Commons sense also counts a little bit, I mean when we started to hear that Iraq was a threat to the entire universe it was a tad difficult to believe. Also, the results of the people who were doing the inspecting of Iraq’s nuclear capabilities posted the information on the internet so that anyone could read it and what they found was no evidence of WMD. So my question is: How come congress did not read that information? I know that is a stupid question but it does explain so much. For example it explains the Feingold-Reid bill, number S.1077 which was voted down in the Senate last Wednesday, another fraud because it contained the appropriate loopholes that would allow the occupation of Iraq to continue unabated. The explanation, of course, is that congress has no intention of stopping the occupation no matter how much they howl about it. Of course the news media portrayed the bill as an effort by the democrats to stop the war and happily neglected to include the verbiage of the bill itself no doubt to help implement the perception of an anti-war democrat congress. But when you read the bill itself it is easy to see that the bill was an empty gesture, in fact, if it passed or did not pass it would have made no difference at all to stopping the occupation of Iraq. So yeah, the information is out there but how many people bother to go look?

Rob, at least before all of the troops got sent over there, some Democrats in Congress did at least have an idea that there was a problem with the concept of Saddam as world-destroyer. The total of Democrats in both houses who voted against the war was 60%. 29% of the members of Congress as a whole voted against the Iraq AUMF. The 21 Democratic Senators who voted against the resolution included a majority of the Democratic members of the Armed Services and Intelligence committees. Just not any of the Senators running for President this year.

An interesting fact: I did a post on Jim Lehrer the other day that Crooks & Liars picked up and ran across a Pew poll done after the Powell presentation to Congress in Feburary 2003 that said 42% of the respondents thought that they hadn't heard enough in the media from war opponents. And that was with only 26% of the respondents completely opposed to the war.

http://www.darrelplant.com/blog_item.php?ItemRef=677

Something tells me 'the good stuff' shrubya was expecting to see was along the lines that there are billions and billions of evil brown foreigners speaking ungodly languages scheming to destroy America. The news that the world beyond American borders is already mapped, not full of demons, and not (at that point) entirely hostile must have come as a complete shock to him.

darrelplant,

Thanks for the link to your post. Your math is better than most reporters.

However I think my criticism of congress still holds water as it is clear that the vast majority of them voted for the war despite Lehrer’s mistaken mathematics. I mean that if 156 out of 532 voted nay that is not exactly inspiring leadership in my book.

Also there is no excuse for the continued writing of legislation that is touted as intended to stop the war when in reality it does no such thing. If you are interested I wrote a post over at Hugo Zoom concerning S.1077 if. Here is the link.

http://hugozoom.blogspot.com/2007/05/when-defeat-means-victory-or-when-up-is.html

Spent 6 years in intelligence with a Top Secret/SCI clearance, read the daily briefs for POTUS and JCS and NEVER saw anything in them that couldn't (and frequently did) appear in the NYT or WP.

In my experience, except for a very few areas involving weapons programs or intelligence sources and methods, classification serves primarily to hide screwups both past and pending.

rob, i don't disagree with your view of congress at all. i think that there are definitely some members of congress who might support withdrawal or other action who are holding back because they've bought into the idea that they will be painted as not supporting the troops.

Dick Durbin, who was one of the 21 Senate Dems who voted against the war even made a remark on NPR a couple of weeks back about how some of the Senators who'd voted against the AUMF had lost elections because of it. Four years after the vote, that's what he thinks, even though the number of people involved was rather small and he knew all of them. Durbin and others who took stands against the administration did come in for an incredible amount of abuse because of their vote, but of the 21 Dems, 16 are still in office, one died in a plane crash, one ran for president instead of re-election, and three left office to retire or take another office and were succeeded by another Democrat. Not a single Senator who voted against the resolution lost a general election for their Senate seat.

http://www.darrelplant.com/blog_item.php?ItemRef=675

Three of the 29 Democrats in the Senate who voted for the AUMF lost elections in 2002 or 2004.

None of the Democratic Representatives who voted against the resolution lost general elections. Nine of those who voted for the war were voted out of office.

http://www.darrelplant.com/blog_item.php?ItemRef=574

Here's the dirty truth of double secret intelligence gathering: Only about one part in a million is not gathered from open sources. Here is the Unbelievable Truth of analysis: The non-open source stuff that contradicts the open source stuff is always wrong.

I'm sure Sam Thornton is right. Secret stuff is very hard to keep secret. The world is populated with blabber mouths. Didn't EVERYONE know you liked "that boy" or "that girl" in grade school? Case closed.

Its the conspiracies you have to worry about.

Muahahaha.

also would like to point out that the sitting president was bored with his job before he took office.

darrelplant,

I really like your blog and I can just imagine the type of abuse received by those who voted against the war. War is a religion in America and when you speak against the war you are speaking against the state according to the mainstream news media. After the first presidential debate between the democrats there was an interview of Mike Gravel and the fellow who interviewed him was totally hostile to Mike Gravel. It is to be expected of course because no one should ever question the goodness of America. Pretty sad state of affairs.

yeah, my impression has been that the only interesting classified stuff is regarding the programs of one's own government

Late November 2000? If so, what's with the "in case we [sic?] were about to become commander-in-chief"? Of course he was about to become commander-in-chief. He'd already been elected by late November.

my impression has been that the only interesting classified stuff is regarding the programs of one's own government

sometime last night it hit me, that must be what dubya was talking about. think of the skeletons the bush family has buried and closeted over the years, the nixon connections, the reagan connections.

my guess is that the clinton people were, true to their general outlook, not doing any seriously secret illegal shit in foreign affairs, because they thought they were living in an open era where keeping your hands on the table was good economic policy. dubya, on the other hand, "knew" that such policies are a cover story, and not finding anybody really putting power to work probably only further sealed his contempt for the previous administration and The Other Side.