Is equivalence a fallacy? Libby/Clinton

Great Debates
81

And I suppose I should apologize as well for not using more precise rhetoric. It does appear that you could have fairly interpreted my use of the word “folks” to mean all folks, including you. I’ll try to be more specific in any future references to folks who gloat.

Also, since it is now clear to me how much importance you rightly place in the principle of criticizing the idea, not the speaker, one to which I will endeavor to closely adhere, I would respectfully suggest that it might help avoid giving the impression that it is acceptable to impugn one’s motives, if not their character, if you were to abstain from making statements such as the following:

I, like most folks, tend to go with the flow.

A. Actually, if forced to parse my own statement, it seems clear that I meant that Libby himself is the shit under the rock, or at least that is what’s being alleged. My next hypothetical was based on whether or not more shit is discovered as Fitzpatrick continues to turn over rocks.

B. Oh, let’s start with Rock One being Paula Jones’ claim of sexual harassment. Rock Two might be the question as to Clinton’s lack of sexual control around the help. Rock Three could be Clinton’s denial of having sex with Lewinski. Three rocks, three piles of shit. Good enough?

(Maybe it’s me, Elvis, but you seem to be having a problem with my plain style of language. I think I say what I mean, and you may of course disagree, but asking someone to re-state or re-define established black and white issues can get to be tiresome.)

I understand that, and to a certain extent, I sympathize. The broader scope makes it much easier to draw fine distinctions. I’ve been accused of being simplistic on a number of occasions because I don’t accept such distinctions. I hold the common opinion that, whether or not one is ultimately charged, tried and convicted of “perjury”, if he lied under oath in a legal proceeding, he committed perjury. Any number of reasons may preclude a conviction, but few if any of them change the conduct itself.

Asked and answered.

Well, sure they can, when that’s the topic. No one has said it’s illegal to get a blowjob. God forbid! Here, today, we were talking about the illegal act of lying about having had sexual relations, then reasoning it was OK to lie because having sexual relations wasn’t illegal in the first place.

No, not at all, and I’m sorry I missed the “court of public opinion” qualification. But even at that, I’d like to see more than an allegation / indictment before arriving at the conclusion that “Libby was engaged in an act of personal retribution for having been shown up as wrong about his lies and excuses for a war of aggression”. Granted, it’s a very popular theory and I understand its appeal, but it seems inarguable that its charm is limited to those who view this matter from a rather partisan perspective. I am not yet among those convinced that Libby’s contributions to our foreign policy were “lies and excuses”, let alone that we are involved in a war of aggression.

No, and I didn’t intend to imply that it was. I have avoided discussing the ethicality of either Libby’s or Clinton’s conduct, since the OP was asking for opinions as to legal and moral equivalency. I feel comfortable in so limiting my comments.

If you can tell me with a straight face that among all the reactions you’ve had to George W. Bush in the last five years, visceral (pssst… try “from the gut”) was not among them, then I’ll apologize. Otherwise, give me a friggin’ break!

Last time I checked, we’re all human here, and subject to the frailties of the species, Elvis. Was that “Fuck you too” an example of one of your better, more rational and well-thought out rejoinders? If you have a point in all this, I wish you’d get to it and quit all the nitpicking and whining about my language. If I use a word that you think has more than one definition, why not pick the one that sorta makes sense and goes along with what I’m saying? Save yourself from a whole lot of unnecessary contortions and me from a whole lot of unnecessary typing!

OK, so only when the president is indicted for any or all of your “fundamental problems”, that’s when you’ll find reason to be concerned for the future of the Republic? My mistake. I apologize for assuming that you value public integrity as highly as I do now and did during Clinton’s tribulations. I will try to understand how, one the one hand you characterize Libby as one of “the gang that has so badly betrayed what our country stands for”, while on the other hand you consider his indictment trivial. While I’m trying to get my head around that, I promise to try not to view you as just another one of those with a personal vendetta out to “get” this president any way they can.

