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For those who remember "Punch and Judy," wouldn't you just love to punch Judy?

September 14, 2006

In News

By E&P Staff

NEW YORK The new Michael Isikoff-David Corn book “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War” has drawn wide attention and sales after a couple of major scoops — including the outing of Richard Armitage as Robert Novak’s “other” source in the Plame case — emerged. But the book is also filled with little nuggets and revelations about newspaper reporters who were at the center or fringes of run up to the Iraq war.

The book, for example, quotes The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward on CNN saying, just before the invasion, that “the intelligence shows….there are massive amounts of weapons of mass destruction hidden, buried, unaccounted for” in Iraq. William Safire, still a columnist at The New York Times, urged Bush on: “Smoking guns and hiding terrorists will be found.”

Then there is this anecdote involving The New York Times’ WMD reporter Judith Miller:

“On the eve of war in Washington, journalists and others gathered at a cocktail party at the home of Philip Taubman, the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, to celebrate his new book on high-tech espionage during the Eisenhower years. Judy Miller was one of several Times reporters there, and she seemed excited. Another journalist present asked if she was planning to head over to Iraq to cover the invasion. Miller, according to the other guest, could barely contain herself. ‘Are you kidding?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been waiting for this war for ten years. I wouldn’t miss it for the world!'”