You mean the Republican blowjob insanity, don’t you?
Thought it was pretty clear.
Hi, Jack!
Yeah, why can’t it get hijacked into a discussion about whether or not the Iraq war was justified, like all the other threads. 
How maladroitly you mischaracterize the other side of the issue!
The leaker of Ms. Plame’s status did not start a war. In fact, as I have explained above, and you have agreed with, if the release of Ms. Plame’s information was authorized by Mr. Bush, then no crime was committed. You have been very vocal in saying that Mr. Bush, personally, lied, and he, personally, got us inot this war under false pretenses. Even if that’s true, he isn’t the criminal agency that leaked the Plamce information. And if it’s true that Mr. Bush was the one that personally lied and got us into war under false pretenses, then that crime cannot also have been committed by the Plame leaker - can it?
Can’t have it both ways.
Lying to the grand jury in this case is serious, and it’s just as serious as lying to the grand jury in the Clinton case.
Personally, I do not think Bush did anything wrong in this case. But thats just because I do not think any of the policy wonks and decision makers ever seek his opinion or advice. Why would a puppet master ask the puppet what to do. I think Rove was pissed at Plame’s husband and decided to punish him by outing her. I bet the VP’s staff was also involved. YMMV
Bricker, if Bush or any other prominent Republican were cought in flagrante dilicto, on video, witnessed by 20 priests and twenty nuns (all willing to testify against him), say with a naked dead 10 year old boy and a pound of meth, would you be willing to overlook it?
You know that for a fact? I’ve not seen evidence which clears anyone in the white house.
Welcome to the moral standards of Brickerland.
The investigators should have been able to figure that out sometime in the last 2 years then, shouldn’t they? A simple statement from Bush to the effect that “I did this, now leave my people alone, willya?” would have done Rove, Cheney, Libby, and whoever else great good - and we know how loyal Bush is to people who are loyal to him. Or they might have simply asked you instead, since you know better. No, pal, you’re grasping at a straw that isn’t even there.
'Course it can. Ever hear of conspiracy?
But exposing the name of a covert agent, something GHW Bush called treason, is less serious? You have a most warped view of morality if you actually believe what you’re saying.
What an assinine response.
What part of “lied under oath to a grand jury” do you not understand? All of the events you describe are illegal, and no one on this board would defend them.
Clinton could not have been impeached over the blowjob if he had simply told the truth.
Wanna bet?
Just out of curiosity, were you educated by Jesuits?
Entirely true! Irrefutable! Utterly irrelevent! But still, undeniably true!
The apparent purpose of the leaker was to punish and/or discredit Mr. Wilson for the temerity displayed by speaking undesirable truths.
And again! Entirely true! Irrefutable! Inconsequential, and void of import!
Unless, of course, you would like to advance the notion that the plan to undercut Mr. Wilson by dastardly means was his? I have every confidence that you have no such intent.
Uh-huh. Yep. Its a fair cop, but society is to blame…
This sort of tortured reasoning is very close to an unnatural act. I’m not sure I have it, its like trying to untie a Gordion knot made of greased earthworms. Is it “If Karl Rove isn’t George Bush, then George Bush isn’t Karl Rove”?
Every bit as serious. In fact, more so. A lot more.
I look forward to the scales being ripped forcefully from your eyes.
Well, you could void that bet by defending Bush. So, no, I don’t wanna bet. 
However, you know exactly what I what I meant and that your post was ridiculous. But, since this is the Pit, you’re certainly entitled to post ridiculous crap like that without any basis.
More of an egg sac than a family per se.
Who do you mean by “we”?
I’m pretty confident that the whole “was she covert” angle will be pounded into our fucking skulls from here until this thing dries up, blows away, and ends up swept under someone’s rug.
Anyone think differently?
-Joe
I’m afraid I need some more education on this detail, if you don’t mind, Bricker. If GWB authorized the release of the information, thereby ensuring that its release was not criminal, is there any necessity that the authorization be documented as having taken place officially, and prior to to the release? I’m pretty sure that anything not already documented would fall under the definition of “after the fact” that you disallowed as illegal a few pages back, but your subsequent posts on the matter have not reinforced the point.
But does a Bush-to-Rove order in the confines of the Oval Office, to release the information constitute proper (and therefore, legal) authorization if there is no official documentation of the decision to strip a covert agent of her covert status? If the answer is “no,” would such an ad hoc order by the President not be illegal?
