Saturday, February 14, 2004

Choices

Well, we can fight the War on Terror or we can investigate the people who are fighting the war on terror. Guess which one the Republican-controlled Senate wants to do? Not only have they chosen to do the latter, they want to "shape" the president's daily intelligence briefing. I am not making this up.

There's one word for the behavior of the GOP Senate caucus: pathetic. You'll be shocked to learn that The New York Times writes this up in glowing terms.

Reader E-Mail

You posted a link to the NY Times story regarding the Senate's pending investigation of the intelligence briefings received by the President and the possible hyping of intelligence information by officials.

It seemed to me that this article must be read against the backdrop of another recent event -- the release of a Democratic staff memo (published without authorization) that detailed a Democratic plan to use the information developed by the Senate committee for political purposes. My recollection is that neither the senior Democrat on the committee (Senator Rockefeller) nor anyone in the Democratic senior leadership ever disavowed the memo's strategy of politicizing the committee's work. True, this leaked memo has received little attention in the Media. But, if the NY Times article is to properly explore the issues, should it not at least make at least some reference to the leaked memo as (perhaps) providing some explanation for the Administration's reluctance to share information. And what does this say about the willingness of the Republicans on the committee to play along?

-R.F.