For those of you who have been wondering about Judy Miller's motivation for hyping the war in Bush's favor during the runup for Iraq, she's finally answered the question.
This is from Howard Kurtz's column in today's Washington Post:
Miller left the New York Times in 2005 after testifying in the trial of former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby that he had leaked her information about a CIA operative. Miller's conduct in the case, which led to her serving 85 days in jail for initially refusing to testify, drew rebukes from the
Times executive editor and some of her colleagues.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, Miller reported stories on the search for Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be untrue, some of which were cited in a Times editor's note acknowledging the flawed coverage. Miller, now with the conservative Manhattan Institute, wrote when she left the paper that she had "become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war."
She's still a lightning rod, but at least she's no longer pretending to be an objective reporter. With Fox News, she'll get to be an integral part of the Republican propaganda machine once again. and she won't have hide behind that veil of objectivity she used to have to wear while working at the dreaded New York Times.You know, that "liberal" paper the right wing gets all incensed about? I'm sure you've heard of it.
Well, now she can advocate for wars and hawk stories about fictional weapons of mass destruction, and out all the CIA agents she wants. She now works for the news organization that went to court to assert their right to lie in their news stories, and won.
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