If George W. Bush had announced, prior to invading Iraq, that his motive was to seize Iraq’s oil, to enhance Israel’s power or to ensure U.S. military dominance of the Middle East, none of these justifications would have satisfied the public.

Hence the need for a cover story, something sufficiently alarming to convince Americans there was an urgent need to go to war. Claims that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein harboured weapons of mass destruction seemed the best bet.

Concocting a cover story of this magnitude is not easy. But then the U.S. government is not without resources.

Inside the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, a group of war-hawks, under the direction of top Cheney aide Scooter Libby, operated as a secret war-planning department, furnishing “evidence” of Saddam’s non-existent arsenal.

The administration largely got away with this. Even after the invasion, the media and the Democrats shied away from making a fuss over the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found. The blame, if any, was pinned on the CIA for its “faulty intelligence.”

Libby’s team remained in the shadows, its fraud and deception largely unknown. Joseph Wilson alone threatened to blow its cover. He knew too much.

Specifically, he knew about a key piece of “evidence” touted by the Libby team — a forged document purporting to show Saddam had tried to buy nuclear weapons material from Niger. Wilson had been sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to investigate the story. He quickly concluded it was a crock, and reported that back to the administration.

So he was surprised to hear George W. Bush repeat the bogus Niger story in his 2003 State of the Union address, as a key justification for the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq. Months later, Wilson went public with the truth. Suddenly, the spotlight seemed dangerously close to highlighting the war disinformation spun by Libby’s team.

The indictment brought down last month doesn’t deal with any of this. It simply charges Libby with lying to a grand jury about his apparent attempts to discredit Wilson, by outing his CIA agent wife.

But lurking beneath the outing-the-agent story lies the much bigger story — easily a match for Watergate — of how a small cabal in the vice-president’s office falsified the case for a war that has already killed tens of thousands.

Whether that bigger story, and the role played by Cheney, emerges depends partly on the media and the Democrats, which is not encouraging.

In a TV interview, top Democrat lawyer David Boies told CNN’s Lou Dobbs that he’d like to see a deal worked out because if the Libby case goes to trial “a lot comes out” and “it damages America.”

Responded Dobbs: “I’m like you. I would like to see this resolved so that it is less injurious to the nation.”

Richard Nixon would have dreamed of such an opposition.

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...