I disagree. How does offering amnesty to everyone help prevent a future occurrence? Sure, offer amnesty to the small fish in order to get needed information, but the people in charge of perpetrating a massive fraud on the American people ought to see the inside of a prison cell.
It’s not the money. Perhaps if the rebuilding were done competently there would have been less support for the insurgency, and fewer of our soldiers would have died. An investigation of this would also serve as a message to companies to not steal quite so blatantly the next time this happens.
BTW, the investigation would be of companies, not politicians - so unless theft is inherently Republican, investigating companies ripping off the government should play as nicely bipartisan.
Oakminster mentioned windfall profits on Big Oil. What I heard might happen is not that, but the removal of various subsidies given to oil today. Given their profits, that would play well to the public also. I’d like to see Bush veto a spending bill because there is no oil company subsidy in it.
Well, if you don’t know quite what happened, it’s hard to know if you can prevent it in the future. The system of checks and balances evolves all the time. Is it possible to build in some more checks constitutionally? Are they needed? Are there questions that should have been asked by members of the Legislative branch that were not? To what degree was the intelligence abused, or even fabricated? Who did the fabricating, if it occurred? Do we really know all there is to know on that subject? The Administration blames intelligence failures. Some might claim the failure was all at the top. Some say mistakes were made all around. Well, how much, in fact, does our intelligence need improving? How dysfunctional is it, really?
I bet there’s lots more that would be useful to our future leaders, just as a case study in failure, and what NOT to do next time. Why not just have it all out and really try to learn something from our mistakes?
Oh, for Heaven’s sake, why would anyone want the government to “do good” for them?
If I knew that Nancy Pelosi was coming to do me good, I should run for my life.
You’ve got to admit it beats the heck out of the past 6 years of government “doing bad” for us. 
Keep impeachment off the table, at least for now. We might just see a little cooperation for the Dems wishes coming from the White House.
Blackmail? Sure. I’d love some.
Extortion is such an ugly word! “Mandate” has a much nicer sound, more woody.
Something to investigate: the (now privatised) Australian Wheat Board. There has been an inquiry here that was unable to investigate the Australian Government’s involvement. What was their involvement? Why has the Bush administration shown such little interest in the biggest illicit payer under the Oil for Food program? Is the Australian Government’s ongoing strong political but token military support for the Iraq war connected with knowledge about AWB?
Doing good would be taking the tax breaks away from the obscenely wealthy and making it easier for middle income families to send their children to school. Good would be funding stem cell research. Good would be implementing the 9/11 commission recommendations and actually making the nation more secure.
There are plenty of good things that government can do. Both parties agree on this, except the Republicans look at government as the means to do favors for the well connected.
Witch hunts? You call NSA wiretapping of US citizens, no-bid contracts and, torture and an illegal war a witch hunt?
I think the Dems should pull out all the stops and investigate. Stop second guessing and worrying about how they would be percieved and do the right thing.
If I were the dems I wouldn’t touch Iraq at this time. The war was Bushes baby.
Let the Republicans deal with the nightmare they created for the next two years and then offer solutions. Deal with minimum wage and domestic agenda until the next election.
Witch hunts? I don’t think so. Halliburton has done so much dirty stuff in Iraq, that the average voter would consider the Dems NEGLIGENT if they don’t investigate it. Lotta other dirty stuff done by other companies, too.
And much as some folks don’t like to hear it, most people regard outing Valerie Plame to have been … wait for it … TREASON!!! They would love to see Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and Richard Armitrage sitting in front of the spotlights being sweated by some VERY unsympathetic Dems.
And even though some American’s are indifferent to what we do to people in the Middle East, only a very small, very sick, minority actually LIKES the idea of Americans being torturers (sadly, Dick Cheney appears to be one of them). They’d LOOOVE to see Alberto Gonzalez being trying explain what he meant by his remarks about “less than mortal injury” to some unsympathetic Dem senators.
And Abramov – once again, to fail to investigate is to be NEGLIGENT.
The Republicans have done so much incredibly nasty shit that the Dems can pick and choose what to investigate, without even coming anywhere CLOSE to the incredibly perfidy of the Pubbies.
Abramoff and concurrent sleaze. Not as high on the list as the Iraq Debacle, but way up there. See, thing is, looks like the Pubbies got really sloppy, figuring they were going to be in power pretty much forever, started to think “accountability” was about keeping seperate sets of books. Some Congresscritters currently re-elected are going to be spending a *lot * more time with their families, your Minimum Security Club Fed institutions have very liberal (ha!) policies as regards family visitation.
Best thing would be to wire up ol’ Tom DeLay and check his reactions. Indian casinos? 7 point 5. Mariannas sweatshops? 9 point 6! Ah, there ya go!
