Of Foolishness And Fantasy
(Hat-Tip: Captain’s Quarters for picking this story up) Captain Ed, blogger extraordinaire, grabbed this story from Dana Milbank and the Washington Post. It seems that the party of the unhinged rolled a 20-sided die yesterday as they started their fantasy in a Congressional basement. (An aside, I remember play-acting like this when I was a child. It was so cool to be in charge, to make rules, to give orders. However, even as a child I knew I had ZERO control over mom and dad, and the world around me. These people need help, and I believe it could come in the shape of a straight-jacket.)
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/004739.php
Democrats Play House To Rally Against the War
By Dana Milbank
Friday, June 17, 2005; Page A06
In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.
They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official.
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him "Mr. Chairman." He liked that so much that he started calling himself "the chairman" and spouted other chairmanly phrases, such as "unanimous consent" and "without objection so ordered." The dress-up game looked realistic enough on C-SPAN, so two dozen more Democrats came downstairs to play along.
The session was a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war. As luck would have it, all four of the witnesses agreed that President Bush lied to the nation and was guilty of high crimes -- and that a British memo on "fixed" intelligence that surfaced last month was the smoking gun equivalent to the Watergate tapes. Conyers was having so much fun that he ignored aides' entreaties to end the session.
"At the next hearing," he told his colleagues, "we could use a little subpoena power." That brought the house down.
As Conyers and his hearty band of playmates know, subpoena power and other perks of a real committee are but a fantasy unless Democrats can regain the majority in the House. But that's only one of the obstacles they're up against as they try to convince America that the "Downing Street Memo" is important.
A search of the congressional record yesterday found that of the 535 members of Congress, only one -- Conyers -- had mentioned the memo on the floor of either chamber. House Democratic leaders did not join in Conyers's session, and Senate Democrats, who have the power to hold such events in real committee rooms, have not troubled themselves.
The hearing was only nominally about the Downing Street Memo and its assertion that in the summer of 2002 Bush was already determined to go to war and was making the intelligence fit his case. Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador whose wife was outed as a CIA operative, barely mentioned the memo in his opening statement. Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq, said the memo "only confirms what I already suspected."
No matter: The lawmakers and the witnesses saw this as a chance to rally against the war. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) proclaimed it "one of the biggest scandals in the history of this country." Conyers said the memos "establish a prima facie case of going to war under false pretenses." Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) concluded that "the time has come to get out" of Iraq.
The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern said.
"The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."
Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his "candid answer."
At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.
The event organizer, Democrats.com, distributed stickers saying "Bush lied/100,000 people died." One man's T-shirt proclaimed, "Whether you like Bush or not, he's still an incompetent liar," while a large poster of Uncle Sam announced: "Got kids? I want yours for cannon fodder."
Conyers's firm hand on the gavel could not prevent something of a free-for-all; at one point, a former State Department worker rose from the audience to propose criminal charges against Bush officials. Early in the hearing, somebody accidentally turned off the lights; later, a witness knocked down a flag. Matters were even worse at Democratic headquarters, where the C-SPAN feed ended after just an hour, causing the activists to groan and one to shout "Conspiracy!"
The glitches and the antiwar theatrics proved something of a distraction from the message the organizers aimed to deliver: that for the Bush White House, as lawyer John C. Bonifaz put it, the British memo is "the equivalent to the revelation that there was a taping system in the Nixon White House."
Of course, Democrats controlled the real committees back then -- though Conyers was not deterred. "We have a lot of work to do as a result of this first panel," he told his colleagues. " 'Tis the beginning of our work."
((Sorry, I’m giggling right now)) Who let the Deaniacs into the meeting? Conspiracy? Not hardly. I’m sure C-SPAN saw how ridiculous the thing was and went to something truly riveting like "Book Notes"; something that would keep the publics attention. For the record, hanging your case on a simple word like "fixed" is pretty weak for impeachment. Especially if moonbats would actually look up the word "fix" in an English dictionary. Words mean things, and the English definition differs from what we normally mean when we say it. The memo was written by the Brits.
Now, contrast Milbank’s piece with one from Scott Shane and the New York Times, reporting on the same "hearing" conducted yesterday. And I thought the GOP got horn-swaggled in the judge deal. Shane has no clue at all.
