Truth Exposed by Senate Armed Services Hearing

"Power to the people" ...!!
Hold these people accountable for the misery they have created.
Don't forget morals either.
Lies.
Lies.
Lies.

I have a 50/50 success versus failure ratio with Carl Levin. On the easy stuff to do, it gets done. anything controversial and difficult in nature, you can forget it. ain't going to happen, least not with his help. I think you can say that most Senators won't even do anything for you, however, and having said that, it means that albeit pretty 'lame' to have them cherry pick what they do and will not do for constitutents, no matter how deserved the request is to comply with, that's better than zero, from Minnesota senators who did absolutely nothing for me when I was a constituent of theirs.

so, Carl Levin gets my thanks, but by no means gets an endorsement as being legitimate 'representation' by which the government can then claim that it can tax us.

NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION is what they said, and today, you don't goddamned have any representation, so hence, the entire U.S. government is ILLEGITIMATE AND CORRUPT TO THE CORE!!!!

http://armed-services.senate.gov/members.htm

and here's what the NY Times has to say [YES, SUBPOENA RICE AND LIBBY -- BUT WHY LIBBY AND NOT CHENEY???]

Senate Panel Examines Faulty Iraq Intelligence
Sign In to E-Mail or Save This Print Reprints Share
DiggFacebookNewsvinePermalink

By DAVID STOUT
Published: February 9, 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 -- Senate Democrats and Republicans differed sharply today on whether Pentagon officials deliberately used faulty intelligence to justify the Bush administration’s war against Iraq.

The debate before the Senate Armed Services Committee was touched off by a report by the Pentagon inspector general’s office, which investigated the Pentagon’s intelligence-gathering and found it seriously flawed, especially in its search for links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the committee, called the report “a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities” carried out by Douglas J. Feith, who was under secretary of defense for policy just before the invasion of Iraq early in 2003.

“Well, unfortunately, the damage has already been done,” Mr. Levin said. “Senior administration officials used the twisted intelligence produced by the Feith office in making the case for the Iraq war.”

But Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican on the committee, immediately disagreed, setting the stage for a series of partisan exchanges. “First of all, you can read the same report and come up with different conclusions, which is quite obvious and will be obvious,” Mr. Inhofe said, adding that the report cannot easily be interpreted as “a devastating condemnation,” as Mr. Levin asserted.

The long-awaited report by Thomas F. Gimble, the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, concluded that, while the Feith team did not violate any laws or knowingly mislead Congress, it developed dubious intelligence that was inconsistent with the findings of the wider intelligence community.

Mr. Gimble told the committee today that, while the Pentagon’s in-house intelligence-gathering was not illegal or unauthorized, “the actions, in our opinion, were inappropriate, given that all the products did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intel community, and in some cases were shown as intel products.”

When Mr. Inhofe pressed Mr. Gimble on whether he agreed with Mr. Levin’s characterization of his report, Mr. Gimble said he viewed the document as “a flat, fact-based report of the events that occurred. I don’t have an opinion as to whether it’s devastating or not devastating.”

On Thursday, as details of Mr. Gimble’s report were beginning to come out, Mr. Feith issued a statement saying his office’s activities had been authorized by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Deputy Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and that his office properly shared its findings.

The report could add fuel to the growing debate in Congress over the administration’s conduct of the war, and whether and how lawmakers should declare their opposition to it.

Mr. Levin said he wanted his committee to hear from Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. Both Mr. Hadley and Mr. Libby received a Pentagon briefing in September of 2002 on supposed Al Qaeda-Iraq links that Mr. Gimble’s report said did not fully reflect intelligence agency views.

Some of the administration’s most severe critics have long accused the White House of implying a link between the Al Qaeda terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and the regime of Saddam Hussein -- a notion largely discredited by the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks.

Senator James Webb, Democrat of Virginia, embraced Senator Levin’s remarks and said the intelligence operation in Mr. Feith’s office had helped to create “a misunderstanding that persists to this day and affects the debates that are going on now.”

But Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, disagreed. “I’m trying to figure out why we’re here,” he said, adding that the shortcomings of prewar intelligence had been known for some time.

Mr. Chambliss noted that intelligence “is not exact science” after Mr. Gimble conceded that some Czech intelligence officials suspected a link between Al Qaeda and Baghdad, at least early on. “There are differences of opinion,” Mr. Chambliss said.

However, Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, drew from Mr. Gimble a statement that Mr. Feith had not been entirely consistent in his intelligence briefings, in ways Mr. Gimble said he could not go into for security reasons.

“He changed the briefing for his audience?” Mr. Reed asked

“There were adjustments made depending on the audience,” Mr. Gimble replied.

“Well, why would he do that?” the senator asked. “Why would he make changes based on the audience?”

“I don’t think I’m in a position to make a comment on why he would do what he did,” Mr. Gimble said.