Plamegate Forest

Tom Maguire has done a superb job cataloging the trees in Plamegate Park, but I'd like to step back briefly to survey the sad state of the forest.

1. President Bush, in 2002, said that British intelligence believed Iraq was shopping for iranium in Africa.

2. A clique in the CIA, after its director had signed off on the 16 words, commissioned Joseph Wilson to essentially debunk them.

3. We go to war in Iraq for many reasons, one of which -- WMD -- turns out to be, in the popular mind at any rate, wrong.

4. War over, the clique's agent, having sipped tea by the pool at his Niger hotel for a few days, writes an op-ed for the New York Times that distorts both his Niger findings and the president's words.

5. "Bush lied" becomes a rallying cry for the rabid Left and opportunistic Democrats. It becomes, for all practical purposes, the majority view and poisons American attitudes toward Iraq.

6. A State Department underling, Richard Armitage, discloses the nature of Wilson's junket to Robert Novak.

7. Left-wing writer David Corn alleges a dark White House conspiracy to exact retribution on the Wilsons. A three-year investigation follows -- despite the Justice Department apparently knowing from the outset the identity of the "leaker" and knowing too that no law was broken.

8. Despite the frivolous allegations and empty investigation, the mud sticks. From a November 2005 Newsweek poll:

"Thinking more broadly about the case involving the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name: Do you think anyone in the Bush Administration acted unethically in this matter, or not?"

Did: 54%
Not: 24%
Unsure: 22%

9. Armitage, only now -- after the indictment for perjury of a vice-presidential aide for what may be nothing more than a different memory of a conversation; after the reputations not only of Lewis Libby but of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are smeared as well; after the critical damage done to President Bush's credibility -- having been fingered by Corn and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, decides to fess up, exposing an outrageous display of cowardice and disloyalty.

So Joseph Wilson, with an assist from the New York Times, succeeds -- with a lie -- in rendering the Iraq War illegitimate in the public mind.

And Richard Armitage -- a member of the Bush Administration! -- allows the administration's credibility to be wrecked by false allegations from Wilson, the New York Times and others -- for reasons that are, to me, inexplicable.

So much that is false has been reported about the Iraq War and by and about Joseph Wilson that it may be impossible for historians ever to set the record straight.

*****
Goldstein has lots of links.

Unfortunate, says the Washington Post. Unfortunate. I italicize to avoid the insertion of a two-syllable gerund between un and fortunate. Allah says they'll regret it. More on the WaPo at Just One Minute and Blue Crab Boulevard.