After a weekend of engaging in illicit behavior, many students will face Halloween with the sobering reality that their decisions landed them out of favor with the law. The same goes for I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, who faces the sobering reality of indictment on five felony charges for providing investigators with fictitious testimony and misleading the grand jury in the CIA leak case. When the public comes knocking on the White House door for the truth this holiday, the administration can no longer peddle sugary lies.
Last Friday, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced the five charges against senior administration official Libby, sparking political crisis for the White House and the immediate resignation of Libby's post. For one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements to FBI investigators and two counts of lying to the grand jury, Libby should consider masquerading as a five-Count Dracula on Halloween rather than an honest official.
But when scandal arises in the Bush Administration, the president's conservative base scrambles like arachnids to spin an intricate web that attempts to quell public unrest. In doing so, they trap the uninformed public and manipulate it in ego-massaging antics, such as going to war on false pretenses. The indictment of Libby reinforces this pattern of spin, as both the President and the Vice President expect that Libby will receive exoneration for all five charges.
Libby's five charges could displace him from the White House to the big house for a maximum of 30 years and slap him with fines up to $1.25 million. Yet, these charges seem relatively lax when one considers that he deliberately orchestrated one of the false justifications for the war in Iraq that has resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 American service members and cost billions of dollars. Granted, the dishonest drive to war involved multiple parties, but Libby should not suffer the fall for his accomplices. Still, the crime of fabricating the case for war does not warrant pardon.
Supporters of the President will likely attempt to hush the fuss over Libby's indictment on the grounds that perjury and lying to a grand jury do not substantiate the demonizing of 'one of the most capable and talented individuals' that Vice President Cheney'in his own words'has ever known. But under similar grounds of perjury, these same holy patriots impeached former President Bill Clinton.
By dismissing Libby's crimes as technicalities, they essentially argue that perjury regarding infidelity represents a more serious crime than perjury regarding an unfounded war paid for with American blood.
The indictment of Libby undermines the 'moral' platform of the Bush administration. The unethical practices employed by Libby and Cheney reveal that behind the facade of righteousness resides warmongering wishes that probably stem from oil interests.
The administration successfully tricked the nation into waging an unnecessary war, and the time has arrived to treat the public with the truth: The justification for war that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction remains utterly unsubstantiated, and the administration should take responsibility for this fabrication.
