Democrats in the US congress have approved a subpoena for Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, to testify on the current administration’s pre-war claims that Saddam Hussein, then president of Iraq, was seeking weapons of mass destruction.
The House oversight and government reform committee voted 21-10 on Wednesday that she should testify.
There may be more than 10 Republicans on that there committee.
Sean McCormack, state department spokesman, said department officials would try to answer the committee, but indicated Rice may not comply with the subpoena due to executive privilege.
That position gives “us no choice but to proceed with a subpoena,” said Henry Waxman, the House oversight committee’s democratic chairman.
There hasn’t been anything resembling Congressional oversight for six years. We’ve had a Congress self-chartered as a vendor of rubber stamps.
True – they’ve been well rewarded for their non-diligence. But, it’s about time we had a few politicians deciding how to get up on their hind legs instead of with whom to share their golf card.
#32 – it worked for 4 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surge
Doug, it was Bill Clinton that said it was incontestable that Saddam had wmd. He was never in Congress, he was the President, and had primary access to all the intelligence up to 2000. He says it is INCONTESTABLE. Are you calling Bill Clinton a liar?
#34. It is one thing to say that Saddam has some WMD. It is another to say – very specifically – that he has an active nuclear weapons program and is seeking uranium from Niger and we donn’t want “the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
Hell, I figured that Saddam probably had a few barrels of sarin laying around, just like any number of countries. That would mean Saddam had some WMD, but it does not mean he would have been a threat. Also, there is a tendency to lump all WMD together. We are not worried that Iran probably already has poison gas, we are very worried that Iran might get nukes.
Keep in mind that the Bushies had access to the most up to date intel, including a source in Saddam’s inner circle who informed the CIA’s European Section chief that Iraq had no active WMD programs. The Bushies ignored this intel and preferred to believe Ahmed Chalabe, the fraudster who was manipulating the US to put him in charge of a post-Saddam Iraq.
It is also clear – and George Tenant’s new book provide additional support tor this – that WMD were merely a pretext for war with Iraq. Cheney and the neocons in the Pentagon were champing at the bit to go to war with Iraq even before 9/11 and immediately blamed Saddam for the attacks, even if there was no evidence whatsoever to support this.
Unlike all the people on the sidelines, it was the Bushies who made the decision to go to war, and therefore the burden of proof was on them to justify it. The fact that they (at the minimum) ignored contrary evidence, and cherry-picked and oversold unreliable evidence to promote a war that they were determined to undertake regardless of whether their case for war was true, puts them at fault like no one else.
And if Bill Clinton was a liar, it does not make George W. Bush and DIck Cheney any less of liars.
#31 – So even if Saddam did not have WMD is the late 1990’s up until 2003, he did have them and used them, but how can you explain the rest of his transgressions of international law? The two large scale ethnic cleansing campaigns against the Kurds and in the Shi’ia, along with running the most complex police state on earth, to keep dissidents in line. In violation of 14 U.N. resolutions. Waged hegemonic war on two neighboring states. Under his rule, Iraq was a state sponsor of international terrorism. Profited extensively under the Oil For Food Program, that did little if any for the average Iraqi, but enabled his regime to bring in over 50 billion dollars and fleets of Rolls Royce.
You may wish to bring back the days of Saddam Hussein, but I for one am thankful his reign in over, as do the majority of the Iraqis.
#36. Yes, Saddam did all these things. The US actually supported some of his efforts (providing intel for the war against Iran) and turned a blind eye to others (the murder of the Kurds) and provoked still others (encouraging the Shiites to rebel, then selling them out).
Saddam was a bad man. Most Iraqis are glad he is gone.
So?
Last time I looked, it is not the US’s responsibility to sacrifice thousands of lives and tons of treasure to oust every bad man in power. The US’s responsibility is to pursue its vital interests. Saddam was in a box before 9/11, and he could have been kept there. The US would have been in a much better position if it had not invaded Iraq. That is the important thing.
#37 – Spoken like a true isolationist. I think it is America’s vital interest to stop regimes, like Saddam’s Iraq, that flaunt international law. You should check out “The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the 21st Century” & “A Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating.” If you goto (http://tinyurl.com/2nahqu) there is a C-Span segment where they interview the author for about an hour. The days of great power war are dead, what is left is helping countries leave “the gap” and to enter the international community. An IMF-esk program for debunk nation-states, if you will.
#38. No, spoken as a realist. Name-calling gets you nowhere.
And International law?!?! International law in the hands of the Bushies is something to flog unfriendly countries with and then disregard as they see fit. (Speaking of international law, how about UN Security Council Resolution 242?)
It is the US’s vital interest to defeat those who threaten it (ie crush terrorist cells that threaten the US) or its overseas vital interests (throwing Saddam out of Kuwait, back in the day). It is also in our vital interests to maintain good relations with countries that can assist us in pursuing our interests, so that they might help us. Thus we are friends with decidedly undemocratic regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and so on. It is also in our interest to reach deals with unfriendly countries to help us out in specific situations, like the aid we got from Iran during the Afghanistan war.
I would certainly favor helping developing countries, but as recent events have shown, we cannot save them from themselves by force.
#29 – OhForTheLoveOf,
I see your point and understand the confusion. I’m sort of a bipolar misanthrope. I genuinely do hate our species. I do, however, like a few individuals and love even fewer.
Generally, I think that all people deserve as decent a life as they can get. It’s also good environmental sense. And, perhaps I had it backwards above. I may care about humans because it makes people less damaging to the environment. I certainly love other species far more than my own. Call me a tree-hugger if you like, but I’d rather be a lion hugger, if I could live to tell about it.
My rule of thumb about our species is that the vast majority of us are complete blithering idiots. If you think about the truly original thoughts you’ve had and how earth-shattering they are, a few people will have thoughts like general relativity, quantum mechanics, evolution, or some other major idea. These people are truly intelligent.
A larger number will be smart enough to think of their own ideas, for example that revolving doors should turn a generator to get the resistence, and realize that they are indeed not among the truly intelligent.
A much larger number will be too stupid to recognize that they are not at all intelligent. Some of these will cite that they were created with the very image of divinity as proof that they must not be idiots. Many others will not turn to religion, but will still rationalize some way in which they are geniuses.
Some in this last category will now delight in telling me that I am in the stupidest category for saying any of this. Enjoy yourselves while doing so. I think that the few in the first and second categories will see your statements as making my point at least as effectively as your own.
I would like to try to convince myself that I am at least in the second category, capable of recognizing my own limitations and my own lack of true intelligence and creative original thought.
I can’t help but notice that you’re using a picture I made without crediting me, and stealing my bandwidth to boot.
Good show!
Doug you seem undecided on whether Clinton was lying in that statement.
You bring up George Tenet’s book. George Tenet said under oath in Feb 2003, that there is
“little chance you’ll find weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq unless Hussein cooperates with inspectors. On the other hand, Tenet said he would expect U.S. troops “will find caches of weapons of mass destruction, absolutely,” were they to invade the country.
He also described Al Zarqawi as working with Saddam Hussein in a way that he hadn’t before.