Thursday, December 01, 2005

Five Worst Offenders

Yes, we shouldn't let Judith Miller get all the credit.

Here's one:

Jim Hoagland, Washington Post: This is sort of the Post's version of Miller, only he gets more leeway because he's an op-ed columnist. A veritable Dr. Strangelove of the war, he carried on a bizarre one-way discourse with Saddam Hussein before it started, referring to the dictator as "old chum" and gleefully chiding him about his imminent destruction. At the heart of Hoagland's madness was Ahmad Chalabi, the huckster who ran the Iraqi National Congress and was used as a chief source by the Bush administration in the buildup to war. Hoagland, to his great detriment, forged a too-close, 30-year friendship with Chalabi. It obviously skewed the man's logic. In 2001, he criticized the L.A. Times for repeating claims that Chalabi, wanted on embezzlement charges in Jordan, was a "crook." Then he waxed poetic about how Chalabi sacrificed "most of his fortune so he can risk his life to fight Saddam." Too bad he forgot to report that the man and the INC were paid tens of millions of dollars by the Pentagon for Chalabi's often faulty — but oh so handy — "intelligence." If Hoagland had any left, he'd pull a Murtha.

(tip from RP)