Tag: John Dean

Phase II Complete.

“‘The president and his advisors undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the (September 11, 2001) attacks to use the war against al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein,’ intelligence committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller said in written commentary on the report. ‘Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false pretenses.‘”

In the stating-the-obvious department, the “Phase II” report by the Senate Intelligence Committee — delayed by the GOP since before the 2004 election — finds once again that the Dubya administration lied us into war. Y’know, back in the day, this would be considered an impeachable offense.

Topic of Cancer.

“‘We know the president broke the law,’ Leahy said. ‘Now we need to know why.'” With the Dems — except for Feingold and Leahy — AWOL yet again, the Senate Judiciary Committee debates Feingold’s censure resolution and hears testimony from former Nixon counsel John Dean, who is back before Congress for the first time since Watergate. Said Feingold at one point: “If you want the words ‘bad faith’ in [the censure resolution], let’s put them right in, because that’s exactly what we have here…The lawbreaking is shocking in itself, but the defiant way that the president has persisted in defending his actions with specious legal arguments and misleading statements is part of what led me to conclude that censure is a necessary step.” Said the rest of the committee Dems (Kennedy, Biden, Kohl, Feinstein, Schumer, Durbin): Nothing.

Mr. Smith meets Allan Drury.

While the Dems continue their 30-hour marathon filibuster of three Dubya judicial nominees (stunt-scheduled by the GOP to draw attention to – gasp – the Dems fulfilling their advise and consent obligation under the Constitution), Nixon counsel John Dean explains the stakes in this fight…and the GOP’s “nuclear option.” Lest anyone forget, the Dems here are filibustering four of 172 Dubya nominations (2%). By contrast, the Republicans blocked over a third of President Clinton’s nominees to the Court of Appeals. As per usual, the hypocrisy of the Right knows no bounds.

Shades of Watergate.

From out the mists of history, Watergate figures weigh in on Felonygate and this administration’s total lack of credibility: Nixon counsel John Dean calls the Bushies worse than his old employers, while Daniel Ellsberg argues that the Plumbers are back. Says Ellsberg of the Plame situation, “I see an almost identical pattern here [between his own experience and Plame’s]. Really, I don’t know of any analogy so close in the 30 years between now and then. This is not an everyday occurrence.” In related news, it turns out that the Bushies have lied again — this time, Wolfowitz & co. drastically overstated the health of the Iraqi oil industry, despite a Pentagon report to the contrary, so as to minimize the cost of Iraqi reconstruction for American taxpayers. Typical.

What did the President not know, and when did he not know it?

Whether or not WMDs are ever found in Iraq at this point, it has become increasingly clear that the Bushies were contradicting their own intelligence last September and overstating the WMD capabilities of Iraq to the UN, the international community, and the American people. Lying to America? Falsifying intelligence? As John Dean points out for CNN, we’re now entering Nixon territory. (Second two links via Pigs and Fishes and Medley.)