The September Hearings and Cheney’s Minority Report

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

The upcoming hearings with General Petraeus might turn out to be interesting in ways no one expected.

Reading recent news stories, one feels one is back in the 80’s, listening to Reagan-era lighter-than-air justifications for the funding of “Freedom Fighters” in Nicaragua.

In an interview on Aug. 18, General Petraeus said that with ill-equipped Iraqi security forces confronting soaring violence across the country in 2004 and 2005, he made a decision not to wait for formal tracking systems to be put in place before distributing the weapons.

“We made a decision to arm guys who wanted to fight for their country,” General Petraeus said.

If General Petraeus really wants to portray himself as a latter-day Oliver North, he may have justification.  The de-facto man at the top of the current chain-of-command, after all, was a champion of the Congressional minority report on the Iran/Contra hearings.  This minority report rather creatively interpreted the Iran/Contra hearings themselves as an example of Congressional over-reach.

Asked by a reporter in 2005 to explain his expansive views about presidential power, Mr. Cheney replied, “If you want reference to an obscure text, go look at the minority views that were filed with the Iran-contra committee.”

“Nobody has ever read them,” he said, but they “are very good in laying out a robust view of the president’s prerogatives with respect to the conduct of especially foreign policy and national security matters.”

The situation is vexing.

We seem to have a General who finds “we made a decision” to be all the justification needed for — quite possibly and willy-nilly — arming the very insurgents he is fighting.  The idea that there might be something, well, against the law about sending tax-payer funded weapons into a war zone and dumping them without supervision amongst the disputants, seems not to register.

The above Petraeus quote is from this article:

Iraq Weapons Are a Focus of Criminal Investigations

By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC SCHMITT

Published: August 28, 2007

BAGHDAD, Aug. 27 – Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.

For President Bush, in this environment, to claim that adding fifty billion more dollars worth of assorted crap into the chaotic toilet of Iraq would amount to, somehow, “supporting the troops” is for President Bush to invite some pointed comparisons.

The comparisons General Petraeus is inviting, witting or no, between himself and Oliver North, give Democrats a frame with which to change the tone of the conversation.  Far from the supporting of troops and the fighting of terrorism, Democrats can use the September hearings to explore the extent to which Iraq is about the undermining of the rule of law and the mainstreaming of Cheney’s minority report.

September could be interesting.