The USSC has Lost It’s Collective Mind

The SCOTUS blog:

In a stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its war-on-terrorism policies, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention. The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.

The Court stressed that it was not ruling that the detainees are entitled to be released — that is, entitled to have writs issued to end their confinement. That issue, it said, is left to the District Court judges who will be hearing the challenges. The Court also said that “we do not address whether the President has authority to detain” individuals during the war on terrorism, and hold them at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba; that, too, it said, is to be considered first by the District judges.

The Court also declared that detainees do not have to go through the special civilian court review process that Congress created in 2005, since that is not an adequate substitute for habeas rights. The Court refused to interpret the Detainee Treatment Act — as the Bush Administration had suggested — to include enough legal protection to make it an adequate replacement for habeas. Congress, it concluded, unconstitutionally suspended the writ in enacting that Act.

Michelle notes:

What’s that sound? The thunder of left-wing lawyers and Gitmo detainees jumping up and down for joy at the Supreme Court’s ruling this morning. Brace yourselves. Dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia warns that the ruling “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed” and concludes “The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent.”

Chief Justice John Roberts says the rule of law and the American people have lost out-and with this ruling, we “lose a bit more control over the conduct of this Nation’s foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges.”

Correct.

Oh, and here:

it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.

Well, now hold the blower, here…

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) – Cite This Source – Share This

in·va·sion   Audio Help   /?n?ve???n/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[in-vey-zhuhn] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation

-noun

1.	an act or instance of invading or entering as an enemy, esp. by an army.

2.	the entrance or advent of anything troublesome or harmful, as disease.

3.	entrance as if to take possession or overrun: the annual invasion of the resort by tourists.

4.	infringement by intrusion.

---

[Origin: 1400-50; late ME < LL inv?s?on- (s. of inv?si?), equiv. to inv?s(us), ptp. of inv?dere + -i?n- -ion; see invade]

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

By those lights, 9/11 was an invasion. Apparently, the USSC has lost sight of that crucial point.

OTB has more, and a decent enough reax list.

I’m to the point where I can draw no other conclusion than our government isn’t interested in solving the problem of high gasoline prices. The evidence for this goes back well prior to the current wave of price hikes, and we’ve written about these factors here several times.

More recent examples of the anti-energy attitude on the part of our government… Democrats, and liberal Republicans, mostly, is found in this morning’s Wall Street Journal:

A tiny corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge contains an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil and would be the largest producing oil field in the Northern Hemisphere. Yet the Senate blocked that development as recently as last month. The Outer Continental Shelf is estimated to contain some 86 billion barrels of oil, plus 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet of the shelf’s 1.76 billion acres, 85% is off-limits and 97% is undeveloped.

Engineers recently perfected refining solid shale rock into diesel or gas, which may amount to the largest oil supply in the world – perhaps as much as 1.8 trillion barrels in the American West. That’s enough to meet current U.S. oil demand for more than two centuries. Yet as late as 2007, Democrats attached a rider to the energy bill that prohibits leasing the federal interior lands that contain at least 80% of America’s oil shale. The key vote was cast by liberal Senator Ken Salazar from Colorado, of all places.

These supply guesses are probably conservative, because the only way to know for sure is to drill exploratory wells. Yet most of Alaska and offshore are cut off even from modern seismic testing. Many areas haven’t been examined since the 1960s, when exploration technology was far more primitive. This has led to the believe-it-or-not situation in which the Chinese are prepping to drill in Cuban waters less than 60 miles off the Florida coast. American companies are banned from drilling in American waters nearby.

But even those huge indicators aside… and regardless of any other factor, there are still price forces in play on Gasoline that the government could wipe out with the stroke of a pen… if they were really serious about lowering gasoline prices at the pump. They could be eliminating cafeteria and seasonal blends, at least until such time as we have enough refining capacity to deal with the luxury the various blendings offer us. Which of course would require added refining capacity be built. Yes, thes are mostly handled at the state level, but is there anyone who does not now understand that our economic security demands energy? This should be taken as a national security imperative deserving immidiate action by the congress and barring that, an execuitive order.

