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colleagues. She used Kelly as a major quoted source in her book "Germs" (on germ warfare). And it was to Judith Miller that David Kelly wrote one of his last emails, on the day he died, in which he expressed his concern regarding the controversy swirling around himself, that "There are many dark actors playing games." Miller then wrote the NYT obit on Kelly but failed to mention her close ties to Kelly or this email. What is even more interesting are the coincidence of dates between the Kelly and Valerie Plame events. Plame was outed by Novak on 7/14/03. Kelly was found dead four days later on 7/18/03. His office and computers were searched. And four days after that, Novak additionally outed the entire Brewster-Jennings counter-proliferation network (on 7/22/03).
I do not believe that Kelly's statements to the BBC (that the pre-war intelligence had been "sexed up"), nor Joe Wilson's op-ed in the NYT (questioning the Iraq-Niger "yellowcake" connection) were sufficient motive for Kelly's murder or the Plame/B-J outings. My suspicion is that there was an in-progress operation that was threatened--something much more serious than merely lying to the public before a war. The war was still in progress and so was the "hunt" for the non-existent WMDs. Possibly the Bushwhacks were trying to plant WMDs in Iraq, maybe with a trail to Iran, to expand the war, then and there. (There was a very odd story in a congressman's book about Manucher Ghorbanifar--the notorious Iran-Contra arms dealer, with close connections to the Pentagon--trying to trick the CIA into believing that Iraq nukes that were being taken to Iran irradiated and killed the team who were transporting them.) The Bushwhacks could endlessly spin mere "lying." Neither the rightwing billionaires who control the corpo-fascist press, nor the Anthrax Congress nor anyone else with the power to hold them accountable for lying, had any inclination to do so. But they may have been determined to cap all their lying by triumphantly producing "the evidence" (with Judith Miller getting "the big scoop")--in order to cement Bush/Blair's political power and/or to expand the war to Iran.
Kelly--a very good counter-proliferation scientist, and a man of conscience and integrity--stumbling upon such a plot--would provide motive, if his bosses knew that he knew. They interrogated him at a "safe house" a week before he died, and threatened him with the Official Secrets Act. He was already "off the reservation" (so to speak), whistle-blowing to the BBC, and could not be trusted. As for Plame and her counter-proliferation team, something similar may have occurred--a threat to this more serious plot. Maybe that story about Ghorbanifar is true. The upshot of the story was that the CIA did not believe him. Was the CIA at that point interfering with a major Pentagon/Rumsfeld OSP operation?
It is difficult to believe that the corpo-fascist media imposed any restraints whatsoever on the Bushwhacks. However, the scandal of planting the weapons in Iraq (and/or using planted weapons to expand the war to Iran) might have been a big enough deal to motivate murders and outings. And if you look at things from the perpetrators' point of view, in July 2003--first, Kelly's whistleblowing about the "sexed up" pre-war intel in Britain in May, then the Joe Wilson's op-ed on 7/6/03, then Blair being informed the next day, on 7/7/03, that Kelly "could say some embarrassing things" --they may have feared that more was coming, that their main plot was about to be exposed. They were still "hunting" for the non-existent WMDs in July, with continued stories from the compliant media about this "white powder" and that suspicious "barn"--and, if my guess is right, they may still have been trying to plant them. The hype was still red hot. In outing Plame/B-J and killing Kelly, were they trying to clear their path, for "the find," or--another possibility--punish those who had foiled them? (Or both--clear their path for a second try, and punish those who had foiled the first try?)
In any case, no WMDs were found--which was slightly embarrassing to the Bushwhacks, but by no means fatal to their Junta. They got what they wanted--at least stage one of commandeering the last of the world's oil supplies. They continued to work on stage two (Iran) until circa 2006 (when I think something big happened to stop them--perhaps China and Russia threatening to come into it, on Iran's side). Stage three (or the stage two backup plan) is probably Venezuela.
I am focusing narrowly on the themes of these two events (Plame outing, Kelly murder) which occurred within four days of each other, in that context--the phony "hunt" for the WMDs--but of course there is a larger context in which that is occurring--a context of war profiteering, the disappearance of a billion dollars cash (tip of the iceberg), Ahmad Chalabi's schemes to become emperor of Iraq (on the Pentagon payroll, feeding phony "evidence" to Rumsfeld and Judith Miller), torture (its true purposes), Cheney/Rumsfeld arms dealing, and much more. I just don't think that mere lying about Iraq WMDs would have toppled an edifice built on election fraud (with more to come), vast war profiteering, vast secrecy and spying (and blackmail), pervasive torture (shredding of the rule of law; torture to induce terror, and torture for more focused Bushwhack purposes), mindboggling theft and a supine press corps in the pay of billionaire war profiteers. However, exposure of the use of illicit WMDs and a scheme of planting them to "justify" all this, would have at least dented the edifice (if it came from insiders), and if they were foiled by someone in that plot, these putative "masters of the world" would not have been forgiving about it.
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