Indicting America

by Scott Ritter

<snip>
Cheney and Libby were behind the decision to mislead Congress, in particular the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's
investigation into the reasons why the U.S. intelligence community had gotten it so wrong about Iraqi WMD capabilities. (Contrary to
the much-hyped case made by the Bush administration in justifying the decision to invade Iraq, no WMD were found in Iraq, and the
CIA subsequently acknowledged that all Iraqi WMD had been destroyed by the summer of 1991).

To Cheney and Libby, Joseph Wilson had committed the ultimate sin when he publicly challenged President Bush's case for war
with Iraq by exposing the fraudulent nature of the administration's very public claims that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium
"yellowcake" from Niger.

If true, the "yellowcake" story would have bolstered the president and vice president's assertions that Iraq had resurrected its nuclear
weapons program, thus legitimizing the case for war. But the reality is that the "yellowcake" claim, like all of the Cheney- and
Libby-peddled intelligence, was specious, in this case derived from forged documents.

Wilson's exposure of this fraud was seen not only as an act of betrayal, but also rightly recognized as a threat to the entire charade
that was the Bush administration's fabricated case for war. If left unchallenged, Wilson's claims could have initiated a process that
would have unraveled the entire fabric of deception and lies woven by Cheney, Libby and the Bush administration about the
non-existent Iraqi WMD threat. As far as Cheney and Libby were concerned, truth was the enemy, and truth-tellers were to be
attacked and destroyed.

And now the lies have come home to roost.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1029-20.htm

dp

sure war was already a certainty, that nothing was going to stop the rush to war.