Is ten years and 50 grand adequate punishment for outing Plame?

Personally, I think the law is way lenient on this one. Anybody willing to give up a covert agent in the WMD field never should see the light of day. The magnitude of her work-especially in light of 9-11-, the destruction of a career's worth of contact and the lives endangered by the act is tantamount to a high order of sedition. Not to mention that revealing Plame was of no merit whatsoever except out of malicious spite, because her husband called out the administration on a lie that contributed to the loss of billions of dollars and thousands of lives. I also may add that this is not a partisan issue. I don't care who commits an act likes this. If Ted Kennedy or Dennis Kucinich -two of my heroes- did something like this, than they would deserve the book tossed at them, likewise. If this happened 5 years ago Clinton would have been done for, so it's time to reciprate that same kind of zeal in going after an actual crime that has been committed. Good luck on that.

but these guys sneaking through without being some bad man's girlfriend certainly appears to be the case. The rules of the game don't apply to Bush and Co. See Vietnam etc.

I have a feeling that this too shall pass and the Bush Regime will get another

Conservatives up & down the AM radio dial were demanding John Walker Lindh's execution. Even if Lindh had not been caught, but instead fought with the Taliban to the death, he could have never done CLOSE to the damage this leak has.

So I would imagine any day now we'll hear similar outrage from the various hate-mongering talking heads.

Any... day... now...

<crickets chirping>

rape-you-in-the-ass jail or country club jail?

if it's the former, might be acceptable if they put him in a cell with Bubba.

:grr:

...what happened to the network she was managing? That network was being used to track the components that could be used for WMDs as they were shipped around the world.

i do not agree with this law. let's not forget! much of what the CIA does is criminal, immoral, deadly, dirty tricks. CIA operatives are not the heroes in white hats like Harrison Ford in the movies. they're torturers, coup plotters, propagandists, kidnappers, snitches, infiltrators, provocateurs, and yes murderers. exposing a CIA agent might be a very public spirited thing to do, if it stops some of the CIA's dirty tricks.

nevertheless, in this case it wasn't public spirited. it was simply revenge. there were no mitigating factors that i'm aware of. Plame was not known to be involved in anything underhanded. and Bush is a right winger and a supporter of this law, so why not apply the law full force?

Most of what the CIA does is some boring-ass shit. They have people who read newspapers. That's all they do, read newspapers. Read newspapers and clip articles in hopes that maybe, just maybe, one of those articles will be the missing "piece of the puzzle" that helps work out a targeted entity. It must work because they still have the desk.

The CIA steals garbage and digs through it. I have been to a dumpster diving course that had a Practical Exercise. Your life isn't complete until you've stood in a dumpster wearing galoshes, a wet weather suit, a pair of Double Thick Rubber Gloves and a gas mask digging through three-day-old garbage looking for someone's insurance receipts. (The instructor started off the course with a memorable opening line: "This is the shittiest job in the whole world, but someone's gotta do it.")

The CIA has done more than its share of dirty deeds. The CIA has some Jack Ryans. But if you made a movie about 70 percent of what the CIA does, doctors could prescribe it as a Guaranteed Cure for Insomnia.

We can't take any chances! Execute first, investigate later. This is a matter of National Security, after all

it's enough to prevent someone taking the fall for some higher up. :-)