Judy Miller - "Useful Idiot" or Toady?

This article from Salon on Judy Miller presents an interesting perspective on someone I find a bit depressing. I've viewed her simply as a toady, but this presents a more comprehensive profile. Maybe it all boils down to the same picture with more or less detail and background.

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Judy Miller and the Neocons

By Juan Cole, Salon.com, Friday 14 October 2005

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/14/neocon/index_np.html

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Miller's reputation had already been deeply sullied by her inaccurate and one-sided reporting on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction before the war. Questions have swirled about her relationship with the small coterie of neoconservatives, including Libby, who staffed key positions in the Bush administration, and who were allied with Ahmad Chalabi, a corrupt Iraqi expatriate and notorious liar who became Miller's principal source on WMD issues. Suspicions that Miller had crossed an ethical line and grown too close to her sources increased after the waiver letter she received from Libby was disclosed. That letter ended with this bizarre, highly personal passage: "You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover - Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work - and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers. With admiration, Scooter Libby."

All of which raises the question: Should Miller herself be understood as a neocon?

The evidence suggests that she is not. Rather it was a combination of hawkish convictions about Saddam, ambition, arrogance pumped up by her pre-9/11 work on WMD and jihadis, lax editorial oversight, and her long-standing tendency to get too close to her sources, that led her to become a credulous mouthpiece for those who sought to justify war with Iraq.

Miller clearly agrees with the neocons on some subjects. But she is too knowledgeable about the Middle East and Islam, too evenhanded on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and too much of a liberal on domestic U.S. issues, to be considered a neoconservative herself. A veteran Middle East correspondent (she headed the Times' Cairo bureau) who speaks some Arabic, she had a more balanced and nuanced view of the region than the neocons - at least until 9/11. She probably has more in common with "liberal hawks" such as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman and Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff, who were driven to support a U.S. war on Iraq by fears of Saddam's weapons, a belief that military action could end Arab/Muslim terrorism, and impatience with the glacial pace of political reform in the Middle East.

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In the end, Miller's decline seems due more to professional ambition than ideological conviction - although her own beliefs clearly grew closer to the neocons'. "While Miller might not have intended to march in lockstep with these hawks, she was caught up in an almost irresistible cycle," Foer writes. "Because she kept printing the neocon party line, the neocons kept coming to her with huge stories and great quotes, constantly expanding her access."

In the end, it seems that Miller will go down in history not so much as a true believer as a useful idiot.

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Read the entire article at:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/14/neocon/index_np.html