They Would Rather Sell Shoes

The evidence for impeachment of a president continues to pile up, and weak kneed members of Congress continue to run away from their duty. Converted war hawk Senator Chuck Hagel told those colleagues blocking a debate on Iraq that if they wanted a safe job, they should "sell shoes". The debate, if it occurs, is actually a proxy debate on the malfeasance in office of the Charlatan and his cohorts. The regime went beyond mere selective use of intelligence to justify an invasion. They deliberately crafted an inaccurate picture of the security threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Another piece of the collage was provided yesterday by the Pentagon Inspector General's office. It criticized the operations of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith. His group inappropriately "developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence estimates....that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community to senior decision makers." Senator Rockefeller IV says his Intelligence Committee will now investigate whether the Pentagon under Rumsfeld violated the 1947 Security Act by failing to inform Congress about Feith's intelligence activities that were conducted at the direction of then Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz.

Part of that "development" was no doubt the forged Niger yellowcake documents which allegedly showed Hussein seeking a source of enriched uranium ore in Africa for a reconstituted weapons program. (See my previous posts on the Italian Job). Senator Carl Levin, now chair of the Armed Services Committee, released a critical minority report in 2004 on the alleged Al Qaeda connection to Iraq and asked for an investigation of the Policy Counterterroism Evaluation Group and the Policy Support Group in 2005. His comment on the investigation results was that the regime got the kind of connections they wanted, "no matter how skimpy". That's right, Senator, and when they found no connections, they created them.