[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

[alnick]

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!

Yes, but the major difference is that they've been lying about Bush. There's hard evidence that they themselves are guilty as sin of the very thing that they've falsely accused the president of.