Second term issues
I'd love to say something about the whole Rove-Libby-Cheney-WilsonPlame thing, but it seems to be pretty well covered
The Judy Chronicles --
washingtonpost.com The Judy War --
washingtonpost.com The Prosecutor Zeroes In.
One thing that deserves mention a forest for the trees sort of
consideration. How many different dimensions this has taken on now
The Miller Mess: Lingering Issues Among the Answers - New York Times. How many different individuals have become revealed this
Many Players Emerging in CIA Leak Drama - Yahoo! News.
Who outed Valarie Plame is the main question, one that at end has an answer
Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report - New York Times --
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Cheney cited as source in CIA leak investigation.
There are other questions. Why did the administration react so strongly
to Joe Wilson's Op ed in the NY Times? Why did that yellowcake uranium
assertion keep coming back, forged documents and all, like some bad
penny. The reason doesn't lie far away it is the centrality of this
issue to the WMD rational, the centrality of that to the war in Iraq.
Speaking to this Robert Kagan has a column in todays Washington Post
It Wasn't Just Miller's Story
(and really just the pure spectacle of Kagan editorializing on this in
the Post is enough to bury the wanton concept of main stream media bias
- and for ever). He starts by saying: "The Judith Miller-Valerie
Plame-Scooter Libby imbroglio is being reduced to a simple narrative
about the origins of the Iraq war." Simple narrative? reduced?
The story emerging is anything but simple. If, by reduced, he means the
gradual revelation of the dimensions of this story the degree by which
it absorbed portions of the White House in a feverish heat two years
ago. If he means by reduced that as the connections fall into
place and the mendacity
What's a Little Lying Between Friends? of the participants is pulled out into the light some sense of the intent involved comes out. Yes, then by all means 'reduced'.
Kagan goes on to say: "It was based on reporting by a large of
number of journalists who in turn based their stories on the judgments
of international intelligence analysts, Clinton officials and weapons
inspectors." That's just it; though, they weren't - everyone was
repeateing a circle-jerk group of assertions and rumours being put into
play a half-handful of Iraqi expatriates and their American handlers.
People now in the administration, and also, you Robert Kagan. It seems
too disingenuous to claim everyone, but everyone believed this during a
discussion of someone who was hounded and punished for saying something
different. If many weren't challenging these claims or the policies
you choose to draw out from them, it is because you all were
doing your damnedest not to let anyone, anyone at all. I should
like to pick up on this point again someday soon.
This affair does magnify the role of Miller as lap dog of the
administration in the WMD sale campaign. Saddam Hussien was a stupid
cruel man surrounded by stupid cruel men. He was easy to back into a
corner and this administration knew that. He thought rumours of weapons
programs and semi-funded weapons programs would serve his purposes
better and cheaper than real ones. Prefering ones aimed at practical
tangible matters like improved ballistic missiles. Instead these served
the purpose of those who desired his kingdom because they allowed him
to be portrayed as a dangerous and unstable man with access to too too
deadly toys. It allowed them to take what couldn't be disproven, as
equivalent to proven. More so for being able to equate perverse
deviousness to absence of fact. They just needed to get that
established as a general impression - and they needed establishment
institutions to accomplish that. That is where Miller and the New York
Times come in - America's paper of record and display case of American
Journalism. If now some would disemble
WHouse backs Cheney but sidesteps CIA leak question and try to rub their fingerprints off that display case what does it mean to the rest of us.
It is a direct indictment of the state of American journalism
that an actor such a Judy Miller could operate in the name of
journalism under the banner of the New York Times which had already
notice of certain structural weaknesses, with no supervision, control,
or accountability and towards, even yet, indistinct ends.
11:49:26 PM  ;;
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