Throughout his presidency, George W. Bush has repeatedly undermined America’s image as a country where justice is above politics, where truth is an ally of good government and where all men stand equal before the law. He did so again on Monday, when he commuted the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former White House loyalist found guilty of trying to pervert the cause of justice by lying.

The facts of the Libby affair – a tortuous saga of journalists and White House aides and unmasked CIA operatives and lies about the Iraq war – remain opaque and impenetrable to this day. Even the prosecutor in the case called it a “he-said, he-said, she-said, he-said, he-said, she-said, he-said, he-said, he-said” case. The full facts may never be known.