Scooter Scoots Off to Slammer

Thirty months.

For Scooter Libby, 30 months in the slammer for lying to the grand jury and FBI investigators about his role in leaking the identity of undercover agent Valerie Plame.

I know we’re all supposed to feel happy about his misfortune, but I don’t. Not that I feel sorry for Scooter Libby. He’s a smart lawyer. He knew better. Yet he deliberately participated in an ugly political attack against an outspoken critic of the president’s war in Iraq — and then became part of the cover-up. He got what he deserved.

But I’m not happy about Libby’s prison sentence for two reasons. First, because, to this day, nobody’s yet been held responsible for the main crime: deliberately unmasking the identity of an undercover CIA agent, and putting her life and the lives of the agents she works with at risk. That’s a federal crime that remains unpunished.

Second, because we know Scooter Libby didn’t act alone. From trial testimony, it looks like Scooter was acting under the orders of Dick Cheney, with the blessing of George Bush, in a political seek-and-destroy mission orchestrated by Karl Rove.

For Scooter Libby to go to jail while Bush, Cheney, and Rove remain at large and in power is an abortion of justice.