1 Boring Old Man

They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath — one of secrecy,” she [Harman] said. “I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything.

Cowed into timid supplicants pretty much sums up what George Bush and Dick Cheney did to to the Congress. In this instance, there were only a handful of Representatives and Senators that could have addressed the ills at hand, and they failed their duty, failed their oath and failed their country. Yes it would have taken a huge "Profile In Courage" for them to have availed themselves of the Speech and Debate privilege and stood in the wells of Congress to right the matter… Courage is what this country was founded on and propagated by, we can ill afford to be in such short supply of it in the most critical moments when the Constitution is being undermined.

I remember clearly what I thought back then, towards the end of 2002. When Bush began to foment for war in earnest in September, I was dubious. I didn’t know if Saddam Hussein had weapons of Mass Destruction or not, but I saw no urgency in having some immediate invasion. I kept thinking, "But we’re after Osama Bin Laden, and al Qaeda, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Why is he talking about Iraq?" When people said, "He’s after their oil" or "He wants to avenge the plot against his father," I thought they were just creating reasons because they didn’t like him. I guess I hoped there was something the Administration knew that justified this change of plans. But when I heard Colin Powell’s U.N. speech, I was plenty underwhelmed.

But, for me, it wasn’t until there were no WMD’s and then Bush got re-elected that I began to really think something was bad wrong in Washington. Nowdays, the deceit of the Bush Administration is just an everyday truth, but back then, it was a series of painful revelations. I didn’t know about the PNAC, or AEI, or OSP, or WHIG, or Judy Miller, or Amhad Chalabi. I had never heard of the Unitary Executive Theory or the Bush Doctrine or Extrordinary Rendition or Enhanced Interrogation Techniques or even about Waterboarding. It’s still hard for me to hold onto the fact that our government actually did the things I now know that our government actually did. And I recall the ridicule that people who actually spoke out received – Paul O’neill, Richard Clarks, Joseph Wilson.

But in 2002 or 2003? I couldn’t have even imagined that such things were possible outside some cheap escapist thriller. And I wonder what I would’ve thought had I been a Congresswoman being "briefed" about what we were doing. Even if I’d been told the truth, which I doubt they were, would I have stood up in Congress and said "The C.I.A. is mistreating the Terrorist prisoners, torturing them"? Even more, can you imagine standing up in Congress and saying, "President Bush and Dick Cheney are torturing the prisoners to try to force them to admit that al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein are in cahoots so they can have an excuse to invade Iraq." I doubt I could’ve imagined such a thing, much less given it as a speech.