The McCarthy Firing - Truth and Double Standards

[kerrygoddess]

Truth and Double Standards
April 23rd, 2006 @ 10:12 pm

Right-wing blogger Captain Ed at Captain’s Quarters gives a “tortured explanation” of how he thinks that John Kerry’s statements today on This Week are supportive of Mary McCarthy, who was “fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth.” Captain Ed misses the point that Kerry is making…

“… that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the White House for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie.”

As Kerry points out, firing McCarthy for telling the truth, “underscores what’s really wrong in Washington, DC” and if she did break the law, then she needs to “suffer the consequences of breaking the law,” just like those in the White House need to do for outing Valerie Plame.

The WaPo’s Walter Pincus reports in the Monday edition that “Key Democratic legislators yesterday joined Republicans in saying they do not condone the alleged leaking of classified information that led to last week’s firing of a veteran CIA officer. But they questioned whether a double standard exists that lets the White House give reporters secretly declassified information for political purposes.” Pincus further points to Kerry’s statements on This Week, quoting Kerry, “Classification in Washington is a tool that is used to hide the truth from the American people.” Pincus then pointed out that Kerry drew “a parallel to the Plame case,” with his statements on This Week.

Right or wrong, in the way it was done, Mary McCarthy allegedly told the truth. Valerie Plame, on the other hand, did nothing, but her husband Joe Wilson told the truth, and she paid the price for that by having her undercover status outed by someone in the White House. What’s good for Mary McCarthy is good for whoever outed Valerie Plame - that was John Kerry’s point today and he made that very clear.

MORE & LINKS - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=2742

[unschooler]

1. McCarthy is a whistle-blower. She deserves a medal.

"Whoever outed Plame" (that would be - uh - George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, I believe) was at best playing with the lives of undercover agents and their contacts for political purposes and at worst intentional blowing the cover of Plame's entire operation to cover up their efforts to manufacture an excuse for a war on Iraq.

When "if the President does it, it's legal" becomes the standard, the rule of law will be no more.




editing for fouled up grammer