Month: October 2005

In this issue (Cross posted at UNCONFIRMED SOURCES):

“Absentee Ballots Give Bush Overwhelming Iraqi Constitutional Victory”

and

“Orange a Smash Hit with Fashions this Fall”

(after the fold…)

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After reading, re-reading, and partially digesting (I really can’t fully stomach it) Judy Miller’s article on her grand jury testimony, I am convinced she is still protecting the administration.

It appears to me that she is going to be a hostile witness when she testifies in Scooter Libby’s trial. Even so, if she was primarily interested in protecting Libby she could have done a better job of it. To see why, let’s start with the heart of the matter: the appearance of the words ‘Valerie Flame’ in Miller’s notes from her second meeting with Libby on July 8th, 2003.

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In Saturday’s NYT article by Judy Miller in which she described her grand jury testimony, Miller revealed that her notes included references to “Valerie Flame” and “Victoria Wilson”. That peaked my interest as I wondered who else might have been provided with an inaccurate name in the case of Valerie Plame (if, indeed, it is inaccurate).

A Google search shows that, in 2003, numerous articles and blog posts referred to “Victoria Plame”. Some of these refer to that version of the name being used in an October, 2003 Newsweek article The Plame Game by Howard Fineman. It appears that the original article has now been revised.

An October 5, 2003 post at Whiskey Bar quotes the Fineman article:

I’ll stipulate that it is a felony to disclose the name of an undercover CIA operative who has been posted overseas in recent years. That’s what the statute says. But the now infamous outing of Victoria Plame isn’t primarily an issue of law. It’s about a lot of other things, like: the ongoing war between the CIA and the vice president’s office.

The Wayback Machine provides this cached version of the original Newsweek story.

more…

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With all the doom and gloom coming out of Iraq, it’s hard to keep track of all the “compromises” and “good work” and “freedom building” that is being done to the Iraqi people. In this particular case women and their status under the new Constitution.

It ain’t pretty. Once the most secular nation in the Arabic middle-east, Iraq is now being turned to sharia law and women’s rights and freedoms, once enjoyed openly are under attack.

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Francesco Fortugno, vice president of the Regional Council of Calabria was assassinated this evening as he entered the Locri polling station to vote in the center-left primaries. A practicing surgeon and university professor, he was re-elected  in the center-left party, la Margherita, this spring.

Preliminary investigation seems to point to organized crime, the Calabria n’drangheta. It is not presently known if Fortugno had received death menaces recently. The center-left president of Calabria, Agazio Loiero, had been menaced recently because of his anti-racket policies. This may point to a transversal vendetta, a purely political crime.

This assassination has a highly symbolic value as it breaks the truce of the “silent mafia.”  For the past five years the mafia has refrained from murdering elected officials, law officers and exponents of civil society on the understanding that Berlusconi would pass legislation to the mafia’s advantage.

The crime has cast a heart of darkness over the center-left primaries as, unexpectedly, over two million citizens turned out to vote. It is the first time in Italian history that primaries are being held.

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