While I view the recent strong-arming of reporters by judges as a clear constitutional violation, it’s clear that there is a difference between Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller. Cooper’s boss made him turn over his notes after his source revoked his confidentiality agreement; Miller is going to jail for not naming her source.

While Time Inc. is being portrayed as a consitutional sellout and Miller as a martyr for journalism, the case is surely more complex. It’s likely that, by turning over Cooper’s notes, Time Inc. could actually give legs to the story and expose the source that outed Valerie Plame (Karl Rove?!). By going to jail, Miller simply protects her source (Karl Rove!?) and seemingly gains in stature as a member of the Fourth Estate sacrificed on the altar of justice.

A New Tork Metro column outs the Pulitzer Prize-winning Miller as a journalist of the whacko — not gonzo — type whose series on weapons of mass destruction for the New York Times was quoted by the Bushites as evidence of WMD existence in Iraq. Of course, her exclusives were based on interviews with former Iraqi golden boy, Ahmad Chalabi.

For the past year, the Times has done much to correct that coverage, publishing a series of stories calling Chalabi’s credibility into question. But never once in the course of its coverage—or in any public comments from its editors—did the Times acknowledge Chalabi’s central role in some of its biggest scoops, scoops that not only garnered attention but that the administration specifically cited to buttress its case for war.

The longer the Times remained silent on Chalabi’s importance to Judith Miller’s reporting, the louder critics howled. In February, in the New York Review of Books, Michael Massing held up Miller as evidence of the press’s “submissiveness” in covering the war. For more than a year, Slate’s Jack Shafer has demanded the paper come clean.

But finally, with Chalabi’s fall from grace so complete—the Pentagon has cut off his funding, troops smashed his portrait in raids of the INC office—the Times’ refusal to concede its own complicity became untenable. Last week, on page A10, the paper published a note on its coverage, drafted by executive editor Bill Keller himself. The paper singled out pieces that relied on “information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors, and exiles bent on ‘regime change.’ ” The note named Ahmad Chalabi as a central player in this group.

It seems likely to me that Miller is in jail not because of principle, but because she’s hiding a source even more embarrassing than Ahmad Chalabi.

The Defense Department has issued its homeland defense plan for the next 10 years, and it looks like we can expect another decade of police-state activities where the gubmint will trample on personal freedoms with impunity.

Here’s a sample of the rhetoric of the “Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support”:

Directed by the Strategic Planning Guidance (March 2004), this Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support focuses on achieving the Defense Department’s paramount goal: securing the United States from direct attack. The Strategy is rooted in the following:

• Respect for America’s constitutional principles;
• Adherence to Presidential and Secretary of Defense guidance;
• Recognition of terrorist and state-based threats to the United States; and
• Commitment to continue transformation of US military capabilities.

[…]

The Conundrum of Fighting Terrorism Is, If We Become Them, They Win

I guess I’m dating myself but I remeber when being a medical doctor was considered a higher calling. With the rise of the HMO concept in the medical profession 30 years ago, doctors became just like any other professional – patent attorneys or tax accountant only richer.

Now the medical profession appears to have suffered its worst black eye since the days of Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who performed horrendous experiments on prisoners in concentration camps, including children.

The charge, which comes from both the Red Cross and former detainees, is that doctors and other medical professionals in the employ of the United States military used their medical training to soften up suspected terrorists during questioning at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now the Pentagon has investigated itself and – big surprise here – found that nothing of the kind ever happened:

[…]

It’s almost seven o’clock on the West Coast, and details about the multiple terror attacks in London this morning are still unclear. All we know for certain is that the characteristics of the offensive resemble the bombing in Madrid last year. As in Madrid, the terrorists attacked the commuter transportation system at rush hour – except that this time instead of one bomb on a train there were multiple, simultaneous explosions in the subway and on buses.

A group with alliegance to al Qaida has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Whether this is coincidental with recent statements coming the network’s leadership urging attacks outside of Iraq and Afghanistan is also uncertain.