We could also lower the price of crude world-wide, and thereby further lower costs at the pump, by simply committing ourselves to domestic drilling. Sure, the stuff won’t be online for ten years, but I’m telling you, the response from OPEC will be to lower the costs per bbl by enough to keep the domestic fields unprofitable, in an attempt by them to maintain their operational monopoly on oil production. They’ll do that before the echo dies from congress opening up ANWR.  (Yes, I’m aware of the speculation that OPEC coesn’t have the ability to raise their output, but it’s untrue. Did you note that they did raise their output the other day… AFTER telling Bush a few weeks ago they saw no need? Apparently they have more capacity than some are now saying)   And anyway, we heard these excuses from Clinton when he vetoed ANWR… we’d not have the capacity online for around 10 years. Well, it’s 10 years on. think Clinton made the correct chocie back then, America?

All that’s required in both cases, is the courage to do so. Remember that the added capacity, the domestic drilling, the blending nonsense, all of it… we pointed oout these price increasing factors several YEARS prior to the current wave of price hikes. Any political ‘plan’ to deal with high gasoline prices that does not include these action cannot be taken seriously. If the government were serious about dealing with high gas prices, they’d have taken such actions a long time ago.

I think we need to pressure McCain on these matters. His stand on ANWR is totally unacceptable, and he has made no serious move to get government out from between the oil companies and our transportation. That would be the mark of a true conservative, and McCain could go a long way toward recouping his conservative creds by making such a move.  It is unarguably govenmental policy that has caused most of the problems we now suffer at the pump, and Mccain will benefit greatly from it’s reversal, as would the Republicans in Congress… whichever decides to grow up first and pursue these matters.   Obama is even worse, having already signaled he likes us paying these kind of prices for getting back and forth to work. He likes that our vacations are being ruined.  He likes that our economic security is suffering under the weight of these prices.

 And I’m telling you, the party that signs onto cutting fuel prices by getting government and the enviro-whackjobs out of the way, drilling in ANWR and anywhere else there’s oil, and allow the refiner’s efforts in adding refining capacity, will win this next election, bigtime.  We as a country have put up with the vain posturings of the greenies for 30 years. We need to get away from them stepping in at every opportunity and costing us our livelyhoods, our transportation, and our money.

Does it make any sense for us to be shutting off our own oil supplies while screaming about how OPEC isn’t pumping enough?

 That move away from the enviro-whackjobs, that move away from governmental micro-management that has demonstraby caused all these problems is the “change” the people want. Get government out of the way. And frankly, the ones that do not pursue that change, deserve whatever they get at the hands of the voters.

Team McCain, are you listening?

Addendum: (David L)

As the Microsoft salesman would say, “Heck Lady, this ain’t no bug, it’s a feature.”   ‘Rats don’t see over four dollar a gallon gasoline as a problem.  They see it as a solution.   Their only problem is how to trick Americans into accepting over priced motor fuels as if they were somehow good.

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air, has posted a video of BO saying in essence the only problem with four dollar five cents gasoline is that we boiled the frog too fast.

The it which PIckler is full of is the brown stuff produced by a cow with diarrhea, or in Pickler’s case the stuff the which flows from her PC which she attempts to pawn off as if it were reporting, Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign said Thursday that Michelle Obama never used the word “whitey” in a speech from the church pulpit as he launched a Web site to debunk rumors about his campaign.

The rumor that Michelle Obama railed against “whitey” in a diatribe at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ has circulated on conservative Republican blogs for weeks and was repeated by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The rumor included claims of a videotape of the speech that would be used to bring down Obama’s candidacy this fall

The blogger and the blog pushing the Michelle Obama “Whitey” line was Larry Johnson of No Quarter:

Current ArticleBREAKING NEWS: Michelle’s Whitey Problem
By Larry JohnsoncloseAuthor: Larry Johnson Name: Larry Johnson

[COMMENTS in this thread are now closed, but may continue to be read. Go to second thread to comment.]

New and dramatic developments. This is a heads up. I’ll post the news Monday morning by 0900 hours. Now I know why people who have seen the videotape say it is stunning. Barack’s headaches are only starting.

Johnson is not a right wing blogger but rather a left wing hack and stooge for Mrs. Clinton.

As for Pickler’s assertion that Rush Limbuugh was spreading the rumor, Limbaugh’s show is totally transcribed.   Pickler should ever provide an acutal quote in context and just admit she is making her stuff up.

