Cheney and CIA LeakFollow

I've pointed out he's from the Right to note that your statement "and they'll likely be politically motivated" holds no water. What's your theory on his political motivations?

Perhaps, but not by me. That was the source of this little question: I said that I trusted Fitzgerald to do his job well and wouldn't be crying regardless of whether or not I get the outcome I'd like to see on a personal level.

Not once did I ask you to tell me how Fitzgerald would rule. I asked you if you trust the man and if you would accept Fitzgerald's findings, good or bad, as valid or if you'd throw a whinefest and cry a partisan river if he decides to indict. You've chosen the whinefest option. Good on you.

Edited, Mon Oct 24 20:19:02 2005 by Jophiel

That much the better. I'll admit that info I've heard so far has declared him to be a Republican (recent AP story declared him to have a "Republican pedigree") but if he's not it doesn't change my opinion much except to think it's nice he has that much less cause to be biased. As I said, I trust him to do a good job. You can sigh and say you don't *know* him but nothing is stopping you from looking at his record and seeing what sort of job he's done so far in his career and what his principles have been so far. None of which really changes his line of Republican political appointments and sponsors including his appointment to this investigation and endorsement by Bush. Which stands in stark contrast to Starr's appointments vs. who he was sent to investigate. He's "at best non-partisan" only in the sense that he's "at worst" a Republican with a Right wing bias. There's no credible evidence to suggest he's biased towards the Left.

If the situation was reversed and he came from a long line of Democratic sponsors and appointments, you'd probably be writing paragraph after paragraph about how he SAYS he's an independant but that's because he's HIDING how he's REALLY a liberal but can't admit it to the media Which I'm not making that accusation towards him (if he wants to call himself independant, good for him) but it gives me a laugh to know how you would have handled it.

How can you possibly say that if he makes "bogus" charges "they'll likely be politically motived" and then say you have no idea why they would be because you don't know him? When you accuse someone of a wrongdoing, it's customary to declare a motive beyond "How would I know?". If he exonerates the administration, will you declare that the exoneration was politically motivated? You can't accept that if he does bring someone up on obstruction or perjury charges, it's potentially because he legitimately feels they lied during the course of a federal investigation and he finds that unacceptable? If someone did lie/obstruct/perjure/whatever during the investigation, should it be overlooked? Because now would be the time to call them on it.

Edited, Tue Oct 25 16:58:11 2005 by Jophiel

I noticed that as well but didn't think it was worth getting into. I assume his focus was the "I'm an independant" quote to the Tribune. At least, that was all I looked at -- I just skimmed until I saw the word "Independant".

Given his constant barrage of attacks on Daley, accusations of liberal partisan bias from Fitzgerald are unintentionally ludicrous at best and intentionally disingenious at worst.

This thread appears to have been a victim of the Asylum hater. Rate-ups for everyone!

Heh. Like I said. I've not done tons of investigation into the man myself. I basically did a google search on his name and political affiliation and that came up. Don't really know or care about the contents of the article itself...


What I do find amusing though is that I tend to flip back and forth between the "conservative" radio stations and the "progressive" radio station (Air America). I do it mostly for amusement factor because you'll get some nutjobs on both sides (and quite a bit of range in between. Jerry Springer is suprisingly moderate for example). It's also interesting (and educational) to make note of how differently the two viewpoints express any given political issue.

On this particular case, it's pretty black and white. The conservatives call Fitgerald a Democrat, and the liberals (progressives...) call him a Republican. I find that amusing as all hell actually. And when I hear that difference on the radio today (cause they were both talking about the latest news leaks about the investigation), it triggered in my mind that you've been calling him a Republican all along, and prompted me to see what if any affiliation he actually had.


That's part of why I tend to look at the situation more then the people. It's usually going to be more accurate in terms of what will happen. Especially with politically charged situations like this. They're lead often more by public opinion then by law. We'll just have to wait and see how that pans out.




I already explained this. He wont do it because *he* has political motivations. Remember. I'm not looking at the person. I'm looking at the situatio. You've got a large number of liberals screaming about this issue. They've pinned a significant amount of political capital on it. It's very public, and the accusations have been very direct and "dirty" towards the Bush administration (not legal accusations necessarily, but political ones). Once you get something like this going, the public demands a satifactory result. Had the liberals allowed this to be handled like a normal investigation. Heck. Had the liberals not so thoroughly publicized their guesses about the Plame thing in the first place, complete with wild speculation about who said what, and announcements of just how bad it was (How many times did we hear that the outting put "lives in jeopardy"?), it could have been treated as a legitimate investigation, and possibly the obvious conclusion (she wasn't operating as a NOC and her identity really wasn't that secret after all) could have been arrived at and the whole issue put to bed without public outcry. Now, due to the rhetoric attacks of the left on this issue, the public demands some resolution. Before the liberal media spindoctors got involved, this was nothing more then a very minor event. Now, it's a matter of national security, and lives being put at risk, and potentially treasonous actions occuring. You can't just say "Nah. Now that we look at it, nothing really happened". That simply doesn't fly.

If that result occurs, the next allegation will be of cover up. After all, the spin given to the public has already convinced them that some kind of high crime has been commited, right? How is it possible that *no one* commmited a crime in the process? Not possible. As a result, it's even in the Bush administration's best interest for someone to get nailed for something so it doesn't look like it's a coverup (bizaare as that logic seems). And they'd almost rather lose a Libby or a Rove then deal with another year of another investigation.

