President Bush and Vice-President Cheney’s credibility is on the line with the Scooter Libby trial. As Cheney’s former chief of staff, Libby’s testimony and that of others give the public a different and clearer perspective from behind the scenes of the Bush administration. We are beginning to see behavior that is out of the ordinary for the top elected officials of our Country. In particular, we see the strong reaction of the VP’s office to the op-ed piece written by Ambassador Joseph Wilson in July 2003 criticizing the President’s State of the Union address referencing the threat of WMD as a reality. We learn that Cheney and Libby were discussing media strategy while aboard Air Force Two the day before the leak to the press. We even see the VP dictating talking points for his spokesman, all of which presents a very unusual and compelling picture within the administration.

What we’re really learning through this trial is the unrelenting determination of the Bush administration to maintain public support for its Iraq policy and to stay on the offensive to do whatever it takes - critics be damned - to keep the war moving forward. The various testimonies show Vice-President Cheney as someone overly involved in watching every op-ed and every comment that was being made regarding the Valerie Plume exposure. As Frank Sesno, Washington bureau chief for CNN, said: “The eight-hundred pound gorilla in all of this is, if Scooter Libby is on trial for perjury, which he is, then what is the role of his boss who was trying to move this whole thing forward? Who knows, Cheney himself may end up on the stand in this trial?” 

 This administration took Wilson’s op-ed piece so seriously because the WMD had become a pivotal point in terms of the public’s attitude and scrutiny for justifying going to war. The hope this raises for me personally is that the public is ready to have these separate but related issues tied together in a simple narrative that offers a general understanding of what happened in the lead up to the war. My forthcoming book, Pilgrim Soul, does just this. It is a love story set amidst the shocking reality of 9/11 that led us into Iraq.

The story advanced by the Bush administration and as presented in my book is built around the fact that there was an immediate threat that, whether it was al Qaeda or some other terrorists group, Saddham Hussein was going to be the funnel through which these types of weapons would be unleased on the world. If this premise comes undone, and it appears it could completely unravel in the Scooter Libby trial, the President and Vice-president could be implicated in taking desperate measures to protect their pretext for war. All of it could become even more exposed than it already is, particularly the way intelligence was manipulated to come up with justification for going into war and the recognition of the critics who correctly opposed the war. The pieces are all falling into place and the truth emerges, as Sesno said, ”that this was just a rush to war built on the flimsiest house of cards.”

The Scooter Libby trial shows the desperation of the Bush administration to hide the fact that the war was built on false premises but it also presents America with an even greater challenge. If the spirit of our troops comes undone, if the support of the American people and the world are withdrawn - which is already two-thirds lacking - where do we go from here?