Thursday, July 07, 2005
judy
I've been thinking a lot today about the case of Judith Miller, the reporter for the New York Times who is sitting in jail right now for refusing to reveal her source in the Valerie Plame outing. (For those who aren't too up on the situation, please read up on it NOW.)
Naturally, The Rude Pundit already covered much of what I wanted to say, because that's what the Rude Pundit does.
But here's my two pennies.
I was struck by two things that I read today:
1) Via Atrios, Miller's little formulation of why she's defiant in the face of her jailing:
2) Judith Miller is coauthor, with Laurie Mylroie, of the book Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf.
These two items, combined with all the rest we know about her WMD stories fed by Achmed Chalabi and "confirmed" by the administration tell me something--this woman is no dupe. She is a true believer. It's time to stop thinking about Miller as a "journalist" just because she happens to work for the Times and won a Pulitzer. Someone as bright as she is doesn't just happen to neglect accurate information about the loaded issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction, particularly when it's being fed to her by sources like this administration and Mr. Chalabi. She was willful in that neglect. She wanted a result--she wanted to help lead the U.S. into war in Iraq. And she got what she wanted.
Again, I know all this might seem a little confusing to those who haven't followed the details of the Plame case, the reporting of the leadup to war, the Chalabi/Miller connection, or so many of the other threads that seem to be interconnected. You may not have heard that Bush himself ordered his staff to cooperate completely with Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of a CIA operative (which neither Bush nor anybody else seems to care enough to follow up on). But given what we know about how Miller has operated the past years, her ties to Mylroie and Douglas Feith, her weird connection with David Kelly, her authorship of the book Germ and subsequent stated receipt of a white powder around the time of the Anthrax scare, the clear conduit between her and the Office for Special Plans (the story of which alone should have been enough to bring this government down), her crap-ass reporting about the United Nations ... it's just too much. She's not "inept." She has not been "duped." She is not an "Inspector Clouseau" figure.
She's part of it all.
Like all my postings, the above reflects my opinion alone, not that of any other authors of Selfish Hedonist.
Oh, I almost forgot: Miller tipped off two terrorist organizations so they could give federal agents the slip. Miller got her information from a tip from...the White House!
Naturally, The Rude Pundit already covered much of what I wanted to say, because that's what the Rude Pundit does.
But here's my two pennies.
I was struck by two things that I read today:
1) Via Atrios, Miller's little formulation of why she's defiant in the face of her jailing:
"I know that the freest and fairest societies are those with a free press . . . publishing information that the government does not want to reveal," she said. She compared her effort to that of U.S. troops risking death in their fight for freedom in Iraq: "If they can do that, surely I can face prison to defend a free press."
"I have chronicled the dark side of the world, where the law is an arbitrary foil that serves the powerful," she said in court, Washington Post staff writer Carol Leonnig reported. "I also know that the freest and fairest societies are . . . those with a free press . . . publishing information the government does not want to reveal," Miller said.
2) Judith Miller is coauthor, with Laurie Mylroie, of the book Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf.
These two items, combined with all the rest we know about her WMD stories fed by Achmed Chalabi and "confirmed" by the administration tell me something--this woman is no dupe. She is a true believer. It's time to stop thinking about Miller as a "journalist" just because she happens to work for the Times and won a Pulitzer. Someone as bright as she is doesn't just happen to neglect accurate information about the loaded issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction, particularly when it's being fed to her by sources like this administration and Mr. Chalabi. She was willful in that neglect. She wanted a result--she wanted to help lead the U.S. into war in Iraq. And she got what she wanted.
Again, I know all this might seem a little confusing to those who haven't followed the details of the Plame case, the reporting of the leadup to war, the Chalabi/Miller connection, or so many of the other threads that seem to be interconnected. You may not have heard that Bush himself ordered his staff to cooperate completely with Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of a CIA operative (which neither Bush nor anybody else seems to care enough to follow up on). But given what we know about how Miller has operated the past years, her ties to Mylroie and Douglas Feith, her weird connection with David Kelly, her authorship of the book Germ and subsequent stated receipt of a white powder around the time of the Anthrax scare, the clear conduit between her and the Office for Special Plans (the story of which alone should have been enough to bring this government down), her crap-ass reporting about the United Nations ... it's just too much. She's not "inept." She has not been "duped." She is not an "Inspector Clouseau" figure.
She's part of it all.
Like all my postings, the above reflects my opinion alone, not that of any other authors of Selfish Hedonist.
Oh, I almost forgot: Miller tipped off two terrorist organizations so they could give federal agents the slip. Miller got her information from a tip from...the White House!
