senate select committee

This is how incompetent the Republicans in Senate are:

When angry Democrats briefly shut down the Senate last year to protest the slow pace of a congressional investigation into prewar intelligence on Iraq, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) claimed a rare victory.

Republicans called it a stunt but promised to quickly wrap up the inquiry. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is overseeing the investigation, said his report was near completion and there was no need for the fuss.

That was nine months ago.

The Republican-led committee, which agreed in February 2004 to write the report, has yet to complete its work. Just two of five planned sections of the committee's findings are fully drafted and ready to be voted on by members, according to Democratic and Republican staffers. Committee sources involved with the report, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they are working hard to complete it. But disputing Roberts, they said they had started almost from scratch in November after Democrats staged their protest.

This is playing politics with the war that has cost us the lives of over 2500 U.S. soldiers, tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens and cost us hundreds of billions of dollars. With all the dangers facing the world today, we need to know what happened in our intelligence community so we don't repeat those deadly mistakes. Instead, Pat Roberts chooses to play politics. He chooses to protect the mistakes of his this administration in order to save his own party. Pat Roberts is as un-American as they come.

Harry Reid is still on top of the effort by Republicans to prevent the next
phase of the pre-war intelligence report to be completed. Today he
released a statement
about the situation:

Washington, DC – On the eve of the two-year anniversary of the start of
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s investigation into prewar
intelligence, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid released the following
statement:

“It was reported today that our government’s former top intelligence
officer for Middle East issues has described the troubling misuse of
intelligence on Iraq by the Bush Administration to take the country to war.
On the same day, we learn that Scooter Libby was directed by the Vice
President and others to leak sensitive national security secrets to publicly
sell the Administration’s case. Evidence that the Bush White House
manipulated and selectively declassified intelligence to wage a public
relations campaign before, during, and after the invasion of Iraq grows
every day.

“Now more than ever, it is critical that Congress completes a full and
thorough investigation into whether this Administration did mislead the
American people into a long and costly war in Iraq. This Sunday marks the
two-year anniversary of the launch of the Senate Select Intelligence
Committee’s investigation into prewar intelligence. That investigation is
still not complete. Our troops and the American people expect and deserve
that this investigation be thorough and be completed so that the lessons can
finally be learned and these mistakes can never happen again.”

Yesterday's lock down of Senate by Democrats has resparked an old, but not
forgotten controversy - the Downing Street Memos.

Republican's have repeatedly tried to dismiss the DSM as false information
saying that it was addressed in phase one of the intelligence report. Now that
Democrats have forced phase two to be complete, which will most likely bring the
DSM to the table in Senate.

One the same note, Murray Waas is reporting that the Democrats are possibly
going to push for a Senate Select Committee to investigate all the incidents
leading up to and involving the Iraq war. If such a committee is formed then it
will be along the lines of the Watergate and Church committees that have taken
place previously. Click

here to read his excellent analysis of what is most likely to come.

The White House press briefing will begin in about 45 minutes and should be
heated after yesterday's events. I will report on it as soon as it concludes.