Well, a full pardon would actually have been better, since it would be less efficacious in shutting up further testimony from Libby. Funny how that works.
It's your prerogative to believe he deserved to be pardoned and Bush's legal prerogative to commute his sentence; but speaking in an unabashedly partisan manner, come 2008, when the administration is still stonewalling in every way it can to prevent investigation of its myriad crimes in the run-up to, and conduct of, the worst war since Vietnam and the Republican presidential nominee is trying to put distance between himself and Bush and Cheney, it'd be awfully convenient to nail him to the wall on this.
It has not been demonstrated to my satisfaction, and I've seen curious un-debunked statements indicating that the grand jury wasn't allowed to consider the question, that Valerie Plame was in fact, under the law, a covert agent, which is the core of the alleged crime of leaking secrets.
Sure, it was a giant dick move, but it was a reciprical dick move after Plames hubby told Congress one thing (indications were that Iraq had approached Niger) and told the press another, leading the willing press to happily report that Bush lied about uranium. Furthermore, the supposedly covert agent didn't seem to mind all the press she was getting over her outing. If she was at risk of reprisal, whoever did the reprising would probably find her at a photo shoot for that national press.
So, a giant investigation begins, one indistinguishable from the no-longer-around-Special-Prosecutor to a schlub like me who doesn't actually watch cable news, and INEVITABLY someone is convicted of obstructing that investigation, after the evidence might've shown that there was no crime in the first place. Whoopsie!
Also, yes, this is the worst war, out of 2, since Vietnam. My only sister is also my least favorite sister. Iraq was mis-managed, sure, but invading Iraq is superior to the alternative. Today Saddam would be in power, sanctions ineffective thanks to Europe and the UN, weapons inspectors still cooling their heels, Americans in Saudi Arabia (to protect them from invasion), daily bombings as Iraq antagonizes the planes enforcing no-fly, and Iran, with a belligerant neighbor, is suddenly immune to any incentive to aborting its nuclear weapons program. Right about now, isolationism and a missile shield would be looking really good right now. Except our troops might be in Darfur, dying from disease and getting killed in the press.
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
it was a reciprical dick move after Plames hubby told Congress one thing (indications were that Iraq had approached Niger) and told the press another, leading the willing press to happily report that Bush lied about uranium.
Not so. Wilson only reported that the Nigerian prime minister claimed that an Iraqi delegation approached Niger regarding an increase in commercial relations. However, Iraq never blatantly said they wanted to purchase uranium. The prime minister suspected that's what they meant, although no one knows, and there was no follow-up by Iraq. I am pretty sure that's what Wilson reported. It's not a direct contradiction to that op-ed he wrote later.
Of course, even if Wilson had told Congress one thing and the press the complete opposite, that in no way excuses outing a CIA agent as some kind of revenge. I'd be interested to know why they chose to act like a bunch of children instead of addressing Wilson's points. I suspect it's because they had no way to convincingly refute Wilson's op-ed, so they were just trying to scare others who might want to come forward like Wilson had.
the supposedly covert agent didn't seem to mind all the press she was getting over her outing.
That doesn't mean a damned thing and you know it. At least I hope you know it. I'm not getting where this, or the rest of your rant (which almost seems like a bunch of random speculation from a guy who admits to not even watching the news), has anything to do with pardoning Libby.
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
I said I don't watch the news; that doesn't mean I don't get news. I just don't have the hours to while away by watching hot-headed loudmouths (on *any* cable channel) express outrage I'm meant to share because a Notice of Outrage was issued by the Official Party Organ.
Once you substract Uranium, there is nothing left to buy from Niger. Quoting the CIA factbook (yeah yeah, CIA, go ahead and give me a better source if you want), their exports are: uranium ore, livestock, cowpeas, onions. Sweet, Saddam must've wanted some of them cowpeas, probably to build himself a palace. To suggest that opening commercial relations was anything but a prelude to purchasing uranium is willful ignorance.
