Lying's just the tip of the iceberg

ANDREW GREELEY

_S ince it is apparently not a
crime to deceive the
American people into sup-
porting 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 sure-
ly 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 pros-
ecutor was unable after two years
of effort to find out the who-how-
and-why of this gratuitous and vi-
cious 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 administra-
tion 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 un-
aware of the Iran-contra deal.
Libby's clumsy lies -- attributing
the ''leak'' about a CIA agent to
journalists -- were probably an at-
tempt to protect the vice presi-
dent, 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 be-
fore the president defeated Sen. Al
Gore (if he really did). They even
tried to blame the World Trade
Center attack on Iraq. A demo-
cratic 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 destruc-
___________________
It seems evident that
both Cheney and Libby
are war criminals.

tion 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 resist-
ance) was in its ''last throes,'' de--
spite 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 administra-
tion, led by the vice president, sys-
tematically deceived the American -
people about the war and continues
to do so. There were never any nu-
clear weapons, never any raw ura-
nium, 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 sup-
porting legislation that would pro-
vide 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 an-
other cold war situation, such leg-
islation 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 in-
dictment 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 con-
tinue even if it has lost one of its
more dedicated members.
There is nothing in the Ameri-
can legal system that permits the
indictment of public officials for
war crimes. Thus, perjury and ob-
struction of justice must suffice as
a substitute. Yet it seems evident
that both Cheney and Libby are
war criminals. They fed the coun-
try false information to seduce it
into a war that was both unneces-
sary and incompetent. And there is
very little the American people can
do to end the war for several more
years.