7.07.2005

karl rove, traitor

Ted Rall has some interesting things to say about Karl Rove.

I'm linking to the Common Dreams version of Rall's piece, because I find Rall's blog a little difficult to deal with it. But there it is, for those interested.

Perhaps everyone knew this but me, as I don't follow these types of stories too well. Apparently Karl Rove was Time reporter Matthew Cooper's source. Rall asks:
Do Republicans have a shred of patriotism or loyalty to American legal principles left?

and

Do Democrats have the slightest spine left?
No, and no. Certainly not.

Rosa Brooks of the L.A. Times has something to say about Judith Miller. I don't care for Brooks calling Miller "competitive and heartless". That's totally irrelevant. I also find it sexist, as I can't imagine a male journalist being described this way. Aside from that, Brooks aptly reminds us
It was Miller, more than any other reporter, who helped the White House sell its WMD-in-Iraq hokum to the American public. Relying on the repeatedly discredited Ahmad Chalabi and her carefully cultivated administration contacts, Miller wrote story after story on the supposedly imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
Brooks closes with this:
If a source with a clear political motivation passes along classified information that has no value for public debate but would endanger the career, and possibly the life, of a covert agent, is a journalist ethically permitted to "out" the no-good sneak? You bet. And if the knowledge that they can't always hide behind anonymity has a "chilling effect" on political hacks who are eager to manipulate the media in furtherance of their vested interests, that's OK with me.

But Miller still won't testify. Even though, ethically, there should be no obligation to go to jail to cover for a sleazeball.

It's possible (though not likely) that Miller is covering for a genuine whistle-blower who fears retaliation for fingering, gee, Karl Rove, for instance, as the real source of the leak.

But I have another theory. Miller's no fool; she understood the lesson of the Martha Stewart case: When you find yourself covered with mud, there's nothing like a brief stint in a minimum-security prison to restore your old luster.
Read the column here.

1 comment:

allan said...

More on Miller, known on some lefty blogs as "The Queen of Iraq":

In June 2003, the Washington Post reported that:

***

Miller played a highly unusual role in an Army unit assigned to search for dangerous Iraqi weapons, according to US military officials, prompting criticism that the unit was turned into what one official called a 'rogue operation.'

More than a half-dozen military officers said that Miller acted as a middleman between the Army unit with which she was embedded and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, on one occasion accompanying Army officers to Chalabi's headquarters, where they took custody of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law. She also sat in on the initial debriefing of the son-in-law, these sources say.

Since interrogating Iraqis was not the mission of the unit, these officials said, it became a 'Judith Miller team,' in the words of one officer close to the situation."

****

More of her unabashed Bush support outlined here.