Somebody's gonna have to explain it to me...

Sen. Dick Durbin, on the floor of the Senate:

Now yesterday the junior senator from Texas came to the floor arguing, I believe, that it was unnecessary to go forward with this investigation.

I think he's wrong.

He argued that if we find that any member of the administration misled the American people into believing that a war in Iraq and invasion were necessary that somehow this would discredit the bravery and heroism of America’s troops.

I can't follow his logic.

The men and women in uniform are doing their country proud every day. They are risking their lives for America. They stand up for values that are essential, like family and faith and truth.

Why would this senate be reluctant to tell the American people the truth?

After awhile, the excuses for this Administration just stop making sense. Even for Senators from Texas.

It's like being inside a trainwreck, as everything gets slower and slower so you can appreciate every nuance of the disaster. And the disaster now plays out in real time. Will be interesting to see who in the MSM picks up on this speech, because it's basically Durbin to Cornyn: you're an idiot, and a liar.

When the junior senator from Texas came to the floor and said that this investigation was unnecessary because an earlier group had investigated it, he referred specifically to the Silberman-Robb commission.

What he did not put into the record should be included, and I quote from the commission. Quote -- "we were not authorized to investigate how policy-makers used the intelligence assessments they receive from the intelligence community. Accordingly, while we interviewed a host of current and former policy-makers during the course of our investigation, the purpose of those interviews was to learn about how the intelligence community reached and communicated its judgments about Iraq’s weapons programs, not to review how policy-makers subsequently used that information." End quote.

That is the question. That is the issue.

And for the Senator from Texas to say the Silberman-Robb commission has dealt with that issue is not factual, and it's not accurate, based on the words of that commission.

He went further to say that the phase one investigation also took care of the question. It did not.

I served on the intelligence committee. We purposely divided this into two investigations. First, any failings or shortcomings of intelligence agencies. Second, any misuse of this intelligence information by policy-makers and elected officials.

That is the responsibility we have to go forward.

This Administration is coming apart like a cheap suit in the rain (to mix my metaphors). But the dance goes on:

Mr. Chalabi is under active investigation. He is under investigation for the charge that he leaked intelligence, including the fact that the United States had broken a crucial Iranian code and that he turned that information over to the Baghdad station chief of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security.

Of course if that happened, Mr. Chalabi endangered American troops and American security. As a result of this charge against Mr. Chalabi, on May 20 of last year, his residence was searched by the Iraqis with the cooperation of American forces in Iraq to see if evidence could be found.

Now, that's a serious charge -- that we would somehow jeopardize the security of America’s troops and our national security and whether this man leaked sensitive information and the fact that he's under active investigation by the F.B.I. is proof-positive that we're taking this seriously.

So where can we find Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi this week? Well, we'll find him in Washington. He has an appointment to sit down and break bread with Treasury Secretary Snow and the secretary of state, Condoleezza rice, and then a little later this week he's going to give a speech to the American Enterprise Institute.

Does this sound like a man under active investigation or a man who is being actively lauded by this administration?

I don't understand this. While the Department of Justice is actively investigating this man for wrongdoing that could have endangered American troops and American lives, the Department of State and the Department of the Treasury are hosting him like some dignitary.

I don't understand it, either.