person:judith miller

  • How The #New_York_Times Is Making War With Iran More Likely
    https://theintercept.com/2018/03/17/new-york-times-iran-israel-washington-think-tanks

    C’est une constante au New York Times : on avait eu Judith Miller et Michael Gordon pour l’Irak (et certainement d’autres journalistes sans scrupules pour vendre une guerre antérieure avant eux) on a maintenant Ben Hubbard, Isabel Kershner, et Anne Barnard pour l’Iran, avec bien sûr systématiquement un mea culpa du journal entre deux boucheries pour faire bonne mesure.

    #Etats-Unis #les_vendeurs_de_guerres

  • Un long et très intéressant article sur le blog de Joshua Landis pour démonter la thèse «Assad a fabriqué ISIS»: Is Assad the Author of ISIS? Did Iran Blow Up Assef Shawkat? And Other Tall Tales
    http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/assad-author-isis-iran-blow-assef-sawkat-tall-tales-ehsani2

    As the events in Daraa unfolded, the President invited key figures from the town to see what can be done to calm the demonstrations. One such figure was cleric Sayasneh. One of the consistent demands of such meetings was the release of prisoners. It was no different when Douma joined the uprising. Foreign Embassies were also pushing the Syrian State to release what it called political prisoners. People like Zahran Alloush were sentenced to seven years in prison when he was arrested with a group of 40 people on the charge of promoting Wahhabi ideology and gun possession. They had not killed anyone or even fired a shot. Yet, they were sent to prisons like Sednaya and kept there beyond the end of their sentence on the whim of one of the security agencies. It was in this context when the residents of Douma demanded the release of prisoners from their districts. The Syrian leadership was under intense pressure to calm the crisis. The people of Douma promised to do their job at calming their own streets if some of those prisoners were released. Zahran and many others like him were released under this rationale. This is not too dissimilar to the way the American prisons in Iraq worked. Zarqawi, Baghdadi and Golani were all released from those prisons either when their terms ended or when the local populations demanded their release. Just like in Syrian prisons, the prisoners in American jails were also indoctrinated with jihadist ideology. Syria erred by releasing Alloush and Abboud who would go on to form Jeish al Islam and Ahrar just like the U.S. erred when it released Baghdadi who would go on to form ISIS.

    • Angry Arab revient lui aussi sur cette théorie, mais en réponse à un billet de Qifa Nabki : Elias Muhanna ("Qifanabki") on ISIS and the Syrian regime
      http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2016/12/elias-muhanna-qifanabki-on-isis-and.html

      So Elias commented on the lousy (really trashy, journalistically speaking) series about ISIS and the Syrian regime in Daily Beast.
      https://qifanabki.com/2016/12/07/assad-and-isis
      This is not about politics but about methodology, journalistic standards and about the dominant political paradigm about Syria and beyond. Basically, in this piece, Eias reveals himself as fully March 14, while he used to be more careful in his analysis before. This piece reads like the talking points of March 14 really. But away from generalizations let us talk specifics (my responses to his words are in red):

      1) His opening sentence set the stage: "Gutman’s articles have been championed by opposition supporters and critiqued by regime loyalists." So here he tells readers that anyone who is critical of the piece is a regime supporters. Look at this demagogic method. So end of story. Let us go home. If you dare disagree with the non-expert Gutman (who research basically constituted spending long hours in cafes in Istanbul). There is really no need to continue when he says that, but I will continue.

      2) He then informs the readers this: "The most astute observers of the conflict have long recognized the alignment of certain interests between the regime and the most radical elements in the Islamist opposition." Here, you are to believe that if you are astute you have to agree with the premise of Gutman and Western media and government, otherwise you are not astute. No evidence is necessary.

      3) Look at this line (and notice that Elias, like all other cheerleaders of the armed Jihadi groups in Syria) still insist that there was this really secular/feminist/democratic spectrum of secular armed groups, and then the regime came and produced those Islamists and then, voila, the secular armed groups suddenly disappeared in order for Bashshar to claim that his enemies are not the real Voltaire Battalions but the various Islamist Jihadi battalions: "The rise of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra has been disastrous for the secular political opposition".

      4) Elias then proceeds to yet again complains that the fact that Gutman piece is short on data and research (unless sitting in cafes in Istanbul counts as solid research) is bad not from a journalistic standpoint but because it helps the opponents of his beloved Syrian rebels (former Voltaire battalions who were transformed by trickery by the regime to Jihadi battalions): "That’s unfortunate, because they have given regime apologists more ammunition for the claim that the Syrian uprising is nothing but a foreign conspiracy fueled by fake news and Gulf-funded think tanks." But I am not sure what he means by the side reference to Gulf-funded think tanks? Does he mean that those are valuable academic assets who should not be criticized or does he mean that their punditry should be respected and not maligned and ridiculed. Not sure here but he seems defensive about them.