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
Since there were, to the best of anyone's evidence (apparently systematically ignored in the run-up to the war) no WMD in Iraq, this seems a secondary consideration.
daily bombings as Iraq antagonizes the planes enforcing no-fly
doing a tiny fraction of the bomb damage we've inflicted to Iraqi cities during and after the invasion (how many people were killed by American air strikes, exactly? Extrapolating from the Lancet study gives about 78,000 (http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7854); I know this has its detractors, but reduce that by a factor of ten and it's still impressively high).
and Iran, with a belligerant neighbor, is suddenly immune to any incentive to aborting its nuclear weapons program.
which is different from the current situation how? The US seems bent on appearing actively hostile to the Iranian regime, and now American soldiers are next door and Joe Lieberman is mouthing off about how we need to do cross-border raids.
The status quo was a bad situation, which is a large part of the reason why I initially supported the invasion, to my everlasting shame. I think it's mind-boggling to suggest that what we got is better; sometimes you don't solve the intractable problem by dramatically cutting the Gordian knot. At the very least, there was no reason to go in when we did; the sense of urgency drummed up in 2002-03 on the emotional coattails of September 11th had no basis in reality, and most of the world realized this, which is why the international coalition that helped us go into Afghanistan in late 2001 was nowhere in evidence.
There's reason to believe the number of excess deaths over a situation in which Saddam, one of the world's worst tyrants, remained in power may be as high as a million. Again, reduce this by a factor of ten or twenty to account for various uncertainties and biases and it's still unforgivably huge. Though most of those people were proximately killed by other Iraqis, to some extent that blood is on our hands and will be forever.
It's not just a clusterfuck, it never made any sense. Personally in 2002-03 I assumed that Bush and Tony Blair knew stuff that I didn't that made their case more solid, but if anything the opposite turned out to be true; they knew things that weren't true according to intelligence available to them. And when people in the government tried to press the matter, they got driven out or smeared and vilified any way the administration's political officers could manage.
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
The evidence of WMD was that last time there were inspectors in Iraq, they dutifully recorded the existence of WMDs (namely chemical warheads). Somehow in 10 years, those WMDs ceased to exist, because they can't be found, and yet there's no record of their destruction, which is what Blix was after. They went somewhere, or they were destroyed and it was recorded. That record would've been satisfactory. Instead, you have people saying that there were never any chemical weapons or nuclear ambitions, as if the OSIRAK reactor never went up and down, as if tens of thousands of Kurds snuffed it only coincidentally after they were bombed by their own leader.
As for the daily bombings, sure they do a fraction of the damage.. but when would then end? When Saddam's sons curled up and died of old age? Grandsons?
And Iran can respond now to economic sanctions (presuming, of course, that Russia, France, and the rest of Europe don't decide that they're too inconvenient and do business anyway, as they did with Iraq).
As for your last three paragraphs, I just disagree. I just don't see that things are as massively screwed up, horrible, and most importantly, incapable of improving to a point where we can leave.
There were two Iraq wars this decade; the first was the defeat of the nation, and the second prolonged war is the conflict with sectarian thugs who preserved the pre-war apartheid, and the ones who armed up in response to it, as well as Al Qaeda in Iraq, and AQI is exactly who we ought to be fighting, better in Iraq than here. Yes, we inflicted the wound that gave AQ the opportunity to move in and infest the place, and Iraq will be the next Afghanistan-- overrun and yet ignored.
AQ's recruitment, we are constantly reminded, is up because of us. Well, so is the attrition rate, and I'm glad that somebody is fighting them still, rather than a quick regime change in Afghanistan and then trying to return to equilibrium with the world while AQ takes up elsewhere. Fuck that. Equilibrium consists of AQ making attacks on the west and we suck it up and do nothing because we can rebound from it. Equilibrium consists of steering the military via popular vote, and the body count steering the popular vote. Pull them out of Iraq now, and we'll be in Darfur before the weather changes, and back out again once a soldier is cut up by machete.
