here's a reminder from her summary post:
"In any case, I'll show that, from the spring on, Judy's reporting was doing the same thing the Neocon's attack on Wilson and eventual outing of Plame was doing--both were trying to sustain the claims for WMDs made to justify the war. Further, Judy was actively assisting Defense in its battle against State and CIA over control of Iraq. Judy twice did things even more closely related to the Plame Affair--trying to discredit someone based on his association with CIA, and trying to pass off what I believe to be another Niger forgery.the whole series was emptywheel at her finest (which she appears not to deviate from) - i suggest you read it.
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If her embed was with Chalabi and the XTF, then we can think of the scope of her embed as defined by her objective, not one particularly military unit. Rummy sent Judy to Iraq to make sure events on the ground in Iraq didn't totally discredit the excuse for the war, the WMDs. Embedding Judy with the 75th XTF was an important way to help Judy manage WMD expecations. But she needed Chalabi's help to thoroughly craft expectations." "
larisa and emptywheel have both demonstrated that while the headlines were focussed on niger and plame, there was a whole lot going on in the early days of the war that we havent even begun to unravel
14 comments:
Blogwhoring is good for me. I read the whole lot through and I am still inclined to think that Judy had been (at least part-way) sucked in and hadn't completely realised the fact until possibly the final e-mail from and then the death of Dr. Kelly. Chalabi had played her like a violin, if she had previously realised this her reporting shows no sign of it. Also David Kay, by his own admission, went to Iraq to report for NBC about the failures of the 75th in May 2003, this was about the time that Judy was there, did they cross paths and compare notes at all?
After this her credibility was obviously at stake, perhaps this is why she did not publicly comment on la affair Plame, especially realising that she could be sucked into that one too (as she eventually was)?
lol - emptywheel can market her stuff at my place whenever and however she chooses - i'll hang out the shingles for her!
i'm not sure why you are so desperate to believe that judy was an unwitting participant (i dont have any proof to the contrary - but it seems easier to believe that she is a part of the conspiracy that some unwitting participant)
btw - thanks for your input - its nice to have you here. lots of good questions.
lukery,
Don't get me wrong, I'm not particularly desperate to believe one thing or another, but sometimes one just has to trample through the undergrowth whilst looking for the trees in the forest. I think she was more than willing to be part of the wider story, and I do think that she initially believed WMD would be found. But an actual conspirator? I'm not quite so certain there. Sure the White House etc wanted it all to come out their way, but as we all now know, that wasn't going to happen, not in a million years. There are red and blue elements in all the agencies, I think this will pan out to be a major reason why much of the correct intelligence was lost along the way. But I wouldn't credit Judy as being the brains behind anything to justify a ficticious case. Not unless someone can prove that she was actually working for the CIA all along.
(Thx for the welcome - it feels like home already!)
grab yerself a coffee :-)
apologies for the 'desperate' comment - that doesnt look so great on the screen this morning. you are correct - we don't know that she was an actual conspirator - she sure looks like one though. perhaps she was so embedded/entangled that she couldnt see that she was being played like a fiddle.
i've said some silly things to get laid in my time - maybe she was guilty of same (although i've only ever broken hearts and promises, not countries)
lukery,
grab yerself a coffee :-)
Yeah, I need one too.
Grab yourself a copy of National Security Directive 54 (paragraph 10) and we'll take it from there !
"Should Iraq resort to using (mobile weapons labs)... it shall become an explicit objective of the United States to replace the current leadership of Iraq."
I've got to say - that's where it started !
simon - are you saying that judy's involvement in this mess goes back to that declaration?
or that the mobile labs story was around before the 91 war?
fyi - here's judy: "After Iraq lost the 1991 Persian Gulf war and agreed to destroy its unconventional arms, Iraqi officials told United Nations inspectors that Baghdad had once considered making mobile germ plants."
lukery,
are you saying...
Not so much about Judy, but about the whole WMD issue and the eventual downfall of Saddam. GHWB made it a explicit objective to remove Saddam for the reasons given. GWB carried out the policy. Saddam had called GHWB's bluff and did what he was told not to do. On the chemical side he used Scuds and Frog missiles and most likely the 'missing' artillery shells, he certainly attempted to destroy the oilfields by blowing them up. The bio thing is a little harder to determine, there were positive detections of anthrax near Dhahran, although they were near sheep pens and you have to bear in mind that anthrax is endemic in Saudi. Maybe it was actually these sheep that were the 'mobile germ plants'?
lol re sheep
are scuds chemical??? man - i really ought to know more about this stuff than i pretend to know...
btw - i'm working on a timeline post about the mobile labs - i'll try to get that out this eve (although i'm in a weird time zone - it might not happen till tomorrow)
ew tells me that she respects your opinion - but i dont know/recognize you - do you post over at her place under a different name?
re saddam and 'regime change' - did yuo see my interview with larisa? she argues that the situation is the same with iran - ie: it has nothing to do with WMD
lukery,
Re: Scuds - I've posted in the missile crisis entry so you'll get the gist from there, see scudwatch.org for more details.
I've never posted at TLH so it's doubtful that EW has come across me before. I used to post about Dr. Kelly and WMD extensively on the UK's C4 News Forum but the censorship (and the trolls) eventually got me down.
Re: saddam and 'regime change', well I think it all came about because of GWB 'doing this for his Dad'. That's where it started at least. (Of course the neo-cons and their ilk were only too happy to make it happen.)
ew is a genius - you just hang out there (although im buzzed to have you at my place)
my new timeline piece is up btw
man - i never knew that the scuds were loaded. why did they keep that one secret?
are you in the uk? i lived in london for a couple of years.
im not sure i buy the 'for my dad' thing - although that's probably as explanatory as anything else we've heard...
(TLH? I meant TNH:-)
Well done on the timeline, I will comment on DK a bit more later, have some other stuff to do this afternoon.
Re: Scuds - if they had told the truth at the time it would have upped the ante in that war no end, it might have turned public opinion and might even have broken the coalition. Once a lie like that is told, it's hard telling the truth again, reputations at stake and all that...
Yep, in England, in King Arthur's ancient land of Avalon !
Not felling Saddam in the first place was GHW's biggest regret. Like a dutiful son does, GW wanted to put that right more than anything else...
hmmmm - i suspect that if there's any truth to the ghwb/gwb/saddam story, it has more to do with oedipus than 'duty'
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