Antiwar Group Says Leaked British Memo Shows Bush Misled Public on His War Plans
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, June 16 - Opponents of the war in Iraq held an unofficial hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday to draw attention to a leaked British government document that they say proves their case that President Bush misled the public about his war plans in 2002 and distorted intelligence to support his policy.
In a jammed room in the basement of the Capitol, Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, presided as witnesses asserted that the "Downing Street memo" - minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top security officials - vindicated their view that Mr. Bush made the decision to topple Saddam Hussein long before he has admitted.
"Thanks to the Downing Street minutes, we now know the truth," said Ray McGovern, a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years who helped organize a group of other retired intelligence officers to oppose the war.
The memo said Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence, had said in the meeting that Mr. Bush had already decided on war, "but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
"Fixed" doesn’t mean we were "fixing intelligence" in an improper manner. English people use "fix" to mean "to fit together, to analyze, derive, and conclude." In other words, we had the intelligence. It was a matter of piecing it all together to come up with a clear picture of what we were dealing with.
Cindy Sheehan, mother of a 24-year-old soldier killed in Iraq last year, said the memo "confirms what I already suspected: the leadership of this country rushed us into an illegal invasion of another sovereign country on prefabricated and cherry-picked intelligence."
Lady, it wasn’t "pre-fab" or "cherry-picked" intelligence. I have personally seen a bit of it. You got no clue what you’re talking about, and the bitterness over the loss of a loved is more than obvious in such a stupid comment. I'm sorry she lost her son, and I thank him for his service and his sacrifice, but you can't blame the president for his death. The kid knew what he was getting into when he signed on the dotted line. It wasn't tea and crumpets; it was being called upon to defend this nation. And, I'd like to add that he did volunteer.
The White House has maintained that Mr. Bush decided to invade Iraq only after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made the administration's case in a lengthy presentation to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003. His argument focused on intelligence demonstrating that Iraq had illicit weapons. No weapons, however, have been found.
I guess Sarin gas isn’t a WMD in the Times lexicon.
Asked about the memo last week, President Bush said: "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option." He added, "We worked hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully."
After the hearing, Mr. Conyers and a dozen Congressional colleagues delivered to the White House bundles that they said contained the names of more than 560,000 Americans (Moonbats galore!) gathered on the Internet who had endorsed his letter to the president demanding answers to questions raised by the British memo. Some 122 members of Congress also signed the letter.
Nice to know that the Congress has moonbats that believe in Art Bell-like conspiracy theories.
Asked about Mr. Conyers's letter and the British memo, Scott McClellan, the president's chief spokesman, described the congressman as "an individual who voted against the war in the first place and is simply trying to rehash old debates that have already been addressed."
"And our focus is not on the past," Mr. McClellan said. "It's on the future and working to make sure we succeed in Iraq."
The hearing and other events Thursday reflected antiwar sentiment re-energized both by publication of the British memo and by evidence that Congressional and public opinion has shifted significantly against the president's conduct of the war.
When the media’s spinning, what else can we expect but a shift. I’d still like to see those polls, and the questions used. Anyone want to bet that the questions were loaded and biased already?
A bipartisan group of House members introduced a resolution calling on the administration to announce by the end of the year a plan for the withdrawal of American forces, and more than 40 legislators announced the formation of an "Out of Iraq" Congressional caucus led by Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat.
Great. There’s an intellectual giant to lead that fight. Maxine Waters is the California equivalent to Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy.
Also, a New York Times/CBS News poll being published Friday found that 37 percent of Americans questioned approve of how Mr. Bush is dealing with Iraq, down from 45 percent in February.
At an antiwar rally across the street from the White House after Mr. Conyers's hearing, speakers roused a crowd of several hundred people with calls to bring the troops home and to impeach Mr. Bush. The protesters, organized by a group called After Downing Street, called the British memo the "smoking gun" proving their case against the administration.
Dumbasses! You have no case, and you have no clue. You have no evidence. To impeach the president you need something more than allegations that are unfounded. You can't base a case on "he said, she said". That isn't how the law works, and it's not how the Constitution works. There is no proof that this president committed any "high crimes or misdemeanor". Remember that under the Constitution, there must be a charge that reflects either of those two points; both of which are specifically cited in the Constitution.
