You said, "Both before and after Wilson went public with what he'd really seen in Africa (i.e., no sign that Saddam Hussein was looking for nuclear weapons there) . .

As I understand it Wilson said that it was highly unlikely that Hussein had purchased any yellowcake from Africa. (Overlooking your absurd reference to nuclaer weapons - it was yellowcake.)

Wilson did not say that it was unlikely that Hussein was looking for it - as you claim in your article

In fact, the Nigerian official that was interviewed by Wilson admitted that he was approached by an Iraqi delegate, ostensibly on a trade mission - that the Nigerian official interpreted as a probable attempt to purchase yellowcake - as yellowcake is about the only thing Nigeria has that could be sold. The Nigerian official apparently rebuffed that approach.

Maybe I'm missing something here but almost everyone who writes about this - except Bob Somerby - either ignores or misses this point. It seems significant.

Can anyone clear this up for me?

Farhad -

You wrote "Well, first, to the relief of many at the New York Times, these accounts exonerate Miller of the most fevered speculation about her role in this case -- the idea that she was the original source of Plame's name, and that she'd passed that information on to the administration through Libby." And Further on, "Beyond that, though, Miller's actions in this case look quite unsavory."

I do not consider that because Miller did not apparently reveal Plame's identity to Libby, she is logically excluded from having provided information, relative to a scenario involving Wilson being promoted by his spouse to her superiors for the Niger trip, to someone else in the administration. Her notes on the matter should be considered compromised material - there is no reason to believe she has not altered or omitted details to obviate her own complicity. The "lost notebook" should be forensically examined to determine how long the ink has been drying.

thanks

SMN

It all goes back to Chalabi and the run up to the war. Judy was in bed with Chalabi and in bed with Scooter. Chalabi's intentions were to beam the drums to overthrow Hussain, feed false information to Judy, the Pentagon, Justice and Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld is jumping through firey hoops that the dumbest people in the world are buying what they are selling, amazingly enough they do believe these lying idiot morons who are no more than oddities masquerading as humans, and we go off to an illegal war. This road to folly was the costliest catastophy in the History of the United States of America. Not just one lie, but lies every day from all corners of the white house all these people were getting sucked into the war. The war in Iraq would probably never happened if not for the stenography talanets of Judy Miller provided to Scooter Libby doing her best imitation as another Bush Puppet. She should get an academy award and then promptly be fired or resign from the New York Times. The American people deserve so much more and we should get it now.