Chris Matthews teamed up with Pat Roberts in a vain attempt to discredit Congressman Rockerfeller.
FoxNews partisanship has once again defined itself as the unabashed propaganda wing for the Religious Right.

Chris Matthews teamed up with Pat Roberts in a vain attempt to discredit Congressman Rockerfeller.
FoxNews partisanship has once again defined itself as the unabashed propaganda wing for the Religious Right.

That photo says it all. Rockefeller's expression is priceless; if there were a thought insert it would be something like, "A Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, once had the guts to call my great-grandfather a 'malefactor of great wealth'. Now a Republican president lies through his teeth and his allies on Capitol Hill will swear to it."

No wonder Rove is back to his old self. The democrats and the MSM are letting the neoCons distort what the debate is all about.

If the Phase II investigation was as ridiculous as the neoCons are saying, and if to hold Phase II as they agreed is a rewrite of history, then Phase II would not have been agreed to.

Phase II, on which republicans and democrats agreed, was to look at what the president and his cabinet said and did, not what congress said. Phase I dealt with that.

The failure of congress to look into the matter, that is, their dereliction of duty, is a seperate issue. And in that issue the leading blame goes to the leading party. But all have been derelict.

In summary, the Phase II issue is what did the president and his cabinet say and do. That is the Phase II inquiry, plain and simple.

#4 Thanks for clarification that Phase II inquiry is about the President and his Cabinet. Is there any chance that someone, anyone (even a citizen) can present evidence to Phase II of PNAC involvement in pre-Iraq War plotting even before Bush was in office? What every blogger in the universe knows needs to GO ON THE PUBLIC RECORD !

http://www.cafepress.com/googlepnac

Google PNAC> "OUT" THE CABAL !!!

If Rockefeller had an ounce of awareness / spine, the key point to debunk in this conversation would have been Roberts' repeated assertion that "everybody believed that Saddam had WMD".

As Rockefeller *did* say, the NIE was a consensus view of the intelligence community (and we don't even know whether that's true, since no one outside the WH saw the raw intelligence or all of the intelligence opinions), not a comprehensive record of all views on the subject.

Even the flawed NIE mentions (without giving details) that there were dissenters to the "consensus view", so the statement that "everybody" believed the NIE's conclusions is false on its face.

The whole idea of the phase 2 investigation is to determine whether "everybody" did indeed beleive that Saddam had WMD (which we know is false), or whether the "minority" dissenting opinion was not credible (which would exonerate Bush), or if, instead, the WH cherry-picked the facts to suit its intentions, despite credible, contradictory evidence and opinion.

The problem that Rockefeller and the other pro-war Dems have with this point is that they can't contest the "everybody believed it" statement, because they believe that's their only escape route for having voted to authorize Bush's actions (and have been complicit in putting the blame for Bush's incompetance on the intelligence agencies).

BTW, that's the other point the Dems need to call BS on - they didn't vote for war, they didn't vote for "regime change" (as Roberts said), they voted for the contingency to use force *if* Saddam didn't cooperate with the inspectors - which he did. That's the real escape hatch, here, yet ther's nary a peep from the Dems on that point.

Argh!

Well, I've not read the NIE, but something I did read said it was a pretty big doc and the first dozen pages or so was an "overview" of the entire document.. And, as I understand it, the NIE was -missing- a lot of "rebuttal", even though it had "some".. that is, when you say "90% of all people involved said this is serious, but 2% aren't sure".. that doesn't quite add up, right?

Personally, I think our leaders failed.. AGAIN .. both Dems and Repugs.. by not fully reading the document.. and not demanding more before the vote to defer powers to the President (which they don't have the power to do.. That fact was also discussed during their meeting, the transcript has the Chairman saying "The constitution is outdated".. or something like that.. quaint? antiquated? something.. but implied that they could ignore the legallity of what they were doing and just defer the power.. ANOTHER FAILING of that group).

The bottom line is, the Phase I initiative simply said "no, the WH didn't 'put pressure' on analysts".. ok, so? Phase II was/is supposed to decide if "they twisted/cherry-picked what intelligence was available to make a case for war when there really wasn't".. and, isn't the WH STILL not giving up documents in an attempt to stonewall that investigation?

Oh, yeah.. funny how Robertson is saying "the entire world's intelligence system failed", yet there were a LOT of groups saying "um.. you're intelligence is wrong, what you're saying in pubic is wrong, what you're telling the UN is wrong".. yet, these guys still say "global failure"? Riiiiiiight.. let's deflect the onus away from the Administration that PLANNED on going to war with Iraq BEFORE Sept. 11, 2001.. and used all kinds of lies and obfuscations to get us there, illegally, and for no good reason (unless you think it's ok to destroy lives to keep the dollar the trading basis of oil instead of the euro.. and destroying countries for access to their oil).

