Iraq: It Still Matters Why We Went In

Brady Bonk has a great blog post on why the most important topic for Congressional oversight -- why we invaded Iraq -- is being overlooked.  Besides our democracy's urgent need for accountability over warmaking, Brady sees electoral blood in the water:

[Iraq War oversight] should have been this Congress’ focus, not legislation. Get these assholes in front of committees and cameras. Inquire. Subpoeana. Make them say "I don’t remember" a thousand times. Force them to consider risking contempt. Show the American public, day after day after day, what a bunch of lying, thieving, incompetent, stupid bastards led us into this ridiculous, far too costly occupation of Iraq. Grab headlines. Uncover every dirty little nasty truth about Iraq that you can, and then run on it in 2008 and beyond, use it to cement a truly veto-proof majority. THEN’s when you get to vote to end it.

But I think Brady still misses the most important reason why Congress needs to clarify for the American people the reason we got into Iraq.  That reason is that nothing — not even oil, spreading "democracy," toppling Saddam, fighting Islamofascism, or enriching Halliburton — matters more to this White House than avoiding the admission of error.

If error can never be admitted, it logically follows that Bush will not withdraw from Iraq under any circumstance in which he cannot plausibly claim that his objectives in going into Iraq were not successfully met.

Until the White House is forced to state definitively what those objectives were, and to admit that those objectives, being grounded in false premises, can never be satisfied, this war will continue, and worse, will continue to be directed solely by the impossible mission of achieving retroactive vindication for the Bush administration.  America will continue to hold its shares of Enron, because they might still pay off, as long as we don't sell.