President Bush’s abrupt commutation of the prison portion of convicted felon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s sentence took a lot of people by surprise. It wasn’t the action itself that was surprising - nobody in Washington ever believed that the White House would let Scooter Libby spend a single night behind prison bars even after being convicted on five counts of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements - but the timing of Mr. Bush’s intervention caught even members of his own inner circle unawares. Needless to say, tongues immediately started wagging across all parts of the political universe. Here’s what some of the key players on the Democratic side of the aisle had to say in response:

Senator John Kerry:

“President Bush’s eleventh hour commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence makes a mockery of the justice system and betrays the idea that all Americans are expected to be held accountable for their actions, even close friends of Vice President Cheney. It’s a tragedy that with young Americans paying the ultimate price in Iraq for this administration’s mistakes, this White House continues to avoid accountability and reward deceit for their friends and supporters.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

“The president’s decision to commute Mr. Libby’s sentence is disgraceful. Libby’s conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq War. Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone. Judge Walton correctly determined that Libby deserved to be imprisoned for lying about a matter of national security. The Constitution gives President Bush the power to commute sentences, but history will judge him harshly for using that power to benefit his own Vice President’s Chief of Staff who was convicted of such a serious violation of law.”
<!-more-> Senator Tom Harkin:

“We have known for a long time that this Administration has contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, but today’s action by the President to intervene to save a high-ranking member of his Administration – who was found by a jury to have broken the law and obstructed justice, on behalf of the Vice President – is a new low. It shows that this President believes there is one set of rules for his friends, and another set for everyone else. The American people believe that government officials should be held to a higher standard. President Bush believes that his cronies should be held to no standard at all.”

Senator Richard Durbin:

“When it comes to the law, there should not be two sets of rules—one for President Bush and Vice President Cheney and another for the rest of America. Even Paris Hilton had to go to jail. No one in this administration should be above the law.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

“The President’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people. The President said he would hold accountable anyone involved in the Valerie Plame leak case. By his action today, the President shows his word is not to be believed. He has abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his Administration accountable.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer:

“The charges against Mr. Libby were not insubstantial; a jury convicted him of lying to authorities and obstructing the investigation into the public disclosure of a CIA operative’s identity. In the last election, accountability for wrongdoing was a major issue. With this decision today in the Libby case, the President continues to demonstrate that he rejects accountability for wrongdoing in his Administration.”

Representative John Conyers:

“Until now, it appeared that the President merely turned a blind eye to a high ranking Administration official leaking classified information. The President’s action today makes it clear that he condones such activity. This decision is inconsistent with the rule of law and sends a horrible signal to the American people and our intelligence operatives who place their lives at risk everyday. Now that the White House can no longer argue that there is a pending criminal investigation, I expect them to be fully forthcoming with the American people about the circumstances that led to this leak and the President’s decision today.”

Representative Tom Lantos:

“This decision sends the wrong message about the rule of law in the United States, just as the president is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. How can we hold the line against injustices in other countries when our own executive branch deliberately sets out to smear its critics, lies about it and then wriggles away without having to pay the price in prison?”

DNC Chairman Howard Dean:

“Once again President Bush and the GOP have undermined a core American value: equal justice under the law for every American. By commuting this sentence, President Bush is sending a clear message that the rules don’t apply to the Bush White House or loyal Republican cronies. After promising that anyone who violated the law would be ‘taken care of,’ President Bush instead handed Scooter Libby a get out of jail free card.

Though Libby was convicted by a jury of lying about a matter of national security, President Bush is sparing him the consequences ordinary Americans would face. This conviction was the first moment of justice in a Bush Administration void of accountability. It’s a sad day for America when the President once again puts protecting his friends ahead of equal justice under the law.”

The Fourth of July is nearly upon us, and Americans are busy ramping up for the annual Independence Day holiday. Barbecue grills are being lit, picnic baskets are being packed, fireworks displays are being prepped, vacation trips are getting underway, and the big July 4th weekend sales extravaganzas are drawing shoppers like, well, ants to a picnic. Here at home, there’s a nationwide celebration going on.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, though, it’s a whole different story. Citizens of those two war-ravaged countries have precious little to celebrate this July 4th. Iraq in particular is a country in chaos, where an already grim situation continues to get grimmer by the day.

Sectarian violence and civil strife are escalating in Iraq. The situation there continues to deteriorate, despite what the official spinners and spokespersons say. While administration officials tout what they describe as a significant decline in lethal violence in Baghdad proper during the month of June, Iraqis are mourning many hundreds of their fellow citizens who’ve died violently in all parts of Iraq during the past week alone.

The latest Reuters FactBox report on security developments in Iraq over the weekend is a grim enough summary of that country’s descent into violent chaos just as it is. But that tally doesn’t even include this morning’s Washington Post report of yet more bombings taking place outside the Baghdad bubble. What was already grim just keeps getting grimmer in Iraq. <!-more-> As the WaPo article points out,

News services reported that 1,227 civilians died violently in June, a 36 percent decrease from May and the lowest monthly total since the Baghdad security plan started in mid-February. The figure was provided by the Iraqi ministries of interior, defense and health, according to the news services. Iraqi state television reported the same death toll.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Abdul Kareem Khalaf, said that he did not know whether the death toll was correct and that no one from the Interior Ministry was authorized to release fatality figures.

