Steve Clemons: "Judith Miller - the Grossest Kind of War Profiteer"

[swag]

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000999.html

excerpt:

The New York Times should immediately fire her and discredit her immediately. This whole episode has been as fake and contrived -- and corrupt -- as Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Armstrong Williams.

She is planning to get rich off her shenanigans, which included misreporting about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and helping to set up an environment conducive to America's invasion of Iraq.

An apologist for Judith Miller -- and someone very close to her legal team -- told me recently that "George Bush did not go to war because of or inspite of Judy Miller's reporting. These soldiers didn't die because of her."

Well, I disagree. Judith Miller helped tip the balance. She carries a significant portion of the blame and bears a burden of responsibility for the deaths of American service men and women as well as tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

But what is more disgusting is that she is planning to CASH IN on this war and on her contrived battle that had nothing to do with freedom of the press and the protection of sources.

Judith Miller is a war-profiteer of the grossest kind.

[understandinglife]

1. Recommended. Steve Clemons is correct.

Peace.

[johnfunk]

2. Miller on the left of the pic, Clemons on the right:

Pwned!

[YDogg]

3. Ship her ass to Iraq ...

... and see how she likes it now.

[speedoo]

4. Class action lawsuit? Injunction against her profiteering?

Can she be sued by next of kin and wounded?

[stepnw1f]

5. Another Sociopath...

pretending to be strong enough to ward off guilt and denial. Her type exists without a soul. There is no way I could ever do the things she has done. I could never stoop that low.

[Peace Patriot]

12. Hey, stepnw1f, we're all human here, and each of us holds the potential

to commit the worst of crimes. And we should never forget it.

"I am he as you are he as you are me, and we are all together," as the Beatles once sang. And it's true.

Throwing the darkness off ourselves onto a scapegoat can't get rid of it. It may feel justified if the scapegoated person actually committed crimes, but it still isn't. Justice, in that case, should be cool-headed, impartial and truly just. But being scared by what other human beings do, so that you wish to deny that you and everyone else is capable of the same, just postpones a reckoning with our own dark side, and may lead to great injustice--as with Inquisitors in the Middle Ages who felt justified in tormenting and burning "witches," for instance. Mob psychology. Self-righteousness. Heaping scorn on others; denying they have a soul (or more perversely, tormenting and killing them to SAVE their souls); or thinking of them as sub-human, because our imaginations run wild about the crimes we think they have committed. (People in the Middle Ages blamed the Jews for the Plague, accused them of poisoning the wells--stuff like that.) That's what can happen when we consider ourselves more human (i.e., better) than others.

Criminals are not sub-human. Not even the worst of them are. We may recoil--but we should know that that recoil is not simple virtue, on our parts. We are anything but simple creatures.

It's sometimes difficult, in the political sphere, to avoid name-calling and the scapegoating impulse, because we don't want evildoers representing us and taking our money and using it for ill purposes. I've engaged in it myself. But I do think about it, every time I do it. Is Dick Cheney evil? Or just human? Is evil the right word? Doesn't the word "evil" just exonerate ME from any part in his crimes--when, in fact, I use oil and oil products every day, and have never acted on my belief that the U.S. war machine should be dismantled (--as others have, the Catholic Workers, for instance, who have done time in jail for pouring blood on missiles)? Am I not part of this "evil"? What have I really done to stop it, or to bear witness? (Some things--but not that much.)

You see what I mean? Judith Miller is not soulless or sub-human. She may have committed crimes, but they were all crimes that we are part of, in some way. Doesn't mean I don't believe in justice. I do! But I guess my justice would be aimed at trying to heal this wounded soul; aimed at recompense and renewal, not at revenge.

[johnfunk]

6. I bet her "book" ends up getting published by a NewsCorp entity...

[gratuitous]

7. Yeah, Judy has much to answer for

Her closeness to Chalabi, her willingness to print anything that helped the cause of war along, her crowing about being the queen of all fucking Iraq, she went way over the line of reporter and became an advocate recalling the worst day of William Randolph Hearst and yellow journalism.

