White House spokesman Snow tried to clear up confusion about Libby's probation and failed.

While commuting Libby's sentence in terms of prison time, Bush left in place his two years of supervised release.

But supervised release — a form of probation — is only available to people who have served prison time.

Without prison time, there can be no supervised release.

To release someone he has to be in jail.

Snow said the White House view was this: "You treat it as if the judge imposed a fantasy imprisonment and then imagine Libby has already served the 30 months.

Then probation kicks in.

"Obviously, the sentencing judge will have to join in our fantasy and figure out precisely how that works," Snow said.

But U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, earlier this week, said the law "does not appear to contemplate a situation in which a defendant may be placed under supervised release without first completing a term of incarceration."

He gave Libby's attorneys and Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald until Monday to respond.

Cheney has started to blacken Judge Walton’s name by saying he only imposed the sentence on Libby because of Walton’s "desire ... to be the talk of the Washington cocktail circuit."

Cheney said if Walton "does not straighten this problem out he will get an icepick and convince him to do as he is told."