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There's the White House narrative that the Bush administration only went to war in Iraq because the CIA duped them into believing Saddam had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program and had stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, and frequent powwows with the Al Qaeda leadership. And then there's the less and less suppressable truth. Check out Atrios here and here. If the Bush administration weren't afraid of a real investigation, they'd have been pushing for it a bit harder, don't you think? So why are they so afraid of it?
Update: Thinking about this a bit more, it occurs to me, isn't the last thing the Bush administration can afford more of now is the appearance of a cover up of how it used pre-war intelligence? From a sheer politics point of view, isn't Bush just going to look more and more dishonest and unethical to voters? More like Cheney? Won't it just feed the very real and measurable public sentiment that they've got something they're anxious to hide? They can maneuver all they want to continue to stall and obstruct Phase II, but when the public doesn't trust them or their proxies in Congress, don't they in a real political sense all lose? I'm no political strategist, but it seems to me the message for the Democrats gets easier and easier: Cover up. Sham investigation. Dragging their feet.
And don't underestimate the related political threat to Cheney and the Bush White House coming from McCain. This guy looks like the shining white knight on all the big picture stuff compared to the Bush White House, and I suspect he is immensely, immensely appealing not only to independents and the stray Democrat, but to plenty of Republicans who don't feel good about the Bush narrative any more on the war, on torture, on ethics, on corruption (remember the Abramoff stuff?), on national security, on national unity. Just as the public has really totally lost confidence in the Bush White House, is this very visible far more appealing potential alternative -- and what is McCain most out front on now? The fact that the White House wants the CIA to have a torture exemption. Not exactly a winning side for the Bush administration. It doesn't help the White House that McCain's chief adversary on this is none other than Cheney himself, who is most associated in the American public mind with discredited Iraq intelligence pronouncements, hiding out in bunkers, and his office's role in outing a CIA officer to the media.
So if you're a Republican and you want to feel good about this country (and with 70% of the public feeling that the country is going in the wrong direction, plenty of Republicans are feeling crappy about the country and this presidency too), who's going to appeal to you? The war hero talking about how torture hurts this country's image and the important work it's trying to do in Iraq? Or the guys trying to advocate for the torture exemption and whining about the war critics and sounding defensive and suspect about the Fitzgerald investigation and the Senate intelligence investigation? In a fundamental way, if the last rationale for being in Iraq the Bush administration is standing on is that the US is doing something noble by bringing democracy to the Middle East, then being so visibly for torture just kills them. It just collapses the entire narrative. Most people just can't hold that contradiction in their heads. Especially with a patriotic war hero on TV explaining why torture is bad for US national security, prestige, and US troops who might be captured by the enemy, like he was. Esp. when that figure has none of the Katrina/Fitzgerald/Rove/Miers/torture/Iraq/Cheney/Rumsfeld baggage that Bush does, and when they think to themselves, wouldn't it be great if this guy was commander in chief, instead of these guys? (And plenty of Republicans have confided this stray thought, and how tired they are of having to defend these guys. You know in your heart of hearts that Bill Kristol is tired of it too, that he's just going through the motions and the Bushies are still never going to consider him loyal for having once supported McCain.) Frankly, politics being politics, it seems it's only a matter of time before plenty of the Republican elite and its publications abandon this sinking ship, its failed Iraq non-strategy and its troubled ethics, and exude open enthusiasm for a more hopeful, positive alternative.
More from Bruce Jentleson about how the same-old, same-old from the Bush administration is neither good politics nor good policy.
