Reply #27: Hm-m-m. Read it. And I'm beginning to be on Libby's side--in this legal

[Peace Patriot]

tug-of-war over Miller's notes. I really don't care if Libby goes to jail or not (or anybody else, for that matter), as long as the TRUTH about this junta is revealed. (I also would like the American people to get some of its trillions of dollars in stolen, unaccountable funds returned.) And I strongly suspect that Miller's notes in the June-July 2003 period might open a can of worms such as we have never seen before in this country.

Don't forget what Judith Miller was doing just before and during that period--she was embedded with the U.S. troops in Iraq who were "hunting" for the WMDs that everybody knew weren't there. According to her, she had a special "embed" contract signed by none other than Donald Rumsfeld. And she threw her weight around with these troops, demanding they go here and there--to the great annoyance of commanders in the field. The war profiteering corporate news monopolies--led by the NYT--had built up expectations that WMDs would be found. And there was their "star reporter," right on the scene to get "the scoop."

So, what was going on with this? Suspicion: Back at the Rome 2001 meeting (with Neo-Cons and Ghorbanifar), they were cooking up more than the Niger/Iraq nuke forgeries--they had Ghorbanifar there to procure actual nukes to be PLANTED in Iraq, which the Judith Miller-led U.S. troops would then "find." Ghorbanifar ALSO engineered a phony story about the Iranians stealing the Iraqi nukes during this period and taking them to Iran. Was the plan to "discover" nukes in Iraq, that were in transit to Iran, and invade Iran back then, following close upon the invasion of Iraq?

I'm not sure what to think of the Ghorbanifar Iraq/Iran nuke ploy (it was as easily exposed as the "crude" Niger forgeries), but it seems more than likely that the follow-up to the Niger nuke forgeries was to be the phony "find" of actual nukes in Iraq--to justify the war, to give Bush/Blair that enormous political benefit, and perhaps also to discredit the CIA.

Of the people in a good position to have discovered such an attempted deceit (planting nukes in Iraq), one has to count, a) Valerie Plame; b) the U.S. counter-proliferation network that she headed; and c) experienced U.N. weapons inspectors such as the British WMD expert, David Kelly. Plame and the Brewster-Jennings network were outed--its covert agents and contacts all put at risk of death, and all projects disabled--and David Kelly was found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances, all within one week: July 14-22, 2003. (The timeline goes like this: July 14, Plame outed. July 18, Kelly found dead, his offices and computers are searched. July 22, Brewster-Jennings is outed.)

The day before Kelly died, he wrote an email to his old friend and colleague, Judith Miller (who had used him as a major quoted source in her book "Germs"). In the email--which is generally forward-looking--he expresses concern about the "many dark actors playing games." (Kelly had been whistleblowing to the BBC in late May about the "sexed up" prewar intel; he had been mysteriously outed to his bosses and interrogated at a "safe house" (late June); Tony Blair had been informed (on July 7) that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things"; Kelly committed suicide, or was suicided, on July 17.) Miller failed to disclose this email, or her close connections to Kelly, in the news article she wrote about his death for the NYT a couple of days after he was found dead.

Given all of this, if I had a choice between Libby going to jail, or getting off (because of "seeds" he may have planted in Miller's notes, for instance--that he is now hunting for), and the latter (his getting off) brought Judith Miller's June-July 2003 notebooks, emails, phone logs and calendar into the public venue, I think I was would choose the latter.

It's not my choice, of course. And, as Talkleft and DU bloggers--and Patrick Fitzgerald and the judge--have frequently pointed out: Libby is not on trial for outing Valerie Plame. He's on trial for lying and obstruction of justice--very likely in an effort to shield Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others from treason charges.

But we need LIGHT in this country, and lots of it--more than we need the seconds-in-command in jail. Fitzgerald's legal strategy has already yielded quite a bit of light, in these very dark times for the U.S. A man like him comes along once in a generation--if that generation is lucky. (And apparently we ARE!) So I'm not telling HIM what to do. He has Libby flailing around defending himself from something he hasn't been accused of--yet--and revealing more with every flail.

I'm just saying I would like to see the real motives for Traitorgate exposed--and the full panoply of crimes; that our country needs that to happen; and that I think that Judith Miller did not get on the front pages of the NYT because she was a good reporter, but rather because of who was running her, who she knew, who she was communicating with and meeting with, and how she was serving the Bush junta and the war profiteers--and I think her notes/calendars, etc., would help us understand just what-all our government has been up to, in our name, and how the collapse of journalistic integrity in our country's news organizations, under the weight of corporate monopolies, has contributed to the fascist coup that we are suffering.

I think she's at the heart of it--witting or unwitting (or half-witting). "It" being the shattering of our democracy. Even more so than people like Libby and Rove. We were supposed to have protection against tyrants running rampant. That's what Thomas Jefferson's design was. A free press, to keep the tyrants reigned in. If the executive runs rampant, we have Congress. If Congress runs rampant--or if the Executive and the Congress run rampant together (as they have with Bushite-controlled "trade secret" vote tabulation, for instance), we have the Fifth Estate, our free press, to cry foul and keep the people informed. (Our top court went rampant long ago.) And if the Fifth Estate runs rampant, and starts printing war propaganda straight from the rampant Executive, and colludes in destroying all checks and balances (such as the honest professionals in the CIA), then our democracy is in very big trouble, to put it mildly, and there has never been a time in our history when we have had more need to KNOW just what is going on.

What we need is a Truth and Justice Commission (such as they had in South Africa). And I hope and pray that that's where we're heading. What's left to us are the powers of the states--which can reverse the electronic voting scam, for instance, and also (we have found out recently) can submit a privileged bill of impeachment against the president and vice president to the U.S. Congress (all it takes is one state legislature). And we ourselves--We, the People--who have been the victims of all this. What's left is us, the theoretical sovereigns of this land. Will we be the last generation to remember a free press and a free country? Or will we rise up, oust these fascists, and create a better country than any of us has ever dreamed of?

That's my bet. A better country and a better world. Democracy is alive and well, here, beneath the corporate news monopoly delusions. And the Judith Millers of this world will better understand that, after we get her testimony at the U.S. Truth and Justice Commission. One commission in each state. And she has to confess her sins in every one. She and her pals in the Pentagon and the White House.