If Mike Gravel had been a member of the Intelligence Committee,

[Joe Fields]

I guarantee he would have done just the opposite of Dick Durbin, and quite possibly we wouldn't be at war right now. It's a shame that todays politicians have such an aversion to doing the right thing.

[Adelante]

1. Dick Durbin voted NO on the IWR

Others on that intelligence committee votes YES. It's a shame.

[Joe Fields]

2. I don't give a rat fuck. He kept the info to himself. That makes him

just as guilty in my book, as those who voted yes.

[Adelante]

3. As those who also had the information and voted YES anyway?

Which is more callous? To vote NO and introduce an amendment to try to defeat the IWR; or to co-sponsor the IWR and vote YES; in both cases having heard the same classified intelligence that revealed Bush was lying. Nowhere NEAR just as guilty.

[Joe Fields]

18. Easy answer. They're all guilty.

[Jack Rabbit]

4. Mike Gravel read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record

That's the kind of thing we're talking aobut. Capice?

[Adelante]

6. I capice

And I agree Mike Gravel would have done something different. It just is pissing me off that Durbin's getting all the heat when he tried so much to avert the war compared to the others on that committee. He's not Mike Gravel, I get that part.

[Jack Rabbit]

7. I partly agree and partly disagree

After all, it isn't just Senator Durbin. There are 100 Senators, all of whom had access to the same information and any one of them could have juxtaposed the public unclassified summary of the NIE with the secret version and drawn the conclusion that Bush and his aids were lying.

Of course, it would have made a difference if somebody, not necessarily Senator Durbin, but it could have been him, would have made public the contradiction between the two versions of the NIE on the Senate floor, over a half million lives would have been saved. All that Senator would have done was risk a prison term and the wrath of suddenly lame duck Bush regime.

Courage is not fighting your enemies without fear. Courage is fighting those fights that simply have to be fought, without have any assurance of the outcome. The worst enemies of the American people in the fall of 2002 was not Saddam and his henchmen; it was and continues to be to this day Bush, Cheney and their aides. There are few things that are a greeater betrayal of the people in a democratic state than lying the nation into an unnecessary war. Perhaps we would have to go back to Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian defense minister who actively collaborated with Nazi Germany prior to the German invasion of Norway in 1940.

You're right in one respect: we shouldn't be picking on Durbin. The only thing he's done to be picked on is tell about it now. There were 00 other members of the Senate at that time, most of them still in the Senate, who remain silent. So there were 99 other cowards who didn't speak out. There were 15 other members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who didn't speak out. They also deserve out wrath.

[Adelante]

9. Bob Graham did speak out in 2005

In a Washington Post op-ed, so this isn't exactly new, although that was the month Edwards issued his apology and it got all the notice. Graham, of course, also voted NO. I appreciate what you're saying very much, and I too wish somebody would have stepped out with it, the blood and death just horrifies me. However, I don't believe the entire Senate was privy to the later NIE the intelligence committee was given by Tenet. Yet I also think that is a technicality probably, because even if the information would not have gotten outside the Senate, it surely would have gotten around inside, one way or another, from some source or other. I still maintain a YES vote beats a NO vote for lack of courage. And the members of the intelligence committee have no excuse whatsoever for not voting against the IWR.

[scarletwoman]

10. I remember Senator Bob Graham speaking out BEFORE the invasion was launched.

It was only once, on an evening network news broadcast. I don't remember if it was before the IWR vote or after. Be assured that that particular clip was never played again.

In any case, it really struck me at the time. He made it very clear that he was seriously constrained in what he could say, but he still wanted to get the message out that there were some major problems with the Intelligence.

I think the only reason he even went that far was because he knew he was going to retire from the Senate. It's a disgrace to our entire country that so much fear and jingoism and mob rule was in the air then. It took a LOT for Graham to even do that much, that's how toxic the atmosphere was in those days.

We NEEDED an exceptional person of conscience to step forward in those days -- alas, no such being emerged. Any small and quiet action such as Graham's few moments of speaking as honestly as he dared was simply drowned and washed away in the tidal wave of psyops that had been released into the populace.

I cannot fault Durbin, or anyone else who could have spoken up. There simply wasn't anyone stirred up enough to actually risk their own lives and livelihood -- the default state of just about all of us.

sw

[Adelante]

11. Yes, certainly he did

But it was in the 2005 op-ed he explained about the later NIE he had wrangled out of Tenet.

I bless Bob Graham for his goodness. There are few politicians I have as much respect for.

[scarletwoman]

12. No, that's not what I'm taking about. This was strictly on TV -- a video clip.

Like I say, it was never shown again, so if you didn't happen to have been watching network news that night (either CBS, ABC, OR NBC -- I don't remember which one it was on), you would probably have never seen it.

I think it was right after the signing of the IWR in the Rose Garden, with Daschle trying to be all best buds with the preznint.

I know I'm old and all, but I swear I remember listening to him in this one short clip on the evening news where he tried, as well as he dared, to warn those who might have ears to hear -- a very small number, obviously.

sw

[Adelante]

14. Yes

We're talking about two different times. I supported Graham in 2003 before he dropped out, btw. It was really upsetting how he was discounted and ridiculed. Good, good man.

[scarletwoman]

15. Well he was bound to be "discounted and ridiculed" after he said what he did.

The machine was turned against him in short order. I also think he knew that he was taking the risk of precisely that. In the company of so many cowards, he seemed like a honorable man.

sw

[malaise]

13. I hope someone plans to send KO all of Gravel's

good deeds as a Senator. Apparently KO has not done his homework. He lost several points from me after that debate when he dissed Gravel and called him Zell Miller. KOs comment suggested that he did not do his homework before the debate.

[Adelante]

17. That did suck

It's bad enough so many people don't know about Gravel's important contributions, but KO really should have known.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. I apologize for the duplicat post.

My bad. Sorry

[BlooInBloo]

8. ... we would have flat intelligence.

[MadBadger]

16. You guarantee? Everybody here "knows" him because of four questions in a debate

[Joe Fields]

19. Anyone who had the courage to read the Pentagon Papers

into the congressional record, as well as filibuster for five months to end the draft, is the kind of person who couldn't live with himself, knowing that what he was told in intelligence briefings didn't come close to jibing with what the administration was telling the American people. So, to answer your question, yes I guarantee it.