Criminal Source and Accountability

Cozy with the Bush administration, Judith Miller may go to jail to protect their leakers (Rove and whoever is intended eventually to take the fall for his action – wherever will they find another Ollie North?). Normally I would be on the side of journalists to protect their anonymous sources, but in this case it is obstruction of justice to do so. I don’t think journalists should be accomplices to all this, and I don’t believe that’s what investigative journalism is all about. Of course, I don’t see a whole lot of investigative journalism anymore. There seems to be more of the “verbatim recitation of press release” style – not much in the way of helping the public to make even the most basic distinctions. Throw a few images together and you can make anything look like anything – like the falling statue of Hussein – let’s see a pan-out of the whole square, the context.

Ironically, Judith Miller says she is going to jail to defend “a free press” – could it be more absurd? What a strange Orwellian precedent! Watch for it to be used in future.

So anyway, “Bioterrorism Judy” has to decide which is worse – go to jail or risk the wrath of her sponsors/sources/demons/whatever they are. She was instrumental in spreading the word that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. I actually read her book while I was writing my dissertation, so I think I understand how she could have been pulled in…

Meanwhile her colleague somehow walks. Very strange.

I wonder what “reporter’s notes” were actually turned over and how the corporation would even have those notes to begin with?

Outing the classified information of Plame as a CIA agent is in fact an act of treason under the law. Her work, and the work of others was hopelessly compromised and their lives were endangered (and perhaps even lost, how would we know?) because of this spiteful act. We could have used them to get better intelligence, to better protect the USA. That this was done in a sneaky way, and simply to punish her husband’s truth-telling to power (he was right about there being no WMDs, remember?) simply underlines the unethical quality of this administration. Hypocrites – whispering to the press to manipulate us, while publically condemning leaks. Please.

Meanwhile, there is simply no accountability of the governing to the governed. No-one from on higher up has even been held responsible for the war crimes in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo – and if Alberto G. comes up for nomination, just remember who crafted the new policies for torture. Can you still call this a democracy or even, as my few remaining conservative friends remind me, a “representative republic”? Wake up sheeple!

We still have mechanisms in this contry to change things. Don’t let it get to the point of revolution. Before the 2006 election, we need to take control of our electoral apparatus. Review the new information at http://www.blackboxvoting.org about the voting machine as a “a house with an unlockable revolving door.”

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