Besides, when Clinton was impeached it was because he had committed a "high crime or misdemeanor". He lied to a federal grand jury. He submitted a fraudulant affidavit to a federal judge. And he attempted to supborn perjury. He wasn't removed from office because every Democrat--the party in the majority at the time--voted against removing him. The House convicts, the Senate removes. That's how the Constitution works. Do the Democrats really think they can get two-thirds of the Senate to convict the president, and have him removed. Please. Get a grip, already.
The Downing Street memo, so named because the meeting was at the prime minister's London residence, was published in The Sunday Times of London on May 1.
It is one of seven prewar documents leaked since September to Michael Smith, a reporter for The Daily Telegraph before he began working for The Sunday Times. One, written in preparation for the July 23 meeting and published Sunday by The Sunday Times, warned that "a postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise" in which "Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."
Activists have accused mainstream news organizations of playing down the document's significance, even as antiwar bloggers have seized upon it as evidence.
Evidence? What evidence? Are any of these antiwar idiots truly a lawyer, or do they just think they are. There is no evidence, and they have no case.
David Swanson, a Democratic activist and one of the founders of After Downing Street, criticized those defenders of President Bush and journalists who have called the memo "old news" because the president's war preparations were widely reported by mid-2002.
"It's not old news to most Americans," Mr. Swanson said.
To Mr. Swanson: To most informed Americans (That would be the close to 60 million that put the president back in office) we knew about it, read it, understood it's meaning, and it doesn't mean the spin you and your antiwar nutty buddies are putting on it.
I’d like to first point out that the Times omitted the anti-Semitic rants of Ray McGovern, thank God. But this is what the Times loves to hype. A bunch of know-nothings that make themselves sound self-important when they puff up their chests, and pump their little fists in the air. Pathetic children is what they are, and that goes for Conyers and his little tea party that he conducted yesterday. Please. Enough. America—the MAJORITY of it, you idiots—doesn’t buy the rhetoric. To quote James Carville "That dog won’t hunt".
Publius II
(Hat-Tip: Captain’s Quarters for picking this story up) Captain Ed, blogger extraordinaire, grabbed this story from Dana Milbank and the Washington Post. It seems that the party of the unhinged rolled a 20-sided die yesterday as they started their fantasy in a Congressional basement. (An aside, I remember play-acting like this when I was a child. It was so cool to be in charge, to make rules, to give orders. However, even as a child I knew I had ZERO control over mom and dad, and the world around me. These people need help, and I believe it could come in the shape of a straight-jacket.)
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/004739.php
Democrats Play House To Rally Against the War
By Dana Milbank
Friday, June 17, 2005; Page A06
In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.
They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official.
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him "Mr. Chairman." He liked that so much that he started calling himself "the chairman" and spouted other chairmanly phrases, such as "unanimous consent" and "without objection so ordered." The dress-up game looked realistic enough on C-SPAN, so two dozen more Democrats came downstairs to play along.
The session was a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war. As luck would have it, all four of the witnesses agreed that President Bush lied to the nation and was guilty of high crimes -- and that a British memo on "fixed" intelligence that surfaced last month was the smoking gun equivalent to the Watergate tapes. Conyers was having so much fun that he ignored aides' entreaties to end the session.
"At the next hearing," he told his colleagues, "we could use a little subpoena power." That brought the house down.
As Conyers and his hearty band of playmates know, subpoena power and other perks of a real committee are but a fantasy unless Democrats can regain the majority in the House. But that's only one of the obstacles they're up against as they try to convince America that the "Downing Street Memo" is important.
A search of the congressional record yesterday found that of the 535 members of Congress, only one -- Conyers -- had mentioned the memo on the floor of either chamber. House Democratic leaders did not join in Conyers's session, and Senate Democrats, who have the power to hold such events in real committee rooms, have not troubled themselves.
The hearing was only nominally about the Downing Street Memo and its assertion that in the summer of 2002 Bush was already determined to go to war and was making the intelligence fit his case. Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador whose wife was outed as a CIA operative, barely mentioned the memo in his opening statement. Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq, said the memo "only confirms what I already suspected."
