Eyal Press reports this in The Nation:
The war in Iraq may have cost 3,900 US soldiers their lives, destroyed America's reputation abroad and turned George W. Bush into one of the most unpopular presidents in history, but it has proved curiously beneficial to one group of people: the pundits who promoted it.
Nobody has been rewarded more generously than William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, neocon extraordinaire and, now, weekly columnist for the New York Times. Some might imagine that slavishly endorsing the lies of the Bush administration might tarnish the credibility of a commentator on foreign affairs. But Kristol, who before this had been a columnist at Time magazine (which declined to renew his contract) and who is a regular feature on the TV pundit circuit, is the latest proof to the contrary. What might have inspired the Times to sign him up? The paper's owners apparently felt that having one neoconservative op-ed columnist who supported the war, David Brooks, was not enough. And they apparently felt a more forgiving mood than the man they decided to hire. In 2006 Kristol suggested that the Justice Department should prosecute the Times for reporting on a secret Bush Administration program to monitor international banking. In 2003 he dismissed the paper of record as "irredeemable," something his own reputation, clearly, is not.
