Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Republican Fred Thompson officially Announces Candidacy for President. Good News, Or?

host · 05-31-2007, 09:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

No. They are pretty smart. They knew exactly what they were doing. How did you conclude what you wrote above based on what I wrote?

I remember reading what Bill Gates once said about what Microsoft was going to do to the competition at one of the anti-trust trials. Things can be ruthless in the world and even smart people can be ruthless. I only made the point that Plame had to know who she was dealing with, if she didn't - she was not a good CIA agent.

Even Honest Abe Lincoln used his political power to get what he wanted or to send a message.

I don't want to go through this again, as I did with another poster here on another issue. All I will say is - there are professions and things certain people should avoid if they don't want to get hurt.

In your "world" ace, no one who has a job to protect, a career, or a reputation, and certainly no one who is a spouse of anyone employed in a classified position in a government agency, SHOULD....if they know what's good for them, openly challenge or criticize the principles in the US executive branch, or they will be "paid back" if they sepak out publicly, just as Plame was, for her husband's challenge of white house assertions to justify invading Iraq and toppling it's government.

Do I have what you are saying, about right, ace? Why would you or anyone, want to be (settle for....) living in a country where the elected leaders claim they stand for "freedom", but behave like that....making an "example" of Plame, to discourage the "rest of us" from speaking out in objection, even to the point of "outing" a 20 year covert CIA veteran, managing a group working on investigation of possible Iranian WMD programs?

ace, here is the issue that your opinion, vs. mine....and others who have weighed in here, can be reduced to....it's in the last sentence in this opinion piece:

Quote:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20...nation/1200952
Opinion
Meet Fred Thompson: Friend of Felons

John Nichols Thu May 31, 1:53 PM ET

.........According to Thompson, in a speech delivered May 12 to the Council for National Policy, "I didn't know Scooter Libby, but I did know something about this intersection of law, politics, special counsels and intelligence. And it was obvious to me that what was happening was not right. So I called him to see what I could do to help, and along the way we became friends. You know the rest of the story: a D.C. jury convicted him."

Whatever the facts of their relationship, however, there is no debating Thompson's loyalty to Libby. He is the leading proponent of a presidential pardon for the convicted felon. And he regularly uses his prominence as a TV lawyer to accuse the man who brought Libby to justice, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, of "perverting the rule of law."

In the faux-conservative circles that define the modern Republican Party, Thompson is more closely associated with the defense of the disgraced White House aide than with any particular stand on the issues facing the nation. That's one of the reasons why so many of the true believers in the Bush presidency are so very enthusiastic about Thompson's now likely candidacy to replace Bush

Since Libby was convicted in March on four counts of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements about how he learned the identity of
CIA officer
Valerie Plame -- the wife of former Ambassador Joe Wilson (news, bio, voting record), who was targeted for attack by Cheney's office after he exposed the administration's manipulation of intelligence when it was lobbying for war with
Iraq -- Thompson has maintained that special counsel Fitzgerald, the federal judges associated with the case and the federal grand jury that decided it were all part of "the Beltway machinery" that railroaded an innocent man because "he worked for Dick Cheney."

"The Justice Department, bowing to political and media pressure, appointed a Special Counsel to investigate the leak and promised that the Justice Department would exercise no supervision over him whatsoever -- a status even the Attorney General does not have," Thompson explained in his May 12 speech. "The only problem with this little scenario was that there was no violation of the law, by anyone, and everybody -- the CIA, the Justice Department and the Special Counsel knew it. Ms. Plame was not a 'covered person' under the statute and it was obvious from the outset."

Thompson was, of course, speaking as an experienced player in courtroom dramas on ABC.

Here is what an actual prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, said in the 18-page Libby sentencing memorandum released two weeks after Thompson asserted that "everybody knew" Plame-Wilson was "not a covered person" under the rules that protect covert agents: "[It] was clear from very early in the investigation that Ms. Wilson qualified under the relevant statute (Title 50, United States Code, Section 421) as a covert agent."

Fitzgerald also detailed how Libby had blown Plame-Wilson's cover in conversations with reporters and White House aides, and explained that, "Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson's CIA employment."

To all of this, Thompson says, "In no other prosecutor's office in the country would a case like this one have been brought."

Fitzgerald says: "To accept the argument that Mr. Libby's prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President. To state this claim is to refute it. Peremptorily closing this investigation in the face of the information available at its early stages would have been a dereliction of duty, and would have afforded Mr. Libby and others preferential treatment not accorded to ordinary persons implicated in criminal investigations."

This is, frankly, a better debate than any that will broadcast during the course of the presidential race.

Thompson, a career politician who plays a prosecutor on TV, says that it is wrong to prosecute someone who knowingly used a position in the White House to punish critics of the Bush administration and then lied about his abuses of authority and the public trust.

Fitzgerald, a career prosecutor who tends to avoid the cameras, disagrees.

Thompson is preparing to seek the presidency as the standard bearer of the wing of the Republican Party that turns a blind eye to official misconduct.

Fitzgerald is preparing to return to his work as one of the nation's most trusted enforcers of the rule of law.

Here is a real contest for Americans to decide. They can choose between two tickets: Thompson/Libby versus Fitzgerald/Rule of Law.