You don't understand, the rich and powerful always protect their own. This will be considered an "oversight" and nothing will become of it. The media will never let that happen.
Posted on 12/08/2003 7:08:16 AM PST by sfwarrior
"Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly and to decide impartially." -- Socrates, 470-399 B.C.
A devastating memo written by a Democratic member of the staff of the U.S. Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence and leaked to Fox News is now creating a furor on Capitol Hill.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is charged with protecting the nation's most guarded secrets. The members of that panel have the nation's highest security clearance. Much of the sensitive information they review is for their eyes only and is off limits even to the senators' own aides. Historically, this committee has been the least politicized of all the congressional committees. After all, it oversees the nation's intelligence community. Its duty, of safeguarding the nation, has historically been above the political fray. Until now, that is.
To congressional Democrats, nothing is sacred any longer: Even the nation's top secrets are fair game for staking out cheap, partisan political advantage. On Nov. 5, Fox News published a document that details the nefarious plans of the Democratic Party for politicizing the evidence that would be found in the Intelligence Committee's ongoing study of an intelligence fiasco. The evidence under review was received from the Bush administration, which was fully cooperating with the committee.
The Intelligence Committee hearings were called to investigate the sequence of events leading up to the military buildup that led to Saddam's overthrow and to the Iraqi liberation. The memo describes the brazen, unorthodox and fraudulent techniques the Democrats would actually use in order to gain power in the 2004 elections.
Originally, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), downplayed the significance of the memo and suggested it is the work of an overzealous aide and not the actual plan of committee Democrats. The memo, directed to the other Democratic members of the committee, reads, in part, "Pull the majority [Republicans] for as long as we can on issues that may lead to disclosures of . . . questionable conduct by administration officials."
The memo goes on to map out a partisan strategy of getting information that could then be used to launch an "independent-counsel investigation." Even the timing is plotted: It needs to break open at the most damaging time, "probably next year," during the 2004 presidential election. This detail clearly means that the Democrats' intent in their work on the committee is not to improve the operation, quality or techniques of U.S. intelligence gathering but simply to use the investigation as a ruse to release any embarrassing items to the press for partisan political advantage. That's sick. If a Republican had written that memo, he would have been drummed out of any position of power.
Immediately after the memo was leaked, the committee chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), halted the hearings and subsequently launched an investigation to discover the memo's author. It was soon discovered through a sheepish confession made to Roberts that none other than Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the committee, had ordered his staff to prepare "options" that led to the creation of this clumsy memo.
Even some Democrats are upset at the power grab implied by the memo. Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), for example, said, "If this is not treasonous, it's the first cousin of treason. This is one of those committees that you should never, ever have anything politicized, because you're dealing with the lives of ours soldiers and our citizens." Amen, Miller.
Unfortunately, this honorable senator and U.S. Marine Corps veteran is retiring at the end of his current term, and his departure will leave behind only a group of vipers hissing in a snake pit. Will the last honest Democratic senator, when leaving the nation's capital, please turn the lights off?
The memo goes on to suggest that the Democrats have had "some success" in getting Roberts to go along with their goals of having the committee "look into the activities" of senior Bush administration officials.
"The fact that the chairman supports our investigations . . . is helpful and potentially crucial," the memo boasts.
But the memo says that such cooperation alone is not enough and suggests that Democrats "take full advantage" of committee rules to, "among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry."
Once Democrats have "exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority," the memo adds, "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," during the presidential elections, the document reads.
"Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq," it continues. "Yet, we have an important role to play in revealing the misleading -- if not flagrantly dishonest -- methods and motives of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war. The approach outlined above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration's dubious motives."
Roberts kept his cool when he learned of the memo, but he was clearly upset that the Democratic plan was meant to, as he put it, "discredit the committee's work and undermine its conclusions . . . before those conclusions are even reached." Apparently, the message that becomes clear is that Democrats sit on the Intelligence Committee only as proxies of the Democratic National Committee and its primary goal of getting a Democrat in the White House next year.
If there is no trust between committee members on the Intelligence Committee, how can its important work proceed? The primary...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Owl_Eagle
" WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH"
Actually this guy is the SF Chronicle's token right winger and articles are appropriately labled that way. I don't think there was any intent here to slam Fox, just a mistake that could easily be made. I associate Hannity with Fox News because I can't even get his radio show where I am at.
You don't understand, the rich and powerful always protect their own. This will be considered an "oversight" and nothing will become of it. The media will never let that happen.
But of course! For the left, political victory alone is sacred. The state is their god, and power is the means by which they worship him. Traditional religion and morality are old-fashioned superstitutions that leftists have evolved beyond.
It is, after all, printed in their "View From the Right" column, which is what liberal rags wave every time somebody accuses them of having a bias.
What's really interesting here is the similarities and differences in reaction to these (really ghastly) memos, and Bob Novak's "leak" of the Joe Wilson affair.
In the latter case, the smelly details -- such as the fact that Wilson's "mission" was patently useless -- were ignored. "The leak" became big news, because it presented (to the uninformed) a reason to distrust Bush's Iraq policy.
In this case, the leak is being downplayed, because to play it up would be to highlight the fact that the D's are, in effect, hoping to mount a coup -- a literal coup.
And, quite obviously, the mainstream media are on-board with it, if not directly complicit.
MemoGate is an outrage but more worrisome is the possibility that Socialists Democrats have dropped all pretense of being American and are moving ahead with their plans to sabotage our system of government with nary a backward glance. Rockefeller is the titular head and must be removed from the U.S. Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence; he is no longer creditable or trustworthy.
Don't stop trying to remove him, keep contacting your elected; your senators and your newspapers, the point must be made that Americans will not tolerate this sort of partisan government! Certainly not from this select and highly sensitive committee.
This is the party of the Clinton's, a party that will stop at nothing to regain power at the expense of America - Democrats care not a whit for the nation or her citizens and as long as that pair are anywhere near government it will remain the most corrupt party ever! Rockefeller has always been a Socialist with little regard for America, just the World Bank and the UN.
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