Wow, thanks for posting this. I now have at my fingertips things I know, but had trouble pulling out of my brain with the documentation needed.
Fitzapatrick is going to do what Fitzpatrick is going to do. Nothing we can say or do will change that.
We can not rely on our elected representatives to go after Wilson. They will not. Look at how they folded with the memo Sean Hannity made public.
"I'm sorry Mr. Dem! Sean Hannity was a bad boy to expose that memo."
The Rockefeller Memo:
"We have carefully reviewed our options under the rules and believe we have identified the best approach. Our plan is as follows:
"1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard.
"For example, in addition to the President's State of the Union speech, the chairman [Sen. Pat Roberts] has agreed to look at the activities of the office of the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, as well as Secretary Bolton's office at the State Department.
"The fact that the chairman supports our investigations into these offices and cosigns our requests for information is helpful and potentially crucial. We don't know what we will find but our prospects for getting the access we seek is far greater when we have the backing of the majority. [We can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing.]
"2) Assiduously prepare Democratic 'additional views' to attach to any interim or final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it.
"In that regard we may have already compiled all the public statements on Iraq made by senior administration officials. We will identify the most exaggerated claims. We will contrast them with the intelligence estimates that have since been declassified. Our additional views will also, among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry.
"The Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an Independent Commission [i.e., the Corzine Amendment.]
"3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time. But we can only do so once.
"The best time to do so will probably be next year, either:
"A) After we have already released our additional views on an interim report, thereby providing as many as three opportunities to make our case to the public. Additional views on the interim report (1). The announcement of our independent investigation (2). And (3) additional views on the final investigation. Or:
"B) Once we identify solid leads the majority does not want to pursue, we would attract more coverage and have greater credibility in that context than one in which we simply launch an independent investigation based on principled but vague notions regarding the use of intelligence.
"In the meantime, even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter footdragging on the part of the majority. For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman. We have independently submitted written requests to the DOD and we are preparing further independent requests for information.
"SUMMARY: Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet we have an important role to play in revealing the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral preemptive war.
"The approach outlined above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration's dubious motives."
The Corzine Amendment
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/s071603b.html
How smart can they be? The memo has been exposed for all and they still allowed the dems to go along with their plans.
It is up to us to pull the plug on Wilson. MSM will not do it. The GOP Senate will not do it. We can do it and we can succeed. We did with rathergate. True MSM ignored (and continues to ignore) the story, the obvious forgeries, the obvious agenda of rather. But we were successful. Rather is gone. Mapes--gone. All they have with that story is hot air and the appearance of idiocy.
It will take hard work. It will take letters to our reps, letters to the media, it will take an endless pounding with the facts. Bring it down to the local level-write those small town newspapers. Instead of bemoaning the ignorance of the sheeple, educate them. Ask what the GOP is hiding by refusing to go after Wilson's lies. The closer we come to midterm elections, the more pressure to be applied. The GOP will react to one thing-losing their seats resulting in losing the majority.
If Wilson walks away the hero in this we have no one to blame but ourselves. We cannot rely on 99.9% of anyone in the halls of Congress.