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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (41527)	4/6/2004 12:36:27 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

Hiding in the White House Leon Wofsy It's almost nine months since someone at the White House broke the law by telling columnist Robert Novak that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. This was retaliation for Wilson's revelation that Iraq's supposed purchase of uranium from Niger was already known to be a fraud when President Bush included it in his January 2003 State of the Union. For a long time after going to war (ostensibly) to find and destroy Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction," we were told the reason WMDs eluded discovery is that Iraq is so big: "WMDs could be hidden anywhere in a country as vast as California." But how big is the White House? Why can't the culprit of the vindictive and criminal leak of a CIA agent's identity be found? Is someone in the White House keeping secrets from the boss? What does the president know? Is the guilty party too high up? Isn't there anyone down the line willing to fall on his sword? The reasonable answer is that the Wilson episode just happens to be the way this White House deals with critics, something now proven too often to escape notice. The messenger of bad news for the White House is personally attacked and punished. Each charge is treated in isolation from similar, corroborative revelations from independent sources. Then the formula is to allow the particular story to fade from public view. The latest case in point is Richard Clarke. All the fury against Clarke blows a screen of smoke over truths that would seem almost impossible to hide: that the war in Iraq was an obsession that had nothing to do with a threat from WMDs or combating al Qaeda; that it expanded terrorism and heightened worldwide antagonism and distrust of the United States. The Bush people want desperately to avoid public focus on the central part of Clarke's charge, that the war and occupation of Iraq have made us and the world far less safe. They hope that they can separate the Clarke story from the whole story -- that by going one-on-one to nullify Clarke, no one will notice the long line of corroborative insider witnesses preceding him: Scott Ritter, Joseph Wilson, Paul O'Neill and David Kay, as well as Hans Blix. But the line of damning evidence is even longer than the line of witnesses, from the disastrous news and mounting casualties in Iraq and from the dangerous repercussions elsewhere. It might be worth reminding the non- inquisitive media that the scoundrel who broke the law to get Wilson's wife is still in hiding in the White House. He or she or they should be easier to find than Iraq's WMDs. commondreams.org lurqer