The Politics of Self-Congratulation--David Swanson

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"Democrats on Capitol Hill see the world through bureaucratic shades and have been circulating this self-congratulatory email:

"Over the last four years,the Republican Congress failed to conduct oversight on the Iraq war and failed to hold the Administration accountable for the conduct of the war. In contrast to this dismal record, in the last five weeks, the new Democratic-led Congress is already exercising vigorous oversight and demanding accountability from the Administration on the Iraq war. Attached is a list of 52 House and Senate hearings that have already occurred on issues related to the Iraq war. There will be numerous other hearings by both House and Senate committees on issues related to the Iraq war over the next several months."

"Of course, the American public would very much like to see real investigations into the war, especially into the lies that launched it. But that's not what this list of 52 hearings is about. The vast majority of these hearings are simply ordinary day-to-day business. They're not investigations of any known or possible crimes or abuses. Most of them are about the future of the war, not its past or how it was begun. Six hearings on military "Readiness" hardly satisfy the public hunger for a hearing on "The Bush-Cheney Fraud." Four hearings on paying for more war hardly elimate the need to investigate Cheney's claim that Iraq had nukes and Bush's warning that we might wake up to a mushroom cloud. A hearing on the reappointment of a General hardly touches the question of why our president made claims about aluminum tubes and uranium purchases and chemical and biological weapons and ties to 9-11 that he had been told were baseless. A hearing on an annual threat assessment seems less valuable when our democracy is threatened with becoming a monarchy, and the war we were lied into four years ago is ongoing.

"Dear Congress, almost all of your hearings have been about how to continue the war, not how to investigate it or end it. The exceptions are few and far between. The Senate Intelligence Committee is listed as having held one (closed) hearing. We don't know what happened there, but we know that none of the abuses of "intelligence" prior to the war were exposed in a closed hearing. Do you consider that a good five-weeks' work? Do you sense any urgency in the air? DO YOU? Can you prove it?

From Counterpunch.org