Bush's Bolton Breach

Patrick Doherty

May 12, 2005

John Bolton's nomination has now been sent to the floor of the Senate without recommendation. That is a considerable victory. But whether John Bolton becomes the ambassador to the United Nations may be of secondary importance. The investigation into his record has created a small, but real, beachhead for an even larger undertaking.

Today, TomPaine.com published "Bolton's Yellowcake," an important article by 27-year intelligence veteran Ray McGovern showing that John Bolton ordered his staff to create the State Department "Fact Sheet" that included the then-discredited claim that Iraq sought to procure uranium yellowcake from Niger. On its own, this sounds like old news. But last week, McGovern and John Prados, in two separate articles, focused TP.c readers attention on the leaked Downing Street memo  which finally confirmed that Bush conspired to deceive America into an illegal war in Iraq.

This dramatically alters the narrative surrounding the Bolton nomination. The minority Committee member narrative has framed Bolton as a rogue operator who in particular has shown a pattern of politicizing intelligence to suit his own views. That frame is weak and, as made obvious by the upcoming vote on the Senate floor, has been effectively countered by the majority members and the White House.

That narrative is also incorrect. Seen in the light of last week's disclosures—belatedly picked up this morning by CNN —that President Bush decided a year in advance to fix the facts to his decision to invade Iraq, it is clear that John Bolton was playing a key role in misleading America for President Bush.

With CNN picking up the story, Democratic members of Congress are standing on the verge of a great decision that reaches far beyond the machinations of John Bolton. These members must now decide whether they accept the implicit narrative used by Joe Biden's Foreign Relations Committee minority staff or the narrative of John Conyers' 88 colleagues in the House of Representives. Biden's Senate colleagues implicitly accept that the Bush-appointed Silberman Commission was right and there was an intelligence failure that misled the president and Congress alike. Conyers and his colleagues understand that the intelligence was fabricated deliberately by the Bush administration.

One of them must be wrong and now it is time for Dems to choose.

But for those aligning with the Conyers camp, it will not be easy to raise awareness in the mainstream media, even with CNN's belated recognition. We learned from the 2004 election cycle that the mainstream media will not pursue controversial investigations without political backstopping. But the minority status of Democratic members ensures that in the short term, there will be no official investigation launched, much less one with subpoena power. Instead, they will have to use the 2006 election cycle as their vehicle, but that's still a long way off.

In the meantime, this story has to stay alive. We'll do our part.