As we observe that number, remember also the tenfold more dead civilians.
Some links that fit these reflections:
- I'm late on this, but Maureen Dowd rules in her Miller piece. Anyone who starts referencing Thackeray, on her way to slicing Judith Miller to ribbons, demonstrates true class. Read it via Steve Gilliard, if only for the photo.
- It's not enough that they're stressed and getting shot at: now they get to lose it all at the table.
- Eric Schmitt gives the most concise expression to what we're all thinking when Bush/Rice start talking new war: With who?
- Via the Rage Diaries: Data bad! Data confuse government!
- Debra Dickerson's review in Salon of Kayla Williams' book contains this concise, extraordinary passage:
The military is full of diamond-in-the-rough kids like her who might have made a few mistakes but still know that there are uncharted worlds inside them. They know they were destined for a polyester uniform; making a break for the GI's outfit, rather than the burger flipper's -- or, God forbid, the inmate's -- is a daring demand to be taken seriously, to be invested in, to be challenged. To be seen. For poor or lost kids, joining up is an escape attempt, a prison break. Our all-volunteer military remains tenable only because these strivers somehow know that hot marches in the sun and nights spent sleeping in a foxhole will open the door to whatever's buried inside their dreams.
Now that it's Tuesday, I'll wrap up with what's frosted me since Friday morning -- when I saw George Freeman, a lawyer for the New York Times, on Friday, try to make Judith Miller's case an integral part of a lecture on the legal concept of reporter's privilege.the pixie dust Freeman tried to toss in our eyes.
He allowed that Miller's work did not present the best argument for a shield law. "Would I have wanted a different set of facts in this case?" he said, spreading his arms wide. " Of course."
As part of the wider discussion, about how the concept of reporter's privilege involved, we of course discussed the issue of the inclusion of bloggers; having just written the post that appears below, I quoted it to him and suggested blogs were also a "weapon in the defense of liberty." He responded like lawyer/politician: you'd never get the Senate to support that, he said.
Then Freeman proceeded to give a perfect, party-line defense of Miller. He said that Lewis Libby's original waiver, whose signing was mandatory as a condition of the White House, couldn't be believed as sincere until the two of them talked -- and that recent events, including the negotiations that led to her release. were a sign that Fitzgerald was becoming "pretty desperate."
He stuck by Miller's story that she had "discovered" her June 2003 notebook just recently; a friend said later that she'd not been able to ask him about reports (by Murray Waas, and now others) others that Miller only admitted that meeting existed after seeing Secret Service logs that proved she was there.
His politics came clear, and predictable enough, from his opinion of the leak case itself, which mimicked Richard Cohen's = not much of a crime, so he's going to create a conspiracy about a non-crime. I so wanted to ask him about the Daily News' confirmation of Miller's "charter membership" in the White House Iraq Group, but I'd used up my question time talking about free speech for blogs.
Now I join the rest of you in waiting to hear how many of the powerful men, the suns to which Miller's flower turned, are placed under indictment - or whether the administration will decide to raise the flag of secrecy over the whole thing.
I stumbled across your blog while I was in the process of doing some online research. The numbers of the dead are indeed distressing, especially when we consider how many innocent lives have been taken during this war.
Posted by: thebizofknowledge | August 23, 2006 at 04:34 PM