Crimes and Cover-Ups: The Case For War

Why did the country go to war in Iraq? Frank Rich wonders in yesterday’s NYT, but not really. He notes that there’s not really an official, justifiable reason — no WMDs, no links between Saddam and Al Qaeda — but that’s not the real reason: the real reason is, a tight-knit group of senior White House officials wanted to go in. Which means that the crux of PlameGate are the reasons — real and fabricated — for going to war. Meanwhile, Newsweek‘s Michael Isikoff reports that Cheney, Libby, Rummy and co. were up to their elbows in raw intel looking for info to buttress their case: “Together, the group largely despised the on-the-one-hand/on-the-other analyses handed up by the intelligence bureaucracy. Instead, they went in search of intel that helped advance their case for war.” Then along came Joseph Wilson with his op-ed and non-WMD assertions, and threw a wrench into that one, and behold, the leak was on.

This week will fill in a lot of the blanks. But if it comes to light that the reasons for going into Iraq were deliberately falsified — by senior members of the White House administration, reaching as far up as even the Vice-Presidency — well, this will be one case where the cover-up, bad as it is, actually was not worse than the crime. We’ll see. We’ll see.

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