1 Boring Old Man

I. The motive for going to War with Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001 bombing of the World Trade Towers, nothing to do with any real evidence Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, and nothing to do with the Terrorist Movement of Radical Islamists. The motive for going to War with Iraq came from a set of ideas generated by members of the Ronald Reagan and George H. R. Bush Administrations for a Post-Cold-War foreign policy of American Dominion in the world – now known as the Bush Doctrine.

II. This set of ideas, originally penned by Paul Wolfowitz during the first Bush Administration as a Defense Guidance, were elaborated widely in the neoconservative think tank, The American Enterprise Institute, with the almost monomaniacal idea that we needed to engage Iraq and Iran in military action, fueled by people like Michael Ledeen and Laurie Mylroie.

III. In 1997, a large group of these people formed The Project for the New American Century specifically devoted to these ideas. They sent a letter to President Clinton and to the leaders of both branches of the Congress in 1998 urging "regime change" in Iraq. They specifically believed that the C.I.A. and the State Department were wrong to focus on the radical Islamic Terrorists [like al Qaeda], feeling that these groups were really under the control of the organized countries of the Middle East – specifically Iraq and Iran.

IV. When George W. Bush decided to run for President, a team of people, called The Vulcans, was assembled to advise him of foreign policy. This team included members of A.E.I. and P.N.A.C. Interestingly, the set of ideas that drove the P.N.A.C. were not mentioned in George W. Bush’s campaign.

V.  When Bush was elected, he incorporated most of these people from the P.N.A.C. and the Vulcans into his Administration. When al Qaeda made its 911 Terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers, the Administration quickly activated the set of ideas from the P.N.A.C and began to plan the War with Iraq. Inside the Administration, there was a rift. The C.I.A. and to a lesser degree, the State Depoartment, focused on al Qaeda. The Defense Department and the Executive Office focused on Iraq [and Iran].

VI. Two groups were formed to popularize the War with Iraq, the White House Iraq Group, W.H.I.G., and the Office of Special Plans, in the Defense Department, O.S.P.  Rather than base this call to War with Iraq on their set of ideas, they went in search of evidence for ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and evidence that he had Weapons of Mass Destruction. As they marched to war, they introduced their set of ideas, not as primary, but as because of Iraq’s connections with al Qaeda and their Weapons of Mass Destruction. The War on Terror did not play out as a War on Terrorists, it turned to the set of ideas that were, by this time, over ten years old.

VII. While the C.I.A. and the State Department are seen as the "out group," the force for moderation in this march to war, they played a strong role in the Administration’s plans. Colin Powell, Secretary of State, carried our case against Saddam Hussein to the U.N. In retrospect, everything he said was essentially wrong. Later, when Joseph Wilson questioned the Administration’s use of pre-war Intelligence, apparently Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, leaked Valerie Plame’s identity to two reporters in the context of talking about Joseph Wilson. I can think of no reason for him to mention her except as a way of suggesting Joseph Wilson’s trip and information was corrupted by his wife’s C.I.A. connection. Also, while the C.I.A. is also seen as some force for moderation, George Tenant, head of the C.I.A. immediately took responsability for Bush’s inclusion of the Niger story in his 2003 State of the Union address. Likewise, Tenant had been instrumental in preparing the information for Colin Powell’s speech.

VIII. So now we are told that Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, a self-professed gossip, told two reporter’s that Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a C.I.A. Analyst and involved in his being chosen for the trip. We are told that he didn’t know that he was the source for Robert Novak until three months after Novak’s article. When he figured it out, he went to Colin Powell and thay sent him straight to the F.B.I., but kept his place in the story a secret throughout the 3 year investigation, at least a secret from the Press [American people]. We are being told that this was an "innocent" leak, and he didn’t know she was a "secret" agent.

[Addition: I suspect that the truth is that he realized in October that he might be discovered to be Novak’s source and that’s why he went to Powell. That’s what happened with Woodward. He didn’t go to Fitzgerald until Woodward confronted him.]

What do we now know?

I. The entire Bush Administration came to office with a set of ideas for a foreign policy that was a radical departure from any previous policy of this country.  It involved a departure from our participation in the World Community [U.N.]. It involved a policy of American Dominion in the world, enforced by unilateral, preemptive military action by our country. And this policy was never acknowledged during George W. Bush’s campaign. If anything, their advertised policy was its very opposite.

II. After the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Towers by al Qaeda, this policy was put into action full tilt, though it was never openly acknowledged as primary. It was embedded in the so-called War on Terror. It was presented as something "new," a response to the Terrorist attack and real intelligence that Iraq was somehow part of the threat to our safety. The evidence for this threat was presented as coming from real intelligence, rather than the truth – the intelligence was jury-rigged to support this foregone conclusion – a conclusion based on a set of ideas from ten years before.

III. Whether President George W. Bush and his advisor Karl Rove, Vice President Richard Cheney and his advisor Scooter Libby, Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and her Deputy Steven Hadley, or anyone else knew that Valerie Plame was a "secret agent" is immaterial to the truth. It is a legal point that has to do with the wording of a particular law, a law put in place by George H. W. Bush. There was unquestionabely the universal culture in the Administration [that involved just about everyone, including C.I.A. Director George Tenant] to discredit the truth of Joseph Wilson’s assertions in his July 6, 2003 article in the New York Times:

Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

This is a tragic story of confusing a hypothesis with the truth, of being unable to adapt in the face of overwhelming evidence, and of trying to cover-up their disasterous mistake and the lies that lead up to it. None of them are "innocent" – not Colin Powell, not Richard Armitage, not anyone or any group mentioned in this post. Many of them may have meant well but they are still at fault for not changing direction in the face of real evidence. They may not have specifically broken the particular law, but they did something worse. They broke their covenant with the American people, and their oath to our way of governing [which has always involved telling the truth].