This is a post from Operation Truth's Ben Flanders:
From CNN yesterday, on Sen. Harry Reid's decision to take the Senate into closed session to discuss the reasons behind the Iraq War:
"Frist said Democrats had "hijacked" the Senate, and Democrats threatened to close the chamber each day until Republicans agreed to move forward with the investigation.
"This is an affront to me personally," said Frist, a Tennessee Republican. "This is an affront to our leadership. It is an affront to the United States of America, and it is wrong."
To read the rest of the article, click here.
Sorry, Senator Frist. You get no sympathy from me. For probably the first time all year, I am extremely proud of a Democrat. Senator Reid made a strong stand against the perceived foot-dragging of this senate in getting to the bottom of why we are sending young men and women to die in Iraq. If it’s true that someone lied to the American people to advance their narrow agenda of either restitution or payback and “cooked” the intelligence, they should be charged with treason.
I never thought much about the justification for war when I went over almost two years ago. Someone with a higher pay grade than me told me to go to Iraq and fulfill my commitment to follow the orders of the officers appointed over me. However nothing would get my blood boiling more than if it were determined that the Iraq War was the product of the over zealous convictions of a few people in the Bush Administration. It might be that these are the same people who failed to plan for a viable stabilization plan for Iraq. The point here is that the question remains completely open whether we were right about our intelligence assessment of the WMD capabilities of Iraq pre-invasion and how any failures may have happened.
America seems to have a penchant for throwing itself into war based on fear. We remained locked in a close battle with Communism for the second half of the 20th century (which was great and all--Western Civilization was preserved). But then came Vietnam. The American people were suckered into that one pretty good and paid a heavy human toll of 58,000 troops. And now with our best efforts we are defending this nation against terrorism. Again, quite noble to not let the bastards win, but Iraq? The tenuous case was made that Saddam was pursuing a WMD program aggressively with the intention of using them against our allies or selling them to a rogue nation or terrorist group. Sounds like enough reason to execute a search warrant to me. But after two and a half long hard years with an inadequate number of Troops in a country that remains dominated by the terror, one has to ask themselves whether it might have been better to spend a little bit more time (a) investigating a foreign policy decision that necessitated the highest collateral we can ever wager on our best guesses, human life, and (b) develop the best plan for executing that decision.
Blah, blah, blah. Hindsight. But this brief history should serve as a backdrop to energize a legislator’s best effort to make sure the noblest and most awesome duty of the Senate, the declaration and authorization for war, is carried out in the most responsible manner. Senator Frist considers Senator Reid's move today a personal affront to his leadership. It brings to my mind what a terrible and tragic affront it would truly be to the American people, the American service members who have served and who have died in Iraq, and their families, to not vigorously determine whether or not we were duped into war and vigorously root out any culprits who may have mislead the nation into war.
I am no insider politician. But to me, closing the doors and looking each other in the eye and getting to the bottom of the questions surrounding the intelligence failures of the war in Iraq seems like the most appropriate thing for the Senate to do.