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Trying to play Mister Apolitical is taking it’s toll. The WaPo:

Today’s news that Jim Johnson, one of three people charged with vetting potential vice presidential candidates for Barack Obama, is stepping down from his role illustrates the perils ahead for the presumptive Democratic nominee as he seeks to preserve his “above politics” image even while pursuing the most powerful job in the world.

After several days of negative news stories detailing Johnson’s time as CEO of Fannie Mae and a tepid response by Obama yesterday, the campaign moved swiftly to excise the problem in a statement released moments ago.

“Jim did not want to distract in any way from the very important task of gathering information about my vice presidential nominee, so he has made a decision to step aside that I accept,” said Obama. “We have a very good selection process underway, and I am confident that it will produce a number of highly qualified candidates for me to choose from in the weeks ahead. I remain grateful to Jim for his service and his efforts in this process.”

Such a clean break demonstrates the danger that being associated with figures like Johnson — long-time party operatives with a history of potentially controversial business ties — poses to Obama.

Well, no. That’s not the danger, here.  The danger is setting unrealistic goals. These are, of course, the same dangers I warned of in the case of John McCain.  THe difference is, since he’s not been running nearly as active a campaign, and a much smaller one…(Obama currently has around 7 times the staff McCain does, according to spending records, and is spending ten times more in television advertising than is McCain) … McCain has been less exposed on these matters. Of course time is the great leveler, here.

One more point about the story that deserves comment:

People are hungry for that sort of change — as evidenced not only by Obama’s stunning victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primaries but also by the huge number of people (65 percent or more) who tell pollsters they believe the country is headed off in the wrong direction.

What this does not indicate, however, is the breakdown of those people… and which way they’d like to see the country move. Is the change they desire more conservatism, or more liberalism?  After 16 years of centrist presidents, that situation could in fact flow in either direction.

Edward Lehner can take a long one way hike, and never come back.  I think Arkansas would be a good choice, Samuel Maull, Associated Press

NEW YORK – A judge has ordered New York’s governor, Senate and Assembly to raise the pay of the state’s judges within the next 90 days.

State Supreme Court Justice Edward Lehner in Manhattan said Wednesday that the defendants unconstitutionally abused their power by depriving judges of a pay hike for almost 10 years. He said state legislators illegally linked a judicial salary increase to one for themselves

If Lehner doesn’t like what the taxpayers of New York State are I am paying him, he should resign.  If Lehner doesn’t resign, he should just shut up.  In the mean time, the legislature should impeach his sorry burro.  My state representatives, such as they are, are accountable to me and not to Lehner.

• Sure, I get the picture, Billy. But consider that what you’re suggesting that we do is abdicate the voting process to these morons outright. That’s supposed to help?
• Speaking of voter ignorance, Boortz touches on this today, too.
• Ron Paul is living in his own little world. I’m glad he’ll never rise to the level of running this one. though it’s starting to look like he’s going to have a better time at his convention than the Democrats will in theirs.  Already the rumors about how crappy the latter will be are surfacing.
• Memeorandum continues to link here for the second day, and I’m grateful.  Traffic continues to be around 500 HPD in total.
• The answer to the question is a resounding YES. That plays on this matter, too. I’m telling you, folks… the party that wakes up to this will win in November. Period. Here’s proof.
• How much of the supposed forclosure crisis is abuse like this? More than we’re being told, I have no doubt.
• McGehee made it home…
• Ah, yes. Attempts to avoid normal transportation… as in cars and light trucks, ends predictably.  But he was savnig the planet right up to the end, huh?  Oh, and notice how they had to get that evil SUV as the culprit? Hard to see though, these people are decidedly not. Calling it a freak accident that couldn’t be avoided is just too damned cute, too. Go ahead…Tell me how this guy would be dead if he hadn’t been riding on a bike in traffic, and exposed to evrything.
• The WSJ makes my anti-union case for me.

Bluto is working a story that I admit only loosely following. It doesn’t quote cleanly, so I’ll have you go read the thing.

The update gives a nifty tease:

The New York Sun’s editorial board notes that Rockefeller deliberately manipulated data for his committee’s report to support the “Bush Lied” meme:

Mr. Rockefeller decided to exclude a handwritten note from the CIA’s terrorism analyst of the Mr. Bush’s 2002 speech in Cincinnati on the eve of the Congressional vote authorizing the war saying the paragraphs about Iraq and terrorism were “all-Okay.” Wrote Senators Bond, Chambliss, Hatch, and Burr in an addendum to the report: “Apparently the majority did not think this was something the public needed to know since they denied our request to include it and did not allow a vote on the amendment offered to fix this shortcoming.”

