Dickey:

In the Wonderland of importances gone head-over-tea-kettle, you missed the actual importance. An act of nepotism, even a dubious hypothetical one, is far less weighty in terms of consequences than this little underscore: it is some of the clearest evidence yet that this administration did not get duped by faulty intelligence; at the very least, it cherry-picked and hyped intelligence to justify the war. What Mr. Wilson found, and subsequent investigations confirmed, was that there was one trip in 1999 — not "recently," but four years before Mr. Bush's statement — by an Iraqi official to Niger and that during that trip, uranium was never discussed.

Proof that Bush lied. Possibly, even probably.

But more important even than a fork-tongued President, is the question of consequences of actions taken.

What consequences?

Children screaming as their arms are blown off. Parents trying to protect their young from helicopter-launched rockers, only to see their home, their children, and all they have go up in violent, mistaken flames. Torture and mayhem. Madness in the eyes of veterans who have seen too much, and caused too much loss and pain. Dead men in the streets, scores of them. Dead women, babies and men lining thehalls of morgues, smoke-stained and scorched in the flesh, stinking like a charnel house. Lives ruined, families broken and destroyed. Widows and deprived mothers keening in the night in Baghdad and in Oshkosh and Madison and New York.

Individual responsibility for such mayhem cannot be borne easily -- the mind can't support it. The usual defense against such overburden is a criminal numbness, layered with justifications and rationalizations. To come face to face with this sort of guilt would drive a strong man mad.

But then, perhaps it has.

A