Sic 'em!
I’ve said consistently that the Dems have to pick their spots. If they investigate, it has to be something that will stick, and can be legitmately used to roll some heads. What I oppose is a broadbrush investigate everything and hope we get lucky with something approach. The wiretapping deal has already been struck by a trial court. Bricker and I have a friendly wager on whether that gets afirmed on appeal. I’d be inclined to let the litigation run its course on that for now. The extreme lefties that dream of hauling Shrub in chains before a war crimes tribunal are pissing in the wind. That will not happen, and pushing for it may well be political suicide.
Just to start with, they should do an intensive, exhaustive investigation of the Coalition Provisional Authority, all its activities, and every single dollar/dinar ever received/collected or spent/wasted by it. Even if some insist the CPA never had any legal existence.
– Greg Palast, Armed Madhouse.
This election was very close, and I saw the deciding key not as mandate to push forward a Democratic agenda, but to hold the Republicans and the Administration accountable. The Democrats first priority needs to be investigations before legislation, and I think this would help them the best down the road.
The Democrats never presented a clear picture of why we should vote for them, but rather the Republicans gave plenty of evidence of why they could no longer be trusted with the reigns of power. I believe the public wants accountability above all else. They want the government to be open, as corruption-free as possible, and that when corruption is exposed, it is dealt with harshly. They also want government to screw them as little as possible. This administration, backed by the Republican Congress, has screwed us over completely - with Iraq, with Katrina, with Medicare, K Street, and Buddha knows what else, and refused to acknowledge any corruption, malfeasance, or negligence, even when caught red-handed. The incompetent are praised, the criminals are rewarded, and the watchdogs lie happy in their kennels with the steaks thrown to them.
If the Democrats want the presidency in '08, they need to show that none of the above will happen on their watch. They need to show the public that they can be held accountable, and then they can worry about legislation. I see the best way forward is to start, or re-start, the investigations on the easy stuff - Abramoff, Katrina, war profiteering and other mainly domestic issues, and they need to throw a couple Democrats under the bus to show they are not on a witchhunt for Republicans, but a witchhunt for corruption and malfeasance.
Once Democrats have shown credibility, they can pass the easy items on their legislative agenda, like minimum wage (hell, they could pass that on day one considering how all the initiatives went), and then start investigations into the harder, uglier stuff like the NSA wiretaps, the extrajudicial extraditions, and pre-war intelligence.
They score enough victories without high-fiving too hard, impeachment could easily be back on the table in a year or so as the majority of the public realizes just how bad this administration really is.
But that last thing the Democrats need to do is claim they have a mandate and try to push forward a liberal agenda. This is where I am skeptical of Pelosi and Dean. I think they were great as minority and opposition leaders, but I do not know how smart they will be now that they are the top dogs. Pelosi especially - she just grates me the wrong way - that ‘laugh’ is all sorts of wrong. I would rather see a strong moderate/conservative like Ike Skelton than Pelosi as Speaker of the House. And his mantra was “oversight, oversight, oversight!”
The main thing is they need to remember is that they have two years to hold all the investigations that need to happen (and damn, if there aint a shithold of them), and to pass their legislation. Nothing needs to happen overnight. And I view the whole ‘100 Days’ as playing to the media, rather than the public. I personally dont want them to pass anything in the first 100 days, minimum wage excepted; they need to settle down into their seats and get their committees in order first.
AP
It was? Now I’m curious as to what a total blowout would look like.
How could things have been worse for the Republicans?
As far as the number of seats won in the House, it was a blowout, but when I look at the results of the individual races, I don’t see very many safe majorities. It could just as easily swing the other way in '08.
The Senate was a squeaker by anyone’s definition.
AP
Wait! You’re BOTH right! It was a landslide AND a squeaker. Sure, some of the individual races were very close. But in order to take the Senate, the Dems had to hold onto every one of their seats that were “in play” and take all the Pubbie seats that were “in play.” Which they did! Hard to argue that the Dems didn’t have a huge groundswell going to accomplish that.
Is that allowed in GD?
I understand what you are saying, but I still dont get the sense that it was a groundswell for the Dems, but one against the Pubs. The bitter part of it for me is that while the Pubbies had 12 years to muck around, it feels like the Dems only get 2 years to fix it, and if they dont, they will be voted out.
And a large part of that is the Deomcrats’ lack of a coherent platform comparable to the Contract with America (was it a contract with, or a contract on, still not sure there). I support the Dems agenda, but I dont see it resonating with the general public yet outside of economic populist items.
That’s why I think launching investigations is more important than trying to pass legislation. They need to rebuild trust in government for any party first before pursuing their agenda.