Republicans Suckered the Senate & the CIA

Republicans Suckered the Senate & the CIA

“It's time to end this mistake. … I don't think there should be amnesty for those who killed or tried to kill our troops. … I don't think any of us can support that.” - Senator Russ Feingold, “Meet the Press”

If you haven't read the story on Cheney
& Rummy vs. the CIA, today is a good day to check it out.

Democrats have it right
on Iraq, Kerry & Feingold more than others. As Feingold said this morning,
only Washington doesn't get it. General Casey is allowing the U.S. to
tell the Iraqis what we're doing. As I said late last night, Democrats should declare victory.

Reliving how we got into this mess makes the Kerry-Feingold binding amendment
even more prescient. Contrary to pr, Kerry-Feingold gives complete flexibility
to General Casey. Remembering the run up to war and how hell bent Bush was to invade Iraq makes you want to scream.

In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare. (snip) Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: “We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.” The sentence took Drumheller completely by surprise. “We thought we had taken care of the problem,” said the man who was the CIA's European operations chief before retiring last year, “but I turn on the television and there it was, again.” (snip) When Drumheller relayed the warning to his superiors in October 2002, it sparked what he described as “a series of the most contentious meetings I've ever seen” in three decades of government work. Although no American had ever interviewed Curveball, analysts with the CIA's Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control believed the informant's technical descriptions were too detailed to be fabrications. “People were cursing. These guys were absolutely, violently committed to it,” Drumheller said. “They would say to us, 'You're not scientists, you don't understand.' “ (snip) “I said: 'Hey, boss, you're not going to use that stuff in the speech . . . ? There are real problems with that,' ” Drumheller said, recalling the conversation. Drumheller recalled that Tenet seemed distracted and tired and told him not to worry. Warnings on WMD 'Fabricator' Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says

Thanks to Howie @ Down with Tyranny for the heads up on the Springsteen video. The boss gets the bottom line, “Bring 'em home.”

Iraq should never have been the “be all and end all of our foreign policy,” as Feingold said today. But Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld made it so. What's happening right now is chaos and terrorists are using Iraq as a terror training ground. A public timetable is essential. It's what Maliki suggested today. Senators Kerry and Feingold were right. Deal with that, Harry and Hillary.