archy

What price
All day I’ve been vaguely pondering our leader’s latest request for funds. He’ll probably get his $87B, and I suppose he should. I’ve always been of the camp that once he gets us into these tarbaby situations like Iraq, we’re can’t just cut and run. At this point, there’s a lot more at stake than honor or responsibility. If we leave now, we leave a vacuum that will fill with civil war and all sorts of geopolitical adventurers. It will become a destabilizing factor in the neighborhood that contains the world’s largest reserve of oil. The real question isn’t whether the US should spend the money, it is as RonK at Daily Kos put it “What pound of shame-faced POTUS flesh should Congress, Kofi Annan, the Axis of Chocolate, the CIA or the 4th ID non-com's demand in return for their sign-off on Plan Iraq, Version 2.0?”

The feel-good solution is someone’s head on a stick (I’m leaning toward Rumsfeld today, for his latest “dissent equals treason” crack). But that’s immature. We can’t afford to waste this opportunity on mere revenge. I think what would inflict the most humiliation on the administration and have the greatest utility for us would be a demand for information. Not just answers to a few questions but unfettered, under-oath access to administration members for a whole shopping list of committees, starting with 9/11, working through energy policy, WMD lies, and finishing with who exposed Valerie Plame. Information from the most secretive of administrations. The gift that keeps on hurting.