Reply #14: Justin Raimondo's (antiwar.com) column today on Miller: [View All]

[JohnyCanuck]

Judith Miller: Hearsted on
Her Own Petard

General Judy's in the brig –
and justice is served
by Justin Raimondo



If any one source of government-generated disinformation could be pointed to as vitally important in the campaign to lie us into war with Iraq, then surely Miller – the New York Times reporter whose articles did so much to inflate the claims of Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" – deserves some sort of award. Thanks to her tireless efforts, there was hardly a tall tale told by Ahmed "Hero in Error" Chalabi's U.S.-government-funded "intelligence-gathering" operation that did not make it into the New York Times, often on the front page. From the aluminum tubes that had nothing to do with nukes or other "weapons of mass destruction," to the secret biolabs in the basements of Saddam's palaces, to the string of nuke factories allegedly working overtime from one end of Iraq to the other, it all turned out to be a tissue of lies.

When the U.S. finally went into Iraq, and the search for those mythical WMD began, General Judy was in the forefront of the posse, personally accompanying the military team sent to conduct search operations – virtually "hijacking" the mission, according to one officer on the scene – and even wearing a military uniform. Her imperious manner while in Iraq with META (the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha) aroused considerable resentment, particularly on account of her brazen attempts to intimidate military personnel by threatening to go to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or his deputy Douglas Feith if things did not go her way. And there is evidence that her relationship with the Pentagon was not all bluff and bluster......

<snip>

Some of the ditzier liberals have been quite upset at this turn of events. Poor Judy is having to sleep on a mattress, they wail, under the same roof as a bunch of felons, murderers, drug-dealers, and whores! Oh, boo hoo hoo! They need to get over it. As the witty proprietor of the Norwegianity blog quipped: she's been "Hearsted on her own petard." And that's a Good Thing.

For once, the neocons are on the defensive, facing far greater firepower than they've ever encountered. In Plame-gate, the War Party is facing its Waterloo. Let no one – not weepy liberals, bamboozled into believing that "reporter" Miller is a martyr to the First Amendment, or party-lining neocons, who whine that "policy differences" are being "criminalized" – deprive us of victory or any of its pleasures. These people belong in jail, and for far longer than any are likely to be sentenced. The sheer beauty of their impending trial – as a lesson in how the War Party works, how it lied and smeared and seized power in a ruthless bid to impose its agenda – makes up for any deficiency of justice in sentencing guidelines that privilege white-collar gangs over the ordinary non-ideological variety. This investigation means there is some justice in this world, if not in the next, and that is more than good enough for me.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6693