#1,#2 --- Not to be discourteous, but just a small correction: That's not Chris Matthews on Faux net.

Wow! After achieving a tiny amount of credibility while he was with ABC, Chris Wallace obviously ended up where he belongs! His approach is exactly why I never bother to listen to FOX News, FOX Interviews, FOX Roundtables, etc. The discussion is ALWAYS lead and driven from the biased perspective of that network and its anchors who are such obvious shills for the right wing and this administration. The likelihood of ANY kind of real and honest discussion of the issues is non-existent. Unfortunately, the other networks are generally only slightly better and only look less biased in comparison to the absurdity of FOX.

I agree completely with the comments of Savantster #7. It is also true that many of the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee and in the Senate, in general, did roll-over and (along with ALL of their Republican colleagues) abdicate their responsibility to oversee the Executive Branch (and, in many cases, no doubt, to even fully study the intelligence that was made available to them from the White House, NIE, etc., not to mention the outside sources that were available on the internet and elsewhere and that were speaking against what the administration was putting out and its rush to war). Even though the vote was to authorize the use of force as a last resort, anyone who knew this administration and was paying attention knew that these ideologues were already set on going to war and would use that authorization the way they did then and continue to now- as an excuse to go to war, no matter what the evidence, and as a way of sloughing off as much of the responsibility for their criminal actions as possible on others.

The other thing that is not mentioned or apparently recalled in the present dialogue was the post 9-11 ("New Pearl Harbor") atmosphere in which these decisions were made. There was an incredibly powerful and pervasive use of the "We're at war" (against terrorism), "You're either with us or your against us", hyperpatriotic mentality that was promoted by the administration and its allies. Remember Freedom Fries? That had a lot more traction then than it does now, because BUSHites had not yet frittered away most of their credibility with the majority of sheep that make up the electorate. Even the few thinking people in the Senate had to take pause in considering the cost of opposing the push to war in that atmosphere. I live in a bastion of conservatism/Republicanism in South Orange County, CA. I am definitely a liberal and was against this war from the beginning, based on the information that WAS available at the time. I am usually willing to be relatively outspoken and to present my arguments to my mostly conservative/Republican colleagues and acquaintances, but I very distinctly recall that I felt it best, for my children's sake, in my business's best interest and for my general relations in my community, to mostly keep my views to myself and a few close friends who shared my beliefs. I can not recall anytime, before or since, when I felt quite the same amount of real or perceived intimidation.

I'd be curious to hear what some of your experiences were in this regard.

Generations from now will the public still remember that the Bush bloodline is corrupt and evil to the core? With that said does the public not remember the Rockefellar bloodlilne? The Robber Barons, Rockefellar chief among them, targetted American families and genuine free market economies for destruction. Today same as yesterday. Rockefellar as well as Bush should never be trusted: it is in the blood.

Yank #4

Here is what the Knight Ridder website says:

"The first phase, completed last year, focused on the performance of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The second phase is to look at the Bush administration's handling of intelligence in the decision to go to war" (link here, bold added).

The neoCons have tried to change the dialogue away from what Phase II is: an investigation into what the admin said vs what the intelligence said.

Their position on Phase I seems to be "since we were all wrong, we were right". Their position on Phase II seems to be "see Phase I".

The Democrats (and even some Republicans) of Congress DID NOT VOTE YES TO GO TO WAR WITH IRAQ.

They were led to believe they were voting to give the pResident leverage in negotiations with Saddam in order to make him comply with demands for weapons inspections and disarmament.

The admin. pushed information and deadline for a decision by vote into a very small window of opportunity. The 93-page NIE report was presented late by the CIA, just 9 days before the vote.

The 93-page report was read by only 6 Senators and only a handful of House Representatives. (Kerry wasn't one - BUT neither was george w. bush who CLAIMS to be a PRESIDENT!!)

The report has been described as "... a 93-page document, filled with caveats, qualifiers, and footnotes of interagency dissent on several key points. It would take a dedicated master of pith to whittle the NIE's findings and equivocations to a single page. (By the Times' account, the summarizer didn't bother with the equivocations.)" [What Did Bush Know - 7/14/04 - Fred Kaplan]

The above-referenced paragraph is taken from an article describing the one-page Presidential Summary of the 93-page document. This is the same one-page document the White House is still refusing to give to Harry Reid for his investigation of the lead-up to the Iraq war.

[From the same article referenced above:]

... "Perhaps no president can be expected to read a 93-page document. (Some presidents would have, though. Bill Clinton was an inveterate reader of intelligence reports. Jimmy Carter once asked to see the engineering blueprints for the KH-11 photoreconnaissance satellite." [This is the difference between intelligent, sincere leaders and the current juvenile deliquent sitting in a stolen seat in the Oval Office, masquerading as President.]

