Some context is important here. I have yet to be even nearly convinced that Plamegate reveals some massive conspiracy to deceive the public in advance about the rationale for the Iraq war. It looks far more likely to me that in 2002, Cheney and Libby were intent on insuring that the CIA was not complacent, and that they weren’t blindsided by Saddam’s WMD program this time the way they were in 1990. I’m grateful for their aggressive attempt to make sure they didn’t ignore threats to this country in the aftermath of 9/11. And they’d now be crucified if a Saddam-made bio weapon had gone off in the U.S. on their watch. What seems more likely to me is that in the aftermath of the war, when their claims largely evaporated, they found it hard to deal with the humiliation. So they over-reached in trying to smear their critics, in the Wilson case, almost certainly violating the law. That’s serious, and it may be a sub-conspiracy. (I have to say I find it entirely credible – though we have no evidence as yet – that Cheney was fully aware of the illegal leak and encouraged it.) But criminality and conspiracy in reaction to post-invasion humiliation is not the same thing as criminality and conspiracy before the war. The anti-war left’s attempt to conflate the two has, as yet, little substance. That’s worth keeping in mind.
THE CASE AGAINST SADDAM: Stephen Hayes makes an interesting point that one consequence of the Fitzgerald investigation is that it has spooked the White House into a failure to make important arguments about why they still had very good reason to depose Saddam. Of course, that’s partly the administration’s fault. If they hadn’t entangled themselves in this mess, they might be freer to make their full case to the public. Like Clinton, Libby did this to himself. And, in a rare moment in the Bush administration, someone is actually being held to account.
THE POPE AND GAY-BASHING: Matthew Parris in the Times of London eviscerates this Pope’s acquiescence to the forces of bigotry. (Bad link now fixed. Apologies.)
VERY, VERY INSIDE BASEBALL: My friend Pete Williams must have felt a little disoriented yesterday:
At one point, Mr. Cheney’s onetime press secretary, Pete Williams of NBC News, asked Mr. Fitzgerald how the prosecutor could take the word of “three reporters” (including his current bureau chief and boss, Tim Russert) “versus the vice president’s chief of staff,” with whom Mr. Williams served in the Pentagon when Mr. Cheney was secretary of defense in the first Bush administration.
Got sand in your eyes yet?
SULU: I find myself wondering what Michelle Malkin’s response was to the news. On the minus side, George Takei’s gay. On the plus, at least they jailed him for a few years in an internment camp in World War II. You can’t win them all, Michelle.
The Dish 