Ron Suskind’s new book has ignited a whole bunch of controversy, particularly on its claim that a key letter - supposedly from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein linking the dictator to the 9/11 terrorists - was forged. Suskind’s sources claimed the CIA was behind the forgery, which has unleashed a flurry of denials; American Conservative magazine suggests, maybe more plausibly, that it came Douglas “Stupidest ***** guy on the planet” Feith’s Office of Special Plans.

But in a post today, Sullivan notes that a second, key aspect of Suskind’s book has been ignored; that the administration knew, before the invasion took place, that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq:

The former head of Britain’s MI6, Sir Roger Dearlove, confirms to Suskind on the record that both Bush and Blair received late-breaking but excellent first-hand intelligence that Saddam was bluffing on WMDs. A James Bond character, British spy Michael Shipster, secured a real line of information from an Iraqi intelligence chief. Blair had tasked MI6 with getting to the bottom of the WMD question. Suskind’s original source, a high-level American intelligence agent, puts it this nway:

“We knew,” he says.
“Knew what?”
That there were no weapons in Iraq.”

The problem, another source told Suskind, was that “the Cheney crowd was in too much of a hurry.” Bush might have stopped the invasion; “Dick Cheney has a lot to answer for,” writes Sullivan.

And, perhaps. But Dick Cheney will never answer for it.

I don’t know why we continue to pretend, even now, that the war was ever about WMDs in the first place. Yes - WMDs were the causus belli, and the administration would have had to come up with a different causus belli had it not been available. But the desire to invade Iraq was complete and separate from the WMD issue. It was about smacking around an Arab country in the wake of 9/11. It was indeed about oil (which even neoconservatives seem to concede these days).

It was about a great power that could not fail to respond to an event of the magnitude of 9/11, lest that event tarnish the great power - prove it to be less of a power than everyone assumed it was. We had to respond and we had to respond against a sovereign state. That required a causus belli; the WMD argument, particularly in the wake of 9/11, was a very effective one.

So even if Cheney and others did know, at the last moment - or at any other point before the invasion - they were absolutely not going to hit the brakes, absolutely not going to say to the American public that, you know what? We were wrong. We were on a mission - and what we knew, and when we knew it, couldn’t be permitted to scratch it.