Jailing Judith Miller

As much as the jailing of reporters worries me, I think that Judith Miller deserves it. She obstructed justice in the investigation of the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative. Although she and Matthew Cooper argued that they were protecting confidential sources and appealing to whistleblower protection, the argument does not hold up. First, the leak was not part of a whistleblower report. It was a politically motivated act of revenge for Joseph Wilson's, Valerie Plame's husband, op-ed in the NY Times before the start of the Iraq war that showed the lie for what it was that Saddam had tried to get yellowcake uranium from Niger. It was a criminal act with no public value. Indeed, Valerie Plame was responsible for working on WMD non-proliferation and her unveiling may have caused deaths of her contacts. Furthermore, she was responsible for many of the untrue articles she wrote for the NY Times about Iraqi WMD capabilities. For that, she has received her comeuppance. However, it is unnerving that Robert Novak is not in jail because he was the first reporter to unveil her name connected with her title as a CIA operative. Real justice will not be done until Bush resigns in shame, and Robert Novak and Karl Rove is sent to jail.