[Totally Committed]

8. Clemons is on the money again! n/t

TC

[johnfunk]

9. Candygram for Judy Miller: You've been...

[Garbo 2004]

10. Judy and the NYT lent credibility to Bush's war agenda & helped perpetuate

a fraud on the American people.

And, evidently, they're still doing it. The NYT's support of their ace "journalist" the fabulist Judy Miller, this time the self-made star of her own highly suspect saga, perpetuates the fraud.

[swag]

13. What is profoundly disappointing (and perhaps I am quite naive)

is the absolute refusal of the New York Times editorial board to acknowledge the unseemliness of that paper's complicity in spreading the administration's "fixed intelligence" as fact, and grounding the false case for war in the realm of the "free" American press.

After a brief round of hand-wringing by their public editor, the Times did some soul-searching and decided that to become a better paper, they should have more coverage of things that most people cared about, like religion. Remember that?

These days, the war and their own editorial polices both disasters, they publish tortured editorials trying to justify themselves in light of Miller's own turn-around and their own prior piety on the matter of her imprisonment, they continue to let Tom "I could have invaded better" Friedman blithely and backhandedly advocate the civil war that he helped create ("if the Sunni's don't like the new constitution, they can go to heck! Hey, is that the new color Blackberry with built-in Taser?"), and they welcome Chalabi's/PNAC's/OSP's own press mole back with hugs and kisses.

The Times needs to come clean. Either they were chumped or they chumped their readers and the nation. Maybe all of the above.

[texpatriot2004]

15. So why hasn't the NYT fired her? She trashed them with this

propoganda and yet they are not only keeping her on but going out of their way to use that ridiculous "release" excuse. I read somewhere that she's close to the family that owns the paper; is that it?

[Tanuki]

11. "Son of Sam law"

Isn't there a law that prevents criminals from profiting from their crimes?

[WiseButAngrySara]

14. Kick and recommended. .....n/t

[tgnyc]

16. remember, she "was proved fuckin' right!"

[Garbo 2004]

17. Yeah and she said that after it was abundantly evident that she was proved

"fucking wrong."

This paragon of journalistic integrity, in response to those who understandably assert that she indeed got the story wrong, said that an investigative reporter's job isn't fact checking. Huh??? Whaaat???

And still the NYT continues not only to keep her on the payroll but defends, justifies and promotes her as a "principled journalist." Simply mind boggling.

[Marr]

18. I don't think she's simply cashing in. That idiot is a real believer.

I remember reading an account of some talk she gave at a university a couple of years ago. During the "question & answer" portion, one student after another pointed inconsistencies in her claims and here professed ideals.

Her responses were a weird combination of jingoism, non-sequiter, and plain stupidity. She didn't make any sense at all, and eventually got angry and left early.

[jmatthan]

19. My views have been in tandem with Steven Clemons

See my blog entry at TPM Cafe at

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/5/35843/5650

[swag]

20. Wow. Nice selection of letters.

The one of July 7, 2005 is my own personal favorite.

[chat_noir]

21. new assignment

Miller should be assigned to cover all the U.S.'s new offensives in Iraq. Put her on the front lines.

[leftchick]

22. Flashback to May,2004.... Everyone Has Your Number Judy!

It is Amazing she has the nerve to show her face at the Times let along write a fucking book! :argh:

Salon: Not Fit To Print...

<snip>

May 27, 2004 | When the full history of the Iraq war is written, one of its most scandalous chapters will be about how American journalists, in particular those at the New York Times, so easily allowed themselves to be manipulated by both dubious sources and untrustworthy White House officials into running stories that misled the nation about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The Times finally acknowledged its grave errors in an extraordinary and lengthy editors note published Wednesday. The editors wrote:

"We have found ... instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been ... In some cases, the information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge ... We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight."

The editors conceded what intelligence sources had told me and numerous other reporters: that Chalabi was feeding bad information to journalists and the White House and had set up a situation with Iraqi exiles where all of the influential institutions were shouting into the same garbage can, hearing the same echo. "Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/27/times/index_np.html