Posted on 01/22/2009 8:37:12 PM PST by RobinMasters
I just can't seem to get off this topic. The question is, what could possibly possess Bush to refuse to pardon Libby? The more I think about it, the more I come up with bad or even unethical motives by Bush.
I will not indulge them here, at least not now, because it is speculation of this sort that leads the nut-roots on the left to make all sorts of baseless allegations. But do let it be said that many reports now are that a number of influential people did try to convince Bush to make the pardon -- and I feel sure that Cheney found a way to let his own feelings be known -- but that Bush was just unmoveable.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
What is the point of this type of post? It’s not news. It’s someone’s unsure feelings about a decision President Bush made, and that’s all.
Honestly, if we know anything about President Bush, it’s that he always acts on principle and on what he believes is right. That doesn’t mean he’s right 100% of the time, but it means he’s true to his own conscience, not someone else’s.
He made a choice based on what he believed to be right, of that I am confident. VP Cheney respects President Bush despite points of disagreement with him. I suggest we do the same.
I think Dubya’s anger with Libby had to do with the fact that he was leaking to that reporter. Period.
The bailouts are far beyond anything modern history has known. They happened under Bush. Bush Derangement Syndrome -- which brought us the Obama disaster -- happened under Bush.
Dear Mr. Bush, it's probably too late, but a good leader has to LEAD, and not just manage honestly. LEADING means aggressive public relations -- they can be honest, they should be honest, but LEADING means being in front, not just giving good orders. You did not lead. Reagan LEAD. A leader must engage the public, and not act like some passive hair-shirt wearer, offering the slanders against him to some sucky deity as a strange offering. Nevertheless, Mr. Bush, you did great -- initially after 9/11 your did LEAD. We all respect that, but what happened?
Katrina demoralized you? Some say that is what happened. If so, you did fail. Not because of our response to Katrina -- which was fast and mighty, which was in reality historic in its success. Nor is your failure because you did not counter the blitzkreig of slander that followed Katrina -- it could have been countered! No, that leadership failure was not it. The failure was that you gave up. A LEADER has to fail, and fail, and fail and fail again. But each time, to get up again, and up again, and up again. That is what you gave up on.
Still, your life is not done. There is no retirement. You can indeed "retire", like your Dad, and act like every breath G-d gives you is already paid for. What folly that would be!
Or you can take up from where you fell, and find a horse and ride back to the front.
I think Bush is trying to stick very close to the letter of the law, and technically a jury did find Libby guilty of perjury, or telling two different stories under oath - it was an unfair gambit by the prosecutor who kept questioning him to the point that anyone would start having ttrouble keeping all the facts straight, but Libby should have probably used the I don’t recall bit from the start to avoid the trap. Bush did vacate part of Libby’s sentence, but I don’t think he wanted to overturn the verdict......
I thought I read that Libby did not ask for a pardon and that there was also some rule that a person had to have been in jail for 5 years before you could ask for a pardon. Thought I read that somewhere on a FR thread.
I believe one of the main reasons would be avoidance of the smear campaign that most certainly would bolster a classic, but terribly unseemly, image of Republicans.
Bush stabbed his friends in the back.
Baloney.
Libby lied - - for no good reason - - and got caught.
The genesis of the entire Fitzpatrick fiasco was the Bush Administration's cowardice. All they needed to do was express their disgust that a rogue element at CIA - - a rogue element that included Wilson's wife - - had colluded with liberal appeasers at State to send the little-known diplomat Wilson on his unauthorized trip to Niger for cocktails with somebody who apparently told him, "Nope, I haven't seen any yellowcake uranium. I didn't do it, nobody saw me, you can't prove anything." (/Bart Simpson)
Instead they all bobbed and weaved and got cute until finally Libby got nailed and Rove almost did. It's the same way the administration stumbled along for eight long years. Nobody ever had the balls to stand up and defend himself with the simple truth. It got so bad they even took the blame for a freaking natural disaster.
Pathetic. Good riddance, and somebody please ping me in 2012.(spit)
Bump for later reading
So was Libby’s sentence commuted? Why, then, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, over him not getting a pardon? President Bush did the same for the Border Agents.
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