So should Libby be pardoned?

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: dahunan

Originally posted by: dahunan
Anyone who exposes the identity of a CIA Agent should be given a life sentence in Leavenworth.. no questions asked.. no passing go.

CIA Agents are there to protect us all.. regardless of our party affiliation.. this politician put party affiliation and love of war and war profits above Americas safety

:thumbsup:

Dude, you can't give yourself a thumps up!!! Are you just reminding yourself of what a genius you are?

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: dahunan

The charges have to do with him deliberately misleading the GJ. Deliberately being the operative word. His defense is saying that while he presented testimony to the GJ that was factually incorrect, he didn't do it intentionally.

With the information that is now coming to light; that Fitz knew from day one who spilled the beans and that the administration had knowledge that Armitage was the guy, why would Libby have to lie? Where is the intent?

I'll admit that the administration's actions were certainly odd. Part of me is leaning to the theory that the administration was just paying out as much rope as Fitz and the Left would take knowing full well that there would be a sudden jerk at the end. This administration has a history of doing just that.

Misleading and delaying and obstructing should be 70% = to an accomplice. Give him 20 years in prison then..

their behavior was not odd.. They set up this whole show to distract us all from other ****** that was happening.. Bush declassified and rewrote rules so cheney could do with this information as he saw fit..

Freedom of the press should obviously NOT include outing a CIA Agent.. EVER EVER EVER ... How in the hell these so called AMERICANS think they can and should be allowed to get away with this is beyond treasonous[/quote]

So how many years should Bill Clinton have gotten then? After all it was lying under oath and obstruction of justice that got him trouble in the first place.

In April, 1999, about two months after being acquitted by the Senate, Clinton was cited by Federal District Judge Susan Webber Wright for civil contempt of court for his "willful failure" to obey her repeated orders to testify truthfully in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. For this citation, Clinton was assessed a $90,000 fine, and the matter was referred to the Arkansas Supreme Court to see if disciplinary action would be appropriate[6].

Regarding Clinton's January 17, 1998 deposition where he was placed under oath, the judge wrote:

"Simply put, the president's deposition testimony regarding whether he had ever been alone with Ms. (Monica) Lewinsky was intentionally false and his statements regarding whether he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky likewise were intentionally false . . ."

In January 2001, on the day before leaving office, Clinton agreed to a five year suspension of his Arkansas law license as part of an agreement with the independent counsel to end the investigation. Based on this suspension, Clinton was also automatically suspended from the United States Supreme Court bar, from which he chose to resign.

In otherwords, Clinton got a plea bargin.
Clinton "I'll agree to a five yar suspension of my law license, and you won't press charge for my lying under oath, deal?"
Robert Ray "Deal"

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: dahunan

Freedom of the press should obviously NOT include outing a CIA Agent.. EVER EVER EVER ... How in the hell these so called AMERICANS think they can and should be allowed to get away with this is beyond treasonous

Should freedom of the press allow the New York Times to expose a secret terrorist money tracking plan that even Democratic law makers wanted to be kept secret? Should we know charge the people who wrote the article and the editors of the New York Times with treason?

Of course there is a difference between the Plame affair and the SWIFT affair. The outing of Plame had absolutely NO affect on the war on terror, nor did it place the lives of any Americans at risk. The outing of the SWIFT affair though did, as it alerted to the terrorist (the bad guys in case you forgot) as to how we were tracking their money. I am sure that after reading this article the smart terror masterminds start looking for new ways to move their money around. And since we all know that money is the key, in effect the New York Times helped the terrorist.

 

[Whoozyerdaddy]

Originally posted by: WHAMPOM

Originally posted by: Whoozyerdaddy

Originally posted by: Pens1566
Should he be pardoned for lying to the grand jury? No. Will he? Most likely.

He has to be convicted first. And in light of recent events, that isn't likely to happen.

(PRESENT) Blanket Pardon like in Ohio? (PAST) Forgot Nixon? Was investigated and then Resigned, wasn't Convicted, and was Pardoooned anyway.

Pardons like that (Libby) happen when a prez is on his way out. Libby's pardon isn't even on the radar yet. I may have phrased my original comment wrong but the sentiment was that Libby's trial will be over before Bush is leaving. Libby will likely be acquitted. Why talk about a pardon now when it's likely that none will be needed?