Another aspect that remains to be seen is the effect the new wave of attacks will have on public opinion. I, for one, have cringed every time the Republicans have repeated their mantra about the war in Iraq that it is better to fight them over there than over here. It seemed to me that terrorists who heard these statements would feel they were being taunted.

There’s also this: The UK has had a lot more experience dealing with terrorist attacks than we have. The hostilities between the British government and the Irish Republican Army and its predecessors and adjuncts went on for decades – even centuries.

In the 1990’s, these hostilities all but vanished – or at least the violence did. I mention this because it is a clear example of how terrorism can be vanquished. How did the British end the reign of terror against them? I think the answer is, they didn’t. Decades of escalating violence and retaliation just prolonged the horror and made it worse.

The major factor in resolving terrorism in the UK was economic development in Ireland. Newfound prosperity helped ease the root causes of the conflict: poverty and its effects on the health and well-being of the society, and the lack of opportunity that caused the poverty.

Maybe there’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Just hours before Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper was to be sentenced to jail for not revealing his source to a grand jury in the Plame case, the source gives Matt permission to reveal his name – but only to the grand jury.

If Cooper’s source is the same as Judith Miller’s at the New York Times, then why didn’t he or she (or Karl) give Judy permission to spill the beans too? As it is, Miller refused to budge and is either in prison now or headed that way.

Doubly odd – Judy Miller was a notorious White House stenographer during the run-up to the war.

And where is Bob Novak? The speculation is, he already turned over the identity of the person at the White House who told him Plame’s identity. The White House reportedly unmasked Plame as a CIA secret agent in order to punish Wilson for calling them on their lie that Saddam had acquired nuclear ingredients from Niger – and as a shot across the bow at other CIA agents who weren’t toeing the Administration line on the war.

Today is the Dalai Lama’s 70th birthday. Send a peaceful thought into the cosmos.

Newsweek’s Periscope column this week considers what George W. Bush’s autobiography will be like. And who will write it. In the wake of “A Charge to Keep,” a slim tome written by Bush’s former communications chief Karen Hughes and rushed to press in time for the 2000 election, expectations are generally low.

But I disagree. There would seem to be plenty of opportunities for Bush to rise to the occasion and produce a work (or have someone produce it) that would explore his place in history and establish his legacy as U.S. president. Of course, as the Newsweek column notes, Bush neither keeps a journal like his father or records his thoughts like Bill Clinton, and he writes thank-you notes with a black Sharpie pen, so any autobio from his camp is likely to be a work of fiction.

With that in mind, here are a few speculative titles I suggest for a George W. Bush (auto)biography:
• Myth and Metaphor in The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• An Encyclopedia of Lies I Told Leading Up to the Invasion of Iraq (Vol. 1)
• Cheney Made Me Do It
• How Condi Got Her Groove Back
• Me ‘n’ Jesus — Just a Couple of Good Old Boys with an Agenda
• Pennies from Heaven — An Investment Guide for Political Capital
• The Kids are All Right, or How I Packed the Supreme Court with Wingnuts
• Dustbowl Dreams: Environmental Policies to Make the Whole World Look Like South Texas
• Serving as the Leader of the Free World and Commander and Chief of the Most Powerful Army on Earth with Your Finger on the Nucular Button for Dummies

Update: Keep those suggestions coming in. Here are a few more:
• Staying the Course: It’s Not About Principle, It’s About Lack of Ideas
• I’ve Never, Even Been Wrong: Being George Bush
• My Life, by George W. Bush and Karl Rove
• Winning the War on Terror Using the War on Logic
• How to Raise Perfect Daughters Even When Their Mother is a Manslaughterer

From Comments: Love this one:
• George W Bush: Nepotism Gone Wrong.

If you have a title to suggest for President Bush’s autobiography, send it to News Desk at Pensito Review Dot Com.