US:President Bush has defended his decision to commute the jail term imposed on former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby for lying under oath in an investigation into the leaking of a CIA officer's identity.
Mr Bush said the sentence was too harsh and he refused to rule out giving a full pardon to Libby, who served as vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff from 2001 to 2005.
"I had to make a very difficult decision . . . I thought that the jury verdict should stand. I felt the punishment was severe, so I made a decision that would commute his sentence, but leave in place a serious fine and probation. As to the future, I rule nothing in or nothing out," Mr Bush said yesterday after a visit to wounded soldiers in Washington.
Democrats have reacted with outrage to the decision to let Libby avoid his 30-month prison sentence, although most Republicans welcomed the decision or said the president should have pardoned him. He will have to pay a $250,000 (€184,000) fine and will remain on probation for two years. "This is hardly a slap on the wrist. It is a very severe penalty," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.
Democratic leaders said, however, that the commuting of the sentence is consistent with a lack of accountability that characterises the Bush administration.
"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," said Illinois senator Dick Durbin.
Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, whose husband issued controversial pardons at the end of his term as president, also condemned Mr Bush's action.
"This is exactly the kind of politics we must change so we can begin restoring the American people's faith in a government that puts the country's progress ahead of the bitter partisanship of recent years," Mr Obama said.
Libby was the only person to be prosecuted in a two-year investigation into the 2003 leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA officer. Conservative columnist Robert Novak revealed that Ms Plame worked for the agency after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times criticising the administration's case for war in Iraq.
Mr Wilson had led a CIA mission to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire nuclear materials from the African country but found no evidence to support the allegations. Mr Cheney and other White House figures were angered by his criticism and the vice-president authorised Libby to brief journalists against Mr Wilson.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald traced the original leak to Richard Armitage, who was deputy secretary of state at the time but found that Libby and White House political strategist Karl Rove had also discussed Ms Plame's CIA role with journalists.
Libby originally claimed to FBI investigators, and repeated under oath to a grand jury, that he first heard that Ms Plame worked for the CIA from NBC journalist Tim Russert but later admitted that it was Mr Cheney who first gave him the information.
Mr Fitzgerald insisted the sentence was consistent with the law and had been carefully considered. "It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing," he said.