That Habbush Letter… Redux

Can someone explain this to me, please? This isn’t some sort of rhetorical device, by the way. I honestly would like some help in understanding the questions surrounding Ron Suskind’s allegations regarding the forged documents which sought to tie Saddam to AQ in an effort to gin up support for the Iraq war. According to his account, George Tenet delivered the order from the White House to the CIA, and they forged the documents. Now, the American Conservative is claiming that while the story is essentially correct, some of the specific facts are wrong.

The Suskind account states that two senior CIA officers Robert Richer and John Maguire supervised the preparation of the document under direct orders coming from Director George Tenet. Not so, says my source. Tenet is for once telling the truth when he states that he would not have undermined himself by preparing such a document while at the same time insisting publicly that there was no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Richer and Maguire have both denied that they were involved with the forgery and it should also be noted that preparation of such a document to mislead the media is illegal and they could have wound up in jail.

My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment. Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job.

Now obviously there are some supporters of the administration who are still crying foul and claiming that the entire story is bogus, but as more cracks appear in the walls, that’s looking less and less likely. With that aside, this leads me to the main question here.

On the one hand, perhaps Bush ordered Tenet to have the document generated. On the other, Cheney had the Office of Special Projects produce the forgery. It then winds up leaking into the press and cranking up the volume of the drumbeats for war. If either of the above scenarios are true, does it really matter who actually forged the letter? What is the point of noting the allegations in the American Conservative article? Are we to say, “Oh! I see! Suskind had it wrong about who forged the letter so the point is moot.”

If (and this is still a big “if”) the facts of the matter come to light and anyone in the Executive branch of our government ordered the forgery of such a document to build support for the invasion, isn’t that pretty much the end of the story? Should there not be some person or persons getting fitted for a set of leg-irons and slinking off toward a cell in The Hague? The fact that so many of us seem able to sit around and have a calm discussion of the question boggles my mind. I’m afraid the old argument of, “Well, we’re already in Iraq so it’s too late to waste time worrying about who was right or wrong in the beginning” isn’t going to cover the tab on this one. Could this story – should it prove true – actually come to light and result in nothing but a sigh and another sad footnote in the history of the entire Iraq debacle? Has my country really come to this?

If you have a good explanation as to why the distinction of which office ordered it or which one produced it actually matters, please let me know. I’ll be wrapping duct tape around my head until then just in case it explodes.