There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal the other day, and it made some good points.  Ultimately, it suggested (as many others have) that 6 years after the debate to invade Iraq began, it’s more important to focus on how to end the war rather than how it started.

So says Scott, at Flopping Aces. I’m not fully convinced. Focusing on how to end the war without remembering the purpose for it is the best way I can think of to lose the thing. And I can’t help but think that is the kind of non-thinking we’re seeing from so much of the left these days.

Republican and Presidential leaders all agree that it’d be best to leave Iraq in a setting where Iraq was secure enough so a 3rd invasion wouldn’t be needed, and in a manner in which the Iraqis were allies in the war on terror.  Both conditions are in the process of happening, and all Americans-Republicans and Democrats-should be awestruck and proud of the efforts made by millions of Americans and Iraqis to make that happen.  They’ve seen the evil that men can do, stood up, confronted it, and are succeeding.

It strikes me, Scott, that the first part of the issue of confronting evil is it’s willing identification. The lack of that willingness, on the part of something less than 50% of the American public; mostly members of the Democrat party,  is why the rest of your post is even in play. That said;

I think the article stopped one step short, however.  The piece focused on the national security and international effect of success in Iraq, but I wonder-as I have for years now-what will unite the Democratic Party and rally the left once President Bush is gone, and American forces withdraw from Iraq?

Well, if we may take the current goings on as any indication, I think the answer is clearly “not much”.  Certainly, the leftie blogs are indicative of this. We’ve seen some circling of the Wagons around Obama, but so too, have we seen a lot of breaking away, and folks as yet unwilling to jump on board with him.  We blogged a few of these last night. I’m sure more of these will come up, going forward.

As best I can tell, the Democrats being as split as they are is the best hope the Iraqis have.

I think you can pretty much figure in that there is going to be an awful lot of discussion between now and November as regards government run health care and the benefits thereof. I did notice today that there was an awful lot of discussion on Outside the Beltway, yesterday and the day before on this very topic, in two posts by Steve Verdon.

From day before yesterday

;Of course, there is the pooling problem. A person who has a serious medical problem and is receiving health care benefits via an employer might be in for some trouble. Healthy co-workers might look around and find better deals with the tax credit and purchasing their own health care, thus leaving the employer with the most costly employees from a health care stand point. Firms not liking this might look for ways to get rid of these employees and or their benefits.

Well, certainly, one can understand why that would happen.  Eventually the cost of benefits over ways the payments made to the plan by the employees. this is a point that gets raised in one of the comments over there,  which I jumped all over.

Here is the first issue, then;

Is insurance to be

* A guard against Emergencies, where you stockpile money against the event of an illness, wherein you actually pay your way

* A means by which you obtain meds cheaper, because someone else is paying for them?

The obvious flaw in the latter plan, is that if you get over a set level of people doing that, you no longer have a chance for the plan to be sustainable..  It amazes me, that with so much talk of sustainable growth, as regards the environment, liberals tend to lose all sense of what is sustainable when it comes to government giveaway programs. as I told one commentor over there:

So, let me understand this;

You’re into the ‘insurance’ plan… and you want the government to take it over, because you want someone else to pay for your healthcare… put another way, you want something for nothing… and yet it’s the oil companies, and anyone else making a profit that is being ‘greedy’?

The narcissism involved here is the stuff of legend.

And so Steve Verdon, for whatever reason decided that he wasn’t going to jump into the conversation on that thread, but started a separate one.   Notice that Steve made pretty much the same point that I made earlier.

An edit of it:

This is one thing that really annoys me, when people complain that they have a pre-existing condition and that they can’t get health insurance. Well no kidding.

…

But when you pool people with pre-existing conditions with those who are healthy, you are basically providing a transfer of income form those who are healthy to those who have pre-existing conditions. So please, call it what it is. You want to give people with pre-existing conditions other people’s money so they can get treatment. Calling insurance is simply a lie.

Steve, I have to tell you that there are a number of people who do not mesh well with reality.  On that basis I hope and assume that you have brought your polycarbonate protector cup.  You’re going to need it. ask anyone who has worked in retail sales, particularly those who’ve worked on Black Friday, and they will tell you the temperament of most people when they find out they actually have to pay for something that they thought they were going to get for free.

