Directly before the Iraq war, I traded a few e-mails with Andrew Sullivan, who was exasperating the hell out of me at the time with his (I thought) rather breezy acceptance of Bush/Cheney talking-points regarding the war's urgent necessity - namely, Iraq's alleged possession of WMDs. Through my own research (before I discovered Dailykos, sorry) on sites like Antiwar.com and Talkingpointsmemo.com, as well as reading what Seymour Hersh was saying about "stovepiping" intelligence in the New Yorker, I'd concluded that the WMD charge was flimsy as hell, if not flimsier. But Andrew would hear none of it.
In one of my e-mails to Andrew I said, "You know, I'm just a proofreader, but I know there aren't any WMDs in Iraq. How is it that the major media and yourself don't know that? Why are you so damn trusting of the government? Isn't conservatism marked by distrust of government?" Andrew would reply (paraphrasing; I no longer have the e-mails), "You're part of the old, decadent left; why would I listen to you?" (Although paraphrased, I'll never forget the "decadent left" charge, because it was so completely ludicrous - which I let him know, by the way.) Then Valerie Plame's "outing" went down, and things got particularly interesting with ol' Andy.
I pointed out - as Justin Raimondo was pointing out, as Seymour Hersh was pointing out, as Amy Goodman, Robert Scheer and (surely) Mr. Kos were pointing out - that in the Plame debacle, there were breadcrumbs everywhere, breadcrumbs the size of boulders, decidedly not hard to follow. I led him to where the luminaries listed above had traveled after threading the route the breadcrumbs described: to Dick Cheney's office, for clearly, Cheney and his hyper-professional-Washington-operator cohorts had risked everything to go after (as Andrew paints Joe Wilson on his blog today) a "two-bit, irrelevant jerk in the grand scheme of things." Yet, with teeth bared, they did indeed go after him.
Many, many people smelled the rigging of a war going on here. Many, many people put things together that equaled "the Bushies wanted this war so bad they rigged evidence to make it happen." Many, many people stated firmly that impeachment was the answer, should the war have been built on a pile of lies. And anyway, doesn't a fiercely desired war help explain why an old politico like Cheney would risk everything, including impeachment, to have it happen? Yes, it sure does.
So - now - what does one of the Iraq war's early super-gung-ho champions conclude today, four years into the war, a good two years into Libby's hot-seat troubles re: Valerie Plame? Just this:
The alternative explanation is that Cheney was scared - so scared he took a huge risk that eventually led to the loss and public humiliation of his most trusted aide, Scooter Libby. But why would he be scared? The most plausible inference is that he knew he had deliberately rigged the WMD evidence to ensure that the war took place. He knew, even if the president was blithely convinced otherwise, that the WMD evidence was weak, and his success in distorting the evidence was threatened by Wilson. Not that Wilson had all the goods - Cheney must have known this was a minor matter. It was the danger that journalists or skeptics pulling on the thread that Wilson represented could get closer to the much bigger truth of WMD deception. This is a huge deal for one single reason: if true, it means that the White House acted in bad faith in making the case for war. There is no graver charge than that. In fact, if true, it's impeachable. I don't want to believe it. But I find it increasingly plausible that this is what Patrick Fitzgerald smells in the Libby case. He can't prove it yet; he may never prove it. But he's getting warmer; and he won't give up.
Andrew Sullivan, thou art an idiot.