Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

As a result of its improper conduct, a cloud now hangs over this Administration. This cloud is further darkened by the Administration's mistakes in prisoner abuse scandal, Hurricane Katrina, and the cronyism and corruption in numerous agencies.

And, unfortunately, it must be said that a cloud also hangs over this Republican-controlled Congress for its unwillingness to hold this Republican Administration accountable for its misdeeds on all of these issues.

Let's take a look back at how we got here with respect to Iraq Mr. President. The record will show that within hours of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, senior officials in this Administration recognized these attacks could be used as a pretext to invade Iraq.

The record will also show that in the months and years after 9/11, the Administration engaged in a pattern of manipulation of the facts and retribution against anyone who got in its way as it made the case for attacking Iraq.

snip

The troops and the American people have a right to expect answers and accountability worthy of that sacrifice. For example, 40 Senate Democrats wrote a substantive and detailed letter to the President asking four basic questions about the Administration’s Iraq policy and received a four sentence answer in response. These Senators and the American people deserve better.

They also deserve a searching and comprehensive investigation about how the Bush Administration brought this country to war. Key questions that need to be answered include:

o How did the Bush Administration assemble its case for war against Iraq?

o Who did Bush Administration officials listen to and who did they ignore?

o How did senior Administration officials manipulate or manufacture intelligence presented to the Congress and the American people?

o What was the role of the White House Iraq Group or WHIG, a group of senior White House officials tasked with marketing the war and taking down its critics?

o How did the Administration coordinate its efforts to attack individuals who dared to challenge the Administration’s assertions?

o Why has the Administration failed to provide Congress with the documents that will shed light on their misconduct and misstatements?

Unfortunately the Senate committee that should be taking the lead in providing these answers is not. Despite the fact that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly committed to examine many of these questions more than 1 and a half years ago, he has chosen not to keep this commitment. Despite the fact that he restated that commitment earlier this year on national television, he has still done nothing.

At this point, we can only conclude he will continue to put politics ahead of our national security. If he does anything at this point, I suspect he will play political games by producing an analysis that fails to answer any of these important questions. Instead, if history is any guide, this analysis will attempt to disperse and deflect blame away from the Administration.

We demand that the Intelligence Committee and other committees in this body with jurisdiction over these matters carry out a full and complete investigation immediately as called for by Democrats in the committee’s annual intelligence authorization report. Our troops and the American people have sacrificed too much. It is time this Republican-controlled Congress put the interests of the American people ahead of their own political interests.

I have only excerpted his excellent statement, so do go read the whole thing (and thank him in the comments). There is also already voluminous commentary from all the best lights of the liberal blogosphere; -- too much for me to link them all, I'm afraid --, but if you poke around Kos and Atrios and AmericaBlog and TPM you'll find a good deal of it.

DCMike has the transcript of Reid's entire speech on the Senate Floor over in a comment at Daily Kos, far too long to quote fully here but deserving of a read.  Think Progress has a video link and also a partial transcript, while Crooks and Liars has this link as well as video of Reid's press conference after the Republicans quickly caved and agreed to continue the investigation.

Without having digested all of this yet, I will say that it seems to me, as seems to be the general consensus so far around the liberal blogosphere, a heartily brilliant move -- as Reid mentioned in his press conference, he didn't tell Frist, and hurt poor Fristie's feelings, because they didn't want the maneuver headed off.  In other words, it was an explicitly hardball political action, and it shows Reid's recognition that there is no reason on earth for the Senate Democrats not to be playing hardball right now.

And, as Kos and others note, this is at least a two'fer (and I think we'll see that it's much more than a two'fer) in that it lets Frist and friends know, should they try to go nuclear on a filibuster of Alito, that the Dems have more than one parliamentary trick in their pocket ...

Update [2005-11-1 19:33:43 by sdf]: Needless to say, beyond the very strong point Harry, Dick Durbin et. al. made today, we'll have to watch and wait to see whether anything substantive is achieved -- which, given that the Repubs still control the Senate, will still be quite the challenge. From the CNN story linked at the top of the post, what the Republicans had substantively to agree to before Reid agreed to re-open the Senate was:

After about an hour of closed deliberations, senators agreed to reopen the chamber and appoint a bipartisan group of senators to assess the progress of the "Phase 2" probe, the office of Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, told CNN. The three Republicans and three Democrats are to report back to Senate leaders by November 14.

Well, we'll see soon enough what they report, but in the meantime the headlines will say that the Senate Democrats forced a reconsideration of the probe into the pre-war intelligence manipulation.

-- Stu