Dems Send the Senate into Closed Session Over Plame Leak

Harry Reid just made a motion, that was seconded, to send the Senate into closeed session.Schumer, Rockefeller and Durbin are before the press asking for a Senate Intelligence investigation into the Plame affair

On Sunday, the NYT's Frank Rich Parroted the Murray Waas National Journal Piece But Ignored Facts that Undermine the Democrat's Conspiracy Theory

From Worldwide Standard, October 30, 2005:

Surprise, Surprise: The NYT's Frank Rich Ignores Facts that Undermine His Conspiracy Theory

For example, Rich writes:

Murray Waas reported Thursday in The National Journal that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby had refused to provide the committee with ''crucial documents,'' including the Libby-written passages in early drafts of Colin Powell's notorious presentation of W.M.D. ''evidence'' to the U.N. on the eve of war.
Rich, like other liberals, are desperately trying to get the nation to believe that the pre-war intelligence on Iraq was manufactured by a small band of zealots in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, including Cheney himself. Last week, Iraq opponents like Rich were abuzz over the remarks of Lawrence Wilkerson who called the relationship between Rumsfeld and Cheney "a cabal" during a speech in Washington. This week it's the Waas piece. But Wilkerson's other remarks in the same speech combined with the Waas piece actually undermine the "zealots made the wmd up" line.

For instance, Waas, a contributor to the American Prospect, writes:

…whether dissenting views from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research [INR], the Department of Energy, and other agencies that often disagreed with the CIA on the question of Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction…
His phrase "programs to develop weapons of mass destruction" leaves the clear impression that INR dissented not only on the nuclear issue (for the record, DOE believed Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program) but also on chemical and biological weapons . But that is not true, according to Wilkerson. Here's what Secretary Powell's chief of staff Wilkerson said the same "cabal" speech:

…I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can’t. I’ve wrestled with it. I don’t know – and people say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios….

According to Wilkerson, most, if not all, of the content in Secretary Powell's address -- a speech, Waas writes, that deputy CIA director John McLaughlin told Congress was reviewed to take "out material…that we and the secretary's staff judged to have been unreliable" -- to the UN was believed to be "the truth" by British, German and French intelligence. And INR, Wilkerson states, was "right there with the chems and the bios."

So Powell's speech didn't include the "Libby-written" passages, yet British, French and German intelligence believed it to be "the truth," and INR was "right there" with Powell on "the chems and bios."

Boy, that's quite a conspiracy the vice president engineered.

More on the Murray Waas piece may be found here and Wilkerson's "cabal" speech here.

Fantastic posting!

BTW, here's what I just phoned into my Senator's office (Frist):

Regain control of the senate chamber!

i don't care about the spin or the political posturing.

i voted for Sen. Frist twice to get results.

i know that Sen. Frist wants to restore comity and collegiality to the chamber,
but sometimes you have to use a heavy hand to restore order.

once the Democrats see that Sen. Frist DOES INDEED HAVE A BACKBONE, only then will they back down.

i am offically resquesting that you PERSONALLY put a bug in the senator's ear reminding him to tell
Sen. Reid that when one party shuts down the government (like in the 1990's), the opposition wins the next Prez
election. and unless he wants history to repeat itself, it's time to get back to work.

I wonder what that secretary thought about THAT...

I am merely stating facts rather than going along with the popular misunderstandings of M v M. It was NOT new nor unique but totally in keeping with the Founders view of the judiciary AND with the views of the writers of the Federalist Papers as well as practice within the states.

Without judicial review the Constitution has no meaning. If the Court cannot strike down unconstitutional laws then ANYTHING could be legislated. Congress could pass a law stating that no private citizen could own a firearm and it would not be able to be overruled by the SC.

It is my view that the "exceptions clause" gives the Congress the authority to take certain laws out of the purview of the SC but it has never done so. There is no doubt that Congress can change the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary and remove Districts if it wishes.

Congress will not make any serious changes in the nature of the Court so don't hold your breath. And the quality of the people sitting as justices is absolutely critical.

Rockefeller memo

Here is the full text of the memo from the office of Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa.) on setting a strategy for pursuing an independent investigation of pre-war White House intelligence dealings on Iraq.

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.

Source: The Hill - November 6, 2003

This is a good thing. Alito is now filibuster proof.

Yep. This will work in the advantage of the Republicans, even if it did stymie a few FReepers.

Knowing the facts of the matter, Senator Pat Roberts and his staff have been trying to get Phase II out in the open, while the Democrats have been working hard in order to undermine that effort by projecting their obstructionist efforts onto Senator Roberts. The Democrats have seen the same intelligence the President and the Republicans have seen. I suspect the Democrats just don't want to vindicate the President by allowing Senator Roberts to bring the findings of Phase II out into the open.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have been trying to indict the entire White House from every conceiveable angle, from Cindy Sheehan, Joe Wilson, Patrick Fitzgerald, their statements on prisoner abuses, etc., because they themselves find themselves to be in total agreement with the terrorists. They decided to politicize the war, and to politicize the war to change the hearts and minds of the American people, they won't win that "political battle" by agreeing with the President or the men and women on the REAL battlefield.

It didn't have to be that way, but the idiots on the far-left have become the mainstream thought of the Democrat party, the party itself could not ignore it.

Harry Reid's behavior and statements yesterday is illustrative of appealing to the far-left of the party. The element of the left that is in the driver's seat of the Democrat party.

Yes watching the news conference after the session by Reid I kept thinking to myself. This is his melt down. He is going off the deep end. Then I thought is this the leader of the DEMs in Congress. Good God! What a jackass. I could not believe that anyone in their right or left mind after 3 years of questions probes, committees, etc could believe any of this stuff. It was sooo blatantly political that I could not believe the DEMS with our MEN and WOMEN fighting and dying on foreign soil would do this to undercut the PRESIDENT. Who are these traitors? The Reps need to ram everything but the kitchen sink down their throats from tax cuts to deficit reduction and not care one bit what they think. Let them Filibuster to their hearts content. They had a melt down in the Senate today what will be next. And they want us to trust them to lead us? give me a break.

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