Via
ThinkProgress and
Sen. Pat Roberts site, Roberts on March 31, 2005:
"I don't think there should be any doubt that we have now heard it all regarding prewar intelligence. I think that it would be a monumental waste of time to replow this ground any further.
Now, as we have all seen, he's called on his bullshit and everyone in the media completely ignores his obvious past statements! This is from an AP article this afternoon:
"Now we have this ... stunt 24 hours after their staff was informed that we were moving to closure next week," a clearly angry Roberts told reporters. "If that's not politics, I'm not standing here."
No mention of his previous statement, it's time to take them to task further and press the media to report of this obvious hypocrisy. Want more hypocrisy, read on.
This is from the
WAPO transcript of the press conference following the release of Phase I of the report:
QUESTION: Given the 800 American G.I.s who have lost their lives so far, thousands have had serious injuries, lost limbs, all on the basis of false claims, as much as the American taxpayers have had to kick in almost $200 billion, doesn't the American public and the relatives of people who lost their lives have a right to know before the next election whether this administration handled intelligence matters adequately and made statements that were justified -- before the election, not after the election?
ROBERTS: Well, as Senator Rockefeller has alluded to, this is in phase two of our efforts. We simply couldn't get that done with the work product that we put out. And he has pointed out that that has a top priority. It is one of my top priorities. It's his top priority, along with the reform effort.
Now, we have 20 legislative days. We want to have hearings from wise men and women in regards to the reform effort, and we will proceed with staff on phase two of the report...
ROCKEFELLER: I have one comment I need to make, and that is that if we're serious about doing intelligence reforms, why do we have to be somehow limited by the fact that the leadership in the Senate and the House are saying that we're out of here after 20 legislative days?
We could work through August. We can work through September. We can come back after the election. We routinely did that in previous years, often working up until December 22nd...
ROBERTS:...We will continue with our work with phase two. I've made that commitment. I don't know if we can get members back over the various breaks. When I mentioned the 20 legislative days, it was more to the approach that would we consider specific reforms, I think we have to have hearings first to educate the committee and really be careful with that, but we are committed to finishing phase two.
When, you may ask, was that. July 9, 2004! Well over a year ago. Something he said might be difficult to accomplish in 20 days has now taken well over a year. That's hypocrisy.
Instead of post some arbitrary email address's of news people, check out this site, if you want to send some emails. It's loaded with media contacts. We cannot let this story die!