When the Lyin' King george says all of Congress was given the same information as what he had ... he's ... well ... LYING. It's just not true.

The 93-page report, which surfaced just 9 days before the vote, was not given out to Congress. A few copies were only made available for review in a few SECURE LOCATIONS.

Therefore no one would be able to actually, competently, study and research the footnotes or the rest of the findings upon which hinged the fate of nations by bu$h initiating war on Iraq.

So --- keep researching and make the truth known!!!

And, by the way, for more information on the False Claim That Congress Had “Same Intelligence” On Iraq - click here

And HERE

Also keep checking Keith Olbermann's Countdown site for the Friday (11/11/05) Transcript which adds even more to the story. MSNBC Transcripts

Hmmmm..Wonder if Rockefeller still has some oil stocks from the family biz. Maybe that's why he has this very leading role in the second phase of operation "take over the world by any means necessary." Let's clean house of dirty dems. Elliot Richardson comes to mind. Dodd, who gets angry to think there might have been election fraud. And why is Hillary Clinton way out front for '08 dem. nomination. Never saw a blog or comment that was pro Hill on any website.

Kira-

Great posts #12 & 13! I read your links and they support what I trying to say in my post #9 above: even beyond the issue of what intelligence information the Senate did or did not receive in the march to war, there was the now much more difficult to revisit environment in which information was received, digested and acted upon by the CIA, the Senate and the American people. To quote from Media Matters info. you link to in #13:

"the Committee's phase one report fails to fully explain the environment of intense pressure in which Intelligence Community officials were asked to render judgments on matters relating to Iraq when policy officials had already forcefully stated their own conclusions in public."

The fact is, the Bush Administration had already made the decision to invade Iraq, at least as soon as 9-11 and, likely, well before. They were making their case with their own bogus intelligence in anticipation of and well before the CIA had fully digested their own information or the Senate was asked to render any decisions. The jury pool was fully tainted and intimidated before they knew what hit them.

Steve -

"You're either with us or against us." g.w. bu$h - Nov. 2001

The Republican Smear Machine has been using grossly aggressive and combative methods to intimidate any who do not march lockstep with their agenda, ever since the early 1990s.

With the help of the msm press corps, they've been able to widely disseminate their cock and bull stories designed to oppress and suppress Democrats and Liberals. But it looks like the truth is about to come out and the American public will finally see these lying, cheating bullies for what they are --- and what they have done to us as a country.

And, yes, there was a concerted effort to bludgeon any dissent and the use of heavy-handed intimidation tactics to achieve their neoCON goal including the manipulation of Congress' real intentions in regards to giving pResident bu$h the authority to invade Iraq in 2002.

Remember the screaming media mantra of the time --- Terror Terror Terror Saddam Terror mushroom cloud Terror Terror!! (ad infinitum.) Typical Rove ... simply look back to the way dubya's Goobernatorial race against Ann Richards was orchestrated. Once again --- Terror terror terror violence terror gays terror. Gotta catapult that propaganda.

You're either with us or against us!

"... when did it happen? When did the country become so politically divided? When did lifelong friends and relatives begin walking on egg shells so they wouldn't upset each other with their political position?"

"You're either with us or against us!" said President Bush.

Yep, that's it. "You're with us or you're against us."

The silent majority just can't get that line off their mind. Why? Because we're all Americans. There is no "with us or against us." For many of us, tolerance is a core value. It's among the reasons our founding fathers fought the revolution more than 200 years ago. Americans support the right to think and act independently. As the fourth branch of government, people have the right to disagree with our elected officials.

I'm paraphrasing here, but Thomas Jefferson once said that it would be a good thing to have a revolution every now and then to keep us on our toes. In a sense, that's what's happening right now. It's been a while since we tried to define ourselves, and doing so is a good thing.

**MORE**

PS I know the wingnuts want to say it's the Democrats and Liberals who have to redefine themselves ... but the reality is that America as a whole needs to redefine itself.

And the GOP's Red Dress has a huge and horrific stain on it, that will take decades to remove, if ever.

What Honor and Integrity has been restored to the Oval Office?

"everybody believed that Saddam had WMD".
I didn't believe it.

I didn't believe the lies either. Of course we all know How Did Iraq Get Its WMD? - We Sold Them To Saddam

But anybody paying attention to the reports coming out (not usually aired on msm --- or no more than one time if at all) knew that the biologicals were 12 years old assuring they were expired. Anybody who has any sense at all knew that Iraq was too poor to make nuclear weapons.

I get so tired of the rightwing crapola.

Bush-I as head of the CIA was responsible for the training of Bin-Laden and his Mujahedeen force. Training and upkeep ... wonder where he is today? As soon as our forces had him cornered in Tora Bora, the idiot-son-of-bush called off the troops and sent them elsewhere. Interesting, that!

