A casualty of war.

Byline: The Register-Guard

One word stands out in connection with the indictment and resignation Friday of Irve Lewis Libby Jr.: deception.

Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, known to his friends as "Scooter," was charged with one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements in connection with an investigation into whether Bush administration officials broke the law when they told reporters that Valerie Plame was a CIA officer.

If convicted on all five counts, the consequences of Libby's alleged deception could be grave - up to 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines.

But the larger question certain to be asked with renewed urgency in the wake of this blow to the Bush administration is: Was Libby's deception part of a calculated effort on the part of President Bush and his key advisers to mislead the American public about the need to invade Iraq?

Libby was no low-level West Wing bureaucrat. He was referred to by Washington insiders as Cheney's alter ego and was part of President Bush's inner circle.

Not only was Libby the top aide to one of the most powerful vice presidents in history, Libby and Cheney were founding members of the Project for a New American Century, the neoconservative blueprint for the Bush administration's foreign policy.

Like Cheney and fellow PNAC founders Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Libby was a proponent of using pre-emptive force to prevent countries from developing weapons of mass destruction.

It wasn't surprising that Libby took a personal interest in former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson's trip to the West African country of Niger in February 2002. Wilson was sent by the administration to investigate intelligence that Iraq had tried to buy a form of compressed uranium called yellowcake, which could be used in making nuclear weapons.

Wilson returned to the U.S. convinced the intelligence was flawed and based on forged documents. Nonetheless, Bush ordered the in- vasion of Iraq in March 2003, citing intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and intended to develop a nuclear capability.

That action prompted Wilson to write an angry column in The New York Times accusing Bush of distorting the intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq. "A legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretences," Wilson said.

To Libby and his White House colleagues, Wilson's public criticism of the administration's war rationale would have represented an act of betrayal and a threat to maintaining strong congressional support.

Eight days after Wilson's article appeared, columnist Robert Novak revealed Plame's name and her CIA status. Plame is Wilson's wife, and Novak said "two senior administration officials" had told him that Plame herself had suggested the Niger trip to her husband.

The disclosure of Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent is illegal. Thus began Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year search for the source of the leak.

Fitzgerald found that Libby and Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff, had both spoken with reporters. Rove wasn't indicted Friday, but he has been called four times to testify before the grand jury and remains under investigation.

Libby isn't charged with leaking Plame's identity but with lying to the grand jury about how and when he learned Plame worked for the CIA. Libby said he learned of Plame's role at the CIA from reporters, but the indictment claims he was told by an unnamed undersecretary of state that she was in the CIA and then by Cheney that she worked for the nuclear counter-proliferation department.

Whatever becomes of Libby and Rove, Fitzgerald's investigation should provide the catalyst to revisit an issue that the Bush administration keeps insisting is moot now that the United States is committed in Iraq. Granted, no one can turn back time.

But neither can the American people afford to ignore the possibility that they were deliberately misled about the decision to send their sons and daughters to war. To do so risks making democracy moot.