In re-reading that last sentence, I realized that I may have used a word for which you will probably demand clarification, so in anticipation of the interrogatory, let me offer this: Based on comments that I have read in this and other threads on this and other boards, I now firmly believe that there are folks out there (if the shoe don’t fit, yourself acquit) who are simply miffed that it’s just Libby in the stocks and not Cheney or Rove or the president. That’s my impression, right or wrong, and the only reason for my use of the word “vendetta”. I think these folks are so angry that Fitzsimmons (have I forgotten his name already?) didn’t get the goods on anyone higher than Libby that they can’t even contemplate the possibility that arguably innocuous mistakes were made here without malicious or treasonous intent, to exclude compromising the security concerns of either the CIA, Valerie Plame or the intelligence community as a whole. They can’t see the forest because they want to see scorched earth, simple as that. Again, I’m not saying you are one of these “folks”, just that your splintered reasoning makes it difficult for me to make a clear distinction.

I’m afraid I’ve re-read this too many times for me to make the sense out of it that I’m sure is there. It seems to be a circular statement that an indictment can be the result of its political effect. For once it’s me asking: Could you clarify?

82

That is not what is being alleged. Outing a CIA agent is incidental. Lying us into war is what’s being alleged.

“More shit” has been public information for years. The current process is about holding the culprits responsible, even if it’s only for tangential actions.

Not from someone who uses only the existence of criminal charges as evidence of shittiness, at least when it’s the other guys doing it.

No, your style is fine. My objections are to your content.

The board’s legal beagles would contest that definition, even as narrow as it is.

I hope you’d agree, then, that the basic problem is the conduct itself, not the presence of a conviction or even charges. If so, then we’re into the realm of blowjob vs. war, and the farcicality of calling them equivalent.

If you have another reasonable explanation, consistent with the facts, it would at least be comforting to know one exists. You’d be the first to offer one here, or anywhere else I’m aware of, however.

Suit yourself, then - but you’re in a shrinking minority.

Huh? You have fundamentally differing definitions of ethicality and morality?

Yes, there are certainly visceral reactions out there. However, you dismiss *all * disapproval of Bush as visceral. Give *me * a break.

No, as already pointed out, it was intended as an in kind response to your suggestion that the reactions you see are simply gloating. They are not, any more than all disapproval of Bush’s job performance is simply “visceral”. See what set me off there?

No, accountability takes many forms, indictment being only one such method. His beginning to take his responsibilities seriously would greatly help alleviate my concerns for “the future of the Republic” (your phrase, btw). Congress and the electorate taking its own responsibilities more seriously would help as well. The legal system stepping in when those things don’t happen is a last resort.

I won’t risk another Mod Warning by replying to that directly.

You yourself stated above that you know a person’s conduct is the fundamental issue, not the presence or absence of charges stemming from it. Your statement that you cannot now understand that is puzzling.

Yes, I agree there’s an element of disappointment that the real crimes, the ones not necessarily found in US legal statutes but squarely within the definitions of ethicality and civilized conduct, are not even being investigated at this point. It hardly makes the desire to do so a vendetta, a campaign of personal spite. Lyndon Johnson’s lying in order to create a full-blown war in Vietnam were equally crimes against humanity, ones he by contrast to Bush effectively took responsibility for, but would you consider the protest of the Sixties to be simply a vendetta against him?

You really think, after reading Fitzgerald’s indictment statement, that those actions could reasonably be “innocuous mistakes”? Really?

Yes, it works both ways, and can be circular. The world of politics can create a criminal investigation, just as a criminal investigation can have repercussions in the political world. The Starr vendetta was the result of the political campaign to get Clinton for something, even though no indictments of anyone outside Arkansas resulted (and indictments are, as the board’s legal experts will say, ridiculously easy to get). Criminal investigations of public figures, even if done out of public view or at least under the radar, have political ramifications against those officials and the administrations in which they serve when they come to light or issue indictments.

83

Yes, I’m afraid I do, because the indictment does not exist in a vacuum – there are other factors at play here - so until and unless it’s proven to the contrary, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. And, although I appreciate your observation that this is definitely a minority opinion, please understand that I’m only trying to be honest here, not unreasonable and certainly not confrontational.

For the record, I have said that if Libby deliberately lied in order to A) obstruct the investigation, or to B) cover a crime that he or someone else knowingly committed, then he should be punished. In the interim, I find it entirely plausible that he may have made a serious error in judgment while exercising his role in a high-stakes game of tit-for-tat between the administration and the CIA. In other words, mistakes were made. Now, why folks don’t fess-up as soon as they realize what they’ve done is a discussion for another day, but let me continue while scratching my head over that one.

