Why Not Torture Judith Miller?
by Mike Whitney
www.dissidentvoice.org
October 3, 2005



 

Let’s see if I got this right.

The New York Times’ star investigative reporter Judith Miller spent 12 weeks in the hoosegow only to discover that she actually had permission to testify before the Federal grand jury the whole time? Is this what the Times means when they say that she had to confirm that she “finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver” from her source. (Ass. Chief of Staff “Scooter” Libby)

Oh, so it was all just a big mistake?

The facts, however, indicate that there may have been other factors that led to Miller changing her mind, including the prospect of spending another 60 days in the slammer. Apparently, her role of “martyr for the First amendment” has a shelf life of about 12 weeks after which she returns to her day job of dissembling pawn for the ruling party.

Miller’s sudden “change-of-heart” hasn’t dulled the Times’ appetite for singing her praises. According to them she is still the undisputed champion of free speech (“No newspaper reporter has ever spent so much time in custody to defend the right to protect confidential sources.”) and the unfortunate victim of an unfair law. In a circuitous and lawyerly defense of Miller, the Times asks why her source (Libby) didn’t simply make a public statement that would have excused her from any obligation to withhold information. That’s logical enough, and that’s the way these things normally go down.

Not according to the editors of the Times:

“We believe the person in the best position to judge when a source is sincerely waiving promises of confidentiality is the reporter who made the guarantee… She has won the right to that confidence with three months' stay in a tough jail.”

In other words, Miller has earned the right to go from Rosa Parks (the Times’ description) to a common stool pigeon without explanation and while still upholding the highest standards of the Times’ editorial staff. Now, that is an impressive transformation!

The Times’ hypocrisy is incidental compared to the inequities of a system that protects criminals like Miller while dispatching Muslims to Guantanamo for lesser offenses. By any measure, Miller’s withholding of evidence posed a direct threat to national security. Whoever leaked the name of Valerie Plame to the press knew that her “outing” would put covert operations and CIA agents working in the field at direct risk. It’s clear that Miller knows who that person is and is acting as their accomplice by refusing to reveal his name.

So far, the Bush administration has consistently suspended the civil liberties of anyone who is even remotely considered a risk to national security. Moreover, the president has repeatedly claimed the authority to do “whatever is necessary to guarantee the safety of the American people”, even if that involves rescinding the Bill of Rights. This is the rationale that underscores the war on terror.

So, what’s difference here?

By Bush’s logic, Miller should have been trundled off to a secret location where she could have been beaten and abused until she provided the information required by the grand jury. She should have been intimidated by snarling guard dogs and fitted for a leash so she could be photographed prostrate on the floor of her cell by fun-loving interrogators from private security firms.

Imagine the public outcry if Miller appeared on the front page of the Times standing stock-still, bound and hooded, while the impish Lynndie England pointed at her genitals; or, if she was draped in sackcloth and propped up on a packing crate with electrical wiring draped from her hands and feet.

Is that what it will take to wake people up to the horrors of the current system?

Miller was a key player in fabricating the information that plunged the country into the worst disaster in American history. Still, she is entitled to every benefit provided under the law. The inmates of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bush’s other gulags deserve that very same consideration.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state, and can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com.

