It has begun...

[oedi]

Libby, former chief of staff for Cheney, was charged with two counts of perjury, two counts of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice. He faces up to 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines. He will be sentenced in June.

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Comments

[anonymous]

Setting our political feelings aside for a moment, setting aside our justifiable anger at all the s##t that Bush and Cheney have done to this country - if Mr. Libby was your father or your husband or your brother getting locked away for the rest of his life, would you say that justice had been done? Or turning it around, if this were the Bush administration casually tossing an innocent man into prison for 30 years wouldn’t we all be TOTALLY OUTRAGED?

I know we all want to “get” the Bushies any way that we can, but is THIS really the way we want to do it? I want BUSH and CHENEY to pay for what they've done, not one of their low-level employees. What next, do we go after the paperboy that delivers newspapers to the White House? Honestly, this seems like we're playing a petty game of "Gotcha" - like being mad at something your neighbor did, so you sneak over when he isn't home and kick his dog.

We can (and should) hate Bush all we want, and we can (and should) fight against his administration and his policies every step of the way, and we can (and should) IMPEACH HIM. But when we start perverting the legal system and trumping up perjury charges so we can grind up one of the little guys just because we want to see some BLOOD? That's ugly. That's scary. That's getting awfully close to "randomly shooting people in the red states just cause we're angry" scary.

Isn't there a famous quote about "in your effort to defeat your enemy, be careful not to become him?"

We shouldn’t celebrate when an innocent man's life is destroyed for political purposes. No matter WHO he works for. No matter WHICH SIDE we're on.

That’s not what America is supposed to be about.

(By the way, I’m pretty sure Libby will appeal this conviction, and I'm fairly sure he'll be found innocent by a higher court, and I'm totally sure there will be endless screams of “Bush conspiracy” when he goes free...)

But if Libby does end up in prison for 30 years, it’s really a loss for BOTH sides of American Politics. Because it means we've decided that it's okay to lock innocent people away just because we don't like them or don't agree with them. And if we can do it to them, they can do it to us.

[oedi]

who are you? For someone as verbose as you are, perhaps you should let my readers know who you are.