Get the losers to the bench -- or better, to the locker room or out of the stadium

The question that’s been asked for some time at this site is starting to percolate upwards: why in the world would major media continue using the people who were so totally wrong about Iraq – dead wrong for lots of people, generally not including themselves or their families – as if they have some valuable contribution to make?
[ http://scatablog.blogspot.com/2006/12/its-pass-torch-time-on-foreign-policy.html and
http://scatablog.blogspot.com/2006/12/baker-lets-not-bother-listening-to.html ]


David Corn is a well-known liberal writer in D.C., and he asks the same question in The Nation. Maybe the point will continue to gain traction, and a grateful nation will start seeing less of the Krauthammers, Kristols, Kagans and Pearles. After detailing one confident Kristol declaration after another that proved completely wrong -- and just from September 2002 onwards until the war started -- Corn concludes:

On March 5, 2003, Kristol said, "I think we'll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction and when we liberate the people of Iraq."
Such vindication never came. Kristol was mistaken about the justification for the war, the costs of the war, the planning for the war, and the consequences of the war. That's a lot for a pundit to miss. In his columns and statements about Iraq, Kristol displayed little judgment or expertise. He was not informing the public; he was whipping it. He turned his wishes into pronouncements and helped move the country to a mismanaged and misguided war that has claimed the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. That's not journalism.
In an effectively functioning market of opinion-trading, Kristol's views would be relegated to the bargain basement. And he ought to be doing penance, not penning columns for Time. But -- fortunate for him -- the world of punditry is a rather imperfect marketplace.

That last line is an especially delicious one. Kristol, of course, doesn't think he's ever met a marketplace that wasn't perfect.