That's how it's "politically motivated". You're assuming that is synonymous with "done for political advantage". I don't mean it that way at all. I mean that there's so much politics at issue here that there's no way anyone, no matter how unbiased and how fair they want to be, can thread their way through the issue without ending up taking some actions as a result of that politics. It's *possible*, but I doubt it highly. Someone will have to be charged with something.




It's certainly possible that there are legitimate charges of obstruction or perjury to be had. But I don't see it in this case. It's a matter of letter of the law versus spirit. The point should be to figure out if someone lied or blocked information that pertained to the case at hand. But if (as I believe) no one in the White House knew that Plame was a NOC, and therefore could not possibly have "outted" her, then any "obstruction" is superfluous. They literally had no reason to lie or obstruct the investigation in terms of figuring out who knew she was a NOC, and who of those people may have passed that information on. However, they most certainly would have a strong motivation to avoid making statements that could be construed in the public's eye to be an admission of guilt.

Remember. My approach to this whole thing is that the very "public" nature of the accusations has skewed the whole thing from the beginning. The purpose of this from the Liberals side has not so much been to get a conviction, but to get the public to distrust and dislike the White House staff. Rove, Libby, and others are well aware of this fact, and that certainly has affected their responses to questions on the issue (a point I also already made).

I'll make a prediction. Any charges of perjury or obstruction will end up being things related to attempting to avoid a public perception of wrongdoing, and not any attempt to hide whether or not someone knew Plame was a NOC and passed her employment on.


And that's much more a "letter of the law" issue. No actual wrongdoing was done in that case. It's actually *very* similar to the Clinton thing. He didn't lie about Whitewater. He lied to avoid making a statement that the public would percieve poorly. Same deal her. If lies are found, it'll be lies to avoid poor public perception, not lies to avoid prosecution on the Plame outting.

Wanna refute that prediction? I'd place about an 85% chance that I'm right on this...

What mainstream media? I've not seen or heard him once referred to as a Republican on any network news broadcast. Nor do I think that any major newspapers have referred to him in that way.

The closest you'll find is that he was "Republican appointed". That's not the same thing. Both parties appoint people to various positions irregardless of that person's personal party affiliation. You're assuming extreme partisanship by assuming that if someone works for a Republican president that that person must also be Republican.


Um. And I didn't say mainstream media referred to him as a Democrat. I said that the conserative talking heads on conservative radio shows did. I was deliberately making a logical connection between them calling him a Democrat, and the liberal talking heads calling him a Republican in order to show that your assumption is based, not on fact, but on rhetoric.

I've never made any assumption about what party he was aligned with. You have.



Um. His record? Do you really think that public perception doesn't play a part in anything? If he doesn't indict anyone, the first thing out of every Liberal's lips in the nation will be the word "coverup" (or is that two words?). His name will be connected to that, whether he likes it or not, and whether it's true or not. The liberal talking heads are already calling him a Republican stooge (and according to you, the mainstream media is referring to him as a Republican as well, although I'm not convinced of that). It's not exactly rocket science to predict what will happen if he doesn't indict anyone.

I think you are naive if you ignore that aspect of this case. You may think it doesn't matter, but I'm pretty sure it's the most significant factor of all.




Would it? Again. In terms of his career, that would be the biggest blow. While I don't know much about Fitzgerald the man, I do know that he was selected for his percieved impartiality and non-partisanship (which would seem to be supported by both sides calling him a member of the other party). He only gains more by appeasing the Republicans if you actually start with the assumption that he *is* a Republican stooge and is looking to curry favor with his "side". But if you assume anything else (like that he actually is trying to walk the non-partisan line), then that makes no sense. Everyone will assume he's exonerating the administration as a sign of stoogedom, and any future perception of impartiality will be destroyed.


I think you are allowing your own personal assumptions about him to lead your arguments. If you think he's impartial then you should understand why he'll have a *strong* motivation to find something to indict someone on. If you think he favors Democrats then you should expect him to find indictments against the administration as well (and perhaps more damaging ones). Only if you are progressing from the assumption that he is bought and paid for by the Republican party does the motivation for exonerating the administration makes sense.


Of course, that assumes that he's affected by the politics at all. It's theoretically possible that he'll take no political pressure into account in his investigation. It would even be nice to think that's the case. However, based on the direction of his investigation from the start, and the speed at which he strayed from the point (finding out who knew she was a NOC and told someone she worked at the CIA) to finding something to pin on Bush administration members, one has to assume that he's not playing this one totally straight. If he was really investigating just the crime originally put forth, then why not first find out who knew she was a NOC? Isn't that the first step? You *can't* have commited a crime in this case if you didn't have that knowledge. But to my knowledge he *never* pursued that tact, instead choosing to focus on who said what to whom after the fact. This is a line of questioning that is seriously rife with political rhetoric since the mere questions can be used as ammunition (and have been, or do I need to dig up the Rove thread from a few months ago?).


Again. I can't say with 100% certainty what he'll do. I can only judge the likely end of the investigation based on what I know of the current actions and direction of that investigation. And everything I've seen so far points me to a conclusion that he's going to take the "chicken" way out, and not go all the way with actual national security violations, but find a few discrepancies in testimony to use to hand out perjury and obstruction charges.


We can debate this all day. I've told you what I think will happen. I've told you *why* I think that will happen. I could certainly be wrong. But the only way to find that out is to wait and see...