Chutzpah: NY Times Disgraced Journalist Judith Miller Criticizes Wikileaks

There has to be a new entry under chutzpah. Disgraced former New York Times journalist [sic] Judith Miller may be the greatest example of an obsequious Washington press corps.

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Miller was a front page contributor to the Times during the lead up to the Iraqi war. Regarded as a Middle East expert (she is neither an expert nor does she posses any language skills, but the designation of "expert" is casually bestowed on even less informed people in America's culture of instant, cottage industry "experts"), Miller was the pawn of the Bush administration in manipulating public opinion in order to stroke public anxiety and fear about alleged Iraqi WMDs. Here's how this went down: Vice-president Cheney and his neo-con staff fed Miller [mis]information from American intelligence sources detailing Iraqi weapons programs (the information was all, of course, false and even doctored). Miller reported that information in the Times without so much as intimating its source, such as "the White House provided me with...". Cheney then used his own planted information to say on American television in an impertinent act of perfidy that "even today the NY Times reported" in order to collaborate his own accusation and cite the "paper of record" as an "independent" source to bestow credibility. But all Cheney is doing is quoting himself: planting information and then pretending as if that information is just something he read in the paper and...concurrently agrees with him.

Miller was no longer a journalist then, but a government P.R. agent. And she knew it and went along. Her second egregious act during the War lead-up was her uncritical acceptance of information from ambitions Iraqi exiles in London, especially the U.S. client Ahmad Chalabbi. It apparently never accrued to Miller that a man harboring the zeal to be Iraqi president and thus eager for the overthrow of Saddam would be liable to lie and certainly exaggerate a picture inclined to excite America against Saddam for his own cynical ends. Miller reported Chalabbis lies (the man was not even in a position to know the matters he claimed) and her efforts were another propaganda bonanza for the administration and neo-cons.

When Miller was confronted with her sordid past her craven response was, 'but how can you fault me if my sources were wrong?' That's precisely the point. She did not know how to vet sources, fact-check claims or adopt any mental filter. And much of her claims on WMDs rested solely on Chalabi when the journalist's handbook calls for always securing two sources before publishing a story. But ethics are for a bygone era... Miller was later terminated from the Times for her poor conduct.

This lousy journalist [sic] naturally went to were pseudo-journalists go: Fox News. There is no higher honor for polemicists masking as informed reporters.

And Miller naturally adopts the right-wing lines of the Faux News. Here's the chutzpah: Miller chastised Wikileaks because apparently they do not do enough to verify sources. Yes, Wikileaks a whistle-blower site needs to verify the diplomatic cables, apparently. WTF?