Oh! what a tangled web we weave

...When first we practice to deceive; so says Sir Walter Scott.

Let us suppose that the Downing Street Memo is a smoking gun -- evidence that we were determined to go to war even though the case for war against Iraq was known to be weak. In order to sell the war, what information must be manufactured? Who does this? How is it done? To try and answer these questions, I started slapping down some text bubbles on a page and drew lines to indicate associations. Lines represent different types of associations, such as membership or generalization or responsibility. Some names are of perpetrators, some are of victims. The graph's completeness is limited both by gaps in my own knowledge and by the constraints of the two-dimensional representation.


(Click image for full-sized version.)

DSM implies fixing the intelligence around the foregone conclusion of war. Part of this was the Niger yellowcake assertion. Related to this was Ambassador Wilson's investigation and the infamous "16 words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address. It turns out that Wilson's investigation contradicted the President's claims. And this leads to two diametrically opposed nodes -- one ("CIA identity leak") to suppress information that argues against the war, and the other ("Pro-war propaganda") to publicize information that argues for it.

[19 JUL 2005 20:50:00 CDT] Update: Since I posted this item, it's been revealed that Dick Cheney's chief of staff (and PNAC war hawk) I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was also involved in leaking Plame's identity. So the diagram is already out of date. Pretend there's a "Scooter Libby" bubble connected to both "Dick Cheney" and "CIA identity leak."