It's almost like you ran out of things to pick on Bush for. This topic is pretty far down on the list if you ask me.

 

[Kanalua]

haha....you Libby haters need to watch Path to 9/11

 

[dahunan]

Originally posted by: Kanalua
haha....you Libby haters need to watch Path to 9/11

Are you just trolling or are you really a bush nuthugger

Do you even fvcking care about our nations security or just think redneck sound fake christians are what this country needs for presidents

 

[Kanalua]

Originally posted by: dahunan

Originally posted by: Kanalua
haha....you Libby haters need to watch Path to 9/11

Are you just trolling or are you really a bush nuthugger

Do you even fvcking care about our nations security or just think redneck sound fake christians are what this country needs for presidents

It's too complicated for you to figure out.

 

[Red Dawn]

So should Libby be pardoned?
Well he hasn't been convicted of anything has he? If not why would he need to be pardoned?

I always thought falling on the sword for the President, especially one like Bush is rather senseless.

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: Corbett
See thats just it. They were never FACTS to begin with. The lefties always take rumors and allegations as fact when in reality they just plain arent. The only FACTS in this case is that the dems smeared Bush/Cheney/Libby/Rove for 3 years over this and then just drop it like a bad habit when they realize they have been barking up the wrong tree the entire time!

Oh well, I guess its on to the next witch hunt for the anti-Bush crowd.

:thumbsup:

And I wonder how many lefties even know who Richard Armitage is.

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: Kanalua
haha....you Libby haters need to watch Path to 9/11

ROFL, I wouldn't recommend that. Now that Slick has had it edited to his liking (He says he doesn't want to see any "lies") you can bet fiction has superceded fact.

 

[umbrella39]

the full court press is on from the neocons fanbois here. They can feel their control slipping away :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Thought this would wait until October but it has started earlier than anticipated. The desperation is palpable. :thumbsup:

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: umbrella39
the full court press is on from the neocons fanbois here. They can feel their control slipping away :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Thought this would wait until October but it has started earlier than anticipated. The desperation is palpable. :thumbsup:

Huh?? One of the biggest anti-Bush stories turns out to be much ado about nothing. The only thing we have after two years on this story is that Libby said a few things that contradict each other in testimony.
Fitzgerald "Mr Libby, what did you have for lunch on July 23, 2003?"
Libby "uhhh a chicken sandwich i think."
Fitzgerald "Wrong! It was turkey, lock him up!"


Do you think Truthout.org will finally admit that Rove isn't going to be indicted for this?

 

[Pens1566]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: dahunan

Freedom of the press should obviously NOT include outing a CIA Agent.. EVER EVER EVER ... How in the hell these so called AMERICANS think they can and should be allowed to get away with this is beyond treasonous

Should freedom of the press allow the New York Times to expose a secret terrorist money tracking plan that even Democratic law makers wanted to be kept secret? Should we know charge the people who wrote the article and the editors of the New York Times with treason?

Of course there is a difference between the Plame affair and the SWIFT affair. The outing of Plame had absolutely NO affect on the war on terror, nor did it place the lives of any Americans at risk. The outing of the SWIFT affair though did, as it alerted to the terrorist (the bad guys in case you forgot) as to how we were tracking their money. I am sure that after reading this article the smart terror masterminds start looking for new ways to move their money around. And since we all know that money is the key, in effect the New York Times helped the terrorist.

That's BS and you know it, or you're just really fond of repeating republican talking points.

The SWIFT info was front and center on their website, and even in a monthly SWIFT publication (a magazine if you couldn't figure it out). As for outing Plame not having any effect on national security, you obviously don't grasp how intel operations work. What do you think could happen to any sources she was dealing with? What about her counter proliferation work? The fact that she was in charge of WMD intel for Iraq and Iran (see Suskind's "The One Percent Solution" if you can grasp the subject matter.)???

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: Pens1566

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: dahunan

Freedom of the press should obviously NOT include outing a CIA Agent.. EVER EVER EVER ... How in the hell these so called AMERICANS think they can and should be allowed to get away with this is beyond treasonous

Should freedom of the press allow the New York Times to expose a secret terrorist money tracking plan that even Democratic law makers wanted to be kept secret? Should we know charge the people who wrote the article and the editors of the New York Times with treason?

