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Constitutional or not, looking for terrorist in calling patterns is just bad math (Page 2)
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Chuckit
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May 18, 2006, 11:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by Dork.
I find it hard to believe that someone in that position could be so partisan as to flush their career down the toilet and risk imprisonment specifically to damage the President. It makes more sense to me that maybe these people see something that they percieve as so fundamentally wrong that they rationalize that it's more detrimental to the country to keep it secret then to break the law and let the public know about it.
Or maybe they think Bush is detrimental to the country. In the end, though, people often think they're much more clever than they actually are. I an believe someone would risk imprisonment if they didn't think the risk was very great and they were deeply involved enough in the politics.
Chuck
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"Instead of either 'multi-talented' or 'multitalented' use 'bisexual'."
     
SimeyTheLimey
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May 19, 2006, 06:13 AM
 
Originally Posted by Dork.
No matter what you think about these various government programs, there's one thing I think we can all agree on: any government official who can be traced to these leaks will probably not be a government official for very long. And even if it is found that some of these secret programs are flagrantly illegal, it doesn't necessarily absolve the people doing the leaking. It is a career-ending move, plain and simple. Not only that, but those who are caught will likely make their next career move to the federal penal system.

I find it hard to believe that someone in that position could be so partisan as to flush their career down the toilet and risk imprisonment specifically to damage the President. It makes more sense to me that maybe these people see something that they percieve as so fundamentally wrong that they rationalize that it's more detrimental to the country to keep it secret then to break the law and let the public know about it. But maybe I'm just a disaffected liberal.
They don't see it that way because they won't be flushing their careers down the toilet. People like Mary McCarthy will be back the next time a Democrat is in the White House.

I'm not making this up. She had a flourishing White House career that ended the day that Al Gore's presidential ambitions ended. Right after that she applied to go to law school. We started together in the same section of law school in the fall of 2001. By that time she had resigned from the CIA on gone to a liberal think tank. She actually lied to me personally. She told me that she left because she didn't want to be an ambassador. Bush wasn't going to make her an ambassador. We now know she was demoted when Bush came into office. But what the papers haven't said (but which I know because I knew her at the time) is that she had already applied to law school, and would have done so sometime between November, 2000 and January 2001. That is when Georgetown's applications were due. So her While House NSC career ended (at least temporarily) because Bush won in 2000. No doubt (and no surprise) that she was bitter.

A little before the 2004 elections she went back to work at CIA. That is roughly when she leaked information beneficial to Kerry. Had kerry been elected, her friends would have been back in the White House, and since her best buddy Rand Beers would have been National Security Advisor, she would no doubt that received a plum job -- perhaps as his deputy.

As it is, Bush was reelected, and so her plan was to be a solo practicioner lawyer until she retires. But it is easy to see how her partisanship and her personal ambitions lead her to break the law. She expected both to benefit. And maybe the next time a Democrat is in the White House they still will. Certainly, all of those friends of hers -- Beers, Sandy Berger, and John Kerry have all rallied to her defense.

I'm sure she rationalizes it as a great and selfless act. But the fact is, she would have benefitted personally had Bush not be elected and reelected.
( Last edited by SimeyTheLimey; May 19, 2006 at 06:23 AM. )
     
Dork.
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May 19, 2006, 07:28 AM
 
Well, I don't know who this person is, and if she was in the news I must have missed her name. But if her name was connected to the release of restricted information that was vital to national security, I'd be suprised if any administration trusted her again, Republican or Democratic. If nothing else, it's kind of hard to work on things that are secret when your name (and possibly picture) have been spread across the papers. She can probably still find a job, and if a Democrat wins the White House next time, she may be able to get a more politically-oriented job, but all that CIA stuff is probably no longer an option for her.

If it turns out that her actions were, in fact, justifiable on moral grounds, and whatever she outed was, in fact, illegal and contrary to American values, history will judge that. But for now, all we know is she violated a trust (and broke the law in doing so).

But you seem to understand Washington better than I do, Simey. For all I know, everyone there gets state secrets in their breakfast cereal.
     
SimeyTheLimey
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May 19, 2006, 08:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by Dork.
Well, I don't know who this person is, and if she was in the news I must have missed her name. But if her name was connected to the release of restricted information that was vital to national security, I'd be suprised if any administration trusted her again, Republican or Democratic. If nothing else, it's kind of hard to work on things that are secret when your name (and possibly picture) have been spread across the papers. She can probably still find a job, and if a Democrat wins the White House next time, she may be able to get a more politically-oriented job, but all that CIA stuff is probably no longer an option for her.

If it turns out that her actions were, in fact, justifiable on moral grounds, and whatever she outed was, in fact, illegal and contrary to American values, history will judge that. But for now, all we know is she violated a trust (and broke the law in doing so).

