Tuesday, March 06, 2007

"Bush need (sic) to do the right thing and pardon Libby immediately."

That was the first comment in the Libby thread at LGF, and it illustrates, perfectly, the neocon mindset.

You see, we live in a nation governed by laws, not men. The jury trial is an intricate part of that system. It generally benefits defendants in criminal cases, and if Mr. Libby did not want a jury, he could have waived his right to it. If he is dissatisfied with the result, he has the right to an appeal.

We have laws against obstructing justice and lying to grand juries. A federal jury, carefully selected to ensure as impartial a panel as possible, sat in the case and reached the conclusion that Mr. Libby violated those laws. The jury appears to have considered the case carefully, as demonstrated by the length of time spent deliberating. The fact that Libby was acquitted on a charge is a further indication that the jury decided the case on its view of the evidence, and not as the result of any bias or political motivation.

In other words, the system worked.

Now, the right wing talks a good game of "law and order," but like most of the crap that comes out of the RWNM (right wing noise machine), they don't mean it. O sure, they're all for putting away street criminals for ungodly lengths of time, but they don't have any real respect for law. In fact, they live by the motto of "whatever you can get away with."

Scooter Libby has blood on his hands, a lot of it. He was part of the whole criminal enterprise to get America to start an illegal and immoral war. Thousands of Americans have died, tens of thousands more are mutilated, and we'll never know how many innocent Iraqis have been killed, but it's surely in the many tens of thousands. Today's verdict is one small piece of justice. Like a cup of water in the desert, it's important cannot be measured by its quantity.

What does the right wing want? They want to "fix" it. They want to bypass the law and have their "man" take care of it. Forget about respect for law, forget the fact that Bush promised to fire anybody involved in this whole ugly mess (he'd had to fire most of his staff), forget about appeals, forget that we're all Americans, forget about all that, the right wing is only about winning, damn the system, just let me know who has to be paid to get this damn thing fixed.

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