carlos waas

Slowly but surely, investigative reporter Murray Waas has been putting together a compelling narrative about how President Bush and his top aides contrived their bogus case for war in Iraq.

What emerges in Murray Waas's stories is a consistent White House modus operandi: That time and time again, Bush and his aides have selectively leaked secret intelligence findings that served their political agenda -- while aggressively asserting the need to keep secret the information that would tend to discredit them.

The latest entry in Murray Waas's saga came yesterday in the highly respected National Journal. Murray Waas writes: "Karl Rove, cautioned other White House aides that Bush's re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been warned that a key rationale fot war had been challenged within the administration."

The aluminum-tube allegation was perhaps the strongest, most concrete piece of evidence the White House had in its campaign to go to war against a country that had never before been seen as a threat to the national security.