John Dean Smells a Rat

Former Nixon counsel John Dean has another article up at findlaw.com arguing that the Niger contretemps is just one thread in a fabric of deception and exaggeration.

What I found, in critically examining Bush's evidence, is not pretty. The African uranium matter is merely indicative of larger problems, and troubling questions of potential and widespread criminality when taking the nation to war. It appears that not only the Niger uranium hoax, but most everything else that Bush said about Saddam Hussein's weapons was false, fabricated, exaggerated, or phony.

Most of his points are nitpicks, instances where Bush presented estimates or suspicions as facts, and any one of them taken alone would amount to little. Taken together, however, they do start to have a snowball effect. One can argue about the "technical" truth of the statements, but such defenses during the previous administration produced much derisive snorting from the same criticasters wielding them now.

The administration's case regarding illegal weapons seems to weaken by the day, especially as the search for any trace of them continues to come up empty. Could this be the reason why they were in such a rush to get it started? Could this be why they were unwilling to allow the inspectors to work through the summer? After all, had they waited through the summer, they likely could have brought several more countries into the alliance and given it a sheen of international legitimacy. But had the inspectors spent the next few months confirming the absence of weapons that would present an imminent threat, it gets questionable whether Bush could have maintained public support for the invasion.

There remains no smoking gun, but it nonetheless smells worse every day. And the implications of it all are of an entirely more serious nature than the nonsensical snipe hunt of Whitewater, on which some forty million dollars were spent. Since it is a felony to give false information to the Congress, I have to agree with Mr. Dean when he says:

There is an unsavory stench about Bush's claims to the Congress, and nation, about Saddam Hussein's WMD threat. The deceptions are too apparent. There are simply too many unanswered questions, which have been growing daily. If the Independent Counsel law were still in existence, this situation would justify the appointment of an Independent Counsel.

Because that law has expired, if President Bush truly has nothing to hide, he should appoint a special prosecutor. After all, Presidents Nixon and Clinton, when not subject to the Independent Counsel law, appointed special prosecutors to investigate matters much less serious. If President Bush is truly the square shooter he portrays himself to be, he should appoint a special prosecutor to undertake an investigation.

If Bush has nothing to fear from a close examination, then he should be just as gung-ho in issuing another "Bring 'em on" challenge.