Blue Radar

As I post each morning, here are some of the political stories thatmight not be worthy of their own posts, but are nonetheless newsworthy:

• Two months before the invasion of Iraq, a CIA report warned there was "a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violentconflict with each other and that rogue Saddam loyalists would wageguerilla warfare either by themselves or in alliance with terrorists."
• The Senate's 'no confidence' vote for Alberto Gonzales will be pushed back until mid-June.
• The oil company ExxonMobile is refusing to change its employment policy so that it bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.
• For the first time ever, the public has access to read all of the special intelligence projects that were inserted into the latest Intelligence Budget Bill.  You can read the entire bill here.
• Here is the roll call of the Senate vote on Iraq funding.  (Both Obama and Clinton voted against it.)
• Here is the roll call of the Senate vote on immigration.
• Chris Bowers of the blog MyDD had the quote of the week: "Democrats are more scared of Bush than their base."  (Maybe we need to try a little bit harder then!)
• CBS: 76% of Americans believe the Iraq war is "going badly."  23% believe it is "going well."
• CBS: Bush approval rating at 30%.
• Kansas Democrats (Research 2000): Clinton - 27%, Obama - 22%, Edwards - 21%, Richardson - 8%.

If we left anything out, feel free to add any stories in the commentbox.

Comments

[granny]

On the CIA report on Iraq war consequences,the NBC story linked says: "None of those warnings were reflected in the administration's predictions about the war."

True, but I'm kind of tired of hearing that phrase "administration's predictions about the war" ... as if the White House's failure to tell the truth, relieved the rest of the inhabitants of the country (which would include the CONGRESS of the United States) from thinking realistically, and acting from an honest and ethical position, using independent knowledge, experience, and information. This war did not happen in a vacuum.

This CIA report, or the clips from it that we see now, is not information that any educated American couldn't have determined to be possible outcomes of attacking Iraq. That is not rocket science. It is the case, in fact, that many, many people knew that the precise situation we have in Iraq now, was entirely predictable. The fact that Bush and his cronies did not spoon feed the truth to Congress and us is no excuse.

Except for a notable few, lack of truthful information (or the input of deceitful information) are not the only factors that drove the vote in Congress.

This horn tooting mantra "... not in the Adminstration's predications" is not a tempest in a teapot, but it's not the whole of it by a long shot. And our affection for it, and satisfaction with it, is very likely keeping other truths from surfacing.