Let us be honest here, to admit to ourselves that any attenpt at further governmental takeover of the Healthcare system is in fact nothing but a wealth transfer and a government mandated one at that. It amazes me, the number of people that are willing to sign onto this monstrosity.  Given that the majority of them figure they’re probably going to get something for nothing out of the deal, it makes me wonder how long the plan will actually be sustainable.  Yes, there’s that word again.

I suppose an expect it will be sustainable so long as taxes can be raised and money can be printed to keep the coffers filled.  However I warn you that that can only go for so long, before the golden goose lies dead in her nest. Which, given what I’m seeing in the discussions on this topic already, won’t be very long at all.

Odd, to find a question like this on one of the more meaningful blogs around;

Can I Be a Meaningful Blogger?

Yet, that’s the very question James Q Wilson at Volokh Conspiracy posts.  And it’s posing adds to an argument I have often enough with regulars both here and at the other places I frequent:

A lot of readers have suggested that I am not a helpful blogger because I refer people to other studies for data to support my arguments…..

…Now for a few more facts, but I warn you that to believe my assertions you will actually have to go out and read something…

…Were I devoted to blogging full time, I would quote all the data and summarize all of the studies, thereby getting nothing else done. I had assumed when I started my blog messages that people would pause, think, and look up facts. A few have, but most seem to have opinions they like to express quickly. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it doesn’t advance knowledge.

Well, if that doesn’t hit the nail on the head, I don’t know what does.

I, too,  get rather tired of having to spoonfeed morons who can’t take the time to do some independent research, except occasionally, to work on defeating an argument the projected outcome of which they don’t like.  Oddly, most of these can’t be bothered to provide the support for their own arguments, that they demand of me and mine. Apparently the only thing that really needs proving by the standards they demand, is anything that challenges their own narrow minded assumptions.

I’m hip, Professor Wilson, trust me.. I’m there.

The only credential Barack Obama is offering up to be President is his self-proclaimed judgement.   Howver as we have seen with Bill Ayers, Jerihiah Wright and now Jim Johnson, video 

[wp_youtube]N_WY29woBxg[/wp_youtube]

BO is to judgement as B.J. Clinton is to fidelity.

More:  Edward Morrissey, Hot Air.  Hat tip video: Michelle Malkin.

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I see See-Dubya is watching the endorsement list. Maybe I ought to as well, if they’re mostly as amusing as this:

Dan Boren from Oklahoma’s second district-“Little Dixie”-seems more than a bit agnostic about the Obamessiah, whom he dubs the “most liberal Senator“.

Get that?  Most liberal.  More liberal than John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, or Barbara Boxer.  The. Most. Liberal.

I don’t really get the “too liberal to endorse, but not too liberal to vote for” distinction, but there you go. He’s a superdelegate, so he’ll vote for Obama at the convention, too.

Why wouldn’t he endorse Obama?  Probably because he’s running for re-election in gun-totin’ Reagan Democrat central.  He’s also been to Iraq since Obama has.

Heheh. Ain’t it real…

Update: (Bit)

Now we see Ohio Gov Ted Strickland joining the ranks of the firmly non-committal… Says ABC’s Political Radar:

ABC News’ Teddy Davis and John Santucci Report: Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D) was Shermanesque on Tuesday in saying that he would “absolutely not” be Sen. Barack Obama’s, D-Ill., running mate even if asked to join the Democratic ticket.

Asked on NPR’s “All Things Considered” if he is auditioning to be Obama’s running mate, Strickland said, “Absolutely not. If drafted I will not run, nominated I will not accept and if elected I will not serve.

So, I don’t know how more crystal clear I can be.”

I suspect that there’s a lot more in the way of elected officials who are more than a little bit edgy on Obama. Of course there’s the issue of how many Democrat VOTERS will be equally if not more edgy about him. I suspect it’s far more than we know.

The ‘rats to have a plan to combat four dollars a gallon gasoline — yet higher texes, Daniel Whittenberg:

June 10 (Bloomberg) — Senate Republicans thwarted Democratic-supported legislation that would increase windfall- profit taxes on oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. as Democrats set their sights on tighter energy trading scrutiny

Well the ‘rats are not exactly open to all ideas:

“We are going to keep trying it, there are a number of approaches to take,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat

Senator, we can not tax and regulate our way to energy indepence.  