No matter: The lawmakers and the witnesses saw this as a chance to rally against the war. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) proclaimed it "one of the biggest scandals in the history of this country." Conyers said the memos "establish a prima facie case of going to war under false pretenses." Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) concluded that "the time has come to get out" of Iraq.
The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern said.
"The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."
Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his "candid answer."
At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.
The event organizer, Democrats.com, distributed stickers saying "Bush lied/100,000 people died." One man's T-shirt proclaimed, "Whether you like Bush or not, he's still an incompetent liar," while a large poster of Uncle Sam announced: "Got kids? I want yours for cannon fodder."
Conyers's firm hand on the gavel could not prevent something of a free-for-all; at one point, a former State Department worker rose from the audience to propose criminal charges against Bush officials. Early in the hearing, somebody accidentally turned off the lights; later, a witness knocked down a flag. Matters were even worse at Democratic headquarters, where the C-SPAN feed ended after just an hour, causing the activists to groan and one to shout "Conspiracy!"
The glitches and the antiwar theatrics proved something of a distraction from the message the organizers aimed to deliver: that for the Bush White House, as lawyer John C. Bonifaz put it, the British memo is "the equivalent to the revelation that there was a taping system in the Nixon White House."
Of course, Democrats controlled the real committees back then -- though Conyers was not deterred. "We have a lot of work to do as a result of this first panel," he told his colleagues. " 'Tis the beginning of our work."
((Sorry, I’m giggling right now)) Who let the Deaniacs into the meeting? Conspiracy? Not hardly. I’m sure C-SPAN saw how ridiculous the thing was and went to something truly riveting like "Book Notes"; something that would keep the publics attention. For the record, hanging your case on a simple word like "fixed" is pretty weak for impeachment. Especially if moonbats would actually look up the word "fix" in an English dictionary. Words mean things, and the English definition differs from what we normally mean when we say it. The memo was written by the Brits.
Now, contrast Milbank’s piece with one from Scott Shane and the New York Times, reporting on the same "hearing" conducted yesterday. And I thought the GOP got horn-swaggled in the judge deal. Shane has no clue at all.
Antiwar Group Says Leaked British Memo Shows Bush Misled Public on His War Plans
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, June 16 - Opponents of the war in Iraq held an unofficial hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday to draw attention to a leaked British government document that they say proves their case that President Bush misled the public about his war plans in 2002 and distorted intelligence to support his policy.
In a jammed room in the basement of the Capitol, Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, presided as witnesses asserted that the "Downing Street memo" - minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top security officials - vindicated their view that Mr. Bush made the decision to topple Saddam Hussein long before he has admitted.
"Thanks to the Downing Street minutes, we now know the truth," said Ray McGovern, a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years who helped organize a group of other retired intelligence officers to oppose the war.
The memo said Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence, had said in the meeting that Mr. Bush had already decided on war, "but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
"Fixed" doesn’t mean we were "fixing intelligence" in an improper manner. English people use "fix" to mean "to fit together, to analyze, derive, and conclude." In other words, we had the intelligence. It was a matter of piecing it all together to come up with a clear picture of what we were dealing with.
Cindy Sheehan, mother of a 24-year-old soldier killed in Iraq last year, said the memo "confirms what I already suspected: the leadership of this country rushed us into an illegal invasion of another sovereign country on prefabricated and cherry-picked intelligence."
Lady, it wasn’t "pre-fab" or "cherry-picked" intelligence. I have personally seen a bit of it. You got no clue what you’re talking about, and the bitterness over the loss of a loved is more than obvious in such a stupid comment. I'm sorry she lost her son, and I thank him for his service and his sacrifice, but you can't blame the president for his death. The kid knew what he was getting into when he signed on the dotted line. It wasn't tea and crumpets; it was being called upon to defend this nation. And, I'd like to add that he did volunteer.
The White House has maintained that Mr. Bush decided to invade Iraq only after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made the administration's case in a lengthy presentation to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003. His argument focused on intelligence demonstrating that Iraq had illicit weapons. No weapons, however, have been found.
I guess Sarin gas isn’t a WMD in the Times lexicon.
Asked about the memo last week, President Bush said: "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option." He added, "We worked hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully."
