It’s Senate Politics As Usual
–Why else would the Senate Intelligence Committee release a controversial and inaccurate report more than 5 years after the start of the war?
Don’t they have any consideration what their political antics are doing to the morale of our men and women in Iraq? Don’t they have any consideration what their constant pounding of the administration and our military is doing for our enemies?
Here is a classic video to review before reading this latest pile of crap:
Here’s the transcript.
Democrats are hoping that America will forget that they were all talking the same smack before the war.
Keep those video quotes in mind as you read this garbage.
The New York Times reported:
In a report long delayed by partisan squabbling, the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday accused President Bush and Vice President Cheney of taking the country to war in Iraq by exaggerating evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in the emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“The president and his advisers undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the attacks to use the war against Al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein,” Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the committee’s Democratic chairman, said in a statement accompanying the 171-page report.
The committee’s report cited some instances in which public statements by senior administration officials were not supported by the intelligence available at the time, such as suggestions that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda were operating in a kind of partnership, that the Baghdad regime had provided the terrorist network with weapons training, and that one of the Sept. 11 hijackers had met an Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague in 2001.
If the Democrats are so convinced that “Bush lied” they should impeach him.
But, they can’t because they have nothing.
Instead, they release bogus committee documents and watch their media go to work.
Senator Bond, who sat on the committee, said it best:
But the report found that on several key issues, including Iraq’s alleged nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, public statements from Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other top officials before the war were generally “substantiated” by the best estimates of the intelligence agencies, though the statements did not always reflect the agencies’ uncertainty about the evidence. All the weapons claims were disproved after invading troops found no unconventional arsenal and little effort to build one.
Republicans on the committee sharply dissented from some of its findings and attached a detailed minority report that listed pre-war statements by Mr. Rockefeller and other Democrats describing the threat posed by Iraq.
“The report released today was a waste of committee time and resources that should have been spent overseeing the intelligence community,” said the minority report, signed by Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the committee’s top Republican, and three Republican colleagues.
Long after the troops come home after winning in Iraq the Democrats will still be whining.
How pathetic.
UPDATE: Freedomplow dug up this quote by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the Intelligence Committee’s Democratic chairman:
Senator John D. Rockefeller
(Democrat, West Virginia) October 10, 2002“The global community — in the form of the United Nations — has declared repeatedly, through multiple resolutions, that the frightening prospect of a nuclear-armed Saddam cannot come to pass. But the U.N. has been unable to enforce those resolutions. We must eliminate that threat now, before it is too late.
But this isn’t just a future threat. Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq’s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East.
