WILLIAM KRISTOL, ERSATZ EXPERT

William Kristol, seen here with his researchers combing the trash for ideas for his column...

When running William Kristol's columns- the latest of which praised Vice President Dick Cheney for cursing ("F _ _ _ you") a Senator who greeted him on the Senate floor - the Albany Herald editors ought to consider a biographical note to enlighten readers who might otherwise assume that Kristol has any intellectual or analytical abilities. For instance, on September 18, 2002 (6 months before President Bush gave the March 19, 2003, order to invade), Kristol predicted that conquering Iraq "could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East." On September 19, 2002, he claimed that Saddam Hussein was "past the finish line" in developing nuclear weapons. On February 20, 2003, Kristol foresaw that "... if we free the people of Iraq we will be respected in the Arab world." On March 1, 2003, he said: "very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president." Shortly after the invasion, Kristol said this about the possibility of post war violence in Iraq: "There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."

All of which begs the question: how does someone who has been so profoundly wrong on so many occasions get paid for his punditry? And why would any self-respecting newspaper run his columns?