"There is nothing that hurts the truth so much as stretching it." -- Sen. Pat "Stretch" Roberts.
DETROIT -- O.J. is innocent. Madonna is modest. Barbra Streisand is sweet. Michael Jackson is normal. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the Republicans in Congress want the American people to know the truth about "intelligence failures" linked to the Iraq war. These equally monumental untruths go well beyond stretching; they are demonstrable lies.
One great truth about the Busheviks is that, once they agree on a lie, they stick to it. Ignoring documented evidence and clear reality, this administration will never budge from the lies used to lead the nation into war.
Bush's radical Republican enablers in Congress and his powerful army of loudmouthed pundit-propagandists will say and do anything to help protect the lies they supported and sold.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) had that pinched look of a hypocrite in heat. He squealed like a stuck pig when Senate Democrats forced a rare closed session to discuss his deliberate negligence and phony excuses for failing to investigate the Busheviks' manipulation and misuse of intelligence to promote their war.
Roberts has consistently stonewalled this inquiry, and his hollow promises were exposed as the lies they were. At a time when the vital role of congressional oversight is imperative, Roberts has consistently made himself the water boy and shameless political whore for the executive branch.
The radical Republican leadership in the Senate lets this four-star jerk get away with it. But, like the Puritan preacher canoodling with the choir girl, sanctimonious Roberts howled when the Democrats -- along with the few Republicans who still respect the Senate as an important institution -- caught him in the act. He huffed and fumed that he was honorable and honest, as he fumbled to zip up his political fly.
Roberts still insists CIA officer Valerie Plame was not working undercover. Of course, that's not what the CIA, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and even the White House say. But Puritan Pat clings to his lies. The truth makes him bristle and pinch his lips together like he bit into a lemon. Roberts is Exhibit A for the case that the Republican Congress has failed in its fundamental constitutional responsibilities.
Last year, before the presidential election, the Senate Intelligence Committee's nine Republicans and eight Democrats unanimously concluded that the intelligence assessments used to justify the invasion of Iraq were critically flawed, unfounded and unreasonable.
The committee determined that most of the important judgments in the CIA's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's allegedly illicit weapons were "either overstated or were not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting."
Roberts was content to lay blame on the CIA's dysfunctional and sloppy work, and pledged that the second phase of the committee's investigation would focus on the political manipulation of the intelligence and on who was responsible for generating and ramping up the flawed intelligence.
The committee, Roberts promised, would examine the role the Defense Department's Office of Special Plans played in the flawed intelligence. That was the rump group the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal set up in the Pentagon that went around the CIA and military intelligence to manufacture the bogus information used to make the case for war.
Roberts and his string-pullers in the White House were happy to pin all the intelligence failures on the CIA. Looking into other possibilities wouldn't serve their purposes, and would expose their lie-fabrication factory.
Roberts also pledged Phase Two would "look at the public statement of any administration officials and public officials ... and compare it with the intelligence we have found out in regards to the inquiry."
Now that would be a revealing project. We'd find out on what basis Bush said Iraq was trying to "acquire" nuclear materials. Or how about the inside skinny on Cheney's wild claim that Saddam had "reconstituted a nuclear weapons program," and his equally wacky statement that Mohamed Atta, leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, had met secretly with Iraqi intelligence officers. Cheney has also boasted "the evidence is overwhelming" that al-Qaeda and Saddam had an "operational relationship." Was the CIA responsible for those whoppers? We should find out.
We would also learn "what the intelligence community said in regards to what would happen after the military mission was over," Puritan Pat Roberts swore to us. Did the CIA tell Cheney we would be "greeted as liberators," as he claimed? Who provided the intelligence when George Bush declared to Polish reporters, "We've found the weapons of mass destruction"? What a wonderful inquiry. The American people would finally know how our great leaders could be so wrong.
But alas, with the election over, Roberts' White House clients were safe, so he just shoved the next phase of the investigation into a dark corner. After the Democrats and a few Republicans exposed Roberts' serial lying and scolded him for deliberately stalling the investigation, he promised the committee would get cracking on Phase Two. Roberts whined like a school boy who got his face washed in snow, calling the closed Senate session a "stunt" and a "blindside attack," and arguing the Democrats had "really politicized" his noble work.
