Dem Senate Still not Quite with the Program; the People have Spoken but the Dems Can't Quite Hear them Clearly

The report that Rockefeller dumped on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend, rather than publishing prior to Thursday's debate, was produced by a method that any of us could have employed, namely reading things that had already been published and summarizing them. To make matters worse, the report looks only at what the prewar predictions were for what the post-invasion conditions would be in Iraq. The report does not even summarize and give its stamp of approval to the existing and overwhelming body of evidence that the pre-war claims about weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda were known at the time to be false. THAT is the report everyone's waiting to see. And we don't want just a boring report. We want hearings on television. But, just as the Democrats agreed to steer the Iran-Contra hearings away from any evidence that might lead to President Ronald Reagan's impeachment, the current crop of Cheney Democrats seems intent on avoiding discussion of high crimes and misdemeanors.

On February 12, 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced that it had agreed to investigate the following list of items. The new report looks only at item E. We have not yet seen any reports, much less hearings or subpoenas, related to A-2, A-3, A-4, C, or G.

A. The matters set forth in the joint release of the Chairman and Vice Chairman on June 20, 2003:

the quantity and quality of U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs, ties to terrorist groups, Saddam Hussein's threat to stability and security in the region, and his repression of his own people;
the objectivity, reasonableness, independence, and accuracy of the judgments reached by the Intelligence Community;
whether those judgments were properly disseminated to policy makers in the Executive Branch and Congress;
whether any influence was brought to bear on anyone to shape their analysis to support policy objectives; and
other issues we mutually identify in the course of the Committee's review;
B. the collection of intelligence on Iraq from the end of the Gulf War to the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom;
C. whether public statements and reports and testimony regarding Iraq by U.S. Government officials made between the Gulf War period and the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom were substantiated by intelligence information;
D. the postwar findings about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and weapons programs and links to terrorism and how they compare with prewar assessments;
E. prewar intelligence assessments about postwar Iraq;
F. any intelligence activities relating to Iraq conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) and the Office of Special Plans within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and
G. the use by the Intelligence Community of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress (INC).

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Russ Feingold (D-WI) tries to put the best spin on the current report that he can:

"The report released today by the Senate Intelligence Committee underscores that the Administration was indifferent to the predicted negative consequences of the war in Iraq. The intelligence community's assessments, made prior to the war and widely disseminated within the Administration, also directly contradict many of the assertions made at the time by the Administration. The intelligence assessments available to the Administration before the war directly contradicted assertions that the war would help us fight al Qaeda. The intelligence community assessed that, as a result of the war, al Qaeda would probably see an opportunity to accelerate its operational tempo and increase terrorist attacks, terrorist groups would probably be encouraged to take advantage of a volatile security environment to launch attacks within Iraq and al Qaeda would try to take advantage of US attention on postwar Iraq to reestablish its presence in Afghanistan. The war's devastating impact on the fight against al Qaeda and on our national security has been apparent for some time. That the Administration was warned of the negative consequences before the war shows just how reckless it was."

Link.

And the raw data is -- and always has been -- here.