Libby sentenced

"Scooter" Libby was given his sentence today:

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison Tuesday for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation — the probe that showed a White House obsessed with criticism of its decision to go to war.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the highest-ranking White House official sentenced to prison since the
Iran-Contra affair, asked for leniency, but a federal judge said he would not reward someone who hindered the investigation into the exposure of a CIA operative. The operative's husband had accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the
Iraq war.

No date was set immediately for Libby to report to prison.

...

Defense attorneys sought to have the sentence delayed until appeals run out. A delay also would give Bush more time to consider calls from Libby's allies to pardon the longtime aide.

[U.S. District Judge Reggie B.] Walton said he saw no reason to put the sentence on hold but agreed to consider it. He scheduled a hearing for a week from Thursday.

...

Walton, a Bush nominee who served in the White House as deputy drug director under Bush's father, said public officials in particular had a duty to testify honestly. His voice raising at times, he said the leak investigation was a serious one and obstructing it deserved a serious penalty.

"It's one thing if you obstruct a petty larceny. It's another thing if you obstruct a murder investigation," he said.

He fined Libby $250,000 and placed him on two years probation after his prison sentence expires. There is no parole in the federal system, but Libby would be eligible for release after two years.

Libby, of course, remains unremorseful and insists that he's done nothing wrong. And his lawyers -- as well as numerous right-wing hacks -- declare that the fact that no-one was convicted for leaking Valerie Plame's name, proves that no such crime was committed:

Libby's attorneys noted that Fitzgerald never charged anyone with leaking Plame's identity, including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage or White House political adviser Karl Rove, the original sources of the leak.

"No one was ever charged. Nobody ever pleaded guilty," attorney William Jeffress said. "The government did not establish the existence of an offense."

But....

In the court filing that sought Libby's prison term, Fitzgerald emphasized that Libby's lies prevented investigators from learning the full truth about the campaign to discredit Wilson, and may have helped conceal another administration official's criminal leaks. Fitzgerald noted that Cheney was one of the first people to tell Libby about Plame, and that Libby has testified that Cheney and he may have talked about sharing information about Plame with reporters.

The whole point of being found guilty of "obstruction of justice" is that you have -- wait for it -- obstructed justice. Because of Libby's lies, we can't get to the truth about this scandal.