Not so sleepy Saturday

The remnants of Hurricane Dennis have been lingering in the Ohio Valley for most of the past week. It has rained most days and is often cloudy and gray. Today was no exception, which would ordinarily make it a sleepy Saturday. You know, a day of rest and relaxation.

And I certainly didn't do much on Saturday -- watched the Yankee-Red Sox game, updated some of my University webpages, went to the grocery store, etc.

Regular readers know that I haven't blogged very much lately, and haven't added any new content in 48 hours.

So...I was more than a little surprised when I discovered that nearly 800 people have visited the site today! Most have arrived via whatREALLYhappened.com and are reading my "Forged Documents" post from February 10, 2004. That post discusses the possible origins of the Niger documents from Italy, but I assume people are reading because of the latest revelations about Karl Rove and Valerie Plame. Plame's spouse went to Africa and helped disprove the Niger-uranium story, despite the existence of forged documents suggesting Niger was selling nuclear material to Iraq.

I've long been interested in the two stories myself, so I'm not surprised people are still interested in the possible connections.

The page they are visiting is probably the most frequently viewed page on this blog, thanks to a previous link from whatREALLYhappened.com and a link from Atrios.

Over the past 18 months, literally thousands of readers have seen that post and probably think I'm running some sort of conspiracy-theory blog.

Am I?

I prefer to relate some of my more speculative blogging to the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game. For example, we'd know a lot more about the Valerie Plame affair if jailed New York Times journalist Judith Miller simply told us what she knew:

1. Judith Miller is linked to "Iraq is to blame for all terrorism" wacko Laurie Mylroie. They wrote a book together!
2. Mylroie is directly linked to Lewis Libby. Libby "blurbed" Mylroie's book.
3. Libby is directly linked to the Bush-Cheney White House. He is Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff
4. The White House is dominated by "Bush's Brain," Karl Rove.

Oh, that didn't take six steps. Should I have added that Michael Ledeen is also on Benador Associates roster? Like Miller and Mylroie, he has often expressed confidence in Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi.

When this story started, Plame's spouse, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, fingered Karl Rove as the leaker.


7/19/05 Correction: Libby didn't blurb Mylroie's book; "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle did that. Libby was personally thanked for his "generous and timely assistance" by Mylroie. Paul Wolfowitz was also thanked.