What we have here is nothing less than Iraqgate. The breadth and consequences of the manipulation of facts to justify the invasion of Iraq makes Watergate pale into jay-walking-ticket insignificance.
The perjury trial of Scooter Libby, VP Cheney's right-hand man, is ferreting out this slimy trail of deception that leads directly to the White House.
"CIA former associate deputy director Robert Grenier averted his glance from the defense table where Libby sat as he joined the ranks of witnesses helping the prosecution paint Libby as a liar who tried to conceal his bosses' efforts to silence a war critic. Grenier's agency had repeatedly taken a beating from Cheney and Libby in the run-up to the Iraq war, with Cheney deriding the spooks as incompetent in finding evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." (WaPo)
As Frank Rich points out in Sunday's New York Times, "Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up":
".... Dick Cheney lost it on CNN.... and barked 'hogwash' at the congenitally mild Wolf Blitzer" in an interview conducted "the day after the start of the perjury trial of Mr. Cheney's former top aide, Scooter Libby. The vice president's on-camera crackup reflected his understandable fear that a White House cover-up was crumbling. He knew that sworn testimony in a Washington courtroom would reveal still more sordid details about how the administration lied to take the country into war in Iraq....
"The White House [is] terrified about being found guilty of a far greater crime than outing a CIA officer, lying to the nation to hype its case for war. When Mr. Wilson, an obscure retired diplomat, touched that raw nerve, all the president's men panicked because they knew Mr. Wilson's modest finding in Africa was the tip of a far larger iceberg..... thanks to the commotion caused by the leak case, that damning evidence has slowly dribbled out....
"What we are learning from Mr. Libby's trial is just what a herculean effort it took to execute this two-pronged cover-up after Mr. Wilson's article appeared. Mr. Cheney was the hands-on manager of the 24/7 campaign of press manipulation and high-stakes character assassination, with Mr. Libby as his chief hatchet man."
Like a horror movie's monster octopus tentacles, the same falsifying of facts and propaganda are pulling the country into the bottomless depths of an expanded and extended war in Iraq.
Watergate brought down a president.
Iraqgate will hopefully rid us of the war's evil architect, Cheney, and his apocalyptic influence over future events.
Justice and over 3,000 U. S. heroes' now stilled voices demand it.
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