In another
sorry ass dereliction of duty, enough Republicans on the House International Relations Committee were able to defeat Dennis Kucinich's resolution
(HR 505) by two votes.
The resolution would have directed the President and the Secretary of State to, within 14 days, provide to the House:
(1) all documents from 2003 pertaining to the taskforce organized by Andrew Card, consisting of Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Nicholas E. Calio, James R. Wilkinson, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley and I. Lewis Libby, known as the White House Iraq Group;
(2) all drafts of all white papers on the topic of Iraq's nuclear threat assembled in 2003 by the White House Iraq Group; and
(3) all documents, including notes from meetings, memos, telephone and electronic mail records, logs and calendars, and records of internal discussions in the possession of the President or the Secretary of State relating to the White House Iraq Group.
The vote went straight down party lines with two Republicans defecting, Jim Leach of Iowa and Ron Paul of Texas. Had two Democrats, Eni Faleomavaega from American Somoa and Howard Berman from California's 28th, been able to show up it would have been a tie. That's close.
That should be taken as a message. Democrats are currently trying to pass investigative legislation. This is how important the 2006 elections are. For the Plame case alone, public sentiment is abandoning the Bush Administration. From a
WSJ poll this morning:
Six in 10, including 43% of Republicans, say there should be a public investigation and hearings into exposure of operative Valerie Plame's identity. Republican congressional leaders don't plan to go along. Among conservatives, 60% say other administration officials aside from Libby may have acted illegally. Fully 69% of Americans hold Cheney personally responsible for the matter; 54% hold Bush responsible.
While 21% say their mid-term election vote will reflect support for the president, 39% say they'll be sending signal of opposition; amid 1998 Lewinsky scandal, just 23% said they'd be signaling opposition to Clinton. Congress draws 57% disapproval, highest in nine years.
I know polls aren't everything, but they can act as a thermometer. The Plame case opens up many aspects of pre-war intelligence and the effect the Administration's motivations had on the decision to go to war. Americans more and more are thinking that it was a mistake. And as the message has shifted to deterring a threat to rebuilding the Middle East, I think more and more people are waking up to the idea that they got duped. The A-P Ipsos poll released today
(link to link to .pdf) shows Bush has a 62% disapproval rating for handling the war in Iraq. He also, incidently, has a 59% disapproval for handling Social Security.
During the Clinton years, the Republican controlled congress had no problem investigating the White House. The Democrats did not obstruct that process. Clearly today there is seldom a visible separation between the Legislative and the Executive. The Republicans in Congress are covering the President's back. This is a dereliction of duty. It threatens the security of country and the integrity of our government.
If the White House Iraq Group was responsible for marketing the war,
any representaive voting against making pertinent documents available should be voted out. Harry Reid had to invoke Rule 21 to get Pat Roberts to
do his job. Republicans play politics with national security. For 2006, we take the Security meme from them. We have to ask the American people if they want to know if they were lied to. We need to show that war initiation based on cherry-picked intelligence to push a radical foreign policy agenda into action is a very dangerous and reckless endeavor.
The American people got played. We need to run on finding the truth and making decisions that benefit national security. For starters. And then we can have our investigations.