Exclusive: CIA Commander: U.S. Let bin Laden Slip Away

[snip] ... Bush asserted that U.S. commanders on the ground did not know if bin Laden was at the mountain hideaway along the Afghan border.

But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. [snip]

Doesn't that sound just like the crapola bu$h asserted after the Katrina debacle? "Nobody could have anticipated that the levees would break".

He just don't know nuttin' when he's responsible. Hey --- just like the rest of this alzheimer plagued bunch.

Coincidence ... the Tangled History Between the Bushes & the Elite of Saudi Arabia

Kira-

The information in your posts never ceases to amaze me. Where do you find the time to read and link to so much. You must have taken Evelyn Wood's Reading Dynamics back in the day! My addiction to following your links (and a few others) is what made me swear to cut down on reading all the comments on this blog. I allowed myself the luxury of reading the comments and most of the links today since my family was gone for a good portion of it. I'll have to get back on the wagon after today's indulgence.

You said in comment #16: "And the GOP's Red Dress has a huge and horrific stain on it, that will take decades to remove, if ever." And to think that this was the same crowd that made such a fuss about Clinton's little stain on a Blue Dress!

Kira, love - Keep all the great stuff coming, please! I don't even have to browse any more to find what I'm interested in getting to the bottom of - I just check out the latest Kira posts at Bradville. How great is that?! By the way, they don't have Alzheimer's, they have Wladheimer's (that's when you get old and forget you used to be a Nazi)...

Yank #5

I referred to a wrong # in my post to you. In my #11 post I referred to your #4 but instead I should have said your post #5.

While I am at it, I should also point out that the "Phase II" I refer to in my post #4 is the reason that Reid and the democrats did what they did, invoke Rule 21 and put the senate in lock down.

The reason they did that is that Phase II was way, way behind schedule and the Robertson committe was dragging their feet.

Phase II is yet to be done. It asks what did the president and his cabinet say the intelligence said, and what did the intelligence actually say.

In other words did they mislead, misrepresent, or just plain lie?

Just read why John Kerry voted for "war" as the GOP slime keep vomitting. It may be long but it does shed a great lite on the reason for the vote of YES.

I will vote yes because I believe it is the best way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. And the administration, I believe, is now committed to a recognition that war must be the last option to address this threat, not the first, and that we must act in concert with allies around the globe to make the world's case against Saddam Hussein.
As the President made clear earlier this week,

``Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.'' It means ``America speaks with one voice.''

Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only:

To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction,

if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies.

In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--

to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.

If we do wind up going to war with Iraq , it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave,
imminent--and I emphasize ``imminent''--threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.

Let there be no doubt or confusion about where we stand on this. I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force,

if we ever exhaust those other options, as the President has promised,

but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances.
In voting to grant the President the authority, I am not giving him carte blanche to run roughshod over every country that poses or may pose some kind of potential threat to the United States. Every nation has the right to act preemptively, if it faces an imminent and grave threat, for its self-defense under the standards of law.

The threat we face today with Iraq does not meet that test yet. I emphasize ``yet.''

Yes, it is grave because of the deadliness of Saddam Hussein's arsenal and the very high probability that he might use these weapons one day if not disarmed.

But it is not imminent, and no one in the CIA, no intelligence briefing we have had suggests it is imminent. None of our intelligence reports suggest that he is about to launch an attack.

The argument for going to war against Iraq is rooted in enforcement of the international community's demand that he disarm.

It is not rooted in the doctrine of preemption.

Nor is the grant of authority in this resolution an acknowledgment that Congress accepts or agrees with the President's new strategic doctrine of preemption.

Just the opposite.

This resolution clearly limits the authority given to the President to use force in Iraq , and Iraq only, and for the specific purpose of defending the United States against the threat posed by Iraq and enforcing relevant Security Council resolutions.

I hope this is not to long but no-one ever refers to the actual speeches by the Dems who voted for the "resolution" not the war.

Funny how the spin has changed from "We KNOW Iraq has WMD and anyone who says they don't believe it hates freedom"

to

"EVERYBODY believed Iraq had WMD and anyone who says they didn't believe it hates freedom"

Well alrighty then, let's go to the tape, shall we?

Iraq On The Record: The Bush Administration's Public Statements On Iraq

(My apologies if this has been posted already)

What a crock of crap that one-sided debate was.

I hope that has taught Rockefeller and all other Dems once and for all to stay away from Faux "We report you decide" News.

Funny about the "you decide" part, considering one of the hosts last statements:
"Not to put words in your mouth, but wouldn't you say this is all just a waste of time?"

Not only is this BS host asking the questions, now he's a psychic too?
"..You Decide" my ass.