Judy Miller and Fox News, made for each other

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Want another reason not to watch Fox News? And another reason not to take it seriously?

It has hired Judy Miller as an analyst.

That would be Judith Miller, former New York Times reporter, Scooter Libby buddy, Ahmed Chalabi confidante, and Iraq War cheerleader. As the WaPo's Howard Kurtz puts it, nicely, "she is nothing if not controversial":

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."

Right, because (of course) she had nothing to do with any of it. She was just getting it all wrong, reporting in the NYT, as fact, willingly and eagerly, what she was being spoon-fed by Chalabi and the propagandists at the Iraqi National Congress. She wasn't a "lightning rod," she was part of the problem, a reporter who made up the news to suit her political positions and career ambitions. (For more on Miller's active role in spreading the lies, see the fantastic book Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.)

Sure, she went to jail for a time for refusing to divulge her Plame leak sources -- and for playing along with Libby -- but she's hardly the First Amendment martyr she's making herself out to be. It's always been about her, not her supposed principles.

Basically, there's no reason to trust anything she has to say. Which makes her a perfect fit for Fox News.