Here We Go, Into The Wild Gray Yonder

The Judy "Queen of All Iraq" apologia story is posted at the New York Times.

I haven't even read it yet, figuring it would be more fun to all do it together. Go do that voodoo that you do so well, me hearties!

Arrrrgggghhh..... (ye parrot sits mute.)

Now featuring not just one but two Updates. Go read more, please do!

UPDATE the first:

Well, I've read it now. The soap opera-to-news ratio ("The Days of our Judy's Lives" would make an appropriate if incomplete title) is about 50-50. And the lede is buried about where you'd expect, just shy of halfway down. Since they ran it as an 8 page piece and I naturally hit "single page format", it's probably circa p. 4.

Scooter Libby is SO very, very indicted. And I hope he has an Undisclosed Location to which his darling boss Dear Vice-Leader Dick "Chopblock" Cheney does not have a key. Because Scooter forgot the single most practical note in the Bible: "The wicked flee when no one pursueth." I. e., don't defend, either yourself or your boss, against a charge that hasn't been made. Known in some circles as the "don't put beans up your nose" rule.

Hee hee. I won't tell you exactly where it is, you'll have too much fun finding it for yourself.

UPDATE the second:

Much is being made of the "Valerie Flame" "misspelling" in Juuudy's notebook, and everyone is assuming that a later reference to a "Victoria Wilson" is another reference to Ms. Plame/Wilson. But ya know what?

Turns out that there is in fact a "Victoria Wilson" who is an entirely different person altogether, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. She was either lawfully replaced or forced out and replaced (pick one) by Bush in December of 2001...but one of her last acts was to sign off on that Commission's Report on Voting Irregularies in Florida During the 2000 Election. Interesting document, you might want to go read.

And also suggests that this might be a name that Judy Kneepads would have in her Special Notebook for Interviewing Bush Administration News Massagers for any number of reasons we could speculate upon.

UPDATE the third, which is an update to UPDATE the First, above:

Okay, *I* thought it was a jump-off-the-page notable item, but apparently I'm the only one to find this passage peculiar. It's on Page 2 of the NYT's online formatting of the Gone With The Judy story:

On June 23, 2003, Ms. Miller visited Mr. Libby at the Old Executive Office Building in Washington. Mr. Libby was the vice president's top aide and had played an important role in shaping the argument for going to war in Iraq. He was "a good-faith source who was usually straight with me," Ms. Miller said in an interview.

Her assignment was to write an article about the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq. She said Mr. Libby wanted to talk about a diplomat's fact-finding trip in 2002 to the African nation of Niger to determine whether Iraq sought uranium there. The diplomat was Mr. Wilson, and his wife worked for the C.I.A. [snip]

But Mr. Libby was already defending Vice President Dick Cheney, saying his boss knew nothing about Mr. Wilson or his findings. Ms. Miller said her notes leave open the possibility that Mr. Libby told her Mr. Wilson's wife might work at the agency.

This is the first, and for that matter the last, mention of "Mr. Cheney" in the whole piece. Nobody had at that point accused Crashcart Dick of anything...so why would Libby's first thought be to defend him? Like I said, it seems like a case of The Wicked Flee When No One Pursueth.

Oh well. Maybe it's nothing.