CIA wars

Great article by Chris Lehmann in today's New York Observer.

Even though—or perhaps because—the Office of Special Plans was custom-ordering its case for war, it began throwing its weight conspicuously around the rest of the White House. “I went to a White House Situation Room meeting, and [Mr. Feith] took over the meeting, and [then–Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen] Hadley let him,” said Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff for Colin Powell. “It was not challenged by any of the intelligence people. It was clear to everyone in the room—not only to people like me, who were consumers of intelligence for many decades, but senior intelligence people themselves—that this guy didn’t know what he was talking about.”

At such moments, Mr. Wilkerson says, the gauntlet was thrown. “If you’re arrayed at the back of the room, and if you don’t see anyone at the table who speaks out, then you say, ‘Well, I’m not going to speak up either.’”

Will indictments really get at the root of the evil that has been perpetrated on us?

EVEN AFTER ALL OF THE INTRIGUE AND HIGH-STAKES ANGST over the Plame investigation, the much bigger black box concerning the elaborate put-up job on W.M.D. remains largely untouched and unopened. And there’s a sickly sense in Washington that, even if the special prosecutor’s office returns a boatload of indictments, that’s where things will stand. After all, the Senate Intelligence Committee still has yet to deliver its follow-up report on who was chiefly responsible for fouling up the W.M.D. case. The committee’s chairman, Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, announced last year that the inquiry had been scheduled too uncomfortably close to the November 2004 elections—and hasn’t taken it up since then.