Please see my post above as to differentiating between “adhering to” and “giving aid and comfort”. I’m still waiting for Bricker to chime in on that difference. You’ll forgive me, I’m a lot more inclined to take his word over yours.
Uh oh. Now I’m in for it. Are you going to turn green and rip your shirt?
Did I say you, personally? I said I’d heard it referred to a lot. I have. I suppose I should have qualified that, but as you and I have never even been in the same thread before (to my knowledge), it pretty much stands to reason I wasn’t talking about you, personally. To make it crystal freakin’ clear: “You, generic you, oh people who believe that disagreeing with our president about this stupid, senseless war is treason.” K? K.
Do you, now? And you’re willing to accept an insincere one? Because I’m not willing to give an insincere one. Not even if you hold your breath and turn blue.
Really, one little valium would be such a help.
Let me ask you something. What was the intent of Plame’s outing? Intent is rather important, you know. Was it just to embarrass the Plames? Was it to slap her because her husband didn’t find the smoking gun the administration so desperately wanted? Was it to endanger her? To say it flat out was not treasonous when we don’t even know the motives is a little ingenuous.
You put words in people’s mouths for a living, don’t you? I said “giving aid and comfort”, which is the exact wording. I never said treason consists of anything that might or might not help our enemies. In fact I said there’s no parallel between the crap you brought up and what happened to Valerie Plame. And I still believe that making the identity of a covert operative known to the enemy is aiding them. You obviously disagree.
Maybe it does aid them. When Karl Rove told some reporters that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent, did he “adhere to our enemies”?
See, lots of things aid our enemies. But doing something to aid our enemies isn’t treason, otherwise Cindy Sheehan is committing treason. But anyone who claims Cindy Sheehan is a traitor is an idiot.
Or take a more obvious case, the Haditha massacre. If the alleged facts are true, the marines who murdered Iraqi civilians aided our enemies. Did those murderous marines commit treason? Of course not.
You said:
You don’t have to take my word. Bricker has chimed in, so please take his word
As I already said: There is a vast difference between
A) some troops getting down because of some woman demanding the POTUS see her and explain why her son was killed, if it was all for lies and
B) The intentional release to the press by a top government official of the name and location of a covert CIA field operative who is in possession of top secret and highly sensitive information. Information which could be obtained by the enemy, were they to capture her while she was in the area.
If you are truly unable to see the distinction between these two things, then I will gladly agree to disagree with you, as arguing any further would be futile.
Maureen - I’m on your side. but I think you’re not addressing his point. I don’t think he disagrees that intentionally disclosing the name of a CIA operative is a “really bad thing”, I dare say he’d even agree that doing so is counterproductive to USA interests.
He’s stating (and Bricker supports) that as evil and bad and wrong as it may be, it does not reach up to the level of being “legally considered treasonous”. Certainly I think it’s (casual discussion ways, not to be confused w/criminally prosecutable) an act contrary to the greater good and safety of the US and its citizens, and if done (as it seems to have been) for political gain, certainly ranks (heh, good word for it) up there w/evil doings by Administration officials, but not, apparently legally chargable as treason.
It doesn’t appear to me that your opponent is suggesting that there isn’t a vast difference between A and B, merely that neither is legally treason. Now, if you had a different point than that to make in the quoted post, it’s not clear to me.
In the HBO mini-series “Elizabeth”, there were some particularly graphic scenes showing the details of that from of execution. It was considered mercy to have that sentence reduced to a simple beheading.
Possibly I misunderstood, then. I was under the impression he was equating the two, as he kept throwing in abstract things that may, possibly, in a weird way “aid” our enemies if taken to an absurd level.
I see this (the entire Plame fiasco) as something which has a direct impact in aiding our enemies. There is no interpretation, there’s no vague possibility that it may, somehow, in some abstract way help them. Knowing the identities of our field operatives helps them.
That is why I was being so…well…anal… about it. I defer to Bricker’s interpretation, of course. But I resent the implication that I said any old thing that may or may not help or enemies is treason.
the “anyone who claims Cindy Sheehan is a traitor is an idiot”, therefore, he, considering himself not an idiot is not claiming same. and, he does seem to be agreeing that the outing of Plame may indeed have ‘aided the enemies’ (his first sentence fragment).
anyhow, to me it’s a side issue. only the rabid few (and they do, of course, exist) seem to believe that the outing of Plame was “okey dokey, no big deal”.
I still see his point as being “neither act is legally treasonous” as bad as some of them may be, and as laudable as others of those list may be (like utilize free speech by being critical of the administration, or making the repubs look stupid…)
Maureen, I don’t necessarily agree since it’s not quite clear to me that Plame was clearly undercover or not, or that national security was actually, as opposed to potentially, harmed. But let’s stipulate that you’re right, that when Karl Rove told reporters that Valarie Plame was a CIA agent, and they printed it, and Al Qaida terrorists read it, and therefore Al Qaida franchisees could have been waiting to assassinate her next time she went to Niger, or they could have looked up who met with Valerie Plame last time she went to Niger, and figured those guys were CIA agents, and assassinated them. Stipulate all that.
That still isn’t treason! It doesn’t matter that what Rove did harmed national security. Well, of course it matters. But as far as charging him with treason it certainly doesn’t matter. I harm national security all day every day when I post on the Dope instead of working.
So. Karl Rove:
Wrong on anti-gay bigotry.
Wrong on revealing the identities of CIA agents.
Wrong for America.
Doesn’t deserve to be executed for treason for what he did, any more than Michael Brown deserves to be executed for treason for fucking up Katrina relief, where his incompetance inarguably contributed to the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of people.
Karl Rove might have broken the law. Probably did. But he isn’t being charged for breaking the law by revealing Plame’s CIA status, even if/though he did. The main investigation wasn’t whether he revealed Plames status, but whether he lied about it to the investigators. And the reason he lied about it was that Bush, way back in 2003 or so said that anyone who revealed Plame’s status would be fired. I guess everyone’s kind of forgotten that by now. Anyway, I imagine he avoided perjury, as LHOD said earlier, by revising and extending his earlier lies to Fitzgerald so that they didn’t contradict what the reporters were saying. Which means he almost certainly had to say something like, “Yes, I told these reporters that Plame was CIA, but I didn’t know she was undercover, and anyway I was drunk at the time.” And so it’s very likely that if Rove told reporters that Plame was CIA, Fitzgerald knows it because Rove admitted it to him…eventually.
And yet Rove isn’t indicted. He either had to admit what he did and risk getting clipped for the outing, or he had to lie about it and risk getting clipped for perjury. Looks like Scooter chose option B, Rove chose option A. Scooter’s facing trial, Rove walks. You do the math.
I skimmed it and didn’t see any of the lawyers I’m familiar with posting, but I did notice that I won $11 in bets from that thread! Technically I don’t win that until 2009, but I’ll make an offer to do a buy-out of those two bets for 50% if either Evil Captor or **Squeegee **are interested settling now.
But why do you think it so odd that someone might have thought you were saying that? Maybe I missed it, but did you give some threshold that had to be passed for aid to become treason and explain why you thought the outing of Plame would have crossed that threshold? All I saw you doing was pointing to the “aid and comfort” clause and claiming that the Plame information counted as aid.
Mainly because I didn’t think it was difficult to differentiate between the vague things Lemur listed and Plame’s being outed as “aid.” I don’t see that it’s much of a stretch in thinking that capturing and interrogating Plame benefits our enemies (whoever they may be). Who knows information she has? I do think it’s a stretch to think that calling for a troop withdrawal would be as much of a direct benefit to our enemies.
