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House Critics Thwarted on Iraq War Intelligence Examination By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers critical of the Iraq war nearly caught a tiny break last week in their repeated, unsuccessful efforts to compel a government examination of how the Bush administration used intelligence to justify the 2003 invasion (see GSN, Dec. 9). The Republican-led House International Relations Committee last week failed to reject a proposed Democratic resolution requesting that President George W. Bush give the House all documents used in preparation for an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati and his January 2003 State of the Union address. In those speeches Bush respectively alleged that Iraq tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes and sought uranium from Africa for producing nuclear weapons. Information revealed since has raised doubts about those contentions and the White House in 2003 said it was a mistake to include the uranium reference in the address. A Republican-proposed vote to report the resolution out of committee with a negative recommendation ended in a 24-24 tie, with Representative James Leach (R-Iowa) joining all committee Democrats to oppose the motion. All but two of the remaining committee Republicans were present and backed the motion. The tie meant insufficient support to send the resolution out of the committee with a negative recommendation, or to defeat it. Committee consideration of the resolution was then suspended until yesterday, when a new Republican motion to report the resolution out without a recommendation was approved by 24 Republicans, beating the 19 Democrats present. Leach was present but did not vote. Little Progress AnticipatedLeach told Global Security Newswire afterward he initially supported the resolution proposed by Representative Maurice D. Hinchey (D-N.Y.), “for a whole spectrum of reasons.” “Some relate to sheer transparency, some relate to lack of vigorous oversight that has been self-apparent, some relate to the depth of mistakes of judgment that have been made,” he said. Asked why he did not again vote with the Democrats in opposition yesterday, he said the vote “was a vote to go forward. So I can hardly object to a vote to go forward. The last one was a vote to disapprove. There’s a huge distinction.” It is not clear why five Democrats did not attend the meeting. Neither motion, however, was likely to bring the measure to the House floor for a vote, according Lynne Weil, spokeswoman for ranking committee Democrat Tom Lantos (Calif.), in an interview yesterday. Whatever the panel’s stance, she said, the Republican-controlled House Rules Committee was certain to block the resolution’s release to the floor. Even in the unlikely event that one passed Congress, the resolutions are nonbinding and could not compel any action by the administration. Despite such poor prospects, Democrats have forced House International Relations Committee votes on nine such resolutions of inquiry, urging release of information on the use of prewar intelligence and the case of former CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose cover was allegedly blown by one or more White House officials. The committee must continue to vote on such nonbinding resolutions when they are introduced; House rules otherwise enable the resolution’s sponsor to obtain a floor vote. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) vowed Democrats would introduce many more. “Unless the committees begin to undertake that … responsibility, these resolutions … are going to go on and on. Because there simply is no alternative for the minority party to attempt to hold the executive accountable for its actions,” he told the committee before the vote. Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) said in a statement last week prior to the first vote that the resolution was “flawed politically and factually unnecessary.” He cited conclusions by committee investigations and the independent Silberman-Robb commission that the White House did not force intelligence analysts to draw particular conclusions. “This issue has been studied repeatedly with the same result — the intelligence was flawed but it was not manipulated,” he said. The Democrats say they are seeking to examine, however, not whether the intelligence was manipulated, but whether it was fully and accurately portrayed by the administration to the public and Congress. “When a decision is made on such a monumental issue as going to war, then we owe it to ourselves individually, to the institution of the Congress, and to our constituents to find out in the aftermath … what went into the information that was developed within the White House and what rhetoric was used and what facts were used for making that decision,” said Representative Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.). Slow Senate ActionSenate Democrats have made better headway in attempts to encourage an examination of the administration’s use of prewar intelligence. A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee on the subject was initiated, though it appeared stalled until Democrats last month in a procedural move forced Republicans to agree to appoint representatives to assess and report on the progress of the inquiry. Also, according to a Washington Post story today, a new Congressional Research Service report requested by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) concluded Congress did not have access to the same prewar Iraq intelligence as the White House. Bush administration officials have said Congress had equal access in attempts to rebut criticisms that they misled the country about evidence of Iraqi WMD capabilities. Crowley in his speech said intelligence information from the White House “trickled down. We were not given everything. We were given what the White House wanted us to know.”
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