Thursday, June 12, 2003

The Congressional GOP leadership has decided that they will not pursue a wider investigation of the questions regarding the use of intelligence in the run-up to attacking Iraq. I was prepared to be outraged, but it actually seems like a reasonably measured decision; the Senate intelligence committee is apparently trying to do all the fact-gathering first. A wise move. I hope this doesn't become politicized, at least too soon; a careful inquiry makes sense to start before the circus begins. But I'm wary, nevertheless. I'm willing to overlook the fact that GOP zealots started a multimillion dollar investigation every time Bill Clinton changed his pants. Can you imagine what the GOP would be saying if this had happened under Clinton, and not Bush? He already would have been impeached again. As I said, however, I'm willing to overlook that for now. Here's the thing, though--if no WMD show up, they damned well better do everything they can to look into it. I think that John Dean's argument that this is potentially worse than Watergate is right on. Keep in mind, I'm not there yet. I, for one, am stunned that we haven't found anything, and the thought that Saddam was telling the truth about his capacities is literally impossible to imagine. The fact remains, though, that nothing has turned up. Maybe the weapons were all destroyed in the run-up to the war, but I'm not buying that; if Bushco was right that the crisis was urgent enough to necessitate war RIGHT NOW, then there would be evidence of that sort of weapons destruction. No matter how you slice it, the nonpartisan facts are that we were led to a war on the pretense that there was an urgent need, because a threat was imminent. Lives were lost. I'm glad that Saddam is gone, but the fact that he was still a bad guy does not change the fact that distorted or false intelligence may have been used to start a war. If there are no consequences to something like that...... Something is fishy, but I'm willing to wait a bit more. If the GOP in Congress throws up its hands, though, and says "Oh well, what the hell," I'm going to vomit all over myself. 3:51:13 PM    Let's hear it. []