Democrats forced the Senate into a rare closed-door session yesterday, infuriating Republicans but extracting from them a promise to speed up an inquiry into the Bush administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's weapons in the run-up to the war.
With no warning in the mid-afternoon, the Senate's top Democrat invoked the little-used Rule 21, which forced aides to turn off the chamber's cameras and close its massive doors after evicting all visitors, reporters and most staffers. Plans to bring in electronic-bug-sniffing dogs were dropped when it became clear that senators would trade barbs but discuss no classified information.
Republicans condemned the Democrats' maneuver, which marked the first time in more than 25 years that one party had insisted on a closed session without consulting the other party. But within two hours, Republicans appointed a bipartisan panel to report on the progress of a Senate intelligence committee report on prewar intelligence, which Democrats say has been delayed for nearly a year.
"Finally, after months and months and months of begging, cajoling, writing letters, we're finally going to be able to have phase two of the investigation regarding how the intelligence was used to lead us into the intractable war in Iraq," Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters, claiming a rare victory for Democrats in the GOP-controlled Congress.
It is about time the Democrats grew a spin. Let's face it. The Republicans in Congress have no interest in investigating this scandal of the Bush administration's lies regarding Iraq's WMDs. They will delay as long as they can because the Republicans know that if they even start digging into this debacle, they're going to find some nasty crap leading to the White House, to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, and possibly to the president himself. The first Senate Intelligence Committee report to investigate these intelligence failures purposely avoided looking into the White House. Senate Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said he would look into the White House in a second phase, but that was just a delaying tactic. And now with the President starting up his new PR-spin of pushing Alito through the confirmation hearings, and claiming he's going to protect the American public against the bird flu, Senate minority leader Harry Reid took that entire Republican-controlled spin and shoved it back down the president's throat.
So what's next? The Democrats need to continue pushing this scandal. They need to continue pushing for the investigation into the White House / WMD intelligence connections. They need to continue to keep this issue in the public's limelight. They need to continue to connect the cronyism relationship between the Republicans in Congress and the White House--how the Republicans are stalling any sort of oversight investigation. They need to continue to paint this Bush White House as a government that caters to elite corporate business interests, and religious right-wing extremists. They should paint the Supreme Court nominee as a religious ideologue, whome the president chosen for placating his religious right-wingnut base, rather than for the benefit of the country. And they need to start targeting the 2006 midterm elections. That's the first big battleground. If the Democrats can gain control of one or both houses in Congress, they gain control of the committees. They can then start investigating the numerous scandals that have plagued this Bush White House, but that the Republican-controlled Congress refuses to look into.
A final comment from Bill Frist:
The usually unflappable majority leader, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), was searching for words to express his outrage to reporters a few minutes later. The Senate "has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership," he said. "They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas." Never before had he been "slapped in the face with such an affront," he said, adding: "For the next year and a half, I can't trust Senator Reid."
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