Now that our closest allies, the British, have announced they are phasing out their troop presence in Iraq, this war unquestionably belongs to the Bush administration and the Republicans who covered for them. The chief of the cover up is Tom Davis (R-VA), who put the Government Reform Committee on a strict diet of salt peter during his reign from 1998 through 2006. The absurdity of the actions of Davis's committee, whereby subjects of investigations could hire Davis's wife to prepare them for an investigation in which Davis could ask planted questions or prohibit questions altogether, is captured deep in the transcripts for the Committee.
Davis cites the Hurricane Katrina investigation as proof he was on the job. But clearly he was not. He limited the hearing and the questions. The most quoted example of planted questions involves the disaster and Carnival Cruise lines, a Florida company with ties to Presidential brother Jeb Bush, Florida governor. Carnival won a no-bid contract for providing housing for displaced Louisiana natives aboard their ships after Hurricane Katrina in amounts that exceeded the costs for providing a full luxury cruise. The ships remained more than half empty. Davis did not subpeona the company but had a friendly hearing on the no-bid, $236 million contract (including $44 million in expenses). When the VP of Marketing, Terry Thorton, testified how Carnival got the profitable award, Davis asked such planted questions as this one:
This was not a question. Furthermore, it was not correct. Democrats found emails to prove it."That's correct," Thorton replied.
Back to the present, it is long past time to challenge the President on the Iraq War. Despite Davis's insistence that those who do so are guilty of treason (should they be hanged for it?), demanding that your country produce compelling reasons for sending people to die is patriotic, too.
How has your representative responded to your questions? The challenges to the war allowed by the Republicans are as meaningful as the challenges from Davis's Oversight Committee, and as absurd as this Q&A:
Group Headquarters was alarmed, for there was no telling what people might find out once they were free to ask whatever questions they wanted to. Colonel Cathcart sent Colonel Korn to stop it, and Colonel Korn succeeded with a rule governing the asking of questions. Colonel Korn's rule was a stroke of genius, Colonel Korn explained in his report to Colonel Cathcart. Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did. Soon the only people attending were those who never asked questions, and the sessions were discontinued altogether, since Clevinger, the corporal and Colonel Korn agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.Catch-22
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