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I am really, really getting annoyed at the number of column inches in recent weeks devoted to professional and personal devotion to what bricks Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper are, bricks in the Press Bulwark of Democracy and Truth. It looks more, to me, as if they are Human Shields for figures in the White House who, in the summer of 2003, were busy, busy, busy with the process of "fixing the intelligence," per the Downing Street Memo, and accompanying documents, and in the ramping up of an invasion of Iraq. [See Daniel Solove at Balkinization on the privilege angles.] This is not a conspiracy theory - US Iraq policy was all out in the open, or so thinly veiled that irrefutable confirmation of official manipulation of intelligence to support an invasion surprises no one who was paying attention; big Ho-Hum from editorialists and reporters who were supposed to be on the case [refs on request - I can post 'em in Comments to save space here].
Except it was a lie, top to bottom, and the Wilson/Plame case wasn't some side issue, it was part and parcel of the whole schmeer - it was crucial that Wilson's report on the non-existent supply to Iraq of WMD materials be quashed at whatever cost to our real security. And this keeps pointing - to my simple mind - again to the question, "If not our national security, then whose security is being protected - for what reasons and to what ends?"
Come on, smarties, fill me in.