Scott Ritter, famed WMD inspector, Marine and Republican, was thrown to the dogs when he tried to stop the war in Iraq. He held a news conference in Bagdad before the war calling on US restraint until the inspections could be finished. Our government's response was indignation and Ritter eventually was charged in a trumped up internet sex scheme. You'd think I was making this up, or that we lived on Animal Farm, but this is the state of our government today. Here's part of what Ritter had to say to Republican leaders during the run-up to war with Iraq:"The conference room was packed with more than seventy Representatives and their staffs. I provided an opening in which I stressed that the case being made against Saddam Hussein and Iraq, centered as it was on the issue of WMD, did not hold water. I chastised the Republican lawmakers with a warning: If they continued to support the policy of confronting Saddam's Iraq over a trumped-up charge, they would not only get America involved in a war it could not win but would end up destroying the credibility of the Republican Party, and turn control of the Congress, and eventually the Presidency, to the Democrats. There were questions asked, and answers given, and in the end most thanked me for what they called an "illuminating" meeting.
Then they proceeded to do nothing."
And here's what he has to say to Democrats today:
"If I were to address a Democrat Theme Team equivalent, I would focus my effort on trying to impress them with the issue that will cost them political power down the road. This issue is Iran. While President Bush, a Republican, remains Commander in Chief, a Democrat-controlled Congress shares responsibility on war and peace from this point on. The conflict in Iraq, although ongoing, is a product of the Republican-controlled past. The looming conflict with Iran, however, will be assessed as a product of a Democrat-controlled present and future. If Iraq destroyed the Republican Party, Iran will destroy the Democrats.
I would strongly urge Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, to hold real hearings on Iran. Not the mealy-mouthed Joe Biden-led hearings we witnessed on Iraq in July-August 2002, where he and his colleagues rubber-stamped the President's case for war, but genuine hearings that draw on all the lessons of Congressional failures when it came to Iraq. Summon all the President's men (and women), and grill them on every phrase and word uttered about the Iranian "threat," especially as it has been linked to nuclear weapons. Demand facts to back up the rhetoric."
After Bush's State of the Union speech, I think it's clear that Bush & Cheney think they can do whatever they want, Congress and the American people be damned. It's time to make them change their minds. I hope we can do it without "waterboarding".