Lying's Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Published on Friday, November 4, 2005 by the Chicago Sun Times

Lying's Just the Tip of the Iceberg
by Andrew Greely

Since it is apparently not a crime to deceive the American people into supporting a foolish and unjust war, one must be content with the indictment of I. Lewis Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice. The indictment is an example of a mountain laboring two years to bring forth a molehill. Libby will have the best trial lawyers money can buy and stands a good chance of acquittal. If he is convicted, the president will surely grant him a pardon before he leaves office.

We are unlikely ever to learn who ''outed'' Valerie Plame and thus ruined her career. That the leak came from a cabal inside the White House has been evident for a long time. But if the special prosecutor was unable after two years of effort to find out the who-how-and-why of this gratuitous and vicious mischief, the historians of the future might not be able to tease out the truth. They might observe, however, that the scandal was proof of how far down the path of evil the Bush administration would go to defend their case for a war that has turned out to be foolish and unjust.

Did the president know what was going on? It is hard to believe that he did not -- any more than President Ronald Reagan was unaware of the Iran-contra deal. Libby's clumsy lies -- attributing the ''leak'' about a CIA agent to journalists -- were probably an attempt to protect the vice president, who is far too clever to be caught in any legal trap. Yet we know enough now to understand that the Iraq war is his war. He and the crowd of neo-conservatives around him and the secretary of defense planned the war even before the president defeated Sen. Al Gore (if he really did). They even tried to blame the World Trade Center attack on Iraq. A democratic Iraq, they argued, would transform the balance of power in the Middle East. The way to Jerusalem, they claimed, was through Baghdad.

Cheney proclaimed to the bitter end that weapons of mass destruction would eventually be found in Iraq and has never retracted or apologized for this claim, which was decisive in winning support for the war from the American people. More recently, he has claimed that the Iraqi insurrection (better called, perhaps, the Iraqi resistance) was in its ''last throes,'' despite overwhelming evidence that it grows ever stronger. Is he lying, or is he the kind of true believer who sees the world differently than everyone else?

Who knows what the answer is to that question? In truth, it does not matter. The Bush administration, led by the vice president, systematically deceived the American people about the war and continues to do so. There were never any nuclear weapons, never any raw uranium, never any Iraqi involvement in the World Trade Center attack. The Iraq war was never part of a ''war on terrorism.''

The vice president is also supporting legislation that would provide the basis for the CIA to do what it is already doing -- torture people who are held outside this country. Granted Cheney's serious fear that jihadism has created another cold war situation, such legislation would still reduce the United States to a country that willingly supports savagery -- an ineffective strategy at that. The war is Cheney's war, and the 2,000 American dead and the 32,000 Iraqi dead are Cheney's victims. The torture is Cheney's torture.

With this background, the indictment of Libby looks kind of silly. One relatively minor player in Cheney's war will have to suffer through a trial and perhaps some time in prison. The conspiracy to go to war pushed forward by the White House Iraq Group will continue even if it has lost one of its more dedicated members.

There is nothing in the American legal system that permits the indictment of public officials for war crimes. Thus, perjury and obstruction of justice must suffice as a substitute. Yet it seems evident that both Cheney and Libby are war criminals. They fed the country false information to seduce it into a war that was both unnecessary and incompetent. And there is very little the American people can do to end the war for several more years.