Matthew Cappas

Matthew Cappas is an anti-war and activist who opposed the war with Iraq.

It has been 10 long years since "Shock and Awe" – the opening bombardment of Baghdad – lit up the skies above the Tigris. A decade later, we know far more about the case the Bush administration made to the world to justify its war of choice to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Books like Hubris by David Corn and Michael Isikoff, and British commission and US Senate reports have catalogued the extent to which intelligence was misused to mislead the public.For nearly a year prior to the invasion, President Bush and his administration peppered the airwaves with serious accusations against Saddam Hussein, including claims of aluminum tubes that could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium, and of Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium yellowcake from Africa.

Murray Waas at National Journal is proving himself the best muckraker in Washington: Take Waas' lastest expose, documenting the administration's top-level machinations to cover up what Bush knew, and when Bush knew it, about Iraq's (lack of) WMD programs:

"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior government official who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the aluminum tubes.