For the sake of brevity, I may make several references to facts already in the public record without citation, and I will also speak as plainly as possible, the combination of which may color my remarks with what appears to be a bias. But, alas, opinion, plainly stated, is often made from and laced with such stuff, and that is all I am offering here. I am sure there will be ample opportunity (and probable need) to clarify and / or expand in the near future. I will now don my tin hat and beg your indulgence…

I find it quite believable that deep in the CIA bureaucracy, there were (and are) any number of long-term careerists whose loyalties lie not with any president but solely with the agency. I’ll not offer judgment on that, only state it as what I believe to be true. Seeing the agency’s credibility under attack, as it most certainly was, a plot was hatched, let’s call it “YellowFake”, using Joe Wilson as a pawn: Send him to Niger to “prove” the CIA had it right.

Joe goes to Niger, finds nothing, and though the absence of evidence has never been evidence of absence until this administration, Joe goes public with the nothing that he found. In doing so, he made several utterances which were immediately contested by administration officials and eventually by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Here’s where I believe things started to go seriously wrong, either by design, as charged, or by happenstance. In an attempt to dissuade reporters from lending too much (if any) credibility to Joe Wilson’s claims, Libby tried to undermine Operation YellowFake by exposing it as an attempt by an embattled and embarrassed bureaucracy to redeem itself, at the expense of the president, his foreign policy and the nation’s trust in all of the above.

Toward that end, Libby, with no clear and convincing understanding that Plame was covert (having heard nothing from anyone with controlling, legal authority, to coin a phrase), pointed out the incestuous relationship between Wilson and Plame, not knowing that the release of that relationship might be a crime, and certainly not harboring any intent to blow the cover of an agent he did not know was covert.

There you have it: Innocuous mistakes without malicious or treasonous intent.

Now, having said that, if either of the following turns out to be true, A) Libby knew for certain that Plame was covert and thus knew he was breaking the law, or B) he deliberately lied to the grand jury for whatever reason, then, with considerable shame and disappointment, I will revise my opinions accordingly.

As for the belief that GeeDubya “lied us into war”, I accept that as popular opinion but respectfully disagree. Tough decisions had to be made based on conflicting intelligence, with the smoldering rubble of the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a gaping hole in a Pennsylvania meadow as reminders that the threat of global terrorism was now too up-close and personal to discount as it arguably was when Riyadh, Dhahran, Nairobi, or the Yemeni port of Aden were the targets. Given the unacceptable probability of severe domestic consequences of continued posturing but doing nothing, I completely understand, sympathize with and support the administration’s decision to make a bold statement in a world full of leaders too cowed by fear or influenced by corruption to open their mouths.

84

Legally, is there a distinction between perjury to cover up an embarrasing sexual interlude and perjury to cover up an attempt to deceive on a matter of grave national importance? No.

Politically, am I going to be more outraged by the latter? Absolutely.

Should everyone else be as well, regardless of the partisan ties of the perjurers? IMO, yes.

Sua

85

This is your big chance to show us where the administration stated the intelligence was conflicting, during its case for war. Just once or twice please.

Because all everybody else heard was: “It’s certain” “Leaves no doubt.” And as you’d agree, if the administration only represented that the evidence was certain, when as you rightly identify it was conflicting, then that is a lie.

A lie that you would further agree was material in leading us into war.

86

Did I ever say the administration “stated” any such thing?

If I were inclined to believe we were “lied into war”, or if I were flat out looking for something to justify that charge, I would probably tend to conclude that, after a thorough examination, consultation and final assessment, choosing one set of probabilities over many other sets of probabilities and pursuing that set with the vigor, conviction and single-minded determination one might expect of a focused leader, this is all the proof I need to claim any damned thing I want. But, having already indicated my propensity to lend benefit of the doubt to those in whom I’ve placed trust, I’m not, so I don’t, and until it’s proven to me that my trust has been violated, I will continue to resist invitations to wallow in disbelief and speculation.

