I have to admit, the Democratic Policy Committee’s series of hearings have been one of my favorite things Senate Dems have done since the 2004 elections.
Republicans, obviously, have given up on exercising their oversight responsibilities in 2001. Anxious to ignore every Bush administration-related controversy that came up, the majority party simply gave up on accountability — no hearings meant no questions, which meant no problems. It prompted Senate Dems, about a month after the least election cycle, to create a mechanism whereby they’d hold their own hearings and oversee their own investigations. DPC hearings were born.
It’s been a pretty successful project. The first set of hearings dealt with employees at the Social Security Administration who were pressured to toe the White House line. The second was in February, examining serious financial abuses — with our money — in Iraq. In July 2005, the DPC examined “the national security implications of disclosing the identity of a covert intelligence officer.”
Today, the DPC is putting Donald Rumsfeld and the war in Iraq on the front burner. In particular, the Dems will hear from retired generals who see the need for a change in the Pentagon’s leadership.
Retired military officers on Monday bluntly accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of bungling the war in Iraq, saying U.S. troops were sent to fight without the best equipment and that critical facts were hidden from the public.
“I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq,” retired Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said in remarks prepared for a forum conducted by Senate Democrats.
A second military leader, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, assessed Rumsfeld as “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically…. Mr. Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making,” he added in a statement prepared for the policy forum.
Good for them.
First, the hearing offered a reminder of how lawmakers are supposed to act.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., the committee chairman, told reporters last week that he hoped the hearing would shed light on the planning and conduct of the war. He said majority Republicans had failed to conduct hearings on the issue, adding, “if they won’t … we will.”
Second, at least one Republican is so fed up with the administration, the event became bi-partisan.
Along with several members of the Senate Democratic leadership, one Republican, Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, participated. “The American people have a right to know any time that we make a decision to send Americans to die for this country,” said Jones, a conservative whose district includes Camp Lejeune Marine base.
Third, by hosting the event, Dems are hitting on the one key issue that will help dictate the outcome of the elections, and generating some decent press coverage.
And fourth, as Christy noted, it’s the right thing to do.
Adequate planning is something that we ought to be able to expect from the Bush Administration officials in the White House and the Pentagon before our soldiers are ever put into harm’s way.
When that is not done, the Congress has a Constitutional and a moral obligation to hold them to account — or they should forever be haunted by the deaths and injuries of all of those soldiers who put themselves in harms way expecting the rest of us to stand up for them on the homefront.
Thank you to the Democrats for taking this step today — special thank you to Sen. Byron Dorgan and Sen. Harry Reid for setting up this hearing today — and here is to many more of these steps to come.
Our soldiers deserve better. Their families deserve better. Our nation deserves better. The time for accountability is now.
I couldn’t agree more. Of course, with a Democratic Senate, we could have real hearings and demand real answers, with questions backed up with real subpoena power. This will do, of course, in the meantime.