But you seem to understand Washington better than I do, Simey. For all I know, everyone there gets state secrets in their breakfast cereal.
Mary was the CIA official fired a couple of weeks ago for leaking national security information to the Washington Post.

Her career civil service days were already over. Really, she in effect made that transition during the Clinton years when she became Sandy Berger's protege. Officially, of course, she was still career. That is why she was only moved sideways when Bush's people came in, rather than being fired, which is what would have happened to a political appointee.

Any position she gets from now on, or indeed, any position she would have received had Kerry been elected would be schedule C. That is, a presidential appointment, not requiring Senate confirmation. Schedule C form the layer between the civil service and the officers who require confirmation. There are schedule C people in the different agencies, and there is a similar category in the White House. White House staff are not civil servants, but rather are appointed directly by the president. That is no doubt where she expects to be in a future Democratic Administration. And given her connections and the fact they rallied to her defense, that is probably where she will go. That might even be the case if, like her former boss, Sandy Berger, she is convicted of a crime. He hasn't been disowned by the Democratic establishment, and so there is little reason to suppose that she would be.
     
FeLiZeCaT
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May 19, 2006, 10:00 PM
 
Originally Posted by SimeyTheLimey
It is a crying shame to see this happen though. A whole agency, or series of agencies tarred by the petulance of the few.
So the best Intelligence agency in the world is mared with dissidents?

Good record.
You live more in 5 minutes on a bike like this, going flat-out, than some people in their lifetime

- Burt
     
Spliffdaddy
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May 19, 2006, 10:34 PM
 
marred

if you're gonna poke fun at 'intelligence' at least spell correctly.
     
tie
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May 20, 2006, 03:06 AM
 
Originally Posted by Dork.
If it turns out that her actions were, in fact, justifiable on moral grounds, and whatever she outed was, in fact, illegal and contrary to American values, history will judge that. But for now, all we know is she violated a trust (and broke the law in doing so).
Secret torture prisons aren't illegal and contrary to American values? I had no idea we'd regressed so far so this could be in doubt.

Perhaps her leaks haven't changed anything and we are still running these prisons. But at least it's out in public now. There was no reason for them to be secret in the first place. It is not like Al Qaeda is now stronger for knowing about them. (And the same can be said the domestic spying program.) But the US is stronger.

The CIA has been tarred by its poor (and, apparently, corrupt) leadership, and the misrepresentation of its intelligence, not for the most part by the people working there.
     
abe
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May 20, 2006, 07:15 AM
 
On many many occasions I have gotten the impression that one of the things some of our foreign posters say about Americans is ABSOLUTELY true, that we too much believe our own PR.

While there are some folks who oppose the Administration who would point to their own cynicism as proof that they DON'T buy in to government propaganda, there is a whole nother level of PR that has managed to survive pretty much intact, to our detriment.

And that is that the USA has always represented the gold standard of morality and virtue. The truth is we haven't. The truth is that even though the US has always wanted to be a nation of high ideals, when high mindedness stood in the way of getting the job done, we got the job done FIRST and left high mindedness to be dealt with later.

What is behind tie's post and many of the liberal posts here is, in a way, a fantasy.

The beautiful, noble, shimmering Land of Oz, where we were all happy and the government (a democrat in office) was benevolent, brave, wise, principled and charismatic and always did the most noble thing has NEVER been the reality. Our heritage is that of a tough, smart, brawny, religious and irreverent, no-nonsense, inventive, resilient, self-centered, impetuous, vengeful, forgiving, sometimes too trusting and generous and ingenious nation with a CAN DO attitude.

When and where no one else could or would, we would and did. And sometimes doing what needed doing wasn't so pretty or nice, but it was necessary and so that's what we did. And if it was something that wasn't that nice we apologized for it and/or tried to make amends. But that was ONLY after doing what needed to be done.

He says he had no idea we'd regressed so far as to do things that were in our national interest that weren't very nice.

It's only within the past generation that we have tried living up to a non-existent moral legacy of principled idealism before all other concerns. There are times when we have to get the job done and if we can do so and be high minded, then fine. Otherwise, the indisputable American standard that we should keep in mind is voiced by a current day philosopher by the name of Lawrence...



If you doubt what I'm saying, you just go to the film archives and look at ANY of the newsreels or documentaries or even the feature films of the 1930's and 40's even the early 1950's. The US didn't take any crap and the world knew it.

Now we're all sensitive and metrosexual. This isn't working as well for us as you libs would hope.
( Last edited by abe; May 20, 2006 at 07:42 AM. )
America should know the political orientation of government officials who might be in a position to adversely influence the future of this country. http://tinyurl.com/4vucu5
     
 
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