The problem is the same for Democrats and others who contend that this war was dishonestly sold to the American public by the Bush Administration, with the help of a submissive press that was afraid to ask the tough questions. They used the same sources available to Miller. What's more, the intelligence agencies of allied countries all agreed that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a threat because of its possession and development of WMD. So the perceived intelligence failure was not unique to the Bush Administration.

Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has written a powerful column for the Washington Post that laid out the problem the Times now faces when it attempts to single out Miller for special scrutiny. The fact is that it wasn't just Judith Miller at the Times who reported that the Iraqi threat was real.

Just a couple examples from Kagan of Times articles from the late 1990's make the point: "Philip Shenon reported official concerns that Iraq would be 'capable within months—and possibly just weeks or days—of threatening its neighbors with an arsenal of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons.' He reported that Iraq was thought to be 'still hiding tons of nerve gas' and was 'seeking to obtain uranium from a rogue nation or terrorist groups to complete as many as four nuclear warheads.' Tim Weiner and Steven Erlanger reported that Hussein was closer than ever 'to what he wants most: keeping a secret cache of biological and chemical weapons.'"

And Times editorials were equally clear when they warned the Clinton administration of the dangers of negotiating with Iraq. They cautioned against letting "diplomacy drift into dangerous delay. Even a few more weeks free of inspections might allow Mr. Hussein to revive construction of a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon." They wrote that it was "hard to negotiate with a tyrant who has no intention of honoring his commitments and who sees nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as his country's salvation."

Why The Times Turned On Judith Miller
by Roger Aronoff
Nov 9, 2005

But following Miller's release from jail, Times columnist Frank Rich went after the Bush Administration and, by extension, Miller. He said the White House "put out a lot of propaganda about WMD, they cherry picked evidence, they ignored signs, sometimes from other government agencies that disputed the evidence for going to war, and they sold it very very well to the public and Congress, often thru the press. And there were very few journalistic institutions that challenged it before we discovered the cupboard was bare."

By the press, he clearly meant to include his own paper, the Times, and Miller.

But since Miller was not alone, even at the Times, in writing such stories, what explains this selective vehemence? The conclusion has to be that Miller is taking a hit because one of her sources has now turned out to be a high-ranking member of the Bush Administration. Official sources are fine when they are being used to undermine the Bush Administration. But when they support the Bush Administration or come from within that administration, that's something else entirely. Clearly, Miller is being denounced because she dared to talk to Lewis Libby and other Bush officials not only about WMD but about the CIA leak case. This was just too much for the extreme liberals at the Times to take.

The irony, of course, is that Miller didn't write a story about what Libby told her about the Joseph Wilson/Valerie Plame affair. But it doesn't matter. What matters, for Frank Rich and his ilk, is that Miller was too close to "Scooter" and that deserves ostracism and even banishment from the paper. The result will be that the Times, already a very liberal paper, will move even further to the left. Bush officials would be well-advised to take this fact into account.

http://www.postchronicle.com/commentary/article_2121179.shtml

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