(Is everybody here old enough to remember vinyl phonograph records? If not, when the record itself, through misuse or accident, developed a crack that ran across the recording tracks, the stylus would “skip” during playback and repeat the same few notes or bars, over and over and over. It required the listener to stop whatever he was doing, get up and physically lift the stylus off the record, then set it back down in a slightly advanced position. What we have here is a crack in this thread. Someone needs to get up and either advance the stylus or get a new record. I would welcome either.)

Gotta run… today’s an actual work day. BBL8r

87

But wait, all you’ve said here is that since anybody can prove anything, nothing is right at all.

How do you know what is even true? And that being the case, when can you correctly give up your benefit of the doubt if, in this case, the president has in fact carried forward false evidence and silenced naysayers as his only justifications for war?

88

Actually, you are granting them the doubt in the first instance, and then further lending them the benefit of that doubt. Just as you say, you consider your “trust” (a very close cousin to “faith”…) a shield that must be overcome before you will (ahem!) “wallow in disbelief”. Comes very close to saying that we must prove out case beyond doubt before we can prove our case at all.

89

He said what he knew wasn’t true. On that we’re agreed then.

If you want to employ your private definition of ‘lie’, feel free but respect the fact that the rest of us discourse in standard English.

90

Well, not really… I think it was you who said that.

Ah, there’s the rub. Everything other than what we know is speculation. We don’t know everything that is true, none of us. You believe what you believe based on what you know to be true, and I do the same. I’m sure that I will continue to believe what I believe until I start believing something different. I can only assume that that will come about as a direct result of learning new or additional truths. I cannot speak for you.

And what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that what “benefit of the doubt” means? Let’s say you level a charge against the president, and I have some doubt as to whether or not your charges are accurate. I lend the president the benefit of that doubt – he remains as innocent as he was before you brought the charges, or more correctly, as if you had never brought the charges, unless and until those charges are proved.

I have no “private” definition of the word “lie”, and I resent the implication, nor do I appreciate your twisting my words. I tell you what, ** Sevastopol**, since you claim to be fluent in English, please let me know if your standard definition of the word “lie” applies to the statements I’ve posted below. Let me tell you in advance, in the regrettable event you were to injure yourself scrambling for your Webster’s, that even if I had never heard George W. Bush utter one single word about Saddam, Iraq or weapons of mass destruction, I would have been just as convinced by the following statements as I would have been had I seen the intelligence reports myself:

So, you tell me… in standard English, please… a bunch of treasonous liars? A pack of fools outwitted by the King of Fools? Or could they just be honest, hardworking folks misled by faulty intelligence from an emasculated and atrophied CIA where incompetence had become the norm?

91

“If he was lying the other people were lying too” gambit. It’s got old.

As Dishfunctional agrees, the evidence George Bush received was contradictory and knowing that to be the case, he told us it wasn’t.

92

BTW it’s an open invitation to anyone to show just one or two examples of the George Bush or a member of his administration stating the evidence was contradictory.

That seems to me a fairly large target and if hit a very effective way of addressing all the evidence that establishes the President to be a liar.

Contrariwise a failure to hit that target would show a conscious effort of message discipline within the administration intended to deceive.

93

Huh? The Clinton investigations had bullshit under every rock. The Starr Report was the Whitewater Investigation report, but used the word “Whitewater” less frequently than the word “anus.”

The fact that people kept making up charges does not make them true. The fact that none of these charges were even mentioned in the report from a hostile prosecutor strongly indicates that they were false. And from a legal perspective, once again Clinton was never charged with or indicted for perjury. He was impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which can be excessive ass scratching, if that’s how Congress feels about it. They flattered themselves to compare the process to an indictment. There were no legal standards proscribing what they could do. So you can say you strongly suspect that Clinton committed perjury, but until he’s brought to trial for it that’s nothing more than a very debatable opinion.

94

No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. Here, read carefully: I’m saying they all got the same input, they all came to the same conclusions, they all made the same mistakes based on the same contradictory data. It’s the double standard that’s getting old.

95

Ah, yes, but “bullshit” is what passes for evidence these days.

I have no substantive argument with your analysis of Clinton’s impeachment or the investigation, for that matter. My comment sought simply to compare what could happen to Libby with what did happen to Clinton.

