Psycho-Cannon
06-27-03, 06:23 AM
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jun2003/mill-j27.shtml
Many of you may remeber the sensationalist articles coming out of the Times signed by Judith Miller.
Seems belive it or not there was more to it than just willingly publishing blatantly false stories.
In a column published June 25, the Washington Post’s media critic Howard Kurtz sheds new light on the integral role played by the media itself, and, in particular, the “newspaper of record,” the New York Times, in this act of criminal deception
In a war that saw “embedded” journalists functioning as cheerleaders for the American military and the media serving as a propaganda arm of the Bush administration, the Times played an especially sordid role.
Its duplicity was exemplified by one of its senior correspondents, Judith Miller, who is reputed in media circles to be an expert in weapons of mass destruction as well as on Islam, despite her lack of a science background and her inability to speak Arabic.
As many know She was assigned the the Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) Alpha - the team landed with trying to find the non-existant WMD.
According to Kurtz: “In April, Miller wrote a letter objecting to an Army commander’s order to withdraw the unit...from the field. She said this would be a ‘waste’ of time and suggested that she would write about it unfavorably in the Times. After Miller took up the matter with a two-star general, the pullback order was dropped.”
Apparently, US military commanders had concluded that the hunt for non-existent WMD had become a “waste” of the army’s time, but Miller, who was embedded with the unit, was operating on her own agenda and managed to overrule them.
In her letter, quoted in the Post column, she wrote: “I intend to write about this decision in the NY Times to send a successful team back home just as progress on WMD is being made.” Military officers quoted by Kurtz reported that Miller regularly told army personnel that she would go directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or Undersecretary Douglas Feith about decisions with which she disagreed. “Essentially, she threatened them,” said one officer.
A journalist??? overturning a millitary order to withdraw troops to continue a hunt for WMD that they decided didn't exist......i'm sorry am i missing something??
She also admitted albeit accidently that the source for most of the "Shocking" stories all of which turned out to be completly false, came from Ahmed Chalabi, Chalabi, a convicted embezzler, heads the Iraqi National Congress, the US-financed exile group that forged close relations with the Pentagon’s civilian leadership in the run-up to the war.
Miller fired back that she was entitled to the interview as she had forged a relationship with Chalabi over the course of a decade. She noted, “He [Chalabi] has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD in our paper.”
The admission was extremely revealing, as Miller never cited Chalabi in her WMD “exclusives.” That he was the source was unquestionably a matter of interest, given that the US intelligence community has long raised doubts about the credibility of information coming from Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. Both State Department and CIA officials had cautioned that the exile group fashioned “intelligence” in order to promote a US invasion that the group believed would place it in power at the head of a colonial-style puppet regime.
Other Miller “exclusives” carried the following headlines: “US experts find radioactive material in Iraq,” and “US-led forces occupy Baghdad complex filled with chemical agents.” In each case, the sensational claims, providing welcome grist for the Bush administration’s propaganda mill, quickly proved unfounded.
As Kurtz makes clear in his latest piece, Miller was more than a mouthpiece for the Pentagon. She played an active, at times even leading, role in the US military’s operations in occupied Iraq.
And they point out a good fact as well.
The Jason Blari fiasco recently saw the massive witch hunt of a young journalist for mis-quoting and plagarising work for this paper yet such actions as this by Miller and they stand by and defend her at the slightest criticism?
What has the "Free press" been reduced to?
Many of you may remeber the sensationalist articles coming out of the Times signed by Judith Miller.
Seems belive it or not there was more to it than just willingly publishing blatantly false stories.
In a column published June 25, the Washington Post’s media critic Howard Kurtz sheds new light on the integral role played by the media itself, and, in particular, the “newspaper of record,” the New York Times, in this act of criminal deception
In a war that saw “embedded” journalists functioning as cheerleaders for the American military and the media serving as a propaganda arm of the Bush administration, the Times played an especially sordid role.
Its duplicity was exemplified by one of its senior correspondents, Judith Miller, who is reputed in media circles to be an expert in weapons of mass destruction as well as on Islam, despite her lack of a science background and her inability to speak Arabic.
As many know She was assigned the the Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) Alpha - the team landed with trying to find the non-existant WMD.
According to Kurtz: “In April, Miller wrote a letter objecting to an Army commander’s order to withdraw the unit...from the field. She said this would be a ‘waste’ of time and suggested that she would write about it unfavorably in the Times. After Miller took up the matter with a two-star general, the pullback order was dropped.”
Apparently, US military commanders had concluded that the hunt for non-existent WMD had become a “waste” of the army’s time, but Miller, who was embedded with the unit, was operating on her own agenda and managed to overrule them.
In her letter, quoted in the Post column, she wrote: “I intend to write about this decision in the NY Times to send a successful team back home just as progress on WMD is being made.” Military officers quoted by Kurtz reported that Miller regularly told army personnel that she would go directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or Undersecretary Douglas Feith about decisions with which she disagreed. “Essentially, she threatened them,” said one officer.
A journalist??? overturning a millitary order to withdraw troops to continue a hunt for WMD that they decided didn't exist......i'm sorry am i missing something??
She also admitted albeit accidently that the source for most of the "Shocking" stories all of which turned out to be completly false, came from Ahmed Chalabi, Chalabi, a convicted embezzler, heads the Iraqi National Congress, the US-financed exile group that forged close relations with the Pentagon’s civilian leadership in the run-up to the war.
Miller fired back that she was entitled to the interview as she had forged a relationship with Chalabi over the course of a decade. She noted, “He [Chalabi] has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD in our paper.”
The admission was extremely revealing, as Miller never cited Chalabi in her WMD “exclusives.” That he was the source was unquestionably a matter of interest, given that the US intelligence community has long raised doubts about the credibility of information coming from Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. Both State Department and CIA officials had cautioned that the exile group fashioned “intelligence” in order to promote a US invasion that the group believed would place it in power at the head of a colonial-style puppet regime.
Other Miller “exclusives” carried the following headlines: “US experts find radioactive material in Iraq,” and “US-led forces occupy Baghdad complex filled with chemical agents.” In each case, the sensational claims, providing welcome grist for the Bush administration’s propaganda mill, quickly proved unfounded.
As Kurtz makes clear in his latest piece, Miller was more than a mouthpiece for the Pentagon. She played an active, at times even leading, role in the US military’s operations in occupied Iraq.
And they point out a good fact as well.
The Jason Blari fiasco recently saw the massive witch hunt of a young journalist for mis-quoting and plagarising work for this paper yet such actions as this by Miller and they stand by and defend her at the slightest criticism?
What has the "Free press" been reduced to?