THIS MODERN WORLD

Arianna has a theory:

Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.

But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls. Here it is: It’s July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson’s now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush administration has “manipulate[d]” and “twisted” intelligence “to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the war — and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller’s credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he’s married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an “unnamed government official”). Maybe Miller tells Rove too — or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

This is why Miller doesn’t want to reveal her “source” at the White House — because she was the source. Sure, she first got the info from someone else, and the odds are she wasn’t the only one who clued in Libby and/or Rove (the State Dept. memo likely played a role too)… but, in this scenario, Miller certainly wasn’t an innocent writer caught up in the whirl of history. She had a starring role in it. This also explains why Miller never wrote a story about Plame, because her goal wasn’t to write a story, but to get out the story that cast doubts on Wilson’s motives. Which Novak did.

Tangentially related cartoon here.

Ice cream is apparently a popular treat in hot weather.

(Hat tip: August.)

…tangentially related cartoon here.

The point of the alien gibberish in the “crawl” was simply to capture the look of a newscast in a cartoon featuring two multi-tentacled alien creatures. I used what I thought would be an unreadable font which was, it turns out, not so unreadable. I confess to having typed in some stream of consciousness riff about Hannity and O’Reilly being morons and liars — but I wasn’t really trying to pass along a secret message to the select few, I was just trying to come up with a plausible-looking string of alien word-shapes.

So to answer the two most common questions I’m receiving right now:

(1) The news logo behind the aliens translates as gibberish because it is gibberish; and

(2) Yes, apparently if you translate the crawl, I mistyped the word “moron” as “morpon.”

And while I’m flattered that so many of you would take the time to figure that one out, I have to say, you’re scaring me a little bit here, people.

The Bush administration’s rallying call that America is a nation at war is increasingly ringing hollow to men and women in uniform, who argue in frustration that America is not a nation at war, but a nation with only its military at war.

From bases in Iraq and across the United States to the Pentagon and the military’s war colleges, officers and enlisted personnel quietly raise a question for political leaders: if America is truly on a war footing, why is so little sacrifice asked of the nation at large?

There is no serious talk of a draft to share the burden of fighting across the broad citizenry, and neither Republicans nor Democrats are pressing for a tax increase to force Americans to cover the $5 billion a month in costs from Iraq, Afghanistan and new counterterrorism missions.

There are not even concerted efforts like the savings-bond drives or gasoline rationing that helped to unite the country behind its fighting forces in wars past.

“Nobody in America is asked to sacrifice, except us,” said one officer just back from a yearlong tour in Iraq, voicing a frustration now drawing the attention of academic specialists in military sociology.

More.

…and then there’s this:

In an interview, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, said that discussions had begun on a program to seek commitments from bankers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, electricians, plumbers and solid-waste disposal experts to deploy to conflict zones for months at a time on reconstruction assignments, to relieve pressure on the military.

I believe there are representatives of at least a few of those professions among the war’s more prominent online advocates. And what good news for them — finally, they’ll be able to really contribute something to the war effort!

Apparently Thomas Friedman is unfamiliar with the concept of slippery slopes:

More than just put up walls. We need to shine a spotlight on hate speech wherever it appears. The State Department produces an annual human rights report. Henceforth, it should also produce a quarterly War of Ideas Report, which would focus on those religious leaders and writers who are inciting violence against others…

We also need to spotlight the “excuse makers,” the former State Department spokesman James Rubin said. After every major terrorist incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed. When you live in an open society like London, where anyone with a grievance can publish an article, run for office or start a political movement, the notion that blowing up a busload of innocent civilians in response to Iraq is somehow “understandable” is outrageous. “It erases the distinction between legitimate dissent and terrorism,” Mr. Rubin said, “and an open society needs to maintain a clear wall between them.”

I understand that Friedman believes that such a list would only be used for good and not evil, shining a spotlight on those who actively encourage young Muslims to become suicide bombers — but Friedman is an idiot. Look, there are plenty of conservatives who equate any dissent whatsoever with active support for terrorism — anyone who’s paid any attention to the right over the past four years understands this. And I promise you, in some people’s minds it’s a very short journey from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Noam Chomsky, and not much further from there to, well, Tom Tomorrow.

And then it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to Thomas Friedman.