Iraqgate: Why a Special Counsel? : Reason to suspect criminal violations occurred

Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee want Atty. Gen. William P. Barr to begin the process that could lead to the naming of a special counsel to look into the Bush Administration’s policy toward Iraq prior to the Persian Gulf war, and to try to determine whether then and subsequently it misled Congress about what it did.

Republicans had weeks ago anticipated and begun to decry this request as an election-year tactic--a “witch hunt,” the President himself declared. But the claim of political gimmickry does not stand up to scrutiny.

NEW VENUE: If congressional Democrats were interested only in manipulating the issue and prolonging the Administration’s embarrassment they could simply continue holding public hearings through the presidential campaign. By asking to have a special counsel take over, they are seeking to shift matters to a politically neutral venue. The investigation in any case is unlikely to be completed--indeed, it may not even be begun--until after the November election. No, this is not an exercise in partisan politics. There is good reason to believe that criminal violations have occurred. The preponderance of evidence supports the need for an independent investigation.

The Administration has long since been forced to concede the obvious, that its efforts to lure Saddam Hussein onto more conciliatory and benign paths did not succeed. Some officials have suggested that with this acknowledgment the matter should be put to rest, as though an admission of error--however reluctantly made--in itself is exonerating.

There are two things wrong with this response. The first lies in the disingenuous suggestion that an earnest and well-intentioned policy came to grief through no fault of those who devised and carried it out. In fact, from everything that’s known, the whole idea of cozying up to Iraq was based not on any informed assessment of what was achievable but rather on the naive hope that a regime with an infamous record of aggression abroad and unrestrained brutality at home could be bribed or sweet-talked into moderating its approach to power. That fuzzy hope seems to have led the Administration to ignore crucial intelligence information about Iraq’s feverish efforts to acquire nuclear and chemical weapons, and to continue making generous agricultural loans to Baghdad even after signs emerged that some of this money was being diverted to military purchases.

OLD OBSTACLE: The second thing wrong with the Administration’s response is that it fails to address possible criminal violations in the way U.S. policy toward Iraq was conducted, and possible ethical if not criminal violations growing out of subsequent attempts to hide from Congress much that went into that policy.

Congress, unable to reach some key subpoena-proof presidential aides or to reconcile certain contradictions in testimony from Administration officials, has probably gone as far as it effectively can go in digging out the truth in this matter. The next step, rightly and necessarily, is to appoint a special counsel.