Following the indictment of vice-presidential aide Scooter Libby on perjury charges for what turns out to be a not-so-sensitive "outing" of a not-so-foreign CIA foreign operative, Max Boot of the L.A. Times puts the whole Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame kerfuffle in perspective.

What comes through, to me, is how rudderless is the anti-Iraq war movement, and by extension, the entire American and European Left, weakly but incessantly "gotcha-gaming" from the sidelines - while a crucial chapter in the history of the Middle East is now being written via Iraq's recently-approved constitutional process and upcoming parliamentary elections in December.

Here's Boot, first, on the much-flogged liberal meme that Valerie Plame's identity as a covert foreign operative was illegally made public.

Feverish speculation had been building that Karl Rove would soon be "frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs," as Valerie Plame's bombastic hubby, Joe Wilson, had hoped. Or even that Dick Cheney would have to resign. But with his investigation all but over, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has found no criminal conspiracy and no violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime in some circumstances to disclose the names of undercover CIA operatives. Among other problems, Plame doesn't seem to fit the act's definition of a "covert agent" — someone who "has within the last five years served outside the United States." By 2003, Plame had apparently been working in Langley, Va., for at least six years, which means that, mystery of mysteries, the vice president's chief of staff was indicted for covering up something that wasn't a crime.

Wilson has become an icon of The Left by claiming that thanks in large part to his eight-day investigative mission in Niger, he discovered the Bush administration went to war in Iraq based on a false premise of WMD's. That deception was illustrated tellingly, he asserted, by inflation of intelligence on the possibility of Iraq's interest in obtaining yellowcake uranium from Niger. But as Boot points out: the Bush Administration was hardly alone in its suspicions, and Wilson brought nothing to the table.

The Senate Intelligence Committee...report found that, far from discrediting the Iraq-Niger uranium link, Wilson actually provided fresh details about a 1999 meeting between Niger's prime minister and an Iraqi delegation. Beyond that, he had not supplied new information. According to the panel, intelligence analysts "did not think" that his findings "clarified the story on the reported Iraq-Niger uranium deal." In other words, Wilson had hardly exposed as fraudulent the "16 words" included in the 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In fact, the British government, in its own post-invasion review of intelligence, found that this claim was "well founded."

This is not an isolated example. Pretty much all of the claims that the administration doctored evidence about Iraq have been euthanized, not only by the Senate committee but also by the equally bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission. The latest proof that intelligence was not "politicized" comes from an unlikely source — Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, who has been denouncing the hawkish "cabal" supposedly leading us toward "disaster." Yet, in between bouts of trashing the administration, Wilkerson said on Oct. 19 that "the consensus of the intelligence community was overwhelming" that Hussein was building illicit weapons. This view was endorsed by "the French, the Germans, the Brits." The French, of all people, even offered "proof positive" that Hussein was buying aluminum tubes "for centrifuges." Wilkerson also recalled seeing satellite photos "that would lead me to believe that Saddam Hussein, at least on occasion, was … giving us disinformation."

So much for the lies that led to war. What we're left with is the lies that led to the antiwar movement. Good thing for Wilson and his pals that deceiving the press and the public isn't a crime.

Downing Street.

Cindy Sheehan.

Scooter Libby.

The Iraqi Constitution.

I choose Door Number Four. Look not backward in regret and recrimination, but forward, in hope, and with strength.

TECHNORATI TAGS: VALERIE PLAME, JOSEPH WILSON, IRAQ

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 3, 2005 10:11 AM