... was considered an expert on Iraq, and for a number of years, she was an apologist for Hussein:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.bergen.htmlAt around the time that Hussein invaded Kuwait, she had a sudden conversion about him and wrote a book--with Judith Miller--which described all of Hussein's evils, etc. and his weapons of mass destruction. This is where, I think, Miller gets her reputation as being an "expert" on WMD.
Around 1993 or 1994, Mylroie had become the darling of the right for writing another book which asserted that Iraq was the seat of
all international terrorism. Although the scholarship in that book was awful, and Mylroie's contention depended upon the assertion of theories that were widely disputed in the intelligence field (for good reason), she kept up hammering on the unlikely and the impossible. That, of course, got her a job at the American Enterprise Institute, where she continued to say the same thing.
This is part and parcel of the
modus operandi of the far right--dubious scholarship as justification for their policy recommendations. A lot of people have forgotten that the far right latched onto a book in 1980 called
The Network of Terror, which was written by Michael Ledeen, and asserted that
Moscow was the seat of all international terror. This motivated the far right to impress on all the Reaganites the "evil empire" routine.
In some instances, this got positively silly. Someone gave William Casey the book during the Reagan campaign, and he was so taken with it that when he took up the reins at the CIA, he ordered his staff to check into the "facts" in the book. Was very easy for the CIA to do. Ledeen has based his arguments almost entirely on reports in European news sources. The CIA looked at the book and said, uh,oh. It was entirely based on black propaganda they'd had slipped into the foreign press to discredit the Soviets. None of it was true. They dutifully reported that to Casey. Casey didn't believe his own CIA. So, Mel Goodwin, who at the time ran the Soviet Political Affairs desk at the agency, said, "Casey's an old OSS guy, why don't we have some Operations guys tell him--maybe he'll believe them." They sent in Operations people--the real feet-on-the-ground spooks--and Casey didn't believe them, either.
There's a pattern here--the neo-cons believe in the importance of the concept of the "necessary lie." Ledeen's and Mylroie's books make the large and wild statements, so-and-so is responsible for all global terrorism, therefore, we have to do something about them. We're good and they're bad.
Now, if either of them had been even close to correct, global terrorism would have collapsed when the Soviet Union fell, and then, again, when Iraq was attacked. In neither case did that happen.
Now, as far as Miller is concerned, I would say that she was turned in the process of writing a book with Mylroie in 1990, and certainly has kept in close touch with Mylroie over the years. I think she had a highly ideological role in all this. Her association with Mylroie is likely the root of her being a true believer of the neo-con cause--at least as regards Iraq and the larger Middle East.
There has to be a
reason for her violating some basic tenets of reportorial responsibility--such as second-sourcing information--which she obviously did not do by printing Chalabi's lies without substantiation.
Just my take on it all.
Cheers.