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
Just why would Americans need to be in Saudi Arabia again? To protect them just like Kuwait was protected? To secure cheap oil supplies? Why exactly am I meant to give you guys sympathy, again?
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
Well, in the future it might be handy to have a presence in the region, considering that Germany seems to be on fairly good terms with its neighbors, so those bases are looking a little outmoded. I grant you, Spain could become aggressive and decide to stamp out Andorra once and for all, but I think the UN will prevent that from happening.
Far as I can tell, the Saudi government, who rule a nation that's very much thrilled with the idea of infidel Americans on their soil, asked us to be there, for protection, because the nation directly to the north of it was attacking two of its neighbors, to say nothing of an ethnic minority in the north, and perhaps its aggression wasn't limited to those 3 targets. Kuwait had fallen by the time the Saudis invited us over.
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It's your prerogative to believe he deserved to be pardoned and Bush's legal prerogative to commute his sentence; but speaking in an unabashedly partisan manner, come 2008, when the administration is still stonewalling in every way it can to prevent investigation of its myriad crimes in the run-up to, and conduct of, the worst war since Vietnam and the Republican presidential nominee is trying to put distance between himself and Bush and Cheney, it'd be awfully convenient to nail him to the wall on this.
As long as we're getting partisan about this...
Sure, it was a giant dick move, but it was a reciprical dick move after Plames hubby told Congress one thing (indications were that Iraq had approached Niger) and told the press another, leading the willing press to happily report that Bush lied about uranium. Furthermore, the supposedly covert agent didn't seem to mind all the press she was getting over her outing. If she was at risk of reprisal, whoever did the reprising would probably find her at a photo shoot for that national press.
So, a giant investigation begins, one indistinguishable from the no-longer-around-Special-Prosecutor to a schlub like me who doesn't actually watch cable news, and INEVITABLY someone is convicted of obstructing that investigation, after the evidence might've shown that there was no crime in the first place. Whoopsie!
Also, yes, this is the worst war, out of 2, since Vietnam. My only sister is also my least favorite sister. Iraq was mis-managed, sure, but invading Iraq is superior to the alternative. Today Saddam would be in power, sanctions ineffective thanks to Europe and the UN, weapons inspectors still cooling their heels, Americans in Saudi Arabia (to protect them from invasion), daily bombings as Iraq antagonizes the planes enforcing no-fly, and Iran, with a belligerant neighbor, is suddenly immune to any incentive to aborting its nuclear weapons program. Right about now, isolationism and a missile shield would be looking really good right now. Except our troops might be in Darfur, dying from disease and getting killed in the press.
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
Not so. Wilson only reported that the Nigerian prime minister claimed that an Iraqi delegation approached Niger regarding an increase in commercial relations. However, Iraq never blatantly said they wanted to purchase uranium. The prime minister suspected that's what they meant, although no one knows, and there was no follow-up by Iraq. I am pretty sure that's what Wilson reported. It's not a direct contradiction to that op-ed he wrote later.
Of course, even if Wilson had told Congress one thing and the press the complete opposite, that in no way excuses outing a CIA agent as some kind of revenge. I'd be interested to know why they chose to act like a bunch of children instead of addressing Wilson's points. I suspect it's because they had no way to convincingly refute Wilson's op-ed, so they were just trying to scare others who might want to come forward like Wilson had.
the supposedly covert agent didn't seem to mind all the press she was getting over her outing.
That doesn't mean a damned thing and you know it. At least I hope you know it. I'm not getting where this, or the rest of your rant (which almost seems like a bunch of random speculation from a guy who admits to not even watching the news), has anything to do with pardoning Libby.
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
Once you substract Uranium, there is nothing left to buy from Niger. Quoting the CIA factbook (yeah yeah, CIA, go ahead and give me a better source if you want), their exports are: uranium ore, livestock, cowpeas, onions. Sweet, Saddam must've wanted some of them cowpeas, probably to build himself a palace. To suggest that opening commercial relations was anything but a prelude to purchasing uranium is willful ignorance.
