Will the WMD investigation inquiry be a whitewash?

Will representatives overlook the WMD deceit to protect the administration? Will those that voted to give shrub his blank check for war be more inclined to protect their political futures than in getting to the truth? Will democrats who voted to authorize war overlook evidence of manipulated intelligence in order to save their own hides?

Interested in DUers viewpoints won what you think will happen here. I personally have rather dim hopes.

...and he won't put up with any shit.

they've done.

non-peeling weather-proofing.

Has there ever been a truly independent investigation done by politicians into anything in D.C.?

Don

which is probably why I have a dim view. I only hope those representatives who were against the war all along, and thus who have nothing to lose poltically, will really crack the whip and make things happen. Bringing the State Department's INR reports, which have always had a skeptical view of Saddam's WMD capabilities would be a good place to start. I hope they mention Curveball often...

Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq
by Alan Friedman

Secret policies to arm Iraq and provide precursors for WMD by US companies (household names) and you get ANOTHER chance at getting the media's attention this time. That is the key to anything ... media attention and asking the right questions.

Problem is human nature and the ability to cover up. Road to hell paved with good intent ? Bush could write the book on that !

The average joe needs to be made aware that his/her best interests aren't furthered by any more Middle East oil adventures. Conservation and alternative fuels should have been the main issue in the election. Instead we get Grover Norquist covertly running the country with Karl Rove, drowning government quietly in their bathtubs.

More CIA insiders will have to come forward along with more media reporting like Spider's Web, along with an 'amnesty' for war profiteers...to get at the truth we're going to have to let smaller fish swim free in order to get to the BIG FISH.

repukes own the process, so it is impossible for it to find truth.

but I think the tide is turning now. More people are finally speaking out and that includes the Democratic politicians. Now the press has to do the right thing but I'm not sure that will happen.

spin machines need to continuously comapare these tactics to the WH handling of Plamegate. It is my understanding that they do not really want to be considered too close to the WH right now.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10446
The Report They Forgot
From our November issue: The Fitzgerald probe reminds us: Whatever happened to Pat Roberts' Phase II intelligence report?

By Laura Rozen
Web Exclusive: 10.19.05



In February 2004, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) announced that it had unanimously agreed to expand its investigation of prewar Iraq intelligence from focus on intelligence community blunders and into the more controversial area of “whether intelligence was exaggerated or misused” by U.S. government officials. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller, struck the agreement with Chairman Pat Roberts -- provided, Roberts insisted, that the probe into policy-makers’ activities wait until after the presidential election.


http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10446
The Report They Forgot
From our November issue: The Fitzgerald probe reminds us: Whatever happened to Pat Roberts' Phase II intelligence report?

By Laura Rozen
Web Exclusive: 10.19.05


It’s now more than a year later, and Rockefeller is still waiting -- the Phase II report has yet to appear. What happened? And why isn’t Rockefeller making more of a fuss?

Republican committee staffers don’t deny that Roberts lacks enthusiasm for Phase II. But they insist that he hasn’t acted to kill the investigation, and that the last interviews needed to complete it are being wrapped up. Ultimately, they say, it will be up to the committee’s members to vote on whether or not to release a report.
........

But committee staff sources say that before the cooperation ceased, the committee had received from Feith’s office internal memos suggesting that the office may indeed have been conducting unlawful activities. In particular, Democratic staffers are interested in a secret December 2001 meeting of two Feith deputies, Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode, with Ghorbanifar in Rome. The meeting also included members of a foreign intelligence service (Italy’s SISMI). The catch is that it wasn’t reported in advance to the intelligence committee or the CIA, in possible violation of Section 502 of the National Security Act, which says that anyone conducting intelligence activities must inform the committee and the agency.

Among the documents in the committee’s possession, the Prospect has learned, is a cable the CIA station chief in Rome sent to Langley expressing concern that members of Feith’s office were involved in an unauthorized covert action. The committee also has Franklin’s Rome report, which, according to sources, revealed that the meeting included the discussion of possibilities for engaging a network of Ghorbanifar associates to pursue action against Tehran. (Franklin pled guilty in October to charges stemming from a separate FBI investigation. Feith left the Pentagon for the private sector over the summer.)

.......

But that was then. Today, committee Republicans view their mission as being not oversight but cover-up. Indeed, one source told the Prospect that Roberts has worked closely behind the scenes with Vice President Dick Cheney’s office in crafting the language defining and limiting the investigation’s terms -- even though the committee is supposed to be investigating and providing oversight of the administration’s use of Iraq intelligence. Yet the committee’s leading Democrat, Rockefeller, hobbled by criticism from within the committee -- and according to one account, “a wimp … not confident of his own judgments” -- has felt constrained from pushing the majority more aggressively to comply with its promise.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006865

(October 27, 2005 -- 04:09 PM EDT // link)

Murray Waas in National Journal: "Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources."

We'll have more on this shortly. But there's more to be said about why this is coming out now, especially since the chairman of the committee, Sen. Roberts (R-KS) was doing his best already to cover for the vice-president.
-- Josh Marshall