NoaIzumiManufacturing a Crime, by Thomas Sowell
January 10th 2009 19:04
The Plame Affair. The issue that will not die. Although in this case, it is topical. Unfortunately, the arguments put forth by Mr. Sowell are not.
Really Long Link
Yep, he wants the outgoing President Bush to pardon Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Mr. Sowell seems to think (or at least wants the rest of us to think) that Libby was an innocent man, railroaded into prison. But the excuse that Libby simply got his facts wrong has been used before, most notably in his trial (which Sowell doesn’t mention). Libby’s team of lawyers (also unmentioned by Sowell) argued it in their defense of him. Now if the eleven person jury that found Libby guilty (again, unmentioned), who had to be intimately familiar with the particulars of the case, didn’t buy it, exactly why should the rest of us? Juries do make mistakes, but Sowell doesn’t provide some great revelation or new piece of evidence, his argument seems to be that the jury made a mistake because … the jury just made a mistake, OK!
“Valerie Plame (Wilson) was no longer an undercover agent, her (Valerie Plame Wilson’s) identity having already been revealed long before this whole episode”
Not according to the CIA. She wasn’t living overseas, but her cover identity was being maintained, and as far as the CIA knew, it was still good right up to the date of Novak’s article.
Really Long Link
“Wilson had gone to the African nation of Niger to check out suspicions that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from there, in order to create weapons of mass destruction. He concluded that this was not so.”
Not entirely true either. Wilson did find evidence that Hussein might have tried to acquire some uranium ore some years before, but Wilson’s opinion (which was shared by others) was that there was no way that he could have actually gotten any uranium from Niger.
Really Long Link
“In reality, Robert Novak got his information from Richard Armitage, not Scooter Libby."
True for Robert Novak (although Karl Rove was also a source for him), but Scooter Libby leaked Mrs. Wilson’s identity to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and was a confirming source for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. All this happened before Novak’s column came out on July 14, 2003.
Really Long Link
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The passage that really caught my eye, though, was this:
“I don't think a man's life should be ruined for that”
That’s actually the second time in this article that he claims Mr. Libby’s life was ruined. Let’s see, he has a felony conviction on his record, he was disbarred in 2008, and he'll almost certainly never hold public office again. But, he never served a day of jail time, his fine is all paid off, and he’s eligible to reapply to practice law in 2012. Does that constitute having your life “ruined”, to anyone besides Thomas Sowell? And if Libby didn’t want his life “ruined”, perhaps he shouldn’t have lied to the grand jury.
It constantly amazes me that some people are all for throwing the book at the bad guys, until the bad guy turns out to be one of their own.
Edit;
Turns out Thomas Sowell isn't the only one. Here's what Byron York had to say in the National Review.
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
Yep, he wants the outgoing President Bush to pardon Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Mr. Sowell seems to think (or at least wants the rest of us to think) that Libby was an innocent man, railroaded into prison. But the excuse that Libby simply got his facts wrong has been used before, most notably in his trial (which Sowell doesn’t mention). Libby’s team of lawyers (also unmentioned by Sowell) argued it in their defense of him. Now if the eleven person jury that found Libby guilty (again, unmentioned), who had to be intimately familiar with the particulars of the case, didn’t buy it, exactly why should the rest of us? Juries do make mistakes, but Sowell doesn’t provide some great revelation or new piece of evidence, his argument seems to be that the jury made a mistake because … the jury just made a mistake, OK!
“Valerie Plame (Wilson) was no longer an undercover agent, her (Valerie Plame Wilson’s) identity having already been revealed long before this whole episode”
Not according to the CIA. She wasn’t living overseas, but her cover identity was being maintained, and as far as the CIA knew, it was still good right up to the date of Novak’s article.
Really Long Link
“Wilson had gone to the African nation of Niger to check out suspicions that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from there, in order to create weapons of mass destruction. He concluded that this was not so.”
Not entirely true either. Wilson did find evidence that Hussein might have tried to acquire some uranium ore some years before, but Wilson’s opinion (which was shared by others) was that there was no way that he could have actually gotten any uranium from Niger.
Really Long Link
“In reality, Robert Novak got his information from Richard Armitage, not Scooter Libby."
True for Robert Novak (although Karl Rove was also a source for him), but Scooter Libby leaked Mrs. Wilson’s identity to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and was a confirming source for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. All this happened before Novak’s column came out on July 14, 2003.
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
The passage that really caught my eye, though, was this:
“I don't think a man's life should be ruined for that”
That’s actually the second time in this article that he claims Mr. Libby’s life was ruined. Let’s see, he has a felony conviction on his record, he was disbarred in 2008, and he'll almost certainly never hold public office again. But, he never served a day of jail time, his fine is all paid off, and he’s eligible to reapply to practice law in 2012. Does that constitute having your life “ruined”, to anyone besides Thomas Sowell? And if Libby didn’t want his life “ruined”, perhaps he shouldn’t have lied to the grand jury.
It constantly amazes me that some people are all for throwing the book at the bad guys, until the bad guy turns out to be one of their own.
Edit;
Turns out Thomas Sowell isn't the only one. Here's what Byron York had to say in the National Review.
Really Long Link
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