William Rivers Pitt, You're my Hero!

William Rivers Pitt has an interesting article in Truthout, titled "Nothing Shakin' on Shakedown Street?" all about the Libby indictment. What's most interesting is that he quotes Harry Reid in testimony before the Senate, in which the Minority Leader seems to have found his voice:

"This past weekend, we witnessed the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff and a senior Advisor to President Bush," said Reid. "Libby is the first sitting White House staffer to be indicted in 135 years. This indictment raises very serious charges. It asserts this Administration engaged in actions that both harmed our national security and are morally repugnant. The decision to place U.S. soldiers in harm's way is the most significant responsibility the Constitution invests in the Congress. The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really about: how the Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions."

"When General Shinseki indicated several hundred thousand troops would be needed in Iraq," continued Reid, "his military career came to an end. When then OMB Director Larry Lindsay suggested the cost of this war would approach $200 billion, his career in the Administration came to an end. When U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix challenged conclusions about Saddam's WMD capabilities, the Administration pulled out his inspectors. When Nobel Prize winner and IAEA head Mohammed el-Baradei raised questions about the Administration's claims of Saddam's nuclear capabilities, the Administration attempted to remove him from his post. When Joe Wilson stated that there was no attempt by Saddam to acquire uranium from Niger, the Administration launched a vicious and coordinated campaign to demean and discredit him, going so far as to expose the fact that his wife worked as a CIA agent. This behavior is unacceptable."

Senate Democrats followed this up with a meaty threat: they will shut down the Senate every day until these issues are addressed fully and completely.

The Republicans are not the only ones to have this kind of shit come down on them. Johnson was a Democrat, and he's the mastermind behind our engagement in the Vietnam War; Nixon, a Republican, was responsible for getting us out. It's not about what party you belong to, or even the nature of your agenda. In America it is imperative for people to have a productive dialogue, focused on the details and the logical arguements, and whenever that dialogue breaks down into rhetoric, whenever journalism breaks down into punditry, whenever we stop demanding answers to our questions and allow people to answer only the questions that serve their purposes, we lose our democracy, our ability to have a government of the people.

Power corrupts, and in an adversarial system it is NECESSARY for the minority party to have a coherent voice. It's high time THIS minority has found theirs.