Good night, Gracie…

96

I won’t quote the rest of the often nonsensical and ingratiating rhetoric you keep putting up in the way of equivocation – no one’s time can be that cheap – but the above really goes too far.

You probably understand, despite your ingenue efforts to convince readers otherwise, that the leader of the nation and his/her immediate executives are responsible for executive decisions on the direction and strategy of the USA, its systems and processes, its operation and activities, etc. Your cherry-picked selection of quotes over the matter of intelligence about Iraq neglects to mention that many of the people you cite were getting recycled and cherry-picked information from a corrupted and falsehood-laden knowledge system (yellow-cake and aluminium tubes, anyone?), or were accessing obsolete materials badly in need of an update.

We knew everything we needed to know about Saddam’s WMDs (i.e., they’re almost certainly not there) thanks to such esoteric and mysterious occurrences as successful UN missions that failed to produce any corroborating evidence for the Bush camp. And what happened then? The Bush camp, finding itself without any valid intelligence support, moved swiftly to sideline the dissenting views and dive into a monumental and expensive mess with no good reason whatsoever, and without a clearly laid plan. If prominent Democrats (or Republicans for that matter) with access to obsolete or corrupt intelligence state otherwise, that is entirely irrelevant because we already possessed better quality information back then. Yes, they were idiots, Hilary and Kerry and the others, I could not agree more, but spare yourself the humiliation of trying to spread thin the responsibility for the idiocy of the past few years - don’t conflate deceiver with deceived.

We all know people on all sides were mistaken about Saddam and WMDs, what’s important is not the parrots repeating stale political lines and lies, but the individuals and organizations who actually had access to reliable information and were (shock of shocks!) broadcasting it. There were more than a few of us on these boards before and during the Iraq war/scandal who made the effort to become informed, and who throught the facts merited more than the usual politicization of issues and information inherent in the American system. Look up some old threads, and you’ll see the issue really wasn’t as confusing as a few vocal Republican partisans would make it out to be.

In other words, we were looking at intelligence sources and analysts, at reliable media, and at the questionable material itself in order to draw an informed conclusion instead of craning our heads back and swallowing the reeking bullshit coming from the Bush/Blair spin machinery. So please don’t seek to confuse the issue with dated, nonsensical, and illogically mitigating statements about “tough decisions”.

97

Look, Abe… I hate to cut you short like this, but as I’ve said in another thread, I have to beg your leave, but will return. In the meantime, let me just state once more for emphasis: If the intelligence was manipulated and a fraud was perpetrated on Congress and the American people, nay the WORLD, then it will come out and there will be hell to pay. I’ll be there with you… a bit shamefaced, but outraged nonetheless. I am just not as able or willing as you to jump to these conclusions. I know it looks bad, but that’s the nature of the animal - we’re talking about a deeply ingrained bureaucracy running smack up against an executive who simply wasn’t going to accept the “cover-my-ass” version of events that previous administrations had demanded from it. Think “inertia” and “atrophy”. It was bound to get dirty, and it did. Frankly, I find it amusing to see the Left defending a corrupt CIA today, when not that long ago you would have sworn Beelzebub was the D/CIA. Such is life… and politics.

BBL8r

98

Defending has squat all to do with it. Dumping the shit on CIA and then stalling the rest of the investigation, that’s what we’re on about.

99

It already has come out. The memo from Niger was shown to be a fraud, and a laughable one at that. It was signed by an individual who worked in a different department than showed on the letterhead. It was dated several years after this individual left the government. Members of the Italian Intelligence Agency stated that they made these problems clear to the Americans, by way of explaining why they hadn’t produced the memo before. It was at the level of Bush’s National Guard memo.

The “Mobile WMD Laboratories” were not mobile laboratories, and were not used in making WMDs. Saying swe thought they were is not good enough, because we told the entire world that we knew they were. If I assert that I know something is true, then I am a liar if it is not.

I don’t see what else you can call this. By the way, the person who exposed the Administration’s assertion as false was Wilson. The adminsitration is now perjuring itself to cover up the fact that it exposed an active CIA agent, inorder to punish someone (this part we’ve established above) for telling the truth to the American people.

100

When would you by neccessity give up your benefit of the doubt if, in this case, the president has in fact carried forward false evidence and silenced naysayers as his only justifications for war?