Plamegate Still Leaves the "Why" Unanswered

Are far as scandals go, I would give Plamegate an ongoing B grade. For all of that has been written and discussed on cable talk shows it has managed one indictment--a prerequisite in order to maintain scandal status. Frankly, there is much to still disentangle.

Now that nationally syndicated columnist Robert Novak broke three years of self-imposed silence we do know that Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, was a source for Novak's controversial column that initiated the scandal. In 2003, Novak wrote that Valerie Plame, a CIA agent, was married to former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was critical of Bush's misstatements about Iraqi WMD, and said so in a New York Times op-ed.

While who leaked what to Novak and when makes for fascinating intrigue and perhaps some laws were broken, if not legal certainly ethical ones, the unanswered issue that is still dangling: why go to this trouble?

Beyond any indictments, convictions, or cover-ups is my insatiable desire to simply understand the why that fueled this entire episode. Because the why takes us beyond the outing of Valerie Plame and returns us to Joe Wilson's July 6, 2003 op-ed: "What I didn't find Africa."

Wilson made the argument that based on his experience with the Bush administration in the months leading up to the war, he concluded that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was "twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush alluded to Iraq's attempt to obtain uranium from Africa as justification for invading preemptively. But Wilson, based on his findings, "it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq." A week later, Novak identified Plame in his column as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction," and wrote: "Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger."

For some, this serves only to regurgitate an argument that seems tired and antiquated. "We've passed that point, it's about moving forward" is how they respond to such desires to know the truth.

We have indeed passed that point. A bipartisan Congress voted to authorize the president to use force against Iraq based on the case he and his administration made that Iraq posed a threat to an already fearful nation. Moreover, we are passed the point of 2,500 American casualties and 18,500 wounded.

We are so far passed that point we view redeploying our troops to be a greater loss of global credibility than the possibility of our government knowing in advance that we were about to unnecessarily engage in a preemptive strike on a country that posed no threat back in 2003.

Are we pass the point that a solider can ask the secretary of defense why have they had not received up to date equipment only to have the secretary duck the question with a failed attempt at humor? Where are all those "I Support thee Troops" bumper stickers and yellow ribbons when you need them?

Are we pass the point that we cannot consider whether our decisions in 2003 have led to an increase in mentally ill service-members today? "We've heard reports that doctors are being encouraged not to identify mental-health illness in our troops," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif) said in a March 8 telephone interview. "If people are suffering from mental-health problems, they should not be sent on the battlefield," she said. Boxer in a letter to Secretary Rumsfeld stated that last year's suicide rate among soldiers on active duty is the highest since 1993--an increase of 24 percent from the previous year.

As much as we would like to move forward there remain too many unanswered questions that keep us stuck in the past. Whatever the legal ramifications surrounding who leaked what to Novak, there was something in Wilson's 2003 op-ed that did not sit well with the administration. I, like many other Americans, are simply asking: what was it and why?

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