Rarely do we see hypocrisy with such sparkle! Judith Miller, queen of the Curveball, matron of the missing WMD, maiden of the cakewalk, told her fellow media analysts on FOX News Watch this weekend that Julian Assange is a “bad journalist.” Why?

“because he didn’t care at all about attempting to verify the information that he was putting out, or determine whether or not it hurt anyone.”

See Judith Miller on Assange and Hat tip to Crooks and Liars this morning.

Judith Miller was heavily exploited as a very useful, very willing tool for the neoconservatives pushing the country into war with Iraq in 2003. Citing unverified evidence of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions, Miller wrote for The New York Times a series of reports that were later used by the Bush Administration as grounding for the invasion. Here was her response when it all backfired and fingers started pointing to her shoddy, agenda-ridden reporting:

“[M]y job isn’t to assess the government’s information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq’s arsenal.”

Too bad, lady. But your little boo-boos have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, 4,730 coalition soldiers, millions displaced, not to mention the orphans and widows (on both sides), the maimed, the mentally broken. The earth is scarred and polluted and there is a government there that has been, and likely still is, torturing its political enemies just as badly if not worse than Saddam Hussein.

Miller has found an unsurprising haven at FOX News, and her compatriots on the show this weekend were polite enough not to draw attention to the bald ironies being played out on the set. She starts work at Newsmax.com this week. Apparently, that is where all the “good journalists” go these days, right Judith?

Funny, how contemptibly Miller says WikiLeaks does not verify its information “at all.” But WikiLeaks says it spends a great deal of time verifying the leaked documents it receives. So which is it? I know which one I don’t believe, sparkle and dimples and all.