Senator Pat Roberts -- A TreasonGate Co-Conspirator If There Ever Was One

Here is an article that was written before Senator Reid dropped the Rule 21 Bomb yesterday. It has some interesting things in it, such as this explanation as to why Phase II of the Senate investigation was taking so long:

In February 2004, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) announced that it had unanimously agreed to expand its investigation of prewar Iraq intelligence from focus on intelligence community blunders and into the more controversial area of “whether intelligence was exaggerated or misused” by U.S. government officials. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller, struck the agreement with Chairman Pat Roberts -- provided, Roberts insisted, that the probe into policy-makers’ activities wait until after the presidential election.

It’s now more than a year later, and Rockefeller is still waiting -- the Phase II report has yet to appear. What happened? And why isn't Rockefeller making more of a fuss?

Republican committee staffers don’t deny that Roberts lacks enthusiasm for Phase II. But they insist that he hasn't acted to kill the investigation, and that the last interviews needed to complete it are being wrapped up. Ultimately, they say, it will be up to the committee’s members to vote on whether or not to release a report.

“The investigation is ongoing,” one committee staffer says. “It is sort of in the ending stage. Every once in awhile, a little campaign gets going that it’s being buried or covered up. That doesn't reflect reality. [Roberts] is not ambiguous. He thinks it’s a monumental waste of our time, but we’re doing it.”

So, Roberts "hasn't acted to kill the investigation." Wow -- how noble of him.

Clearly, Senator Roberts and his fellow Republicans felt they could drag their feet on this investigation as long as they wanted in order to protect the Bush Regime. After all, the Democrats weren't making a whole lot of fuss about it. All that changed yesterday.

But what was Senator Rockefeller's excuse? The American Prospect article explained this way:

The Republicans have more votes on the committee than the Democrats. “In fairness, if you follow the committee rules and procedures, which [Rockefeller] is trying to do, he has been slam-dunked by the Republicans,” one source says. “And they have the votes.”

A second problem for Rockefeller: An internal staff memo urging him to call for an independent investigation of the administration’s use of Iraq intelligence was leaked to FOX News’ Sean Hannity in November 2003. The resulting mini-furor that erupted in the right-wing media has contributed to Rockefeller’s reluctance to act.

But the main reason he has been inhibited is that previous public comments he made apparently caused the Pentagon to abruptly stop cooperating with the investigation. At the July 2004 press conference occasioned by the release of the Phase I report, Rockefeller asserted that certain activities of members of the office of then–Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, including a secret Rome meeting with the Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, might have been “unlawful.” At that point, Feith’s office simply stopped cooperating with the investigation, and Roberts hasn’t compelled Feith or his staff to comply. "

So, there was more BushCo stone-walling. Imagine that.