      5) Here he produces his theory (same as Gutman theory and same as the various theories about the Jihadi rebels from DAY ONE): "When the Assad regime released many of its Islamist prisoners from Sednaya Prison in 2011 — including individuals like Zahran Alloush, Yahia al-Hamawi, Hassan Abboud, and others who would go on to positions of leadership in Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, and ISIS — it did so in full knowledge that the Islamists spelled trouble for the nascent uprising." So the evidence marshaled by Elias is that since the regime released them from jail, it means it controls them and even controls them when they bomb the regime sites and when they kill regime supporters, etc. But here is what curious: if this is the evidence in itself, how come Elias never wrote that US is responsible for the Jihadi in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan as the US release scores of Jihadi fighters INCLUDING BAGHDADI HIMSELF? And does this argument not apply to Jordan, Saudi, Pakistani, Afghani, and Moroccan regime? The Jordanian regime is most culpable among them all as it started to manipulate Jihadis long before any of those regimes. So if the evidence is the release from jail, then it can’t be true in the case of Syrian regime and not true in the case of all those other regimes including the US government and its occupation authorities in the region.

      6) Then Elias produces another conspiracy theory more fascinating than the first one: "The intelligence services guessed correctly that the peaceful secular demonstrations would be overrun by violent former inmates". Here, what does overrun mean? I mean, if the rebels were mostly secular, why would the release of Jihadi “overrun” them? What would that happen if the majority are active in the Voltaire Battalions? Why did not the more popular (according to Elias and all other mainstream journalists) secular forces overrun the others?

      7) Then Elias proceeds to make a Lebanon analogy: "That group was widely seen as a tool of Syrian intelligence". Widely seen? It was only “widely seen” by the Hariri family and the rest of the Saudi-run March 14 Movement. There was never any evidence presented about that. The only evidence is that its leader once spent time in Syrian regime jail, just as Baghdadi once spent time in US military jails in Iraq. And many of those Jihadi groups are openly and blatantly opposed to the Syrian regime on sectarian grounds and in fact the regime fought against them in Lebanon during the Syrian political domination of Lebanon. But it gets worse:

      8) Elias then says: "Longtime Syria-watchers will recall that Hizbullah was adamantly opposed to the Lebanese Army’s assault on the camp". I consider myself “a long time Syria-watcher” — and an occasional bird-watcher — and I dont recall that. This is absolutely and totally untrue, and even Elias friends in March 14 would not mischaracterize the stance of Hizbullah as such. Hizbullah was NOT opposed to the assault on the camp: Nasrallah specifically said that entry into the camp “is the red line”. He meant that the civilian population of the camp should be spared and that the assault on Fath Al-Islam should have sparred the lives of civilians But unfortunatley, once the Lebanese Amy began the assault on the camp, Hizbullah never complained AS IT SHOULD HAVE. More than 45 Palestinian civilians were massacred by the Lebanese Army assault. I was and still am of the position that the Lebanese Army should not have assaulted the camp (I call on Elias to visit what is left of the camp to see for himself) in order to get rid of a small armed gang, especially that negotiations were going on. In fact, the lousy Syrian regime Army supported and helped and the lousy Lebanese regime Army in the assault of the camp. And unfortunately Hizbullhah provided intelligence and military support for the Army during the assault. So if my position against Army assault make me an accomplice with Fath Al-Islam, be my guest. But it was really incredible how Elias—desperate to find evidence of any kind—decided to distort the position of Hizbullah.

      9) Finally, Elias concludes with his last evidence, that the Syrian regime had “infiltrated” those groups: "given the regime’s successful infiltration of these groups". Wait. Infiltration of groups means control and creation of those groups? Do you remember after Sep. 11 when George Tenet testified before US Congress that CIA had infiltrated Al-Qa`idah? Syrian, Jordanian, Saudi, and other Arab and Western and Israeli intelligence services had all infiltrated those groups, but why do you go from here to decide that only the Syrian regime is guilty of infiltration? Are you that desperate to validate a lousy piece of journalism by Roy Gutman? Finally, here is what I find interesting: Gutman built up his case on coffee shop chatter by Syrians in Istanbul, but usually Westerners mock unsubstanitated conspiracy theories by Middle Easterners. Yet, only in the case of Syria are those conspiracy theories believed and peddled and only because they serve the propaganda interests of of Western governments.

      PS Do you notice that when people cite the lousy piece by Roy Gutman they always say: the award-winning Roy Gutman. I remember when people cited Judith Miller about WMDs of Iraq before 2003, they also always said: award-winning journalist, Judith Miller.

