Ajami asks for a Libby pardon

Fouad Ajami asks President Bush to pardon of Scooter Libby in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Here's the best passage:

The men and women who entrusted you with the presidency, I dare say, are hard pressed to understand why former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who was the admitted leaker of Mrs. Wilson's identity to columnist Robert Novak, has the comforts of home and freedom and privilege while Scooter Libby faces the dreaded prospect of imprisonment.

I'm not one of the people who "entrusted [Bush] with the presidency," but let me take a stab in the dark -- because Libby lied to the FBI and Armitage didn't?

The most offensive aspect of the op-ed, though, is the title "Fallen Soldier: Mr. President, do not leave this man behind." and the closing line:

Scooter Libby was there for the beginning of that campaign. He can't be left behind as a casualty of a war our country had once proudly claimed as its own.

I imagine that the families of the real casualties of the war wouldn't appreciate that kind of language. Libby is going to serve a few months in jail for lying to the FBI. There's just no comparison.

Comments

[Rob]

Agreed, Brendan, the point isn't what Libby lied about, or whether the subject of the lie was itself criminal, it's that he lied to the FBI.

Similarly, I know you disagree with those who claim that Ken Starr was wrong to expose President Clinton's lies to a grand jury that grew out of the special prosecutor's investigation of whether the White House had subborned perjury.

And I applaud your consistency on this issue.