Other Articles by Mike Whitney

* The Occupation of New Orleans
* Brownie's Comic Opera
* Apartheid Justice in America: Krugal vs. Padilla  
* The Impending Cakewalk in Iran
* Farewell to the Democratic Party
* Basra: Another Milestone in the War on Terror
* The Inevitable War with Iran
* Let Them Die Or Let Them Go
* Who’s Blowing Up Iraq?
* The Second American Revolution
* Hurricane Hugo at the UN
* Tal Afar: Crackdown in the Sunni Heartland
* John Roberts’ Role in the Guantanamo Hunger Strike
* Jose Padilla and the Death of Personal Liberty
* Rodney King in New Orleans
* Rehnquist Paved the Way for the Imperial Presidency
* The New Orleans Looters Are the Bush Progeny
* The Devastating Impact of Hurricane George
* “Transformation”: How Rumsfeld Smashed the National Guard
* The Lords of War
* Robertson’s Fatwah: “A Whole Lotta Smitin’ Goin’ On”
* Turning Cindy Sheehan’s Victory Into Defeat 
* “My Son Died for Nothing”
* "Shoot to Kill": Tony Blair’s First Trophy
* Greenspan’s Role in the Housing Bubble
* Failing in Iraq
* Revving Up World War III
* Pretty Hot in Crawford, Pretty Hot in Hell
* Straight-Shootin’ George Galloway
* “Operation Community Shield”: Comrade Chertoff’s Preemptive Crackdown
* Kristallnacht: What Happens When the Public Says Nothing? 
* Burying Blair: Post-Mortem for the British PM
* “Withdrawal” from Iraq?: Forget About It
* The Globalization of State Terror
* Tom Friedman: Fabricating the Roots of Terror
* Doomsday: The Final Months of the “Housing Bubble”
* John Roberts and the National Security State
* Guantanamo: the Calculus of Human Misery
* Did Greenspan Know About the London Bombings Two Days Before?
* Another Casualty in Rumsfeld’s Information War
* Genesis of an American Gestapo
* Bush's Orgy of Carnage
* Goodbye to Sandra Day O’ Connor . . . and Good Riddance
* The Rumsfeld Solution: “Liberating Iraq, One Journalist at a Time”
* Show Your Independence on the 4th -- Burn a Flag
* "Up in Smoke": Bush Flops in Prime Time
* More Rumsfeld Lies About Insurgent Meetings
* Incinerating Iraqis: The Napalm Cover-Up
* Guantanamo: The New-World Icon
* The Bush Radio Address: More Delusional Blather While Iraq Bleeds
* The Friedman Solution: Reinstate the Draft
* Body Slamming the 4th Amendment
* Operation Desperation: Rumsfeld’s Baghdad Fiasco
* The EU Constitution: Don’t Believe the BS
* Protecting the Plutocrats
* What Was Laura Bush Doing at the Al Aqsa Mosque?
* Free Jose Padilla!
* Alberto Gonzales’ Kristallnacht: Purges for a Safer America
* Tom Friedman: The Imperial Chronicler
* Gods, Gays, and George Bernard Shaw
* A Tentative Strategy for Ending the War
* The Specter of Violence in America
* Free Speech in the Crosshairs
* Why America Needs to be Defeated in Iraq
* More Madness at the Bush News Conference
* Ratzinger’s Plan to Hide the Pedophiles
* Let’s Let Atheists Back into Politics
* Pope Ratzinger: More “Pie-in-the-Sky” for the Struggling Masses
* The Purveyors of Violence: The NY Times in Falluja
* Screw You, Paul Volker!
* Pope TV and the New World Media
* The Economic Tsunami: Sooner Than You Think
* Destroy Abu Ghraib!
* Terri Schiavo and the Battered Judiciary
* Railroading Moussaoui
* The Wolfowitz Appointment: A Red Flag for the Coming Wars
* “Economic Meltdown” -- Sorry, but We’re Toast
* John Bolton and the Road to Tehran
* Clearing the Way for the American Police State
* Challenging the Language of Violence
* Jose Padilla and the 10 Commandments
* Crushing the UN for a Stronger America
* Europe to Bush: “Hands Off Iran”?
* The Incredible Shrinking Dollar
* Assassinating Al-Hariri Fits Washington’s Plan
* Washington’s Plan to Foment Civil War in Iraq
* Condi’s Euro-Tour
* Folksy Tom Friedman and New Age Imperialism
* Government Without Consent
* The Desperate State of the Union
* Iraq’s Election Fiasco
* Boarding Up the “Window of Opportunity”
* KGB Chieftain Finds Home at Homeland Security
* Bush’s Grand Plan: Incite Civil War
* Pink Slips at CBS

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