State Department Excluded From Senate Threat Hearing

The State Department's intelligence branch, whose skeptical prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs were more accurate than other agencies' judgments, is being excluded from a panel that advises Congress each year on worldwide threats. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research was not invited by Republican leaders to testify at the annual threat hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee being held Tuesday, even though the bureau has participated in the hearing every year since it began in the early 1990s, congressional and administration officials said.

Color me flabbergasted. The only Intelligence group that had it's act together during the rush to war has been banned from Senate hearings? Weren't these the ONLY people who were actually right about ANYTHING? Now they're being excluded out of what certainly seems to resemble spite. Can we please put the "George Bush is strong on National Security" line to rest now? It's painfully obvious that his main priority is avoiding embarrassment at any cost. Every time this Administration has a chance to actually make the nation more secure it either passes the buck or stonewalls the investigation (9/11, Iraq, the Valerie Plame/CIA scandal, Halliburton, etc. etc.) George Bush and National Security are mutually exclusive. He's not making us safer. He's putting this country in danger by putting his own polical interests above everything else, and that's all there is to it.

Posted by flow Frazao on February 23, 2004 at 01:02 PM | Permalink