At least 101 U.S. soldiers were killed in June, the third-straight month in which American casualties reached more than 100 and the highest quarterly death toll since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent Web site.

1,227 is a grim enough death toll for a single month, but given the uncertain situation on the ground and inside the Interior Ministry the actual Iraqi casualty count is sure to be even grimmer than that. The problem with trying to cite casualty figures in an active war zone is that the body count inevitably increases faster than the numbers can be tabulated.

Even with more accurate information coming from our own armed services, that sad calculus is just as true for American and coalition casualties as it is for Iraqi ones. The official U.S. casualty count stood at 101 as of June 29, but there are other casualties still in the process of being confirmed by the D.O.D. The unofficial count was actually 108 at that time. It’s even higher now.

These statistics are never static. According to the running totals maintained by ICCC at http://www.icasualties.org, there were 3,578 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq as of this weekend. The WaPo website count still put the total at 3,561 instead (3,965 including those killed in Afghanistan as well.) [Update: as of July 2, the ICCC online tally has been raised to 3,584 to include more troops who lost their lives in Iraq while this blog entry was posted.]

The numbers are grim, and they’re still getting grimmer. This is the third month in a row in which U.S. military fatalities in Iraq have exceeded the milestone number of 100. This is the third time in a month that we’ve reported on those ever-increasing casualty counts here on johnkerry.com, too. On June 4, we listed the 37 U.S. soldiers who had been killed in The Last 7 Days since the Memorial Day holiday:

When the deliberate mismanagement of our involvement in Iraq has led to such grim circumstances after 5 years of our troops risking all, one has to ask, what are we doing there? What are we accomplishing?

And just a week later on June 10, we noted the sad passing of another milestone, 3500:

Iraq is becoming one big field of numbers; 3500 Americans killed in action, untold thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed in the sectarian violence and millions of refugees that are fleeing the region. The problem with numbers that large is that they blur the focus and obscure the fact that each number is an individual tragedy, each loss a grief that will be borne by real families for the rest of their lives.

And now, at the start of a July 4th holiday in which Americans are celebrating their birth of our country while Iraqis are mourning the death of theirs, we’re reporting on grim milestones once again. And things just keep getting grimmer in Iraq, despite what the President said in his weekly radio address yesterday in which he also compared U.S. troops deployed abroad to the signers of the Declaration of Independence:

“We’re still at the beginning of this offensive, but we’re seeing some hopeful signs … We’re engaging the enemy, and killing or capturing hundreds.” Apparently we’re back to measuring success by enemy body counts again. But at least Mr. Bush didn’t try to claim that we’re making progress and that we’re turning the corner in Iraq again this time, too.

As the President continues selling his surge over the airwaves, his actions in Iraq are increasingly remniscent of something that another imperious head of state named George said about his own stubborn refusal to end an unpopular and unwinnable war abroad:

George III obstinately tried to keep Great Britain at war with the rebels in America, despite the opinions of his own ministers. Lord Gower and Lord Weymouth both resigned rather than suffer the indignity of being associated with the war. Lord North advised George III that his (North’s) opinion matched that of his ministerial colleagues, but stayed in office. Eventually, George gave up hope of subduing America by more armies. “It was a joke,” he said, “to think of keeping Pennsylvania”. There was no hope of ever recovering New England. But the King was determined “never to acknowledge the independence of the Americans, and to punish their contumacy by the indefinite prolongation of a war which promised to be eternal.”

Contrast those arrogant statements made by an earlier George at the dawn of American independence with the ones that Senator Kerry made in a speech he gave on the floor of the Senate on May 1 of this year:

We honor the lives lost in Iraq, not with words but with lives saved. We honor the lives lost in Iraq not with words and with the political partisanship here but with a policy that is right for them and for the region. We honor their sacrifice by creating a situation in the region where we protect America’s and the region’s interests at the same time and begin to recognize the degree to which our presence in Iraq is playing into the hands of the terrorists, is advancing the very cause we seek to fight, which is diminishing the ability of the United States to be able to leverage, not just the Middle East issues, but a host of other issues in the world.

I believe we need to change course, and it is only by changing course that we will honor their sacrifice, respect our interests, and bring our troops home with honor.

That is how we honor our troops. That is how Washington keeps its unspoken agreement with those who sign up to serve. You honor the memory of the more than 3500 who have given their lives, you honor the troops and their families by giving meaning and purpose to their mission. You honor them by getting the policy right.

At least Mr. Bush did acknowledge in his weekend radio address that “The fight in Iraq has been tough, and it will remain difficult.” He’s right about that. The fight in Iraq has been tough, and it will remain difficult. It has been grim, and it will continue to get grimmer—until we finally convince this administration that it’s time to finally get the policy right in Iraq, and to bring our troops home in time to celebrate next Independence Day with their loved ones here in America instead.