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• I complained last night that Memeorandum had been pretty much ignoring BitsBlog. Apparently, someone there is reading, and they reacted. The post complaining about being ignored, got featured status. Gottena  few links through since then, a well. Nice to know they’re reading. I never knew. The timing of the thing is amusing, also… best laugh I’ve had in a week, that.
• Seems the Reublicans have been listening to BitsBlog, too. OK, maybe not, but at least they’ve caught on to the idea of who is to blame for the current gasoline prices…. and it’s not the oil companies.
  

  Putnam said on the Democrats’ watch, “America has become a nation of $4 gasoline. This expensive milestone arrives two years removed from an endless stream of assurances by Democrat leaders that they had their hands on a ‘commonsense plan’ to lower gas prices,” Putnam said Sunday in a news release.
  …

  Sadly, John McCain still doesn’t get it.

  For the record, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has said he opposes oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: ”ANWR is one of the pristine places in the world,” McCain said in South Carolina last December. ”I wouldn’t drill in the Grand Canyon either, and I wouldn’t drill in the Everglades.”

  Idiot.Ask me again about my disappointment iin John McCain.

• And of course the Democrats who always think the solution to any given problem involves taxes, have decided a ‘windfall’ tax on oil compnay profits is the answer. I mean, ignoring that the government is already making many times what the oil compaines are, off the sale of petrolium products,  and leaving aisde also the question of how increasing taxes… which you and I pay… is going to lower prices at the pump… I wonder what the approval for this thing would be from the American public if they knew their retirement accounts were going to suffer if the such a tax ever made it into law?
• Meanwhile, the Saudis have quietly increased their output. Apparently, they’re doing so on the basis of the screaming for domestic prodction. I’ve been saying for weeks, now, and this proves it,  that the mere threat of increasing domestic production would get them off the stump. They’re trying to protect their monopoly, after all. And so much for the widespread nonsense about how the Saudis couldn’t increase their output because their fields can’t support it.
• I note also that they’re reading BitsBlog at Real Clear Politics.
• We now have good reason for why our planet has been cooling. The Sun.
• Another Honorable mention at OTBs Caption Contest

A great article in the Weekly Standard, today, by Thomas Joscelyn that should put to rest all the naysaysers about how involved Saddam was in terror. He lists several points of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s so called “phase two report” that I’ve mentioned here in the past. Then says he:

These conclusions should not be surprising. In his book At the Center of the Storm, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet provided a number of details concerning the safe haven al Qaeda members received in Saddam’s Iraq. For example, Tenet wrote that two of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s top operatives, Thirwat Shihata and Yussef Dardiri, received safe haven in Baghdad. Tenet says that there was “concern that these two might be planning operations outside Iraq.”

The first report on the uses of prewar intelligence published by the Senate Intelligence Committee in July 2004 also found that Zarqawi freely roamed around Iraq and Saddam’s goons must have been aware of his presence. The authors of the Butler Report, the British government’s investigation into prewar intelligence, found roughly the same. Even other al Qaeda members have, on occasion, been open about the relationship between Zarqawi, other al Qaeda operatives, and Saddam’s regime in prewar Iraq.

Despite all of these findings, however, the myth that Zarqawi and other al Qaeda operatives lived in Saddam’s neo-Stalinist state without receiving at least the dictator’s tacit support has lived on. But now, even in a partisan report designed to attack the Bush administration’s credibility, the Senate Intelligence Committee has admitted that Bush and his officials were right to argue that Saddam was harboring al Qaeda fugitives. Both prewar and postwar intelligence assessments confirm their view.

But no one should take the Senate Intelligence Committee’s word one way or another on these issues. In fact, the only reason that we know the committee got the story of Saddam’s safe haven for al Qaeda members right is because so many other sources have already confirmed it. And while the Senate Intelligence Committee got this issue right, it got many others wrong. The report is not even internally consistent and the committee simply ignored numerous pieces of information that got in the way of some of its conclusions.

Go and RTWT.

It’s not hard to figure out what the motivations of the Democrats who are running the Senate Intelligence Committee, are. Theyve been trying to spin this thing to their political favor for years, now. But the fact is that Saddam was harboring and aiding al-Quieda terrorists. And that means that (Big shock, this… brace yourselves) The Democrats have been lying to us so as to win political power.