Posted on 04/07/2015 4:23:05 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
In a book just released, The Story: A Reporter's Journey, Judith Miller, a key witness in the Libby prosecution, states that Patrick Fitzgerald had offered repeatedly to drop all charges against Lewis Libby if he would "deliver" Vice President Cheney to him. In addition, she charges that Fitzgerald manipulated her into incorrectly testifying about a critical conversation she had with Libby and withheld exculpatory evidence from both her and the defense in order to induce her mistaken testimony – testimony the prosecution knew was made because she was acting under a false belief....
[must read snip]
....Rizzo, of course, is focused only on the impact on the CIA. For the rest of us, the impact of this disastrous fiasco was the disruption of the president's War Council, where Libby was the advocate for the surge (in opposition to Armitage's boss, Colin Powell, who hid from the president for three years the source of leak). The surge was successful. Had this made-up leak not interrupted the process, it would have occurred earlier and probably saved many lives and resources. Had Libby falsely implicated Cheney to save his own skin, we'd never have had the surge, and Iraq would have been in much worse shape when Obama took office (and then precipitously and foolishly withdrew most of our troops).
It was a terrible error for President Bush ,who did commute Libby's sentence, to fail to pardon him, which would have expunged his wrongfully obtained conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice and allowed him to return to the practice of law. It's well past time, in any event, that the fairy-tale narrative of the vindictive outing of Valerie Plame be given a decent burial and Libby 's good name restored in the public record.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Commutations are the complete prerogative of the president.
I don’t see why not.
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