The war in Iraq is clearly a failure of integrity rather than a failure of intelligence.
The leading political question of the day should be:
Why are none of the presidential candidates running on a platform of integrity?
This is what a candidate's platform should be:
1. Why I am better than what you've got.
2. Why I will be better than any of the folks running against me.
Has any candidate dealt with question one -- Why I am better than what you've got -- in any succinct, non-partisan way? Is there anyone running for office that has the courage of conviction to say:
"Healthcare, taxes, global warming, stem cell research be damned. George Bush got us into war by lying. I may not have all the answers but I do understand that lying is, was and will be a mistake."
I don't want to hear namby-pamby Clintonesque justification of her Senate vote or revisionist, "even though there were no WMDs we needed to get rid of Saddam anyway."
I want to hear somebody, in straight homespun American say: "The president lied."
I'm not even sure I want to hear a promise that, "If elected, I won't lie." Just please say that lying is bad.
Granted, politicians lie. But this isn't a Clintonian sex lie, a Nixon paranoia lie or a Reagan "I don't recall lie." This is a lie of historic consequence that will continue to kill our children for decades to come.
Sometime after the attacks of Sept. 11, it was decided to invade Iraq. Cheney and the boys concluded that our national sense of hurt over the World Trade Center would override our native skepticism and lead us to ignore the obvious foreshadowing of quagmire.
Two current books, including one published last week, prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Bush administration betrayed the cornerstone of the intelligence agreement on which great nations operation: The production of non-partisan information.
Curveball: Spies, Lies and the Con Man Who Caused a WarRandom House is a story of a woebegone Iraqi scientist who bartered a farfetched tale about germ factories into asylum in Germany. It was the eventual basis for Colin Powell's claim of "eyewitness" evidence of prohibited weapons. Even then, Powell was one of the few administration figures with widespread credibility. We wanted to believe him.
What we -- and perhaps Powell -- didn't know at the time was the source of this information was a "can't-get-it-straight" informant codenamed "Curveball." Bob Drogin, a Los Angeles Times reporter who has won every investigative journalism award over a distinguished 30 year career, tells the story of the spy codenamed Curveball in such a tantalizing fashion that critics compare it to a first rate spy novel. Sadly, it's not a novel. Our own operatives, more concerned with orders than integrity, identified Curveball as an easy method to "document" a preconceived notion. None of their handlers had the gumption to give their reports a failing remark and write the word "preposterous" above where it says "Top Secret."
The other, perhaps more damning report, is found in The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq (Rodale Press). The book was written by Peter Eisner and Knut Royce, arguably the best duo of investigative reporters in Washington since the day Woodward and Bernstein hired their first Hollywood agent. Their book traces a fraudulent intelligence document from Italy alleging Saddam was getting uranium from the African nation of Niger. The letter was replete with misspellings and absurd statements that were self-evident fabrications.
These books are not political tomes or partisan revisionist history based on hindsight. Although more lyrical they are simple presentations of indisputable fact. They read like a perfectly tuned indictment. This brings us back to the integrity issue.
Perhaps we don't want an honest man. We replaced Nixon with Jimmy Carter, an honest man who, at best, lacked the skills to inspire. Rudy replaced Dinkins, FDR replaced Hoover. Sometimes we think we need a bully.
Each candidate has their own baggage, from Rudy's inability to maintain marital or baseball fidelity, Edwards' poor boy millions, Obama's 'I don't recall what happened in New York during college' and Hillary, well just being herself is enough to make a polygraph needle make a seismograph seem understated.
McCain tried the integrity thing but missed his moment in America's ADHD political attention span. Fred Thompson's gravitas is based on television writers who apparently are going on strike.
The greatest political myth in our history is the one about George Washington fessing up to an encounter with a cherry tree. If none of the current crop of candidates can even invent such a morality tale, even if it's not true, we need to get somebody else.