      PPS Elias Responds here.
      https://qifanabki.com/2016/12/07/assad-and-isis/comment-page-1/#comment-127286

    • Sinon, c’est la même #théorie_du_complot, explicitée cette fois par Michel Touma de l’Orient-Le Jour, reprise de manière extrêmement fainéante par Courrier international :
      http://www.courrierinternational.com/article/lettre-ouverte-du-liban-pourquoi-francois-fillon-tout-faux-su

      (alors qu’il y aurait beaucoup à dire sur le fait de baser une politique étrangère française sur la prétendue et forcément catastrophique « protection des Chrétiens d’Orient »)

  • RETOUR SUR UN MENSONGE MEURTRIER

    Review: Judith Miller’s ‘The Story: A Reporter’s Journey’
    APRIL 7, 2015http://www.nytimes.com

    In late 2002 and through 2003, Judith Miller, an investigative reporter at The New York Times, wrote a series of articles about the presumed presence of chemical and biological weapons and possible nuclear matériel in Iraq. Critics thought the articles too bellicose and in lock step with the George W. Bush administration’s march to war. They all included careful qualifiers, but their overwhelming message was that Saddam Hussein posed a threat.

    Ms. Miller’s defense of her work then was straightforward: She reported what her sources told her. She has now written a book-length elaboration of that defense, “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey.” The defense is no better now than it was then.

    “The Story,” as anodyne a title as one could imagine, briefly sketches Ms. Miller’s early life before devoting itself to a more detailed description of her career. She came from a troubled home in Nevada and grew into an intrepid young woman who, she writes, liked adventure, sex and martinis.

    With very little experience, she joined the Washington bureau of The Times in 1977 as a reporter, a prized assignment, largely because the newspaper was facing a lawsuit accusing it of sex discrimination, she writes. The chapter describing this is titled “The New York Times, the Token.” She was very raw and her early work showed it. An editor told her she was sloppy and unprofessional. She learned professionalism fast enough that in 1983 she was posted to Cairo, one of the first women to head an international bureau for The Times.

    Correspondents in Cairo are typically charged with covering the whole of the Arab world, from West Africa to Iraq. Sometimes, non-Arab Iran is thrown in just for fun. This is an impossible if enthralling job and, in Ms. Miller’s telling, she fell hard for it. It was “thrilling” and “exhilarating,” she writes.

    Ms. Miller recounts longstanding friendships with, among others, King Hussein of Jordan, who failed in an attempt to teach her water-skiing.

    She was one of the earliest mainstream journalists to report on growing radicalization within Islam. She was also one of the earliest to report on the difficulties that could be imagined when the new radicals crossed paths with another emerging problem — the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This became a subject she would return to throughout her career.

    Ms. Miller devotes several chapters, by far the most given to any subject, to her coverage of Iraq. She had missed the first Persian Gulf war, she writes, stranded in Saudi Arabia. She fought hard to be included in coverage of the next one. The string of exclusive articles she produced before the Iraq war had the effect of buttressing the Bush administration’s case for invasion.

    She had built her career on access. She describes finding, cultivating and tending to powerfully situated sources. She writes that she did not, as some critics of her prewar reporting supposed, sit in her office and wait for the phone to ring. She pounded the pavement. And an ambitious reporter with the power, prestige and resources of a large news organization behind her can cover a lot of road.

    Opponents of the Iraq invasion and media critics of her reporting accused her of being a secret neoconservative thirsting for war. Whatever her actual politics, though, the agenda that comes through most strongly here is a desire to land on the front page. She rarely mentions an article she wrote without noting that it appeared on the front page or complaining that it did not.

    During the war, she writes, she was the sole reporter embedded with the military team charged with finding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. It failed, meaning so had she. Ms. Miller concedes that the Bush administration’s case for war was built largely on Iraq’s presumably ambitious weapons program. In describing what went wrong with one particular claim, she offers a defense that is repeated throughout the book: “The earlier stories had been wrong because the initial intelligence assessments we reported were themselves mistaken — not lies or exaggerations.”

    The New York Times fired her for being wrong. So, why are you giving gravitas to her “mea non culpa” book? She was wrong then.
    Ms. Miller’s main defense is that the experts she relied upon — intelligence officials, weapons experts, members of the Bush administration and others — were wrong about Mr. Hussein’s weapons. She acknowledges being wrong but not making any mistakes. She quotes herself telling another reporter: “If your sources were wrong, you are wrong.” This is where she gets stuck.

    Journalists, especially those who have a talent for investigative work, are taught early to write big, to push the story as far as possible. Be careful; nail the facts; be fair, but push hard. Nobody pushed harder than Ms. Miller. In this case, she wound up implicitly pushing for war.

