The Democrat's political strategy of repeating, over and over, the charge that the President lied about pre-War intelligence on Iraq, would be more likely to succeed if they were willing to take any responsibility at all for their own actions. That they are not is evident in the following comments by Senator Rockefeller, posted on Powerline.
CHRIS WALLACE: But a lot of people – that's not the point of the investigation, Senator.
SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Chris, there's always the same conversation. You know it was not the Congress that sent 135,000 or 150,000 troops.
WALLACE: But you voted, sir, and aren't you responsible for your vote?
SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No.
WALLACE: You're not?
SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No. I'm responsible for my vote, but I'd appreciate it if you'd get serious about this subject, with all due respect. We authorized him to continue working with the United Nations, and then if that failed, authorized him to use force to enforce the sanctions. We did not send 150,000 troops or 135,000 troops. It was his decision made probably two days after 9/11 that he was going to invade Iraq. That we did not have a part of, and, yes, we had bad intelligence, and when we learned about it, I went down to the floor and said I would never have voted for this thing.
But he did "vote for this thing." If he were willing to take responsibility for that, and say--"lets be honest, both the President and many Democrats, including myself, screwed up. The difference is that we can admit our mistakes and change course now that the awful truth is clear"--or something like that, then the Democrats could put Bush and the Republicans away. As it is, the majority that now has lost faith in the war knows full well that the Democrats are doing no more than playing politics. Rockefeller votes for the war one day and heaps scorn upon the President the next day, depending on which way the wind is blowing. He refuses to take any responsibility for this own actions.
And in charging the President with lying, they are themselves telling bold face lies. Rockefeller is saying that, if he had had the information that the President had, he would not have voted for the war.
WALLACE: Senator Rockefeller, the President says that Democratic critics, like you, looked at pre-war intelligence and came to the same conclusion that he did. In fact, looking back at the speech that you gave in October of 2002 in which you authorized the use of force, you went further than the President ever did. Let's watch.
(Video) SEN. ROCKEFELLER (October 10, 2002): "I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11th, that question is increasingly outdated."
WALLACE: Now, the President never said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. As you saw, you did say that. If anyone hyped the intelligence, isn't it Jay Rockefeller?
Obvious answer: Yes. Does Rockefeller take responsibility? Of course not.
SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No. The – I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I'll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq – that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11. Now, the intelligence that they had and the intelligence that we had were probably different. We didn't get the Presidential Daily Briefs. We got only a finished product, a finished product, a consensual view of the intelligence community, which does not allow for agencies like in the case of the aluminum tubes, the Department of Energy said these aren't thick enough to handle nuclear power. They left that out and went ahead with they have aluminum tubes and they're going to develop nuclear power.
WALLACE: Senator, you're quite right. You didn't get the Presidential Daily Brief or the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief. You got the National Intelligence Estimate. But the Silberman Commission, a Presidential commission that looked into this, did get copies of those briefs, and they say that they were, if anything, even more alarmist, even less nuanced than the intelligence you saw, and yet you, not the President, said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat.
In short, Rockefeller is shamelessly lying about what actually happened.
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