Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was particularly broadsided by Harry Reid's dramatic Senate secret session gambit Tuesday. As a result, an embarrassed Roberts says his committee, finally, will get cracking on the so-called "phase 2" of the investigation into the intelligence leading up to the Iraq war - the phase that's supposed to examine whether the administration manipulated and exaggerated that intelligence to whip up national bloodlust.
'Tis wonderfully refreshing to see Reid lay the smack down on somebody that deserves it (instead of Democrats in his own state). But much, much more importantly - after all, Pat who? - the attack was leveled at the entire Republican Congress for colluding with the administration to craft a giant cosmic "never mind" about Iraq. As attacks go, that one is long, long overdue.
And yet, nicely timed. By highlighting GOP congressional stonewalling of the Iraq investigation, the Democrats are perfectly complimenting the message that the Bush administration aggressively tried to silence its critics and is now stonewalling questions about Scooter and Karl. The ever-changing justifications for the Iraq war, after all, have gone from weapons of mass destruction (with a twist of Saddam's hooked up with Osama, wink wink) to freedom is on the march to a refusal to discuss ongoing legal proceedings.
The longer Bush and Cheney (and poor, poor Scott McClellan) don't say something, anything, about the importance of discrediting Joe Wilson, the shadier and less trustworthy they appear (assuming there is still a portion of the American populace that feels the Bush administration can be trusted on anything, which there must be, because Fox News is still being broadcast). The deeper they dig into their bunkers and insular bubbles and try to change the subject (and kudos to Reid and the Democrats for changing the subject back), the more Bush, Cheney and rest look like the lying conquest-obsessed arrogance-addled scoundrels that they are.
Yes, Harry, by all means and wholeheartedly, pounce. Do it again, do it again, harder, harder.
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IN ADDITION to a welcome attack on Republicans for whitewashing the run-up to war, Reid and the Democrats may be unleashing something else that is long, long overdue - whether they want to or not: A genuine, sincere national discussion about why the war started. To be sure, Reid's statement Tuesday was laden mostly with the fundamental charge: that Bush and friends deliberately hyped intelligence to sell the war. It is a variation on the "we were misled" theme that worked so well during the Kerry for President campaign.
But as loyal readers know, the lowly Gleaner has hammered on Reid and the Democrats for voting for the war in the first place, contending they did it not because they feared Saddam, but because they feared getting smashed in the midterm elections to be held within weeks of the October 2002 vote on the Iraqi war resolution.
So while reading Reid's statement Tuesday, it was particularly fascinating, in this little corner of the cyberwasteland, anyway, to see stuff like this:
There is also another disturbing pattern here, namely about how the Administration responded to those who challenged its assertions. Time and again this Administration has actively sought to attack and undercut those who dared to raise questions about its preferred course.
Hold the phone! Somebody was challenging the administration's assertions? Surely, not before the war?
For example, when General Shinseki indicated several hundred thousand troops would be needed in Iraq, his military career came to an end. When then OMB Director Larry Lindsay suggested the cost of this war would approach $200 billion, his career in the Administration came to an end. When U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix challenged conclusions about Saddam’s WMD capabilities, the Administration pulled out his inspectors. When Nobel Prize winner and IAEA head Mohammed el-Baridei raised questions about the Administration’s claims of Saddam’s nuclear capabilities, the Administration attempted to remove him from his post. When Joe Wilson stated that there was no attempt by Saddam to acquire uranium from Niger, the Administration launched a vicious and coordinated campaign to demean and discredit him, going so far as to expose the fact that his wife worked as a CIA agent.
Is Reid finally, after all this time, preparing to admit that his vote to give Bush a blank check wasn't wholly the fault of Bush misleading him? Are Reid and the other 28 Senate Democrats who voted for the Iraqi war resolution finally going to abandon what is, after all, the central Bush administration talking point: that simply everybody thought Saddam needed to be taken out. Are Reid and his ilk finally going to give credit where credit is due - to the 22 senators and majority of House Democrats who voted against the war resolution?
And will some reporter, any reporter, with a mainstream media company in the beltway ask some of these guys why they didn't do like their wiser and more circumspect congressional colleagues, and listen to Blix and el-Baridei?
it could get pretty dicey for Reid and some of his Democratic playmates if they end up having to eat crow of their own over the Iraq vote. Rightful, but dicey.
Yet no matter how embarrassing to the Democrats an honest, forthright accounting of the nation's adolescent march to war, it's an accounting the nation must and will undergo. Someday.
And if it's sooner rather than later, exposing the Democrats' own cynical complicity in the process? The Democrats' motives, ignominious though they may have been, still pale compared to the twisted and psychotic machinations perpertrated by Bush. He's got more to lose than they do.
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