How did that thing go yesterday?
Topic: DSM Hearing.
Well, it's of little surprise that the DSM Hearing yesterday didn't succeed in bringing an on-slaught of headlines today. Probably goes back to the notion that many in the media think that there is no news in the memo and after all that was years ago! It's right now, NOW, so they need to tell us about Michael Jackson Juror's some more, or speculate what happened to the hot blonde in Aruba more, or yammer about another earthquake in California and to spice that up they thought they add words like "Tsunami warning." Not that there was really much of a chance of a Tsunami but because a real lot of people died due to one last year so it's a good way to garner attention and ratings. Manipulate that culture of fear! This way the right can have more time to let the truth slip into the cracks.

Anyway, (I am feeling rantish today) CNN managed to have an article up about the hearings yesterday evening:

Forum focuses on 'Downing St. memo'
Democrats urge inquiry into whether Bush misled nation on war

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Amid new questions about President Bush's drive to topple Saddam Hussein, several House Democrats urged lawmakers on Thursday to conduct an official inquiry to determine whether the president intentionally misled Congress.

Rep. John Conyers of Michigan and a half-dozen other members of Congress were stopped at the White House gate when they hand-delivered petitions signed by 560,000 Americans who want Bush to provide a detailed response to the so-called Downing Street memo."

Fuckers stopped them at the doors!? I wonder why?

"At a public forum where the word "impeachment" loomed large earlier in the day, Exhibit A was the Downing Street memo, a prewar document leaked from inside the British government to The Sunday Times of London a month and a half ago."

Ooooh, that's big and scary word to use but man isn't about time we start hearing these kinds of ruminations? Could the DSM gradually become the Watergate of the 21st century? A tough question. This memo thing is just one on a pile of small and burning things such as this alleged misappropriation of funding related to the Iraq war. Or the ongoing investigation as it relates to Ambassador Joseph Wilson and the 'outing' of his CIA wife. These people bent a lot of rules to get this horrible war and if any of them turn out to be credible than I think Dubya ought to be dubbed a murderer. Over 1,700 soldiers have fallen. And they are calling Dick Durbin Un-American?

"The president "may have deliberately deceived the United States to get us into a war," Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, said. "Was the president of the United States a fool or a knave?"

The Democratic congressmen were relegated to a tiny room in the bottom of the Capitol, and the Republicans who run the House scheduled 11 major votes to coincide with the afternoon event.

That was nice of the republicans, point lots of fingers, blame accuse people, tell them they are unAmerican, antipatriotic...But as soon as something comes out that clearly calls BULLSHIT on them...Oh, lets not have that debate, lets schedule a bunch of votes and then ignore them as much as we can. How did the White House respond to all of this?

"The White House refuses to respond to a May 5 letter from 122 congressional Democrats about whether there was a coordinated effort to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy, as the Downing Street memo says.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan says Conyers "is simply trying to rehash old debates."

When Conyers couldn't get inside the White House gates Thursday, an anti-war demonstrator shouted, "Send Bush out!" Eventually, White House aides retrieved the petitions at the gate and took them into the West Wing.

See? It's old news to them, an old debate so somehow it's just not that important. However, it is important REALLY Important:

"We have not been told the truth," Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Baghdad a year ago, told the Democrats. "If this administration doesn't have anything to hide, they should be down here testifying."

If that doesn't convince you, all the death at the cost of a fucking politically motivated lie...How about this (emphasis added):

"Quite frankly, evidence that appears to be building up points to whether or not the president has deliberately misled Congress to make the most important decision a president has to make, going to war," Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said earlier at the event on Capitol Hill.

Misleading Congress is an impeachable offense, a point that Rangel underscored by saying he's already been through two impeachments. He referred to the impeachment of President Clinton stemming from an affair with a White House intern and of President Nixon for Watergate, even though Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment.

Conyers pointed to statements by Bush in the run-up to invasion that war would be a last resort. "The veracity of those statements has -- to put it mildly -- come into question," he said."

The other reason this is important is that we presume to know they lied our ass into this war. I have known this for sometime...I read Woodward's "Bush at War" and Clarke's "Against All Enemies" where it was made crystal clear that Rumsfled brought up Iraq on 9/12/01 because Afghanistan didn't have enough targets (cool shit to blow up) and that the plan to invade Iraq was on the list as soon as they got in office!

The real question is WHY!? What is it? Is it really a need to finish what we started in 1991? Is it really just the oil? Is it some kind of Neo-Con world view they are working this hard at putting in place weather America wants it or not? It clearly wasn't really about WMD. It clearly wasn't really about bringing freedom to Iraq, if that were the case then they would have been beating that drum from the beginning instead of waiting a year or so to bring that part up. Which is funny in and of itself anyhow seeing as they also truly expected to see our troops rained on with flower petals and love for bringing on the freedom. That really didn't go that way now did it? Neither did the costs which is where the ultimate bottom line exists.