In April 2001, Scott Ritter was invited to Washington, DC by a group of Republican Congressmen. The subject was Iraq. He chastised the Republican lawmakers with a warning that if they continued to support the policy of confronting Saddam's Iraq over a trumped-up charge, they would not only get America involved in a war it could not win, but would end up destroying the credibility of the Republican Party, and turn control of the Congress and eventually the Presidency to the Democrats.
That warning has become reality in the 2006 elections.
Today, writes Scott Ritter, if he were invited to Washington to speak to a body of Democratic Congressmen, the issue would be Iran rather than Iraq. Although the Democrats are able to ride the Iraq war free of culpability, the looming conflict with Iran will be assessed as a product of a Democratically controlled Congress, present and future. If Iraq destroyed the Republican Party, a war with Iran can destroy the Democratic party.
Scott Ritter has advice for Democrats: stop Bush.
I would strongly urge Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, to hold real hearings on Iran. Not the mealy-mouthed Joe Biden-led hearings we witnessed on Iraq in July-August 2002, where he and his colleagues rubber-stamped the President's case for war, but genuine hearings that draw on all the lessons of Congressional failures when it came to Iraq. Summon all the President's men (and women), and grill them on every phrase and word uttered about the Iranian "threat," especially as it has been linked to nuclear weapons. Demand facts to back up the rhetoric.
Summon the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or any other lobby promoting confrontation with Iran, to the forefront, so that the warnings they offer in whispers from a back room can be articulated before the American public. Hold these conjurers of doom accountable for their positions by demanding they back them up with hard fact. See if the US intelligence community concurs with the dire warnings put forward by these pro-war lobbyists, and if it doesn't, ask who, then, is driving US policy toward Iran? Those mandated by public law and subjected to the oversight of Congress? Or others, operating outside any framework representative of the will of the American people?
(snip)
If hearings show no case for war with Iran, then Congress must act to insure that the United States cannot move toward conflict with that nation on the strength of executive dictate alone. As things currently stand, the Bush Administration, emboldened with a vision of the unitary executive unprecedented in our nation's history, believes it has all of the legal authority it requires when it comes to engaging Iran militarily. The silence of Congress following the President's decision to dispatch a second carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf has been deafening. The fact that a third carrier battle group (the USS Ronald Reagan) will probably join these two in the near future has also gone unnoticed by most, if not all, in Congress.
According to Ritter, Democrats in Congress have the opportunity to "nip this looming disaster in the bud." He believes that a war with Iran will pale in comparison with the current conflict in Iraq. And if there is a war with Iran, this Democratic Congress will be held fully accountable.
A war with Iran, he believes, will have the same effect on the Democratic party as the Iraq war had on the Republican party. And it could take this Democratic Congress down.
If a Democrat-controlled Congress fails to take action, and America finds itself embroiled in yet another Middle East military misadventure, there will be a reckoning at the polls in 2008. It will not bode well for the Democrats currently in power, or those seeking power in the future.
Scott Ritter frequently writes for The Nation and his interesting article can be read in full here: http://www.thenation.com/...