I’m beginning to love this trial.
I love it because it is firmly establishing this fact:
She testified that both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were intensely interested in Ms. Wilson and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had been sent to Africa to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger for his nuclear weapons program.
Why is that important? Because June 2003, when this obsession took hold, was also the month that the CIA first briefed Bush, Cheney, Rumsfled et al. that they were facing a full-blown guerrilla insurgency in Iraq. Were they obsessed by the fact that there war was changing, that it might be more difficult to prosecute than they’re bargained for? No. They were obsessed with sliming Joe Wilson. And with the missing WMD. They decided to have David Kay lead a 1200 member intelligence force–the Iraq Survey Group–to “find” the WMD. They did not do anything to help the U.S. troops on the ground help fight the insurgency. They didn’t add additional intel resources to help figure out who the insurgents were. General Ricardo Sanchez had only 27 intel officers on the ground at the time, according to my sources. And they certainly didn’t add any troops.
After the decision to invade Iraq in the first place, the inaction and public relations obsessions of June 2003 are flagrant reasons why this administration will be remembered as morally bankrupt, an utter disaster.