Creating a Climate of Silence

The LA Times has an analysis today of the ongoing scandal surrounding Karl Rove and others in the administration.

Top aides to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were intensely focused on discrediting former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV in the days after he wrote an op-ed article for the New York Times suggesting the administration manipulated intelligence to justify going to war in Iraq, federal investigators have been told.

...

Regardless of Rove's legal liability, the description of his role runs contrary to earlier White House statements that Rove and Libby were not involved in the unmasking of Wilson's wife, and it suggests they were part of a campaign to discredit Wilson.

From elsewhere in the same article:

A source directly familiar with information provided to prosecutors said Rove's interest was so strong that it prompted questions in the White House. When asked at one point why he was pursuing the diplomat so aggressively, Rove reportedly responded: "He's a Democrat."

Rove's efforts to discredit Wilson because he was a Democrat helped lead our country into a war on false pretenses.  That is completely unacceptable.

The claim that Wilson correctly refuted, namely that Iraq "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," was used by Bush in his State of the Union address to justify the imminent invasion of Iraq. The nuclear angle was an important component of the war sales pitch, because it made Saddam sound like a major threat to our country's security.  And until Wilson’s op-ed article, most people believed the President.

Seeing the retribution suffered by Wilson’s innocent wife, we can understand why other public servants who saw that “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” kept their mouths shut. It’s literally a tragedy—if more had spoken up perhaps war could have been avoided.