    A deeper critique of her own reporting, and through that example a critique of the entire enterprise of investigative reporting, would examine its inherently prosecutorial nature. Investigators — journalistic or otherwise — are constantly trying to build a case, to make things fit even when they don’t obviously do so. In the process, the rough edges of the world can be whittled away, nuance can become muddled in the reporter’s head, in the writing, or in the editing.

    The final section of “The Story” deals with Ms. Miller’s role in the Valerie Plame affair, her refusal to identify a source (for an article she never wrote), her jailing because of that refusal, and finally her forced resignation from The Times in 2005. As she describes it, she wasn’t simply abandoned but thrown overboard. This seems partly because of politics and institutional embarrassment, but also partly because of her personality. Almost every investigative reporter is in some way difficult to deal with. Ms. Miller was no exception. She offended colleagues on the way up, she says, and they delighted in her failure when she fell down.

    To Ms. Miller’s credit, this is not a score-settling book, although Bill Keller, the executive editor who she says forced her out of The Times, gets walked around the block naked a couple of times and competing reporters receive just-for-old-times’-sake elbows to their rib cages.

    That doesn’t mean she has made peace with the end of her career at The Times. It was a devastating exile for a proud and influential reporter. Cast out of the journalistic temple, she says she felt “stateless,” and from the evidence here she remains a bit lost. This sad and flawed book won’t help her be found.

    THE STORY
    A Reporter’s Journey
    By Judith Miller
    381 pages. Simon & Schuster. $27.

    Terry McDermott, a former national correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, is the author, with Josh Meyer, of “The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.”❞

  • James Moore: Bang the Drum Loudly: The Failed Journalism That Sent America to War in Iraq
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/bang-the-drum-loudly-the-_b_2908061.html

    The timing was a thing of pure political beauty. President George W. Bush was only a few days away from speaking to the United Nations’ General Assembly about Iraq’s renewed efforts to acquire banned weaponry. And, in a month, the president was going to Congress to seek a resolution approving of a war against Iraq. A Sunday morning story, September 8, 2002, in the New York Times made the U.N. speech and the congressional debate much easier for the White House.

    Under the headline, “Threats and Responses: The Iraqis; U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts,” a 3,603 word story by Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller detailed the administration’s case against Saddam Hussein related to weapons of mass destruction.

    (...)

    Of course, that’s not the way journalism really works. Otherwise, reporters could easily be replaced with stenographers and people to read and publish e-mail news releases. Actually, if Miller had spoken to one of the various scientific organizations when she wrote the first story, including the leading groups in her own country, she would have learned there was almost no chance the tubes were going into a centrifuge. Her list of interview subjects needed to include contradictory voices and opinions on the uses of the aluminum tubes. There was certainly plenty of them out there.

    (...)

    Miller and Gordon’s inability to find a divergent opinion in a city full of political minds, scientists, and think tanks, has remained a perplexing mystery among their colleagues.

    The White House had mixed up journalists’ ambitions with misleading intelligence and brewed up a myth that yielded a powerful national belief in its illusion.

    (...)

  • Le gag du moment : #Judith_Miller accuse #Julian_Assange de ne pas vérifier ses sources.

    http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/judith-miller-criticizes-julian-assange-not

    Judith Miller (now “Judy” for Fox News) makes a crack about Wikileaks’ Julian Assange being a “bad journalist” because —wait for it—

    “JUDITH MILLER:... because he didn’t care at all about attempting to verfiy the information that he was putting out or determine whether or not it would hurt anyone.”

    That’s very interesting coming from Miller, an instrumental component in taking us into the Iraq War, and the subsequent deaths of tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and 4430 American troops.

  • Tiens, mais que devient #Judith_Miller ? Alex Pareene se fout allègrement de sa gueule dans ce poilant papier de Salon.

    Judith Miller : From the Times to the nuts- - Salon.com
    http://www.salon.com/news/media_criticism/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/12/30/judy_miller_newsmax

    Since her early days at the Times, when she inserted CIA misinformation into a piece on Libya, she’s always been a tool of power. She was the voice of the Defense Department, embedded at the Times. She was hyping bullshit stories about Iraq’s WMD capabilities as far back as 1998, and in the run-up to the war, her front-page scoops were cited by the Bush administration as evidence that Saddam needed to be taken out, right away.

    Lying exile grifter Ahmad Chalabi fed her the worst of the nonsense designed to push America into toppling Saddam Hussein (and giving Iraq to him), and she pushed that nonsense into the newspaper of record. She got everything wrong, and for some insane reason, she remained employed at the Times until 2005, when she negotiated her separation from her longtime professional home.