Weigel

The New York Times reporter who quit the paper in 2005 -- a casualty of the Valerie Plame scandal and a target of attacks on her pre-war reporting about Iraq's weapons programs -- has a job in print journalism again. She's a contributing writer at Newsmax, the conservative web and print venture founded in 1998 by Christopher Ruddy and built into a multi-million dollar company. (Miller is on contract, not a full-time staffer, so she's continuing the Fox gigs etc.)

After leaving the Times, Miller became a Fox News contributor and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writing occasional, reported op-eds about the Middle East. Miller's latest story for Newsmax marks a return to the men-in-danger-at-the-outskirts-of-American-empire reporting she used to do for the Times. For example:

John Myers never minded the scorching heat of Iraqi summers or the bone-numbing cold that desert nights in winter guaranteed. Fact is, he loved this assignment — drinking endless cups of chai tea or bitter black coffee with his Iraqi counterparts, trying to understand them better. He even enjoyed being in Anbar province — the Sunni heartland, Iraq’s equivalent of America’s Wild West.

He taught his Iraqi charges American-style forensics and watched their confidence swell as terrorist attacks dropped from 15 per day to less than one.