Bob Graham might be the best presidential candidate Democrats never nominated. The former Florida senator, former governor and all around good guy just called Bush out into the street for some serious whup-ass in
Sunday's Washington Post -- in an op-ed.
Says Graham:
The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.
The day the Twin Towers fell, Bob Graham was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In What I Knew Before the Invasion, he first quotes Bush -- ""[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said" -- and then buries him.
For years, Graham has obsessively recorded every minute of his life in little pocketbooks -- he has some serious recall aids at his disposal and a substantial mind to put them to use.
On Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet told Graham's Senate Intelligence Committee that the CIA had never prepared a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on war with Iraq. Graham, "[i]nvoking our rarely used senatorial authority," ordered a NIE.
Graham takes on Bush nose to nose:
From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.
I saved the best for last.
On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.
Read the article, Graham is the real deal.