NYT: Leak Case Renews Questions on War's Rationale

[Bumblebee]

Leak Case Renews Questions on War's Rationale



By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
and DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: October 23, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 - The legal and political stakes are of the highest order, but the investigation into the disclosure of a covert C.I.A. officer's identity is also just one skirmish in the continuing battle over the Bush administration's justification for the war in Iraq.

That fight has preoccupied the White House for more than three years, repeatedly threatening President Bush's credibility and political standing, and has now once again put the spotlight on Vice President Dick Cheney, who assumed a critical role in assembling and analyzing the evidence about Iraq's weapons programs.

The dispute over the rationale for the war has led to upheaval in the intelligence agencies, left Democrats divided about how aggressively to break with the White House over Iraq and exposed deep rifts within the administration and among Republicans. The combatants' intensity was underscored this week in a speech by Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Colin L. Powell while he was secretary of state.

Mr. Wilkerson complained of a "cabal" between Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that bypassed normal decision-making channels when it came to Iraq and other national security issues. He described "real dysfunctionality" in the administration's foreign policy team and said that Mr. Powell's aides had thrown out "whole reams of paper" from the intelligence dossier developed by Mr. Cheney's staff for use in Mr. Powell's presentation of the case against Iraq to the United Nations in early 2003.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/politics/23strategy.html?hp&ex=1130040000&en=55c9a6d313b21ef5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Bumblebee]

1. and a neat quote:

"The way in which the leak investigation is being pursued is becoming a symbol of who was right and who was wrong about the war," said Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. "The possibility of Libby being indicted, and the whole Cheney angle, is all about proving in some sense that they were wrong and therefore that we who opposed the war and never thought the intelligence was right have been proven correct."

[HereSince1628]

2. Don't you think a circuit breaker that keeps tripping is trying to say

it's time to get in and really look to see why.

Could it be that the American people really would be ready to impeach Bush if some other "emergency" didn't always seem to pop up and change the medias attention?

[gratuitous]

3. Better late than never?

This was a discussion that should have been had three years ago, two years ago and even as recently as a year ago. Instead, we've squandered our Treasury, our national prestige, our military, and thousands and thousands of lives all in service to a bunch of corrupt assholes who couldn't be bothered with the owning up to the truth.

And not all of those corrupt assholes are technically on the federal payroll.