In the pre-Roberts days, the Senate Intelligence Committee worked in a bipartisan and collegial fashion. The committee's work is important to national security and critical for the checks and balances that are necessary in a free society. Pat Roberts serves the king, not the people.
What Roberts and the radical Republicans are doing in abrogating their responsibility and serving King George is dangerous.
At the height of the Vietnam War, the Democrats had large majorities in both houses of Congress, but it was
Democrats who exposed Democrat Lyndon Johnson's lies. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright used his panel to force Johnson's Cabinet members and generals to testify under oath about how we got into Vietnam and how the war was going. Very badly, we learned. Johnson despised Fulbright for what he did.
But the senator from Arkansas had Democratic allies -- Eugene McCarthy, Wayne Morse, George McGovern and many others -- who were willing to challenge the president of their party and seek the truth for the American people. The Democrats in Congress chose country over party and helped drive Johnson out of the White House. That's an example hard to find among Republicans on Capitol Hill these days.
Blind Republican partisans in Washington also cling to a claim that ranks right up there with "O.J. is innocent": "Halliburton is an honest company, working hard and earning every one of the billions of taxpayers dollars the company is getting in no-bid contracts."
Halliburton has been caught repeatedly overcharging the taxpayers, cheating on billing and doing substandard work in military contracts in Iraq. The culture of corruption Vice President Dick Cheney cultivated when he was CEO at Halliburton has blossomed in the war-profiteering his old company is reaping in Iraq. Cheney is still getting checks from Halliburton.
A United Nations-sponsored audit recommends that the United States repay the Iraqi government more than $200 million for contracting work Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown & Root subsidiary performed poorly or at inflated prices. The audit, based in large measure on work the Pentagon's own auditors conducted, found Halliburton had "grossly overpriced" fuel imports and other services.
During World War II, other military contractors tried to pull similar frauds, but one United States senator zealously protected the public's money and provided much needed congressional oversight. A little-known Missouri senator, Harry Truman, chaired the Senate Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. Truman was relentless in going after the crooked contractors who cheated the public and hurt the war effort. Truman made the Rumsfelds, Cheneys and Halliburtons of his day shudder. He took on the War Department in Roosevelt's Democratic administration, forcing people to be accountable and responsible. Harry Truman was a loyal Democrat, but he was first loyal to his country.
Can anyone possibly imagine Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, the Appropriations Committee chairman, subpoenaing Halliburton executives and having them testify under oath about their dirty deals? That will never happen, because it would make Cheney squirm. Stevens is far too busy raiding the Treasury for billions of dollars in pork to build bridges to nowhere in Alaska and other wasteful projects. Stevens has been a full partner in the Bushevik spending spree, the costliest in U.S. history. While serving as the conductor on the spend-and-borrow fiscal train wreck, Stevens is suddenly trying to show some restraint. He wants to whack food programs for the poor to pay for the medical needs of Katrina victims. This is hypocrisy from the man who singlehandedly has made Alaska our one and only authentic welfare state.
With Bill Frist, the majority leader and Martha Stewart clone, in charge, and the likes of Roberts and Stevens running key committees, the Senate, once a body of restraint and a check on executive authority, has become a club of self-dealers, slaves for a president gone out of control.
There are some notable exceptions, though: John McCain, Chuck Hagel, Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins and a few others. They have dared, from time to time, to challenge Bushevik bullying and block the madness of King George. They rarely succeed.
McCain did get approval of his amendment to a defense appropriations bill that "outlaws the cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody." McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, wants a clear statement of public policy restoring the Geneva Conventions and prohibitions against torture in the new Army field manual.
Bush insists we do not torture prisoners, but he's threatening to veto the defense bill if it contains the McCain amendment. Cheney has been lobbying to exempt the CIA from any torture restrictions. Why ask for an exemption when you say you don't use torture?
In a 90-to-9 vote, the Senate passed the torture ban. One of the "Kneecap 'em Nine" -- senators voting to keep torture alive -- was none other than Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts. No surprise. Puritans have always been high on torture.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Nov. 8 2005 |