The bitch is back

(Updated below)


Well, well, well. Look who's back in the saddle again. Our Lady of the Chalabi Hobby has found a congenial new venue for her infamous tropism. The WSJ is publishing her two-parter on how President Braveheart's derring-do turned Libyan strongman Moammar al-Gadhafi into a regular Depends customer and saved the world from certain annihilation.

Were the folks at WSJ unaware that Ms. Miller has, shall we say, a less than pristine history when it comes to reporting on Libya?

The scenario sounds somehow familiar: in support of a somewhat loopy Republican president's campaign against an Arab dictator, Judith Miller was willing to plant official US disinformation in the New York Times.

The year was 1986.

Nine years into her tenure at the New York Times, she participated in John Poindexter's disinformation campaign against Libya for the Reagan administration. As Bob Woodward later revealed in the Washington Post, Miller planted Poindexter's propaganda in her own writings: claiming that el-Khadaffi was being betrayed from within his own country, that he had sunk into depression, and had turned to drugs. Miller went on to claim Khadaffi had tried to have sex with her, but lost interest when she claimed Jewish heritage.

I guess it is also worth taking notice of the fact that shilling for the Shrub has become so difficult that they have largely abandoned claims that Iraq is a success, and are resorting to dog-that-didn't-bark defenses. (Sure, he screwed the pooch on the war he did fight, but he kicked ass in the mythical one he didn't!) But the fact that they are using Judy Miller to do it is even more pathetic. Surely the Journal has less soiled reporters who can be persuaded to offer similar paeans to Dear Leader's magnificence?

Having never slept with or been propositioned by any Middle Eastern leaders, I have no independent basis for contradicting Judy's breathless prose. But isn't it instructive that the left blogosphere has been generally cautious about believing the story about Rove's indictment from Jason Leopold due to problems with his previous stories, while one of the only national newspapers in the country has no problem giving perhaps the most compromised and disreputable reporter of our time the opportunity to spin from their pulpit -- about the very people she has been found (at best) to have been completely wrong about before?

It's those damned blogger ethics.

Update: speaking of the WSJ and blogger ethics, Tim Grieve points out the incredible dishonesty in their snark sbout the Jason Leopold - Karl Rove story. (The Journal suggests that we all jumped, lemming-like, on his uncorroborated indictment scoop.) As Tim points out, I think we have in general been pretty damned level-headed in our response.

And another thing. Compare the exhaustive examination within our ranks of the story and how to treat it on the one hand, with the New York Times and the way it blew off not just us, but its own Public Editor. I think we come off pretty well by comparison.