A House committee voted this afternoon to authorize a subpoena of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as it presses an inquiry into the claims, long since discredited, that Iraq sought uranium from Niger.
(source)
We can only hope it is the first of many, many subpoenas.
I've been arguing for a long time that for reasons both idealist and cravenly political, the Democratic Party should make its first priority to bring to light as many of the Bush Administration's lies and dirty tricks as possible. As I mentioned in the last paragraph two posts ago, we're facing a cleaning task that makes a Superfund site look like a job for half a paper towel.
You're a good man, Congressman Waxman.
5 comments:
I'm not saying that the Democrats shouldn't look into this. But where the heck was the courageous Democrat willing to call Colin Powell to task for his speech before the U.N. on WMD? This Niger info has been around since at least Joe Wilson's "What I Didn't Find in Africa" piece in the NYTimes in July 2003.
Subpoenaing the Republicans now smacks an awful lot like election year (since elections are all now at least 2 years long) opportunism.
Sure, there's no doubt that politics is part of all of this. But I think if you look into Waxman's record [1], he has been trying his best for years to investigate and criticize this administration's doings. Now, he's (finally) got the chair and subpoena power.
[1] For example: see this, this, this, this, this, and the archives of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This page starts in early 2002 -- you can move forward or backward in time from there.
Oh, and by the way, I'd kill for a Lexis account (and a research stipend) to more fully document Waxman's consistency. I've long viewed him as one of the good guys.
Don't forget that in addition to lacking subpoena power, being in the minority in Congress also meant that there was a lot less ink spilled over Waxman's lone voice in the wilderness four and five years ago. Not to mention the tame MSM stance on the whole rush to war.
You may be able to access Lexis/Nexus through your local library.
A good thought, but to no avail -- the Monroe County Library System does not have a LexisNexis account, even through machines physically installed in the library branches.
An MCLS librarian responding to my email query suggested SUNY/Brockport as a nearby alternative.
Got any handy links for buying fake student IDs? ;^)
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