After last week’s setbacks to the Bush administration: the withdrawal of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers; the number of troops dead in Iraq surpassing 2,000; a report of prisoner abuse in an Afghanistan detention center; and, capping it off, the indictment of a senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House is having to work itself out of a serious state of shambles.
The CIA leak scandal has not nearly approached the magnitude of Watergate, which led to the resignation in 1974 of President Richard Nixon, but the Bush administration is now seeing its lowest approval ratings since the president took office in 2001.
The indictment on Friday of I. Lewis Libby, the vice president’s senior aide, has brought the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative even closer to the White House, yet Bush is showing no signs of a change in attitude to the central issue surrounding the indictment: the decision to go to war in Iraq.
In 2003, President Bush decided to go to war in Iraq despite a lack of data from the Central Intelligence Agency that the purpose for going to war (the weapons of mass destruction) had been found.
The CIA operative’s reports, which raised questions about the White House’s decision to go to war, seemed to have been ignored by the president. And it now seems likely that the Bush administration may have tried to cover up the reports of Secret Agent Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger, which was to investigate whether Saddam Hussein was purchasing enriched uranium from that country.
Aside from the decision to start an unjust war, which critics say has permanently affected the United States’ image in many Arab countries, President Bush’s worst mistake is that he refuses to accept accountability for the flawed decision. Instead he continues to insist that soldiers in Iraq are fighting and dying for a just cause.
Libby’s indictment may just be the tip of the iceberg in the Bush administration’s downhill battle, and the president now needs to explain his plan of action, firstly by choosing a nominee to the Supreme Court who is both qualified and likely to be approved by the Senate, secondly by stating his reason for continuing to send troops to a country filled with insurgency and thirdly by setting out a detailed plan of what he plans to accomplish during his remaining years as president.
The grand jury investigation into the CIA leak is not likely to get any better for the White House, and President Bush should choose to act now, before it’s too late.
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