[Steve_Seattle]

"I can't, for the life of me, see the difference."

Nothing in this memo suggests they are going to use classified information against the President. Basically, it says they're going on a fishing expedition, looking for evidence that the administration exaggerated or distorted intelligence claims about Iraq. And, as an earlier poster noted, they can spin it to look like they are working on behalf of the American people to expose lying by the administration. But their real motive, of course, is just to cause trouble for Bush, even if it hinders the effort in Iraq and encourages Saddam's diehards to ever more extreme tactics. But this would never technically qualify as offering "aid and comfort" to the enemy in a legal, prosecutable sense. We can't make traitors out of every critic of the administration's foreign policy.

[concerned about politics]

Nothing in this memo suggests they are going to use classified information against the President. Basically, it says they're going on a fishing expedition, looking for evidence that the administration exaggerated or distorted intelligence claims about Iraq. And, as an earlier poster noted, they can spin it to look like they are working on behalf of the American people to expose lying by the administration.

Clinton used the same info to bomb Iraq. We should drag that out before the people, plus the Democrats quotes who supported him.

[mewzilla]

Who declassifies? Because if the senate can declassify its own intell product...Surely you can see the can of worms this opens, can't you? Especially if the Pubbies on the committee are little more than useful idiots.

[Qwinn]

"But their real motive, of course, is just to cause trouble for Bush, even if it hinders the effort in Iraq and encourages Saddam's diehards to ever more extreme tactics."

I don't think it qualifies as an "even if". That would be a certainty. I would agree that there is probably nothing prosecutable here under criminal law, BUT there is probably more than enough to get an indictment by a Senate Ethics Committee (which is not just bound by statute). The charge of "treason" is valid, IMO - not in the sense of prosecutable, but in the sense of emphasizing that the Democrats are more interested in politics than in accurate intelligence, which in ITSELF could fully explain any "intelligence failures" of the past.

They've been accusing Bush of "politicizing" and "massaging" Iraqi intelligence for political gain for a year now... and now here they are doing the same thing! This is -very- significant, because if this is "politics as usual", then it's also true that what they accuse Bush of doing, even if it were true (which it isn't), was also "politics as usual" and they've been carping about nothing they wouldn't do themselves.

Qwinn