bodhisattva Defender of Justice wrote:
I had linked a very nice piece from the NPR (liberal media), it stated that the most people couldnt understand the implications of Rove/Scooter. The forests from the trees if you will.
So basically, they realized that they weren't getting the traction they wanted from the investigation into that angle, so they're seeing if another investigation might better persuade the public that their version of things is correct.
Point being that (as mentioned earlier) we don't pay Congress to single out one administration and spend attempt after attempt to discredit them out of proportion to actual actions.
If you want to investigate whether faulty intelligence might have led to war, then start with the reasons Congress voted for that war (seems a logical starting point since this is Congress investigating, right?). Look at only those things considered and voted on in that resolution and work from there.
What they're doing is finding *any* intelligence that can be shown to be false, whether it was used as part of Congress' decision to go to war or not. More specifically, they already have a "list" of known false intelligence. Oddly enough, to my knowledge none of them were included in the Congressional decision to vote to authorize war. So the purpose of the investigation is not to see if we went to war based on false intelligence, but merely to flout the fact that there was false intelligence and hope that the media picks up on it and the public makes the assumption that it resulted in the war. And given past assumptions made in the public eye on this issue, that's not a bad bet.
It's purely about generating rhetoric to use against the Bush administration. That's why it's not a good use of their time, and doubly why using shenanegans to force it is a misuse of proceedure. Instead of making them look like they're getting things done, it makes them look desperate.
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That the whole reason that the outting of plame happened was because her husband former Ambassador Joeseph Wilson refused to keep quiet when the Bush administration continued to use information that had been proven false in order to support the war in Iraq. Only a couple days after Wilsons Op-ed in the NY Times (Liberal Media) his wife was outted in an attempt to punish and discredit Wilson.
Funny take on it actually. Given that Wilson's op-ed, while openly calling Bush a liar, did not actually refute Bush's statement. I've said this before. I'll say it again. Bush said that Iraq "sought" uranium from Africa (Niger in this case). Wilson refuted it by arguing (correctly) that Niger didn't sell Iraq any uranium so Bush is lying. Interestingly enough, if you read his entire op-ed piece, you'll read a part where he talks about meeting with a minister in Niger who told him that he was approached by Iraqi governnment agents who wanted to open up "commercial arrangements", and that minister broke of dealings with them because selling uranium to Iraq would have violated UN resolutions.
So basically, Wilson's own article calling Bush a liar confirms exactly what Bush said. Iraq sought to obtain uranium from Niger. The issue is muddled further because there were forged documents found in Italy (I think!) that claimed a sale of uranium had been made. However, the Bush administration never claimed that sale actually occured, and we most definately did not go to war based on the assumption that that document was factual. So why investigate a forged document when the false information in that document wasn't used? It's pure smoke and mirrors designed to confuse the public on the issue.
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The invesigation into whether the senate and american people were cajoled and fooled into believeing that Iraq was a threat through the misrepresentation of facts is very very important and something that the republicans have been dragging their feet on.
Yes. It would be. The problem is that the "false intelligence" that the Dems want to investigate is mostly stuff that was discovered to be false before we went to war, and was not involved in the decision to go to war at all. What they really are doing is hoping that no one will notice that fact (and they're unfortunately probably right), and if they can get an investigation to file a report that lists the false intelligence, they know that that's all that'll be reported in the news.
The problem is that any report from such an investigation will provide a warped view to the public. The context of the intelligence leading up to the war will be lost since the report will undoubtably only mention those things found to be false. The public will only hear about the false intelligence, and assume that's all there was, and therefore conclude that we must have gone to war as a result of that. It's an investigation that leads the facts. It's not about determining if the war was based on faulty intelligence, but purely about making sure to provide the public (though the media) as big a list of bad intelligence as possible. That's not good politics. It's not even mediocre politics. That's why such an investigation has been blocked in the past. Investigating only one aspect of the intelligence will only provide a warped view of the issue. Looking into only the false things, or those suspected of being false, will exagerate those things importance in the decision to go to war. The first phase of the investigation did exactly what they *should* have done. It looked at the justifications listed by Congress for war. It analyzed each one for veracity. It found that the reasons used and voted on were all valid. The so called "phase two" is just a rhetoric building device for the Liberals.