I hate to beat a dumb horse, but I just have to. Cohen has so clearly lost his moral and intellectual way, it’s no longer even funny to watch it happen. It’s disturbing.
What has happened to a man’s mind when it causes him to write something like this:
This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off…
As Fitzgerald worked his wonders, threatening jail and going after government gossips with splendid pluck, many opponents of the Iraq war cheered. They thought -- if "thought" can be used in this context -- that if the thread was pulled on who had leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to Robert D. Novak, the effort to snooker an entire nation into war would unravel and this would show . . . who knows?
…An unpopular war produced the popular cry for scalps and, in Libby's case, the additional demand that he express contrition -- a vestigial Stalinist-era yearning for abasement.
Think about that for a minute.
On the one hand, Cohen is saying, inexplicably, that a Republican, Bush appointed U.S. Attorney conducted an entirely politically motivated(!) investigation against a Republican, Bush administration official that was Stalinist.
It was that horrific and shocking.
But he feels that intentionally revealing a covert operative’s employment by the CIA, which wrecked a woman’s career, compromised ongoing intelligence operations to prevent nuclear weapons from exploding in downtown Manhattan, and which may have gotten people killed, is just practicing the “dark art of politics”.
And no one should be held accountable for that!
Again, if you’re just destroying a person’s life, getting people killed, and endangering all Americans for cheap political purposes, well, that’s one thing.
But to make a man, a fabulously wealthy and important white man no less, who’s been convicted of four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, knuckle under to the honor code of a white collar, wall-less, guardless “prison” for two and a half years for cheap political purposes(!), that’s Stalinist!
All Libby and Cheney and Rove and Armitage did—aside from destroying people’s lives, getting people killed, and making the world a more dangerous place—was send a simple message to all of our covert operatives that if they get out of line, their careers are over and their lives will be endangered.
Comrade Fitzgerald, on the other hand, delivered a brutal knife in the dark, terrorizing all public officials that if they simply broke the law repeatedly and intentionally, and then understandably lied to the FBI and a grand jury, they could find themselves facing a ten o’clock curfew for the next thirty years!
Oh, I’m sorry—months!
Christ, if out of control partisan assassins like Fitzgerald keep this up, before you know it, we won't have any high ranking government officials lying to the FBI or grand juries at all! Then where will we be?
Well, Richard Cohen tells us we'll be in a world where the very idea of logic is purely theoretical!
No one has yet explained, though, how Libby can express contrition and
still appeal his conviction. No matter. Antiwar sanctimony excuses the
inexplicable.
It's crazy, isn't it???
In every other criminal prosecution, in the history of the United States, the accused has always been allowed to express contrition--before their appeal--and then, if they do, the matter gets dropped. That's why our criminal justice system is the envy of the world!
Until the sanctimonious, Stalinist, antiwar, Republican, Bush-appointed United States Attorneys came along and started using Title 18 of the United States Code as a political football!
That's how you know this whole thing is trumped up and rotten--a "mess", as Cohen perfectly sizes it up: Libby is caught in an insane Catch 22, wherein he can't confess his crimes and appeal them at the same time!
Because everyone's being so darned sanctimonious all of sudden. A few thousand Americans get killed and the taxpayers foot the bill for a trillion dollar fiasco that will affect the world for a generation, and suddenly everyone who thought invading Iraq was a bad idea is so sanctimonious! Like they're angry or something! Just because people like him called them fools or Frenchmen for being entirely right about Iraq!
It's inexplicable!
But excused by the failure of the war in Iraq.
Lucky for us sanctimonious pricks we have the war in Iraq, otherwise our inexplicable justice system would be without excuse!
Why is this rich, soft, stupid old man not writing that everyone responsible for deceiving the American people into sacrificing thousands of their soldiers and billions of their dollars should be held accountable for practicing their dark political arts with the lights out?
Why is this muddle minded simpleton not writing that everyone who is responsible for perpetuating this fraud even after it's been proven and proven and proven to be a grotesque lie should be held accountable for practicing their dark political arts with the lights out?
Why is this asshole not using his column in the Washington Post to turn the goddam lights on?
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