Behemouth Grove
A hellmouth in a grove of Aspens!
Miller and Libby are old pals who over the years have shared an obsessive fear that Saddam Hussein would destroy Israel. Feeding into that fear was their friend and fellow neocon Laurie Mylroie, whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors. (Miller wrote a book on the Holocaust while co-authoring a book on Saddam with Mylroie. The two share the same agent as Richard Perle.) Mylroie is the neocon's favorite crackpot conspiracy theorist on Saddam. She actually believes, to this day, that Saddam Hussein was behind the first World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, and 9/11 (and perhaps JFK's assassination, too).
So it comes as no surprise that Miller and Libby kicked around the idea of smearing Wilson on three separate occasions, a coziness that caught Fitzgerald's attention and prompted him to wonder aloud at his press conference: "Why did [Libby] tell Judith Miller three times?" On one of those occasions, Miller strolled into Libby's White House office to report to him about a recent trip she had taken to Iraq (where she enjoyed special Pentagon clearance to hunt for Saddam's phantom weapons). She was giving Libby an "update." Was she acting as a reporter or as an aide? Hard to tell.
But this much is certain: She shared Libby's interest in keeping their story of Saddam's phantom weapons alive – along with their reputations. After all, it was General Judy's fictional reporting on WMD in Iraq before the invasion that bolstered the White House's case for war. And she was fed the lies through Libby's office. Ambassador Wilson blew the whistle on the lies, and needed to be stopped. Miller didn't go to jail to protect confidential sources, as she nobly claimed. She was really protecting her shady dealings with Libby over the scheme to smear Wilson.
Woodward, for his part, met at least twice with Libby during the same frenetic month as Miller, whom he angrily defends as a victim of Fitzgerald's "junkyard-dog" tactics. He and Libby and his boss Cheney go way back. Woodward is so compromised by his friendship with the powerful men that he agreed to submit written questions in advance to Cheney, giving the evil warmonger license to spin – something he doesn't bother to disclose to readers in his exclusive, "behind-the-scenes" book on Iraq. The list of questions ran 18 pages long. That's not journalism. That's collaboration.
FROM
http://www.antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=8128
Miller and Libby are old pals who over the years have shared an obsessive fear that Saddam Hussein would destroy Israel. Feeding into that fear was their friend and fellow neocon Laurie Mylroie, whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors. (Miller wrote a book on the Holocaust while co-authoring a book on Saddam with Mylroie. The two share the same agent as Richard Perle.) Mylroie is the neocon's favorite crackpot conspiracy theorist on Saddam. She actually believes, to this day, that Saddam Hussein was behind the first World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, and 9/11 (and perhaps JFK's assassination, too).
So it comes as no surprise that Miller and Libby kicked around the idea of smearing Wilson on three separate occasions, a coziness that caught Fitzgerald's attention and prompted him to wonder aloud at his press conference: "Why did [Libby] tell Judith Miller three times?" On one of those occasions, Miller strolled into Libby's White House office to report to him about a recent trip she had taken to Iraq (where she enjoyed special Pentagon clearance to hunt for Saddam's phantom weapons). She was giving Libby an "update." Was she acting as a reporter or as an aide? Hard to tell.
But this much is certain: She shared Libby's interest in keeping their story of Saddam's phantom weapons alive – along with their reputations. After all, it was General Judy's fictional reporting on WMD in Iraq before the invasion that bolstered the White House's case for war. And she was fed the lies through Libby's office. Ambassador Wilson blew the whistle on the lies, and needed to be stopped. Miller didn't go to jail to protect confidential sources, as she nobly claimed. She was really protecting her shady dealings with Libby over the scheme to smear Wilson.
Woodward, for his part, met at least twice with Libby during the same frenetic month as Miller, whom he angrily defends as a victim of Fitzgerald's "junkyard-dog" tactics. He and Libby and his boss Cheney go way back. Woodward is so compromised by his friendship with the powerful men that he agreed to submit written questions in advance to Cheney, giving the evil warmonger license to spin – something he doesn't bother to disclose to readers in his exclusive, "behind-the-scenes" book on Iraq. The list of questions ran 18 pages long. That's not journalism. That's collaboration.
FROM
http://www.antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=8128
posted by professor rat at 1:19 AM
<< Home