine.
John Dean, in his book, “Conservatives Without Conscience” uses Libby as an illustration of an “uberneoconservative” and an “exemplary authoritarian.” He points to an American Progress backgrounder that does in fact, consider Libby’s whole life.
It was Libby – along with Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and a handful of other top aides at the Pentagon and White House – who convinced the president that the U.S. should go to war in Iraq. It was Libby who pushed Cheney to publicly argue that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda and 9/11.
It was also Libby who prodded former Secretary of State Colin Powell to include specious reports about an alleged meeting between 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official in Powell’s February 2003 speech to the United Nations. Libby and his staff reportedly badgered Powell’s speech writers for weeks, culminating in a meeting where Libby presented information in a manner that, according to those who were there, was aggressive and over the top…
Within the Bush administration, what has touched Cheney has also reached Libby and vice versa. Libby’s role in the awarding of at least one no-bid, multi-million dollar contract to Halliburton is a case in point.
For months, the vice president’s office denied that it played any role in the selection of the company once headed by Cheney to repair Iraq’s oil fields. But, as the Washington Post reported [in 2004], it turns out that Libby had been briefed by Pentagon officials before the contract was awarded – raising questions of impropriety at best, and corruption at worst.
So much for the big picture. Libby is dirty, and Dean has no trouble keeping the facts straight.
