[Mb-civic] From no less than Dan Schorr

[Linda Hassler]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071505J.shtml

Rove Leak Is Just Part of Larger Scandal
      By Daniel Schorr
      The Christian Science Monitor

      Friday 15 July 2005

      Washington - Let me remind you that the underlying issue in the  
Karl Rove controversy is not a leak, but a war and how America was  
misled into that war.

      In 2002 President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, was casting  
about for a casus belli. The weapons of mass destruction theme was not  
yielding very much until a dubious Italian intelligence report, based  
partly on forged documents (it later turned out), provided reason to  
speculate that Iraq might be trying to buy so-called yellowcake uranium  
from the African country of Niger. It did not seem to matter that the  
CIA advised that the Italian information was "fragmentary and lacked  
detail."

      Prodded by Vice President Dick Cheney and in the hope of getting  
more conclusive information, the CIA sent Joseph Wilson, an old Africa  
hand, to Niger to investigate. Mr. Wilson spent eight days talking to  
everyone in Niger possibly involved and came back to report no sign of  
an Iraqi bid for uranium and, anyway, Niger's uranium was committed to  
other countries for many years to come.

      No news is bad news for an administration gearing up for war.  
Ignoring Wilson's report, Cheney talked on TV about Iraq's nuclear  
potential. And the president himself, in his 2003 State of the Union  
address no less, pronounced: "The British government has learned that  
Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from  
Africa."

      Wilson declined to maintain a discreet silence. He told various  
people that the president was at least mistaken, at most telling an  
untruth. Finally Wilson directly challenged the administration with a  
July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed headlined, "What I didn't find in  
Africa," and making clear his belief that the president deliberately  
manipulated intelligence in order to justify an invasion.

      One can imagine the fury in the White House. We now know from the  
e-mail traffic of Time's correspondent Matt Cooper that five days after  
the op-ed appeared, he advised his bureau chief of a super-secret  
conversation with Karl Rove who alerted him to the fact that Wilson's  
wife worked for the CIA and may have recommended him for the Niger  
assignment. Three days later, Bob Novak's column appeared giving  
Wilson's wife's name, Valerie Plame, and the fact she was an undercover  
CIA officer. Mr. Novak has yet to say, in public, whether Mr. Rove was  
his source. Enough is known to surmise that the leaks of Rove, or  
others deputized by him, amounted to retaliation against someone who  
had the temerity to challenge the president of the United States when  
he was striving to find some plausible reason for invading Iraq.

      The role of Rove and associates added up to a small incident in a  
very large scandal - the effort to delude America into thinking it  
faced a threat dire enough to justify a war.

   
------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Daniel Schorr is the senior news analyst at National Public Radio.

    
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