Of course there is a difference between the Plame affair and the SWIFT affair. The outing of Plame had absolutely NO affect on the war on terror, nor did it place the lives of any Americans at risk. The outing of the SWIFT affair though did, as it alerted to the terrorist (the bad guys in case you forgot) as to how we were tracking their money. I am sure that after reading this article the smart terror masterminds start looking for new ways to move their money around. And since we all know that money is the key, in effect the New York Times helped the terrorist.

That's BS and you know it, or you're just really fond of repeating republican talking points.

The SWIFT info was front and center on their website, and even in a monthly SWIFT publication (a magazine if you couldn't figure it out). As for outing Plame not having any effect on national security, you obviously don't grasp how intel operations work. What do you think could happen to any sources she was dealing with? What about her counter proliferation work? The fact that she was in charge of WMD intel for Iraq and Iran (see Suskind's "The One Percent Solution" if you can grasp the subject matter.)???

On the Plame issue.

The Washington Post reported on October 29th that no formal damage assessment had yet been conducted by the CIA "as is routinely done in cases of espionage and after any legal proceedings have been exhausted." Dafna Linzer wrote, "There is no indication, according to current and former intelligence officials, that the most dire of consequences -- the risk of anyone's life -- resulted from her outing. But after Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's column, the CIA informed the Justice Department in a simple questionnaire that the damage was serious enough to warrant an investigation, officials said." Mark Lowenthal, who retired from a senior management position at the CIA in March 2005 told Linzer "You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources." One intelligence official who spoke anonymously to Linzer said "You'll never get a straight answer about how valuable she was or how valuable her sources were." The official explained this would be to protect the agency and its work

On SWIFT:

A former federal prosecutor who handled major terrorism cases, Andrew C. McCarthy, said he believed that the greatest harm from news reports about such classified programs was the message that Americans could not keep secrets.

"If foreign intelligence services think anything they tell us will end up in the newspapers, they'll stop sharing so much information," said Mr. McCarthy, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington.

"I would be surprised if terrorists didn't know that we were doing everything we can to track their financial transactions, since the administration has been very vocal about that fact," said William F. Wechsler, a former Treasury and National Security Council official who specialized in tracking terrorism financing.

But Mr. Wechsler said the disclosure might nonetheless hamper intelligence collection by making financial institutions resistant to requests for access to records.

"I wouldn't be surprised if these recent articles have made it more difficult to get cooperation from our friends in Europe, since it may make their cooperation with the U.S. less politically palatable," Mr. Wechsler said.

Let's get one thing straight. Valerie Plame's name should have never made it into the news, shame on Novak for writting about her.

It also looks like the same type of damage may have been done, ie. people may not want to work with us in the future because of this.

However, there is a big difference between Novak mentioning Plame in an article and the New York Times detailing a top secret program after being asked not to by both Republicans and Democrats.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: Corbett

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: Corbett
Just wondering. Seems like most of the people here who were screaming for Bush/Rove/Cheney to be overthrown because of their outright lieing about the CIA leak have suddently gone silent on this one.

Once again, a non issue is turned into a huge issue by the anti-Bush crowd and made to look like it is Bush's fault. It never fails.

Personally, I would like to see Schumer in front of a grand jury now explainging his actions in the whole sharade.

:thumbsup:

And you're right. The silence is deafening.

Ah, now I understand the source of the confusion and subsequent attempts by you guys at sounding clever...let me help you out.

For the majority of us in the "anti-Bush crowd", these things we call "facts" take on an almost mystical significance in determining what really happened in any given situation. This concept may prove confusing, so just think of our "facts" as, say, things Bill O'Reilly tells you to think. When confronted with an unknown situation, OUR natural inclination is to uncover the truth of the matter. Our experience with the Bush administration has been that "truth" is not something they are quite familiar with, it's like some sort of intellectual novelty that they dimly recall through the coke induced haze of their college experience. Naturally, when we were confronted with potentially illegal action by someone in the administration and the executive branch acting even more suspicious than usual, we made a few assumptions about how the situation would eventually play itself out. The fact that Bush supporters spent a great deal of time digging into legal hairsplitting to "prove" that exposing the cover of former CIA operatives wasn't illegal tended to support our judgements rather than disprove them. After all, if nobody leaked it in the first place, who cares whether or not this hypothetical leak broke the law? The loud assertations coming from Bush and his supporters that nobody did anything wrong was viewed as particularly unconvincing, as weak points are almost always the loudest (especially when discussing things with Republicans).

