Can CIA agents reveal their identiy?
No, Dick Cheney got in serious trouble this year for leaking the name of a CIA agent. So basically the answer is; if the vice president can't get away with it than nobody else can.
Who still believes Rush Limbaugh and Fox News false claim that Valerie Plame was NOT a covert CIA agent?
Gee...like Henry Waxman isn't partisan? It's also a matter of Congressional record that Kerry says spending Christmas in Cambodia in 1968 is "seared" into his memory. That doesn't make either true. Under the law that was supposed to have been broken, I forget the name but I did read it a year or so ago, there were several definitions of who was defined as a covert agent. Valerie Plame fit none of those definitions. That's what Rush and Fox News are referring to. UPDATE - The law in question is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. I've linked to the text of the law. Look under Definitions, section 4. Valerie Plame did not fit the definition of "covert agent" under any of those terms, thus no one broke any law outing a covert agent. The most you can say is Richard Armitage, the original source who has confessed, outed a CIA employee. See second link for the confession.
Why was George W. Bush a bad president but Barack Obama a good one?
Tough call, when looked at objectively, but I would have to say Bush was better, but only marginally.Yes, Bush was in charge when the housing market tanked, taking the rest of the economy with it. However, he doesn't have to shoulder all the blame for that if we are being honest. He had Democrat help in the person of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd whose mortgage bill forced banks to grant loans to people who could never pay them back, and started the crash. Bush is to blame because he signed it, trying to be nonpartisan.But, let us not forget Obama tripled Bush's debt, and spent more than any other President in US history.Bush got us involved in two prolonged wars, true enough. One (the Iraqi war) he even used outdated and faulty Intel as part of his justification. However, the full story on both these wars is never fully discussed. America got involved with Iraq at the request of the Iraqi people (like the Kurds) because Sadam was gassing and executing whole villages… men, women, kids and even babies. He got involved with Afghanistan because Al-Qaeda and the Taliban took credit for 9/11, and hid the planners, including Bin-Laden. The world is a better place without either man in it.Meanwhile, Obama foolishly announced to the world that come hell or high water, we were withdrawing from Iraq on a certain date. This gave rise to ISIS. And he still never closed GITMO or withdrew from Afghanistan as he promised. And, to make matters worse, Obama created a big mess in Lybia, and negotiated with the mother of all terrorist states, Iran.Although they didn't always get along, under Bush, Republicans and Democrats could often work together in bipartisanship. And, Bush treated ALL Americans civilly and as equals. He was a unifying voice after 9/11 (where I doubt Obama would have been).Obama was the great divider, who openly mocked Republicans and those who voted for them. He used identity and victimization politics to rally his base, and set us on a course of division we are still reeling from. He apologized and showed weakness to our enemies, while distancing and alienating our allies.
If Hillary neither was running nor ever would run for US President, would liberals have thought and spoken differently about her email indiscretions?
The facts show that Hillary Clinton lies the least of any politician in modern history, with the exception of Barack Obama. Her email practices, while not permitted under Obama administration policies were consistent with those of Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and Madeline Albright. John Kerry is the first Secretary of State to use Stste Department e-mail. We're she not running for President, or if she was a Republican none of us would have cared about her email server. The Bush administration used RNC servers and deleted tens of millions of emails and also outed a CIA agent. Donald Trump being Donald Trump is simply unacceptable, because it essentially involves being a bigoted sexual predator who is also an incompetent con-artist.
At the end of the movie Salt, the President is still alive and he knows that Liev Schreiber's character tried to kill him. So why was Salt (Angelina Jolie) worried that no one would believe her?
This is a very good question, and I don't know if there's a good answer to it. I guess there is the point that even if the president knows Schreiber was guilty, that doesn't mean (since the president was knocked out) that the president will know Salt wasn't part of the evil plot and simply had a last-minute disagreement. She is, after all, still a spy who infiltrated the government, and was clearly initially involved in some aspects of the plot -- remember, she was part of the plan sneaking into the White House, and was right there when the suicide bombing happened.So while the film has a problem with some of the presentation of Salt's sticky predicament at the end, in that it doesn't accurately portray the REAL problem she faces, there are actually rational reasons that hypothetically she might have serious problems that result in serving out a prison sentence of hard labor or even the death penalty for treason.As a complete side note, I highly recommend reading Kurt Wimmer's original version of the screenplay for the film, when it was titled "Edwin A. Salt" and was intended for Tom Cruise as the lead. While Jolie was awesome in the film, and the revised script still made for one helluva fun ride, I personally think Wimmer's original script was terrific and could've been used with a simple gender switch while retaining the rest of the original story and events, for an even better version of an already really good film.
Is Dick Cheney the most crooked politician in recent U.S. history?
No. Don't misuse the term "corrupt". Dick Cheney might have had really awful ideas; he might have had too much power in the Bush Administration, but he wasn't corrupt in the modern sense of it (taking bribes, etc.). If, for nothing else, he was incredibly rich already. The Cheneys needed not a dime in bribes from anybody on planet earth as they were worth north of $50 million on the day they stepped into the Naval Observatory. The truth simply is this: Vice President Cheney really believed what he was advocating. He still does. It's tempting to try to characterize that belief as "evil" or "corrupt" or flowing from some nefarious place in dark, smoke-filled rooms. We all do this (or fight the temptation of doing this). Many of my conservative family members really do believe that Obama and Clinton were terrible, awful men acting out of some kind of corruption (if not demonic possession). It's always evil or stupid when it's not your belief. Re: "Although Bush was president, the general feeling is he was a Puppet and Cheney the main Puppeteer who led us into war with Iraq for oil."That is a very popular (with the American left) idea that doesn't stand up to ANY of the testimony coming from the many, MANY sources within the White House. And if we're painting a caricature for shits-and-giggles, then sure. Have at it. But then don't expect a serious discussion.And don't straw-man me; I'm not defending Bush II (remember, I am very much a liberal; I'm not a fan of GWB, his administration, the invasion of Iraq and many of his lieutenants). But what I'm NOT is a blind ideologue who favors dogma over honest observation. I'm pointing out three very well known realities from the White House by anybody -- liberal or not -- who spent time with Bush:He was incredibly intelligent.He was a very nice individual.He was completely in charge.We want our "villains" to wear dark capes and twirl their moustaches while they're tying the innocent maiden to the railroad tracks. But it's not like that in reality. Sometimes our "villains" are really good people, they're smart, they're dedicated passionately to their jobs. . . but like humans they just do awful things because, well, we're flawed creatures and at times we don't think things through or we act with our egos first or we select information to confirm our biases.