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The refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of the insurgency, the obsession with WMD--these were political acts, campaign ploys. And so was Libby's apparent fixation on Ambassador Wilson, who was calling into question the Administration's claims of an Iraqi nuclear program. The most important rationales for the war--that the invasion would go smoothly, that the "smoking gun may come in the form of a mushroom cloud"--were disintegrating. The presidential election of 2004 was looming. It seems a fair indication of the West Wing's WHIGged-out desperation that Libby even attempted the oblique argument that Wilson was not to be trusted because his wife, a CIA analyst, had sent him to find out if Niger had sold uranium to Iraq. But it is an even better indication of how the White House reflexively dealt with unpleasant news: destroy the messenger. Last week there was more of the same, according to a prominent Republican, who told me that the White House had sent out talking points about how to attack Brent Scowcroft after Bush the Elder's National Security Adviser went public with his opposition to the war in the New Yorker magazine. "I was so disgusted that I deleted the damn e-mail before I read it," the Republican said. "But that's all this White House has now: the politics of personal destruction."
Libby's grand-jury prevarications seem fairly substantial. But the real felonies of the Bush Administration are not criminal. They are political. They involve spinning, smearing and governmental malfeasance--the sordid tool kit of the Permanent Campaign.
> To see a collection of Klein's recent columns, visit time.com/klein