A fresh and potentially damning revelation about pre-war manipulation of intelligence comes out, and the administration -- for the first time -- has to acknowledge that an "incorrect" justification for war was bruited. It's yet another instance -- the 13,862nd, I think -- over which we shake our heads, imagining what the right would have done if a Gore administration had tried to get away with something like this. And so, once again, we are confronted with the same exasperating question: What has to happen to make the American people care about the lies told to get us into this war?
Actually, there are a few encouraging signs of disarray. Joseph C. Wilson IV's thunderbolt New York Times op-ed piece Sunday debunking George W. Bush's State of the Union claim about the Iraq-Niger uranium connection could prove to be a turning point. But for that to happen -- that is, for the people to care -- the media has to tell them it's something they should care about.
It would be too much at this juncture to say that the Wilson story has created a media firestorm. I did a simple Nexis search yesterday afternoon that turned up 94 mentions of the story, which isn't really that much. (By comparison, the number of stories in the same time period about Kobe Bryant's current woes: 333.) Predictably, most of them -- 57, to be precise -- were citations from international news organizations: lots of Britain, Australia, Canada and, of course, those America-haters over at Agence France-Presse.
Still, the story made the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post on Tuesday, though below the fold, naturally. And no major newspaper that I've seen has yet editorialized on the matter, nor is it currently bouncing across the op-ed pages in a muscular way. (And surprise, surprise, the story has not been discussed once on FOX News, according to Nexis.) But it's a start. Bush was asked the question directly Tuesday in Africa, and he danced: "The facts will ah ah show the world the truth."
My point exactly. This unfolding story sets up a potentially dangerous sandbar downriver for the administration. Because now, as a result of the Wilson op-ed, the White House has had to go on the record as saying that it, and Bush, had not been warned by intelligence officials that the connection was bogus before the State of the Union address. Evidence surely exists somewhere on paper that can tell us whether that's true. If it isn't true? There will still be plenty of people who'll say it doesn't matter, and that what does matter is that Saddam Hussein was ousted. But it will constitute, whatever the White House and the press corps decide to call it, a pretty clear-cut lie -- told by a president directly to the American people in his most public forum.
Granted, it's only about war and peace and life and death and not something really important like a blow job, so it won't get the hyenas baying at fever pitch. But it would be solid, and solid has the potential to wake even the contemporary media from its long national stupor.
As usual, though, the public is showing signs of being ahead of the press. A Gallup Poll in late June, not very publicized or widely discussed that I've noticed, offers some numbers that offer a stark alternative to the sunny numerology the media usually convey, and I'm betting that Karl Rove took notice.
Back in April, Gallup respondents said the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over by 76 percent to 19 percent. In the new poll, those numbers are 56 percent "yes" and 42 percent "no." Still a majority in favor, to be sure, and there probably always will be, short of some smoking-gun revelation or some horrific development no one wants to see.
But there's a heck of a difference between 19 percent and 42 percent; specifically, it's the difference between a Democrat getting absolutely hammered on war and foreign policy and being able to hold his own when he (whoever he turns out to be) interposes a question or point of skepticism during the campaign.
Fifty-six percent to 42 percent bespeaks a very different national climate than 76 percent to 19 percent, and one senses that maybe the pre-war criticisms about the difficulties of occupation, which were speculative at the time and thus easy to dismiss, are now starting to ring true to significant chunks of the public. The Iraq War may never be an out-and-out negative for Bush, but even if it ends up being sort of irrelevant -- if a large percentage of Americans conclude that it wasn't a terrible idea but certainly wasn't necessary and is kind of becoming a bigger mess than we all thought when that statue came down -- then much of the incumbent's Caesarian glow is removed.
This has been, without question, the most vexing two years in modern American history for liberals. When we talk with one another, we talk -- and talk -- about one thing: How can this be happening? What this administration is doing to this country is not merely Republican, or merely conservative. It is revolutionary, as indeed some within the administration clearly fancy their project and themselves (Paul Wolfowitz springs to mind). And with all revolutionaries, it's always the same old story: interpretation first, facts later.
Those of us who hang on every turn of the screw and have been maddened for months about how Bush can get away with converting Saddam Hussein into an imminent threat to America -- or calling his tax cut middle-class, or labeling this Medicare swindle "reform," or any of a hundred other surrealities -- have been dumbfounded at how thoroughly the interpretation has taken hold. The Wilson op-ed piece just might mark the day that the facts finally started to catch up.
Michael Tomasky will become executive editor of the Prospect in September. His columns appear on Wednesdays at TAP Online.
