Monday, October 17, 2005

Iraq Election Article, Judy Miller, New York Times

An Iraqi doctor has written an article in tomorrow's NY Times. Voting 'Yes' to Chaos by HATEM MUKHLIS is a clear picture of why the balkanization of Iraq is the end-result of the wrong-headed constitution they are trying to push.

Yesterday's Times carried a 6000 word report on what had gone so badly at the paper as to be scooped on stories about its own correspondent -- Judith Miller. Miller herself wrote a rather opaque article which appears to make things more rather than less murky. It fell to Randi Rhodes of Air America to state it succinctly: What do you make of this? A reporter goes to jail for 85 days saying she will not reveal her source. Then she comes out with much fanfare, goes to the grand jury, and tells them she doesn't remember who here source was! No other commentator has put it quite so elegantly. Yahoo had a news headline today that several members of the media felt Judy Miller should have been sacked for the humiliation she brought upon the paper. Not only did the paper toe her line, but it backed up its suckering by spending millions of dollars on her defense.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News Service reports that Vice-President Cheney may be the one path of Patrick Fitzgerald's inquiries. [Read article]. And just now, the top headline in the Washington Post is: Cheney's Office Is A Focus in Leak Case.

On Sunday, Condoleezza Rice was on several talk shows. Asked about the Fitzgerald inquiry by Chris Wallace of Fox, she took the usual Bush Administration (we don't talk about matters sub-judice) line. Rice, as revealed in a fine article by Frank Rich, was one of the eight members of a secret group called "White House Iraq Group", created in summer 2002 to 'sell the Iraq War' to the American public. Neither Russert nor Wallace asked about it, though.

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