Let's not forget, Pat Roberts promised an investigation into Iraq

[Cocoa]

the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of intelligence failures was "Phase 1."

There was supposed to be a "Phase 2," where the use and possible distorting of intelligence was to be looked into, but it was postponed until after the election so it wouldn't be politicized.

Well, here we are, the election is over. Let's have Phase 2, and they can start with the Downing Street Memos.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/11877957.htm

<snip>

But the Bush camp is working hard to deny the memo's fixed-intelligence passage - a sign that the White House is sensitive about the issue. Last weekend, GOP chairman Mehlman stated: "That (memo) has been discredited. Whether it's the 9/11 commission, whether it's the Senate, whoever's looked at this has said there was no effort (by Bush's war planners) to change the intelligence at all."

Mehlman's claim is undercut by the facts.

The Sept. 11 commission never looked at the administration's behavior; commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton said last year. "(Under the law) we were to focus our attention on 9/11 and those events, and not on the war in Iraq."

And while a 2004 Senate panel did criticize the prewar intelligence as "a series of failures," it didn't look at whether the Bush team had misused the material. That task was postponed until after the election; today, in the words of Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, it's still "on the back burner."

more...

[harlinchi]

1. It's not a dud; it's been daisy-chained!

Knowing something intuitively is one thing; seeing evidence of that knowledge is another entirely. It amazed me that the pundits were attempting to pooh-pooh the minutes prior to their being more commonly known, making statements claiming that the public is uninterested, that the memo is a dud, that all of the memo's assertions were known by the public (citing the preparations being made for war in advance of war), that the administrations use of intelligence has been thoroughly investigated by the two relevant commissions, etc. The problem is the claims are false.

The public, when informed become intensely interested a (500,000 signatures on a John Conyers petition demonstrate that!); the so-called dud must instead have had a time-delayed fuse, or perhaps (in a more apt analogy) must have been 'daisy-chained' (or wired together) to cause spaced out explosions with greater and greater effect, 'cause the political explosions are continuing; the assertions made by the memo were not commonly known in 2002 -- perhaps suspected by some who in voicing their suspicions became suspected traitors in the media's eyes (if the possibility of war exists, planning must be done - that does not imply that war has become a foregone conclusion, especially when the president says it has not); and the two investigating commissions (9-11 and the Senate's) were precluded from investigating 'use of intelligence' by this administration. The Senate's so-called 'Phase II' of its investigation, if y'all remember, was postponed until after the election. Sen. Roberts (the committee's chair) now says that portion is on the back burner. I'd submit the issue, in reality is off the stove entirely, cooling on some oven mitt somewhere!

[acmejack]

2. Well, put it on the front burner & turn up the heat!

nt