"... an entire Noah's Ark of scam-artists." -- The Judy Miller legacy

[understandinglife]

Almost two years ago, Alexander Cockburn published an essay entitled "Judy Miller's War."

Much has happened in those two years, but one thing was abundantly obvious even before August of 2003 -- Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice and others had all lied to the American people, the Congress, the UN and our allies. And, Judy Miller and the New York Times participated in the deception, big time.

Today, Bush's propagandist-in-chief is in jail. Though the real reason why is probably going to be revealed to be yet another Judy-scam -- using the 1st when what she should be doing is claiming the 5th.

Her colleagues increasingly are acknowledging what Cockburn cogently described two years ago.

Let's compare two articles; Cockburn's on August 13, 2003 with Moore's published yesterday, August 3, 2005.

And, let us also realize how many more American and allied soldiers have been killed or injured; how many more Iraqi citizens have been killed, injured, terrorized and tortured; how much more destruction of Iraq has transpired; and, how many, many, many more lies Bush and the neoconsters have told all of us in the intervening two years.

Judy Miller's War
by Alexander Cockburn

August 13, 2003

Lay all Judith Miller's New York Times stories end to end, from late 2001 to June 2003 and you get a desolate picture of a reporter with an agenda, both manipulating and being manipulated by US government officials, Iraqi exiles and defectors, an entire Noah's Ark of scam-artists.

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We don't have full 20/20 hindsight yet, but we do know for certain that all the sensational disclosures in Miller's major stories between late 2001 and early summer, 2003, promoted disingenuous lies. There were no secret biolabs under Saddam's palaces; no nuclear factories across Iraq secretly working at full tilt. A huge percentage of what Miller wrote was garbage, garbage that powered the Bush administration's propaganda drive towards invasion.

What does that make Miller? She was a witting cheer-leader for war. She knew what she was doing.

And what does Miller's performance make the New York Times? .....

More at the link:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08182003.html

Judy and the Little Tubes of Terror

by James Moore

August 3, 2005

In the Washington Post this week, Richard Cohen has insisted that the current fury over Judy Miller is bad for journalism. He is as wrong as the guy who thought New Coke was a good idea. Journalism, like every craft and profession, needs to purge itself from time to time of diseased tissue. The failure of Miller and the mainstream media in general during the run up to the Iraqi invasion is certainly the perfect moment for introspection and rethinking over how reporters do their jobs. Miller was quoted as saying that it wasn't her job to analyze what the government is saying or doing; it was her responsibility to simply report it. Below is a narrative of how she did just that. And it proves why she is wrong. I don't know what she is protecting by going to jail. Probably information that exposes her and the people she has worked with on all of her inaccurate stories.

The Valerie Plame investigation exists today because Americans were lied to about Iraq and reporters, either unwittingly or by design, were complicit in that lie. And it is as important to look at that time period as it is to examine the outing of an undercover spy. The two are inseparable.

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The timing was a thing of pure political beauty. President George W. Bush was only a few days away from speaking to the United Nations’ General Assembly about Iraq’s renewed efforts to acquire banned weaponry. And, in a month, the president was going to Congress to seek a resolution approving of a war against Iraq. A Sunday morning story, September 8, 2002, in the New York Times made the U.N. speech and the congressional debate much easier for the White House. Under the headline, “Threats and Responses: The Iraqis; U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts,” a 3603 word story by Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller ....

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The White House had mixed up journalists’ ambitions with misleading intelligence and brewed up a myth that yielded a powerful national belief in its illusion. A political Sasquatch, the aluminum tubes story was the first to begin banging the drums of conflict. The truth, finally, was tortured until it was no longer recognizable.

And the sons and daughters of America were sent marching off to war wearing the boots of a well-told lie.

Much, much more at the link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/jim-moore/judy-and-the-litt_5117.html

September 13, 2003 was more than a year before November 2, 2004 -- and we still have members of the Democratic Party, as well as reasonable members of the Republican Party, both supportive of Bush's illegal war on Iraq and unwilling to demand the resignation of Bush, Cheney and all the other criminals in Bush's administration.

They are criminals - they lied to us, they lied to the Congress and they launched an illegal war. Oh, and then we have the torture thing and ....... THEY ARE CRIMINALS.

The evidence is not 'circumstantial'; it's staring us straight in the face and has been since the spring of 2003.

How much longer are we going to tolerate the continuing lies, the continuing dereliction of duty by our representatives in Congress, and the continuing illegal occupation of Iraq?

How much longer?

WATCH IT; SPREAD IT http://www.bushflash.com/right.html

Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us - How ever long it takes, the day must come when tens of millions of caring individuals peacefully but persistently defy the dictator, deny the corporatists their cash flow, and halt the evil being done in Iraq and in all the other places the Bu$h neoconster regime is destroying civilization and the environment in the name of "America."