{Bush’s actions and commutation} reveal the continued ferocity of a White House cover-up and expose the true character of a commander in chief whose tough-guy shtick can no longer camouflage his fundamental cowardice...He didn’t care if he looked like an utter hypocrite, giving his crony a freer ride than Paris Hilton and violating the white-collar sentencing guidelines set by his own administration. He had to throw a bone to the last grumpy old white guys watching Bill O’Reilly in a bunker.
You can argue the points until you’re blue in the face, but two things have been revealed in the Valerie Plame leak. One is that she was an undercover operative working for the CIA. Two is that Bush is a coward.
The only people clamoring for Mr. Libby’s freedom were the pundits who still believe that Saddam secured uranium in Africa and who still hope that any exoneration of Mr. Libby might make them look less like dupes for aiding and abetting the hyped case for war. That select group is not the Republican base so much as a roster of the past, present and future holders of quasi-academic titles at neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute.
Bush has no loyalty to the conservatives who support him. His goal is now simply to survive and run out the clock. Bush won’t be able to stop the investigations or the unraveling of his presidency. In fact it’s come down to later night behind the scenes decisions that, like Harriet Myers, Bush decides on his own until president Cheney disagrees. He announced this pardon before the holiday and without consultations inside his own cabinet.
That’s the behavior of an accountant cooking the books in the dead of night, not the proud act of a patriot standing on principle.
At the Walter Reed hospital, Bush took the opportunity to dismiss the Walter Reed scandal as little more than bureaucratic bungling. Just like Katrina was a bureaucratic problem and Abu Gharaib was a bureaucratic problem, there is nothing this administration hates more than bureaucracy, especially when it’s the law.
But cowardice, the character trait so evident in his furtive handling of the Libby commutation, is as important to understanding Mr. Bush’s cratered presidency as incompetence, cronyism and hubris.
Even The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, ... called the Bush commutation statement a "profile in non-courage."...What it did not recognize, or chose not to recognize, is that this non-courage, to use The Journal’s euphemism, has been this president’s stock in trade...Mr. Bush’s failure to have the courage of his own convictions was apparent early in his history, when he professed support for the Vietnam War yet kept himself out of harm’s way when he had the chance to serve in it.
Did anyone think that this draft dodging coke addict would ever have the courage to commit his crimes in the light of day? He is a criminal and should be treated as such.
More importantly, Bush lacks courage and integrity.
Nowhere is this president’s non-courage more evident than in the "signing statements" The Boston Globe exposed last year. As Charlie Savage reported, Mr. Bush "quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office." Rather than veto them in public view, he signed them, waited until after the press and lawmakers left the White House, and then filed statements in the Federal Register asserting that he would ignore laws he (not the courts) judged unconstitutional.
Bush put the worst possible people he could in power and who paid the price but the soldiers and the taxpayers.
But he never backed up the rhetoric of war with the stand-up action needed to prosecute the war. Instead he relied on fomenting fear
It's no shock then Rove is running the War On Terror out of Goebbels playbook- instill enough fear and loathing- keep the terrorist threats up and no one will actually see or care what you are doing.
In regards to the woefully under supported and woefully out-numbered soldiers, Bush couldn‘t change Rumsfeld's mind- or he lost a battle with him, one of the two- and neither of those things he lost were good for US troops who were sent in piece meal and to this day the situation continues to deteriorate.
No one can stop Mr. Bush from freeing a pathetic little fall guy like Scooter Libby. But only those who paid the ultimate price for the avoidable bungling of Iraq have the moral authority to pardon Mr. Bush.
http://select.nytimes.com/...