The Bush administration response to the latest Libby revelation is that POTUS can legally declassify anything he wants so its not illegal (and so can Cheney now as of a recent law change). This is similar to them claiming Bush can legally tap your phone because the constitution says he can.
Well, I have a constitutional right to have sex with any consenting adult I choose. So I can now tell my wife its ok if I have sex with the lady next door because it’s not illegal.
But to really keep it in line with what Bush is doing, I first have to tell her that she can never cheat on me or I will kick her out of the house.
You don’t see anything immoral about misleading us into a war? About all the thousands who have died because of it?
If that’s too diffuse a concept, how about exposing someone to personal danger, along with all of her colleagues, and disrupting intelligence operations out of simple spite? Is that immoral, either?
It’s not even a given among liberals that Bush lied to get us into war (e.g., Richard Cohen), but even if it were, this is a red herring, so you can get off your soapbox.
Bush declassified information to counter Wilson’s political position that there was not sufficient evidence to support the war. We can all have an opinion as to whether or not the war was justified based on intelligence available at the time. But it’s a non-starter, it seems to me, to suggest that the act of declassifying information to clarify the evidence that the administration used is an inherently immoral act. If it is, again, how so?
Also, even if the president can declassify anything he wants (and I agree that’s probably the case, at least if there isn’t a law saying that something has to be classified), I assume there is some sort of paperwork to fill out. He can’t just mutter to himself and Cheney “this stuff isn’t declassified anymore” while they’re alone in the Oval Office, and have it be so. Indeed from what I understand, the WH did declassify the information via whatever formal process exists, but only after the leak.
Also if the WH honestly belived that this stuff was unclassified by Bush’s fiat, then they should’ve said so back when this whole thing started. After all, if the information was unclassified, then there was no crime commited and much taxpayer money has been spent and several careers hurt by having a Grand Jury run around for 3 years on a goose chase.
Nope, you’d be wrong. Read Bricker’s contribution in this thread. It’s a long trip, but informative.
OK, let’s try again. The information in the news now, the legal declassification, did not reveal Plame’s CIA status. It is not relevant to the wasted taxpayer money that has resulted in zero charges based on the original crime to be investigated.
Well, ideally one analyzes every claim at face value without regards to someone’s past history, but in the real world there isn’t enough time, and sometimes a quick judgment is safer.
I don’t really have to think to hard about certain things many, many, many Presidents say. If you know just a bit about them it’s fairly obvious to tell when a politician is lying with a 90% confidence rate (lips move, yadda yadda, ROFLMAO you are so funny ). <— just heading off the obvious rejoinder.
Read half the thread, I’ll get to the second half when I get a chance. Not convinced so far that the prez can “secretely declassify” information. I’ll post more when I finish reading as it’s an interesting question.
Sorry, I haven’t read the papers yet. Figured since the stuff came up in the course of the Plame investigation, that it had to do with Plame’s name being released. My bad.
Not as much as you might think. Or are you saying that character doesn’t matter at all? If you’re saying that there may as well be no jailtime given for any crime since we all have the capability to change our characters Janus-like.
Character might not be the best criteria for judging statements but it cannot be ignored. Moreover, the question is not necessarily “is this statement true”, but “is it wise to trust this claim, with no further inquiry”, in which case character emphatically matters.
What about Bush’s vow that whomever leaked the information would suffer the consequences when he knew exactly how the information was released? That’s what bugs me most about this whole thing, and nobody seems to be calling him on it.
Yeah, you didn’t know how semantically nimble Bush was, did ya? “It wasn’t leaked at all, because it’s impossible for the president to leak anything, so I will punish very harshly the leakers, if any existed, which they don’t because I’m fully authorized to reveal at will things that would be punishable if revealed by any other person, in which case it would be leaking, not fully authorized revealing.”
Well, it’s similar in the sense that Bush said both things. But it’s not similar in the legal sense. Bush’s legal authority to wiretap w/o warrents is highly questionable, at best, whereas his authority to declassify anything he wishes is indisuptable.
As for whether or not the declassification of this material was immoral, I don’t see it. Stuff gets declassified all the time. You need to make a case as to why this particular declassification was immoral. Even if it was released for the sole purpose of countering Joe Wilson’s claims, so what? Bush has every right to defend his own position against attack. And let’s not get into the Plame affair here, because the declassification of the NIE did not contain info about Plame. If Libby or Cheney or Bush leaked Plames status as a covert agent, then it was both illegal and immoral (although I suppose it might not be illegal for Bush). But the NIE report? Nah.
Libby claims that Cheney told him that Bush told Cheney it was OK to give some of this NIE report to Judith Miller. Maybe Libby is telling the truth, maybe not. If he is telling the truth, then maybe Cheney was teilling the truth to Libby and maybe not.
The reason nobody is calling him on it because it’s a pretty tenuous propostion. It’s possible that Bush authorized the leak to Miller, but it is far from certain. But the fact is, Bush can authorize the release of anything he wants. This really is one of those cases where it’s not a crime if the president does it.
Does this news story lend more credence the idea that Bush was either lying or being a hypocrite when he said he wanted to investigate any source of leaks? Sure. Does it prove that? Not a chance.
I’m not sure but it kinda important to Clinton-haters that he said stuff in public that turned out not be true, and he violated all sorts of moral standards by insisting that it was? What you call Bush’s furrowed-brow promises to find out who leaked the material when (I think even you’ll have to concede) he must have had a pretty good idea of the leak’s source if it was actually he who did the leaking. Isn’t that called a lie? Isn’t lying immoral? Didn’t you guys have a problem with Clinton over this a few years back?
). <— just heading off the obvious rejoinder.