Treason

What I'm asking is, what's bigger? The lies the administration used to convince the country to go to war? Or the lie that the administration only fought the intelligence community after the fact, to cover its tracks when caught?

Is the administration covering up the lengths to which it went to prevent the exposure of its mistaken reliance on bad intelligence? Or is the administration covering up the lengths to which it went to promote intelligence developed by its own, parallel intelligence structure, a plan which required the simultaneous undermining and the destruction of the credibility of the country's established (read: authorized and legitimate) intelligence structure, which refused to give them what they wanted?

The answer to that question is the difference between "just politics," and "we're not kidding when we whisper the word 'treason.'"

Of course, Darth Cheney, and his minions, have been fast and loose with that word whenever anyone questions their motivations in the War on Terra. Kagro X brings up this quote from a couple of years ago early on in the Plame investigation in response to the Feith media blitz attempting to limit the damage from the recent Inspection General's report [thanks to Avedon for the tip].

It should be obvious what Feith's motive is, especially with the Libby trial looming in the background. His primary interest, of course, is that the activities of his OSP be deemed at least not unlawful. And he's managed to get the IG's cooperation on that score. But he wants more than that. He wants to scotch their designation of his activities as inappropriate even if not unauthorized.

Why is it Doug Feith always comes across like a used car salesman who's having a hard time keeping a straight face as he's unloading a lemon?

But he is a brazen liar. For example, watch the CNN clip at Crooks and Liars to see him completely distort the report of Charles Dueffler of the Iraq Survey Group. Far from supporting the claims of Feith's Office of Special Plans, in 2004

...Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq's weapons programs, said Hussein's ability to produce nuclear weapons had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program."

The findings were similar on biological and chemical weapons. While Hussein had long dreamed of developing an arsenal of biological agents, his stockpiles had been destroyed and research stopped years before the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Duelfer said Hussein hoped someday to resume a chemical weapons effort after U.N. sanctions ended, but had no stocks and had not researched making the weapons for a dozen years.

Duelfer's report, delivered yesterday to two congressional committees, represents the government's most definitive accounting of Hussein's weapons programs, the assumed strength of which the Bush administration presented as a central reason for the war. While previous reports have drawn similar conclusions, Duelfer's assessment went beyond them in depth, detail and level of certainty.

"We were almost all wrong" on Iraq, Duelfer told a Senate panel yesterday.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.

But after extensive interviews with Hussein and his key lieutenants, Duelfer concluded that Hussein was not motivated by a desire to strike the United States with banned weapons, but wanted them to enhance his image in the Middle East and to deter Iran, against which Iraq had fought a devastating eight-year war. Hussein believed that "WMD helped save the regime multiple times," the report said...

And Feith can't even keep a straight face lying to Wolf Blitzer trying to keep a Special Prosecutor away. One wonders whether Cheney really was the one that thought up the idea to out Plame. It was a hare-brained way to keep the CIA agents the Company didn't own in line, and far more the kind of dirty trick you'd expect from a smirking used war salesman.