Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: We were lied to--and we lied to readers--about Iraq

Okay, I'm paraphrasing slightly O. Ricardo Pimentel's editorial from today's paper, but not by much:

The New York Times has gone through its mea culpas on this score, capped recently by Judith Miller's alleged tell-all on her role in Plamegate. Miller is the reporter who undeniably did much of that promulgating, taking at apparent face value self-interested claims from dubious sources that such Iraqi WMD existed.

Those caches of deadly weapons did not exist, of course, revealing much of the administration's stated reasons for going to war to be just as barren--as in devoid of truth. I'll leave for the moment the question of whether this was a matter of error or just plain lying.

The New York Times occupies an elevated strata of journalism. But do the rest of us below that level of influence and reach--this newspaper's Editorial Board being my concern--also have a responsibility to explain ourselves?

I think so. In the interest of transparency.

The news side of this operation simply reported the days' events and debate in the walkup to the war, including meaningful reporting of the reasons given.

But, you see, this Editorial Board did indeed accept the premise that Saddam Hussein had these weapons early on. And in that acceptance by the board, it can be credibly argued that we did a bit of promulgating ourselves.

Pimentel is the paper's editorial page editor, and, as such, bears ultimate responsibility for everything appearing on that page. In the run-up to the war, despite Pimentel's assertions that the Journal Sentinel "hedged" and "counseled caution," the paper, like most papers around the country, was an unabashed cheerleader for Bush and his plans to interrupt the war on terror with a sideshow in Iraq. Pimentel says they were misled, and, while not asking for forgiveness, asks a much more pertinent question:

Now, of course, we discover much evidence that the intelligence fed the public, including us, was "cooked" or "fixed"--choose your favorite description--around what the administration viewed as its most salable argument. Americans were not likely to favor invasion because of the dominoes-of-democracy theory nor because Hussein was a monster. Vietnam is a word that still resonates, and what made this particular monster any more worth toppling than the world's many other monsters?

But, yes, regrettably on the matter of WMD, count us as among the many who were duped. We should have been more skeptical. For that lack of skepticism and the failure to include the proper caveats to the WMD claim, we apologize, though I would note that, ultimately, we didn't believe that the president's central WMD argument warranted war. Not then and especially not now.

So there it is--with an addendum. We take responsibility for being duped on the matter of WMD--and still arguing against war--but at what point will those doing the duping be held accountable for taking us to war?

The only person "doing the duping" (not counting Miller, whom Pimentel assumes was a patsy) that Pimentel mentions by name is Colin Powell, who, with his February 2003 United Nations speech was the one who "resolved" the editors' doubts about Iraq's WMD. Yet Powell was as much a victim as the editors were. Powell aide Lawrence Wilkerson made that clear this week in the Los Angeles Times, as he fingered those who really were responsible:

In President Bush's first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security--including vital decisions about postwar Iraq--were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [. . .]

Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift--not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."

But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well. [. . .] It's a disaster. Given the choice, I'd choose a frustrating bureaucracy over an efficient cabal every time.

Wilkerson is in a position to know things, having been at State for the process that led us to war, a process that included creating false evidence of Iraqi WMD and, when challenged, engaging in the kind of criminal conspiracy that led to Scooter Libby's indictment this week. It was a process whose beginning, middle, and end was in Dick Cheney's office. It was a process that should lead Pimentel to call, as other media figures have, for Cheney's ouster. Pimentel knows all about Cheney and his role in the cabal, since Thursdays editorial cites Wilkerson by name. We all know about Cheney's role in outing Valerie Plame as revenge on Wilson, since it's in black and white in Libby's indictment. Pimentel and his editors made some very cogent points along these lines when they endorsed John Kerry last October: "The president is a decent man, yes," they wrote. "On the whole, however, he has been so wrong about so much in such a short time that accountability must kick in at some point." The cabal was wrong about Iraq, about WMD, about everything. Time to call for accountability again.

So why can't you pull the trigger, Mr. Pimentel? Isn't it enough that we were lied to, sir, and that the vice president is almost certainly culpable in a a politically-motivated breach of national security? Does Cheney actually need to eat a baby on live TV before you call for his head? This is your chance to be bold, and show some leadership on an issue of great concern to your readers.

Say it with me: Cheney must go.

Now print it in your paper.