Free Advice
Spencer Ackerman has some words of wisdom for the Democrats as they try to press the WMD intelligence issue:
Despite high-profile parliamentary tactics by Democrats to compel the conclusion of that inquiry--such as forcing the Senate into closed session last year--the intelligence committee has now snarled into inaction due to such pressing matters as whether a staffer hired by Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel is sufficiently partisan. What yesterday's Democratic Policy Committee hearing really suggested is whether it does any good, as Democrats have been claiming, for the report to be completed. It's inconceivable at this point that the GOP-led report--which, after all, is supposed to assess what the administration's role in intelligence was--will be even remotely rigorous in pointing the finger at the vice president's office and the Pentagon, where all the evidence on, say, the Iraq-Al Qaeda debacle, emanated from. On the off-chance that the report is ever completed, the Democrats will most likely be faced with a choice between voting for a whitewash or voting against a document they've loudly demanded. Maybe it's better for the Democrats, and the country, for the Democratic Policy Committee to pick up the intelligence committee's slack. Hearings like yesterday's will be dismissed as partisan. But that's preferable to being stonewalled--and lied to.
I agree. There's absolutely no hope of cooperating with the GOP in good faith on this issue. They've made that eminently clear over the years, and that's just the way it's going to be.
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J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
Thank you Matt. I was wondering what had happened to that report while watching the Dark Side last week. And he is absolutely right. This is the CoverUp Congress and George Bush you are dealing with and the only way to deal with them is to kick them in their privates.
All of which compels the conclusion that it is high time to put massive issue distance between the Democratic Party and Bush's War Party on national security issues starting with Iraq and starting right now.
June 27, 2006 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink