New York Times hires key Iraq War proponent

The New York Times has announced that it has hired neoconservative ideologue, pundit, and Fox News analyst, Bill Kristol, as a new regular op-ed columnist. Kristol was a key member, along with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz of the Project For A New American Century (PNAC) think-tank. As early as 2000, Kristol and PNAC promoted a position paper titled, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century," which insisted that the United States needed to have a "forward military presence" in the Gulf in order to maintain US global dominance of land, sea and space. They argued that although now-executed leader Saddam Hussein would provide the rationale for an invasion, the need for a US military build-up in the region "transcended" the issue of Hussein. They further lamented at the time that it would be hard to muster domestic support for such US adventurism absent some "catalyzing" or "catastrophic" event like "a new Pearl Harbor." Kristol was perhaps the most influential pundit of all in promoting the US invasion of Iraq and has strongly defended the move ever since. Times' editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal defended the move. Rosenthal told Politico.com shortly after the official announcement Saturday that he fails to understand "this weird fear of opposing views.... We have views on our op-ed page that are as hawkish or more so than Bill.... "The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual–and somehow that's a bad thing," Rosenthal added. "How intolerant is that?" The paper noted in its own announcement: "In a 2003 column on the turmoil within The Times that led to the downfall of the top two editors, [Kristol] wrote that it was not 'a first-rate newspaper of record,' adding, 'The Times is irredeemable.'" Kristol, on Fox News in 2006, suggested that the paper should face charges after its big banking records scoop: "I think it is an open question whether the Times itself should be prosecuted for this totally gratuitous revealing of an ongoing secret classified program that is part of the war on terror." In 2003, on NPR's "Fresh Air" show, he said, "There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni.... Iraq's always been very secular." In the July 14, 2006 issue of The Weekly Standard, which he edits, Kristol called for a "military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions -- and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement." Kristol, in the current issue of The Weekly Standard, argues that Gen. David Petraeus should have been picked as Time's person of the year, but "Our liberal elites are so invested in a narrative of defeat and disaster in Iraq that to acknowledge the prospect of victory would be too head-wrenching and heart-rending." In the Dec. 17 issue he argued, "Resisting the temptation to throw away success in Iraq by drawing down too fast or too deep is the greatest service this president can render his successor."