If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, Occam's Razor says that it is almost certainly a duck.
Good point. I think the guilty party should invoke self defense if he or she is ever outed. Like O'Neill, Thielmann and others, Joe Wilson told the truth to the detriment of the Bush White House and they "defended" themselves by outing a CIA agent.
When a homicide detective finds a man with a knife in his back, what he will presume is murder. When a set of facts as clear as the Plame case arise, what are we to presume?
Again you are presuming a murder ("guilty party") when the "facts" only suggest it but also suggest other possibilities.
What else do the facts suggest? An active undercover intelligence agent was outed by a reporter who cited "White House sources." Since such an act is illegal, it is pretty clear that a felony has been committed. The only question is, will that person be charged?
Yes, I have. The homicide detective, presuming murder when the facts indicate such, calls in an investigator to examine the evidence. In this case, Tenet presumed that a crime had been commiteed when one of his operatives was outed and referred the case to the Justice Department to examine the evidence. In fact, the evidence was so strong that the JD appointed a special prosecutor who could more thoroughly examine said evidence.
As I have mentioned, an indictment may never come, but that still would not mean that a felony has not been committed.
No. The evidence tells the story. The investigator doesn't make up the beginning and shape the evidence to fit the story s/he began. It is the evidence that tells the story.
I'm arguing the conceptual point that you are arguing with bobrek not the specifics of the Plame case.
You are wrong. If a homicide detective finds a body with a knife in the back, they will not wait until CSI determines it is murder. That detective will begin interviewing potential murder suspects while the CSI examines the evidence. The facts in the Plame case are very clear. The only thing that is not clear at present is who actually committed the felony.
the facts are not clear- that's why there's an investigation. loudly declaring over and over that a felony was committed doesn't make it so. i'd suggest you wait until the facts are know before making such grand, sweeping assumptions.
The only people to whom the facts are not clear are blind partisans and administration apologists such as you, texx, and t_j. No, the fact that an undercover CIA operative was outed in public by a journalist is what makes it so. The facts ARE known, you just continue to ignore them.
Well, of course they have thoughts about it. Nothing wrong with that. However, I will point out that they do not convict while you do.... That's the problem.
I'm not convicting anyone in particular, but it is very clear to all but the most dedicated ostriches that a felony has been committed in regards to Valerie Plame.
Everyone holding their guns about the Plame felony that was committed good job. I have been away due to some serious family medical issues. Anyway, Basso, your own article clearly lays out the requirement for a felony being committed. Those requirements were clearly met. Novak doesn't have top level security clearance, and the identity was leaked to her. We know that the CIA definitely was keeping her identity unknown and that she was actively involved in WMD intel operations. It is silly to ask if it is a felony why isn't there an indictment. As others have pointed out, you don't indict one of 20 people who could possibly have done it. We need to find out which of those 20 or so folks it actually was. The posting history in this thread baffles the mind. First the pro-Bush crowd claims victory and tries to gloat over a legal brief filed, which has no proof of anything in it. Then in attempt to say that Plame's identity being revealed probably wasn't a felony, Basso posts an article which clearly illustrates that a felony has been committed. The correlation between the statutes posted by Basso and the events in the Plame case were even spelled out issue by issue. Then there is an attempt to hide behind a clause that nullifies a pension, but doesn't affect the status of the felony at all. It is almost surreal reading this.
