Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

With regard to the Plame/Wilson marriage, and Wilson's trip to Niger, Miller writes that one day in July 2003 she stepped into the office of Jill Abramson, at this point the chief of the NYT's Washington Bureau, and told her  (these are words from the memoir's paraphrase, not the actual words of the conversation), that "Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and had apparently helped send her husband on the trip to Africa before the war to investigate the uranium charge.  If true, I said, the CIA was possibly guilty of nepotism and of covering up intelligence that disputed its prewar WMD claims. If the source was wrong ... the White House might be trying to smear them. Either way, I told Abramson the tip needed pursuing." Three points, then apparently intrigued her: 1. Guilty of nepotism? Probably the least of it -- the notion that Wilson (a former ambassador -- there were good reasons for giving him the assignment regardless of his marriage) benefitted f...

I wrote last week about one passage from Judith Miller's memoir, THE STORY (2015). Here's another. Early on in her chapter 15, Miller, writing about being embedded with a team that was assigned to look for Saddam's supposedly hidden cache of weapons of mass destruction during the Iraq War in 2003, tells us: "Col. Richard R. McPhee, forty-seven, who commanded the eight-hundred-person XTF, had insisted I wear a uniform if I wanted to travel with his METs." Jargon translation there. The XTF was the "Exploration Task Force." It was made up of Mobile Exploration Teams (METs, but not a New York baseball franchise.) So, the Colonel in charge wanted her to wear a uniform. Why? "A reporter in civilian clothes was a natural target, he said He was not going to be the first commander in Iraq to get his embed killed." I'm curious why this is? An Iraqi sniper would aim for the civilian? Why? Or just because it would make her conspicuous? Well...

It's been four years since publication,so I'm late to the fair. I'm only now looking at Judith Miller's book, THE STORY (Simon & Schuster)-- chiefly a memoir of her years with The New York Times.  That covers a lot of years. The Times hired her in 1977, and she was forced out in 2005. In all the controversy about the supposedly hidden "weapons of mass destruction" in Saddam Hussein's hands in the run up to the Iraq War, Miller is for me the most fascinating single character. I am happy to report that the book doesn't make her seem less so. A terminological point: she doesn't use the phrases "first Gulf War" and "second Gulf War." She refers to the war of 1990-91 as the Gulf War -- there is only one -- and the war of 2003 as the Iraq War. Today, I'll quote a bit of what she wrote about the Gulf War, the war associated with George H.W. Bush, portrayed above. The Times' coverage was coordinated by Johnny Appl...