If the answer is “yes”, of course, I think I’ve just described an extremely high-stakes game of “Freeze Tag.”
This argument reminds me of a story I read as a boy, might have been Isaac Asimov. It was about a half-assed chess player, a patzer, a wood-pusher, who had no real talent for the game. He played a grimly mediocre game, hanging on with the dim hope that his opponent would make some gross blunder, so that he might win the occassional game by dint of sheer tenacity.
Then one day he discovered an opening never seen before, never even contemplated before, an opening that so brutally offended any reason and rationality that it would unhinge the mental stability of his opponent so intensely that the victim would run screaming from the room, forfeiting the game.
He was eventually murdered by a vengeful cadre of Intl Grand Masters to preserve the game from the horror wrought by this AntiChrist of Reason.
The argument needs be dissected carefully, it is dangerous if ingested all at once.
This is the opening salvo of the assault on reason. It is offered blandly, flat-footed, bald-faced. It is a homeless, derelict statement, with no visible means of support, it is in danger of being arrested for vagrancy. On what basis do we make this assumption? We are not advised, it would be impudent to ask. Perhaps if we press on, it will be revealed…
In which we are disappointed. The water only gets muddier, it is now too thick to drink, too thin to plow. “In fact”, it begins, luring us to believe that some reasonable inference can be made from the first preposterous premise, but of course it can’t, you can’t carve a block of moonbeams and set it for a foundation, it has no substance.
Substance! we cry aloud in glad voices! Now we’re getting somewhere, this can be parsed into something very much like fact. Somewhat like fact. Close enough, maybe we should just move along before it changes its mind…
But it collapses beneath us suddenly, like the gallows trap beneath a condemned argument, one moment standing there, the next plunging into darkness, a suspended sentence. “Even if my hat isn’t blue, kangaroos are not mammals.” A mutual dependency is suggested between too assertions that are strangers to each other, they’ve never met, there is no connection.
It is a Wagnerian crescendo of sheer nonsense, tying together vaporous arguments with ectoplasmic string. Its not that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises, no conclusion could follow those premises, they wander over the countryside, one east, one west, one simply sits and wonders where everyone else has gone.
This argument should be taken to a bathtub and drowned, it must not be allowed to reproduce, it might spread and further burden a nation already reeling from the pandemic of Cognitive Dissonance. Either that, or its Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick. It is too many for me, I fold, I cannot afford enough drugs for this to make sense.
Oh Bravo elucidator
I renewed my subscription just so I could compliment you on the awesomeness of the above post.
regards,
slumtrimpet
If my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle. This is not even worth mentioning, because if this did happen prior to the leak, Bush could have saved a lot of people a lot of trouble by owning up to it. It would also mean that Bush lied through his teeth when he expressed surprise at the whole deal and promised to bring those responsible to justice.
It just isn’t plausible, and it isn’t a meme that needs to get perpetuated. Besides, even if this might possibly make what happened to Plame legal, I sincerely hope no one would claim that this would make it right. (I don’t think you’re claiming that, Bricker.)
There is going to be some lingering doubt because the President’s apologists want so desperately to find a way to argue that nothing bad happened here.
Whatever Plame’s official status was, it is not in dispute that she worked for the CIA and people without the proper clearance were not supposed to know this. If anyone needs more evidence of Plame’s covert status, how about the fact that she could no longer do her job after her employment for the CIA became known?
Once again, it needs to be pointed out that just because there might be some way to make it legal, it still doesn’t mean it’s right. (John Mace is not claiming this, but others here and elsewhere probably will. Think about how many man-hours and how many millions of dollars it must take to place an agent like Plame covertly in the field to gather weapons intelligence. Bush/Rove/whoever were willing to piss that away just to get a little revenge on Joe Wilson because he said they were lying when they were, in fact, lying.
He sho’ nuff talks pretty, don’t he?
This is a beautifully written reply, full of sound and fury… and, like Billy says, signifying nothing. Are you actually going to counter it with anything approaching fact, or are you going to hope that the beautiful prose dazzles the reader enough that he doesn’t notice you haven’t actually addressed the argument at all?
To an extent, yes. I have a licentiate in canon law; most of my teachers for that course of study were Jesuits.
Does it show?