After the hearing, Mr. Conyers and a dozen Congressional colleagues delivered to the White House bundles that they said contained the names of more than 560,000 Americans (Moonbats galore!) gathered on the Internet who had endorsed his letter to the president demanding answers to questions raised by the British memo. Some 122 members of Congress also signed the letter.
Nice to know that the Congress has moonbats that believe in Art Bell-like conspiracy theories.
Asked about Mr. Conyers's letter and the British memo, Scott McClellan, the president's chief spokesman, described the congressman as "an individual who voted against the war in the first place and is simply trying to rehash old debates that have already been addressed."
"And our focus is not on the past," Mr. McClellan said. "It's on the future and working to make sure we succeed in Iraq."
The hearing and other events Thursday reflected antiwar sentiment re-energized both by publication of the British memo and by evidence that Congressional and public opinion has shifted significantly against the president's conduct of the war.
When the media’s spinning, what else can we expect but a shift. I’d still like to see those polls, and the questions used. Anyone want to bet that the questions were loaded and biased already?
A bipartisan group of House members introduced a resolution calling on the administration to announce by the end of the year a plan for the withdrawal of American forces, and more than 40 legislators announced the formation of an "Out of Iraq" Congressional caucus led by Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat.
Great. There’s an intellectual giant to lead that fight. Maxine Waters is the California equivalent to Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy.
Also, a New York Times/CBS News poll being published Friday found that 37 percent of Americans questioned approve of how Mr. Bush is dealing with Iraq, down from 45 percent in February.
At an antiwar rally across the street from the White House after Mr. Conyers's hearing, speakers roused a crowd of several hundred people with calls to bring the troops home and to impeach Mr. Bush. The protesters, organized by a group called After Downing Street, called the British memo the "smoking gun" proving their case against the administration.
Dumbasses! You have no case, and you have no clue. You have no evidence. To impeach the president you need something more than allegations that are unfounded. You can't base a case on "he said, she said". That isn't how the law works, and it's not how the Constitution works. There is no proof that this president committed any "high crimes or misdemeanor". Remember that under the Constitution, there must be a charge that reflects either of those two points; both of which are specifically cited in the Constitution.
Besides, when Clinton was impeached it was because he had committed a "high crime or misdemeanor". He lied to a federal grand jury. He submitted a fraudulant affidavit to a federal judge. And he attempted to supborn perjury. He wasn't removed from office because every Democrat--the party in the majority at the time--voted against removing him. The House convicts, the Senate removes. That's how the Constitution works. Do the Democrats really think they can get two-thirds of the Senate to convict the president, and have him removed. Please. Get a grip, already.
The Downing Street memo, so named because the meeting was at the prime minister's London residence, was published in The Sunday Times of London on May 1.
It is one of seven prewar documents leaked since September to Michael Smith, a reporter for The Daily Telegraph before he began working for The Sunday Times. One, written in preparation for the July 23 meeting and published Sunday by The Sunday Times, warned that "a postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise" in which "Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."
Activists have accused mainstream news organizations of playing down the document's significance, even as antiwar bloggers have seized upon it as evidence.
Evidence? What evidence? Are any of these antiwar idiots truly a lawyer, or do they just think they are. There is no evidence, and they have no case.
David Swanson, a Democratic activist and one of the founders of After Downing Street, criticized those defenders of President Bush and journalists who have called the memo "old news" because the president's war preparations were widely reported by mid-2002.
"It's not old news to most Americans," Mr. Swanson said.
To Mr. Swanson: To most informed Americans (That would be the close to 60 million that put the president back in office) we knew about it, read it, understood it's meaning, and it doesn't mean the spin you and your antiwar nutty buddies are putting on it.
I’d like to first point out that the Times omitted the anti-Semitic rants of Ray McGovern, thank God. But this is what the Times loves to hype. A bunch of know-nothings that make themselves sound self-important when they puff up their chests, and pump their little fists in the air. Pathetic children is what they are, and that goes for Conyers and his little tea party that he conducted yesterday. Please. Enough. America—the MAJORITY of it, you idiots—doesn’t buy the rhetoric. To quote James Carville "That dog won’t hunt".
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 1:17 PM
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