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
Since there were, to the best of anyone's evidence (apparently systematically ignored in the run-up to the war) no WMD in Iraq, this seems a secondary consideration.
daily bombings as Iraq antagonizes the planes enforcing no-fly
doing a tiny fraction of the bomb damage we've inflicted to Iraqi cities during and after the invasion (how many people were killed by American air strikes, exactly? Extrapolating from the Lancet study gives about 78,000 (http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7854); I know this has its detractors, but reduce that by a factor of ten and it's still impressively high).
and Iran, with a belligerant neighbor, is suddenly immune to any incentive to aborting its nuclear weapons program.
which is different from the current situation how? The US seems bent on appearing actively hostile to the Iranian regime, and now American soldiers are next door and Joe Lieberman is mouthing off about how we need to do cross-border raids.
The status quo was a bad situation, which is a large part of the reason why I initially supported the invasion, to my everlasting shame. I think it's mind-boggling to suggest that what we got is better; sometimes you don't solve the intractable problem by dramatically cutting the Gordian knot. At the very least, there was no reason to go in when we did; the sense of urgency drummed up in 2002-03 on the emotional coattails of September 11th had no basis in reality, and most of the world realized this, which is why the international coalition that helped us go into Afghanistan in late 2001 was nowhere in evidence.
There's reason to believe the number of excess deaths over a situation in which Saddam, one of the world's worst tyrants, remained in power may be as high as a million. Again, reduce this by a factor of ten or twenty to account for various uncertainties and biases and it's still unforgivably huge. Though most of those people were proximately killed by other Iraqis, to some extent that blood is on our hands and will be forever.
It's not just a clusterfuck, it never made any sense. Personally in 2002-03 I assumed that Bush and Tony Blair knew stuff that I didn't that made their case more solid, but if anything the opposite turned out to be true; they knew things that weren't true according to intelligence available to them. And when people in the government tried to press the matter, they got driven out or smeared and vilified any way the administration's political officers could manage.
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
As for the daily bombings, sure they do a fraction of the damage.. but when would then end? When Saddam's sons curled up and died of old age? Grandsons?
And Iran can respond now to economic sanctions (presuming, of course, that Russia, France, and the rest of Europe don't decide that they're too inconvenient and do business anyway, as they did with Iraq).
As for your last three paragraphs, I just disagree. I just don't see that things are as massively screwed up, horrible, and most importantly, incapable of improving to a point where we can leave.
There were two Iraq wars this decade; the first was the defeat of the nation, and the second prolonged war is the conflict with sectarian thugs who preserved the pre-war apartheid, and the ones who armed up in response to it, as well as Al Qaeda in Iraq, and AQI is exactly who we ought to be fighting, better in Iraq than here. Yes, we inflicted the wound that gave AQ the opportunity to move in and infest the place, and Iraq will be the next Afghanistan-- overrun and yet ignored.
AQ's recruitment, we are constantly reminded, is up because of us. Well, so is the attrition rate, and I'm glad that somebody is fighting them still, rather than a quick regime change in Afghanistan and then trying to return to equilibrium with the world while AQ takes up elsewhere. Fuck that. Equilibrium consists of AQ making attacks on the west and we suck it up and do nothing because we can rebound from it. Equilibrium consists of steering the military via popular vote, and the body count steering the popular vote. Pull them out of Iraq now, and we'll be in Darfur before the weather changes, and back out again once a soldier is cut up by machete.
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
Re: As long as we're getting partisan about this...
Far as I can tell, the Saudi government, who rule a nation that's very much thrilled with the idea of infidel Americans on their soil, asked us to be there, for protection, because the nation directly to the north of it was attacking two of its neighbors, to say nothing of an ethnic minority in the north, and perhaps its aggression wasn't limited to those 3 targets. Kuwait had fallen by the time the Saudis invited us over.
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