I Knew a Dog Named “Scooter” Once

Add comment July 4th, 2007

I knew a dog named Scooter one. He had a problem with “cling-ons” when he defecated. He would then “scoot” to clean himself up. Scoot on the grass, scoot on the rug, scoot across the bed. It was effective for him, but it always left a trail. Other than that he was a very loyal dog - not mine by the way. I am strongly reminded of him when thinking about the tremendous popularity of Scooter Libby. My guess that a big part of saving his butt has to do with the trail he would leave if put in a hostile environment.

The wires are burning with the decision to commute. On one hand we hear the same rhetoric that we heard all through the trial:
he didn’t do anything wrong
he didn’t leak Plame’s name and identity
Plame wasn’t under cover anyway
What about Sandy Berger?
What about Clinton’s pardons?

Obviously these folks are operating under the same principle as the Bush administration - tell the same lie often enough and people will think it is true. Maybe it’s Rove’s strategy (who I suspect is a big “scooter”).

Rob Kall over at OpEd news did a to the point response:

Some Talking Points on Bush’s Commutation of Libby’s Sentence

Watching the conversation on Libby unfold, here are some responses to the arguments right wingers seem to be putting forward:

A jury found him guilty of OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE and did not believe Libby just forgot.

Libby was prosecuted by a republican appointed prosecutor and sentenced by a republican appointed judge.

Bill Clinton was found innocent by the senate.

This was about national security– the intentional outing of a CIA agent.

Libby was protecting Cheney and probably Rove, Bush’s agent. Bush pardoned a man complicit in a crime he himself was implicated and suspected of being involved in.

Sandy Berger was found guilty of taking a few reports. Libby outed an active CIA agent. Berger didn’t receive jail time.

However, it is Keith Olbermann captured the outrage that I feel, and the depth of the betrayal by the Bush Administration. The full comment and video of the comment is available at MSNBC. Here are some excerpts from this excellent statement:

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the “referee” of Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s analogy. These are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush–and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal–the average citizen understands that, Sir.

It’s the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one–and it stinks. And they know it.

.

So why did Bush, the hanging Governor, who spared not one bit of mercy to criminals in Texas, find mercy in his heart of “Scooter?” Was it because Scooter might leave a stinky brown trail that led right back to Cheney - and to Bush? Or perhaps because he has been a loyal dog. Regardless, it seems more than self-serving for Bush to commute Libby’s sentence (with the possibility of a full pardon). Perhaps it is just more royal hubris from the King of the United States. The laws are up to him, and justice is his whim. Whether that justice is to give people life sentences without ever being charged, tried, or represented in a US court of law. Or whether it is to spare a buddy from the hardships of separation required for the crime he committed - obstructing an investigation into a treasonous act which had its roots high in the administration.

Bush’s argument that he “respects” the jury, but the penalty was “too harsh,” is perhaps his true perspective on telling lies and muddying the waters - even when those lies and obfuscations are a direct breach of national security and US law. Perhaps this is a trivial event to him. If so, it shows just how far he has strayed from his role as President of the United States.