Eriposte at Left Coaster has written a few pieces on Judith Miller's statements that she can't remember who told her about "Valerie Flame" or how that name got into her notes. Asptrader at Daily Kos has more on this, particularly Robert Novak's reference to "Valerie Flame" in this October 6, 2003 Human Events column. Novak's TownHall column on October 1 had the name spelled correctly as Valerie Plame. Or did it back then?

Murray Waas breaks more news about Judith Miller, which is confirmed by her lawyer Robert Bennett.

Miller was asked about the June Meeting with Libby during her first grand jury appearance, and didn't recall it until Fitzgerald showed her secret service logs showing she had been at the White House Annex that day.

When a prosecutor first questioned Miller during her initial grand jury appearance on September 30, 2005 sources said, she did not bring up the June 23 meeting in recounting her various contacts with Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Pressed by prosecutors who then brought up the specific date of the meeting, Miller testified that she still could not recall the June meeting with Libby, in which they discussed a controversial CIA-sponsored mission to Africa by former Ambassador Joe Wilson, or the fact that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

When a prosecutor presented Miller with copies of the White House-complex visitation logs, she said such a meeting was possible.

Lawrence O'Donnell, who broke the news that Karl Rove was Time Reporter Matt Cooper's second source, was interviewed yesterday by John Amato of Crooks and Liars. You can listen here.

He was very revealing to C&L about the reasons why he leaked Karl Rove's name when he did and the thoughts that went through his mind before he uttered the name Rove to the world at large. Lawrence also felt that because he leaked Karl's name when he did, it forced his lawyer to take much quicker action than he would have. O'Donnell also stated that there were other people who knew about the Rove-Cooper connection.

Arianna has an indispensable timeline for those tracking discrepancies between Libby and Tim Russert. Tom Maguire at Just One Minute has more today. Jane at Firedoglake has the background.

As background, the New York Times reported on July 16, 2005:

by TChris

Even as Michael Brown plays the blame game, deflecting attention from his poor response to Hurricane Katrina, other FEMA officials are providing the Senate with honest information:

Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA regional director, told a Senate panel investigating the government's response to the disaster that he gave regular updates to people in contact with then-FEMA Director Michael Brown as early as Aug. 28, one day before Katrina made landfall.

In most cases, he was met with silence.

Brown's press secretary finally responded on Brown's behalf on Aug. 31, complaining via email that not enough time had been allocated for Brown to enjoy his dinner in Baton Rouge. At least we know that Brown's priorities are consistent with the president's: "It's important for me to go on with my life."

A must-read: Ray McGovern's "Cheney's chickens come home to roost."

The Wall St. Journal (free link) reports:

Officials who know Mr. Libby say he was almost certainly trying to shield Mr. Cheney from Mr. Wilson's charges that the White House manipulated prewar intelligence on Iraq. What is unknown is whether Mr. Libby's conversations with reporters were done on impulse, or part of a larger, scripted White House effort to discredit and punish Mr. Wilson by disclosing that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked at the Central Intelligence Agency. The grand jury on the case has also four times questioned White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove.

WaPO has more details on Rove's last grand jury appearance in which sources familiar with his testimony (if it's not Luskin, I bet it's Ben Ginsberg) say Rove told the grand jury he learned of Plame's identity from Libby who said he learned it from Russert.

This Counterpunch timeline by Former NSC staffer Roger Morris is well-worth re-reading.

Human Rights First has released a report finding serious flaws in the investigations conducted by the U.S. into the death of 27 detainees.

The details are staggering – for example, evidence, including a bag of body parts, left on an airport tarmac that exploded from the heat and investigations so vague that the date of death falls within a 5-month span.

This is of critical relevance given the White House’s and House of Representatives' attempts to kill or water down the McCain Anti-Torture Amendment.

A 16 year old has been charged with the murder of Pamela Vitale, the wife of lawyer and tv pundit Daniel Horowitz.

I'm glad Dan and his family will have the closure. The funeral is today.

by TChris

An activist who wanted to make a media splash with his demonstration in favor of a proposed Georgia law that would deny state benefits to undocumented aliens couldn't find enough supporters to join his protest, so he paid fourteen homeless people $10 each to hold signs at a rally.

by TChris

"Tough on crime" posturing has been the fallback position of most politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, for more than two decades. It's nonetheless odd to hear Jeanine Pirro criticizing Democrats in the New York State Assembly for failing to enact sexual predator legislation that would detain convicted sex offenders indefinitely after they've finished serving their sentences. Pirro is running for the United States Senate, not the New York Assembly. Her obvious attempt to paint Sen. Hilary Clinton as just another Democrat who "coddles" criminals is disingenuous, given that Clinton isn't a state legislator and doesn't vote on proposed state legislation.

by TChris

As reported in the NY Times, Australian journalists revealed that American soldiers in Afghanistan “burned the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters and then used the charred and smoking corpses in a propaganda campaign against the insurgents.” According to the Australian report, a “psychological operations team” used a loudspeaker to broadcast taunts while driving through a village suspected of harboring Taliban fighters.

According to the program's translation of the taunts, which were delivered in the local language by American forces on the scene, a soldier identified as Sgt. Jim Baker, said: "You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve the bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be." … The reference to the bodies "facing west" appeared to be a deliberate mocking of the Islamic requirement to face Mecca during prayers.

The Pentagon acknowledged that a video of the incident appeared to be accurate and announced that it would undertake a criminal investigation of those responsible. According to the Times, “senior officials” admitted the obvious: “that the incident posed the potential to do further harm in the Islamic world to the image of the United States, already badly tarnished by the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.”

At a speech at Washington's New America Foundation Wednesday, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff made some serious charges against the Bush Administration:

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.