Thou shalt not bear false witness

Perjury, according to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas), is just a technicality. These were her words on Meet the Press:

     I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says
     something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime
     and not some perjury technicality.

Seems to me that the Christian Right has a blind spot when it comes to the Ten Commandments. Christian Conservatives are very invested in putting the Ten Commandments in public places. Roy Moore’s stubborn insistence on displaying the Decalogue in his Alabama courtroom led to his being elected Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He was later deposed from the same position because of his stubborn refusal to remove them when so ordered by Federal courts. This is the political movement that won recent Supreme Court approval to keep a granite monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas Capitol.

Conservative politicians use the Ten Commandments to win political support from the Christian Right. Only trouble is… has anyone bothered to read the document lately? Last time I looked, the Ten Commandments included the following: “Thou shalt not bear false witness” (Exodus 20:16, Deuteronomy 5:20). This commandment specifically addresses the importance of telling the truth in a judicial setting. Telling the truth when giving witness in a court of law is essential to a just and moral society. How can a court render a just verdict unless it hears “the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth”?

     • When witnesses tell lies under oath, the innocent are convicted
        and the guilty are exonerated.

     • When witnesses withhold the truth they know in order to protect
        friends, they deprive injured parties of the justice they deserve.

     • When witnesses are less than candid with the truth they know,
        they distort the justice system.

A just, moral, and stable society depends upon witnesses telling the truth in courts of law. This is not some mere technicality. This is an essential biblical insight.

Is it acceptable, in Sen. Hutchinson’s considered opinion, that Scooter Libby made “materially false and intentionally misleading statements and representations, in substance, under oath,” as he is charged with having done?

Is it acceptable to bear false witness in order to protect those individuals who decided to punish Joseph Wilson by outing Valerie Plame? Aren’t Wilson and Plame entitled to justice? Aren’t we entitled to a Government that honors and protects the civil rights of its citizens?

Point of fact: had members of Bush Administration told “the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth” to the FBI and the Grand Jury, the investigation would have been completed very quickly. We would know the individuals responsible for the crime that was committed. Justice would already have been done. But because of “technicalities” like perjury, making false statements, and obstructing justice, we have to hire a team of investigators and prosecutors to fight to learn the truth.

This Administration, it seems, has a culture of silence, not a culture of truth telling. They give lip service to the law of God, but they obey the law of omerta.

It's a sad day when...

In his statement on the resignation of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, President Bush noted that “we’re all saddened by today’s news.” While I can understand the President’s feelings of sadness, I am disturbed by what the President did not bring himself to say.

Yes, it’s a sad day when a trusted and hard-working colleague, with whom you have labored for nearly five years, is indicted for multiple felonies. But that sadness needs be put in context.

It was a sad day when members of the Bush Administration chose to respond to the whistle-blowing op-ed column of Joseph Wilson by retaliating against his wife.

It was a sad day when Libby and, presumably, other unnamed individual(s) chose to “out” an undercover CIA agent, putting into danger her life and the lives of her contacts.

It was a sad day when the Administration chose to react to Wilson’s column instead of attending to his warnings about faulty intelligence.

It was a sad day when the Administration chose to act on that faulty intelligence, intelligence asserting that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat to the United States of America.

It was a sad day when the Bush Administration refused to allow United Nations inspectors to search for said nuclear weapons, choosing warfare instead of diplomacy.

It was a sad day when the United States engaged in preemptive warfare against a threat that turned out to be nonexistent.

It was a sad day when the first of thousands and thousands of soldiers and civilians began dying, and suffering devastating injuries, as a result of that war.

It was a sad day when each of thousands of American families, when each of tens of thousands of Iraqi families learned that the life of a son or daughter had been lost.

It was a sad day when the “liberation” of Iraq was undone because the Administration chose to disregard the advice of senior military officers concerning the number of troops required to secure the peace and safeguard the stability of Iraqi society.

It was a sad day when the same Administration chose to disband the Iraqi army and the Baath Party, alienating the very parties in Iraq whose help could have been so helpful.

It was a sad day when the Republican-controlled Congress chose not to conduct investigations into the faulty decision-making processes that led to the present catastrophe.

“We’re saddened by today’s news,” said President Bush. Yes, but the sadness of today comes at the end of a series of many unfortunate choices made during many sad days. It is a sad day when the life and career of a highly intelligent and devoted lawyer and public servant comes crashing down as a consequence of choices he made. It is a sad day when any individual finds himself or herself in legal trouble because of lapses of judgement, because of unethical acts, because of untruthful words, because of a lack of candor when testifying to a Grand Jury.

But the saddest case of all is that of Mr. Bush who, to date, has not understood or appropriated the lessons of the Nixon and Clinton presidencies: The President must admit mistakes and accept responsibility if he wants to be able to move on. Otherwise his Administration will be trapped in a growing morass from which there is no escape. These are the words I would like to hear him say:

“The leaking of the name of Valerie Plame to the press was an unthinkable, unethical, and presumably criminal action. It violated the first amendment rights of Ambassador Wilson, ended the career of a devoted CIA employee, and put at risk the lives of her contacts. Any members of my Administration who were responsible for perpetrating this leak, or attempting to protect the identities of those who did, or for failing to be completely truthful and forthcoming to me or to the Grand Jury will be brought to justice. That is the lesson of today’s indictment and of any future indictments. It saddens me personally, but I take responsibility.”