Judith Miller: Hearsted on Her Own Petard

[norml]

July 18, 2005

Judith Miller: Hearsted on
Her Own Petard
General Judy's in the brig –
and justice is served
by Justin Raimondo


When William Randolph Hearst – the newspaper publisher who put the yellow in "yellow journalism" – sent the artist Frederick Remington to Cuba in the 1890s to illustrate articles on an alleged revolt against Spanish rule, Remington and his fellow journalists ran up against a slight problem: "There is no war," Remington wrote to his boss. "Request to be recalled." Hearst cabled in reply: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war."

Hearst's journalistic fulminations were the spark that set off the Spanish-American war and the conquest of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and they fed a spate of war hysteria that set off a convulsion of imperialism that didn't end until until America found itself bogged down in fighting a guerrilla insurgency in the Philippines that exhausted the moral and military limits of the nation and bade us step back from the abyss of Empire. If history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second as farce, then this Hearstian pattern can be fairly detected in the journalistic career of Judith Miller.

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. As reported in Editor & Publisher,

"Miller had helped negotiate her own embedding agreement with the Pentagon – an agreement so sensitive that, according to one Times editor, Rumsfeld himself signed off on it."


snip


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

[CoffeeCat]

1. That's why I don't buy her crocodile tears...

When we heard that Judy was drying her tears and whining, "But...but...I fear for my life...the government is just too powerful," I think we all knew she was honing her acting skills.

Miller is a part of the big, powerful government--that she supposedly is crying about. Her loyalty to the neocons was the motivation for those treasonous, fluffy, lie-saturated articles she wrote that led up to the Iraq war.

She's one of them.

The fact that she's trying to make it look like she's got a legitimate reason for her cover up (cuz she's just so scared!) reveals that she's covering up someone uber high up on the food chain in the White House.

[warsager]

2. This is an awesome article

and should be read in its entirety.

There was one paragraph that confused me at first:

"...How the former could be true, when the information Miller is accused of passing did not form the basis of a published story, indicates the degree of confusion reigning on this score, particularly among the Bush-bashers who are so eager to attribute all the evil in the world to the regime they invariably refer to it as "BushCo." What these Democratic partisans don't seem to understand is that Bulldog Fitzgerald is their friend."

I guess I felt completely confused because I think Miller is a criminal that belongs in jail. But then I remembered many people think its a crime that she was jailed. Well I think for any doubters this is a great article. And also, it gives me hope.

:bounce:

[slor]

4. I am glad she is in jail...

but not for the reason she is in for. Refusing to name a source is quite admirable, in keeping with the highest journalistic integrity. Her promotion of the disaster in Iraq, based on the lies fed to her by that blowhard chalabi, is why she needs to locked in a cell, and it is my sincerest hope that someday soon, while she is there, that she will be within earshot of her fellow criminal taskmasters, the entire bush administration.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Miller's in jail, but not accused and convicted for her true crime.

"It is now clear that Miller performed certain duties on behalf of the War Party, aside from publicizing their case for invading Iraq."

[Disturbed]

5. Refusing to name a source

That is what she claims. No one knows if that is in fact, the truth. She may not be protecting any source. She may be protecting herself. She may be protecting a criminal &/or traitor. Why? She may be the person that got the name of V. Plame for Lewis Libby and passed it on to Cooper and Novak. We don't know what or who she is protecting. We only have her word for that. She is in contempt of court for refusing a lawful order to testify to the GJ, not for refusing to name a source. I suspect that she is guilty of Obstruction of Justice and Conspiracy To Commit Fraud. She may recieve extra charges. I sure hope she does.

[warsager]

6. I don't consider the leaker of

a covert CIA agent a source. Not to offend anyone here, but that is absurd. She is either protecting her own criminal activity or that of someone else. Either way, there is no 'journalistic integrity' here. AND also, being that she clearly never had any before, why now suddenly?

This is just more BS.