So imagine our surprise when, apparently, Rove, Bush and Cheney were cleared (at least as far as the lawyers are concerned). The facts, as it turned out, were NOT quite as we assumed them to be. So we dropped it, we were wrong. I imagine this is the confusing part for you two, but think of this as science, instead of religion. Our initial judgements were based on facts and reason, so when we get new information, it's perfectly natural to revise those judgements. Had we started from a position based on "faith" and partisan bias, it would certainly be understandable that we'd refuse to back down, even after we've been disproven. You think we think like you do, but really we don't. We are not "anti-Bush" because it's part of our political religion, most of us are "anti-Bush" because we don't think reality is on his side. The confusion is understandable.

See thats just it. They were never FACTS to begin with. The lefties always take rumors and allegations as fact when in reality they just plain arent. The only FACTS in this case is that the dems smeared Bush/Cheney/Libby/Rove for 3 years over this and then just drop it like a bad habit when they realize they have been barking up the wrong tree the entire time!

Oh well, I guess its on to the next witch hunt for the anti-Bush crowd.

You're right, the better thing to have done would have been to KEEP barking up the wrong tree...that's the Republican way to do things. When the facts don't fit with your viewpoints, just invent new facts. I agree, the Dems went a little overboard based on conjecture and accusations, but that's how politics works. It would be nice if it didn't, but I didn't see you shedding any tears over poor old John Kerry when confronted with the Swift Boat Vets (an event the media was very happy to blow out of proportion hugely in Bush's favor, I might add). But at the very least the Dems "dropped it like a bad habit" when they realized they were wrong...I have NEVER seen that sort of behavior from the right. And that was the point of my whole post, when confronted with the facts, the right and the left react in far different ways. Your inability to understand the actions of the Democrats in this situation just prove my point.

 

[Craig234]

The republicans in many cases - most it seems now - are, without realizing it themselves, just rabidly partisan people screaming for their own side to win the debate points, to protect their sense of who they are as republicans, and their power.

They project their weaknesses onto the democrats, by saying *they* only care about power for its own sake.

I'm not going to, as some here have, issue a blanket condemnation for outing a CIA agent. I can see patriotic motives for doing so at times. I don't think Daniel Ellsberg belonged in jail.

However, none of those exceptions apply to Plame, who by all accounts was doing nothing that 'deserved' her being outed to the public. The worst, and they were false, allegations are that she put her husband up for a mission.

*If* she had done something improper with that, then action within the CIA would have made sense; and *if* Joe Wilson had misled the public on the central issues, which he did not, then they could have made their case correcting his errors without outing Plame.

The facts are that administration officials did improperly inform or confirm Plame's identity as a CIA agent with multiple journalists, and they did say false things to investigators afterward. Bush did say that he saw it an a very serious matter and he would not keep people who had been involved if they could be identified, and he did break his word when they've been clearly identified, Armitage even confessing. He has not pursued the implication that Cheney was involved because Libby was, as far as we can tell from his statements.

We do have a remarkable history of the right wing media, fed in part by the republicans, putting out false information again and again on the story. For just one example, the 'she was not undercover' lie.

Finally, however non-political Armitage's leaking was, it's a separate question what Rove and Libby did. The right wants to pretend that what we learned about Armitage clears Libby and Rove; it does not.

We have here as a direct result of the administration and the bad reporter Novak, the head of an anti-proliferation CIA unit losing her cover, including any effects that has on her past contacts being exposed and the chilling effect on others trusting the CIA, and we have the president lying about his response, pretending he'd not accept this and he really wanted the names found, but reversing himself when his bluff was exposed.

And this from a guy who also grabbed the political points of saying that his administration would be a model of ethics, not just doing the right thing but beyond even the appearance of wrongdoing. That bluff, too, is long disproven.

Finally, the charge that the left is too quiet on this? We can agree on that.

 

[conjur]

Last I knew Fitzgerald hadn't announced that perjury charges against Libby were the end of the investigation or that he would drop those perjury charges against Libby.


Something about the "rule of law" no longer applicable?