Confession Time

So George Tenet admits in his new book that the rushup to war was never seriously debated, and Dick Durbin makes a bizarro confession on the floor of the Senate that he knew the administration was lying about prewar intelligence but wasn't allowed to say anything due to his Intelligence Committee double-dog secrecy oath.

Someone clue me in on the true nature of oversight, because I'm clearly not understanding the concept if this is how it's operationalized.

Why is Tenet only now deciding it's time to clear the air? Maybe the $4 million advance had something to do with it. Or maybe four years was the limit on how long he could stare at his framed Medal of Freedom before his conscience finally kicked its way out of that dark corner where it had been walled up since 2003.

Or, as Durbin's performance suggests, maybe it's getting down to serious CYA time. The delivery of classified information to the Senate Intelligence Committee sounds like nothing so much as the closed loop of the confessional, where the priest is bound by vows to listen, absolve, and then keep his mouth shut. The senate is supposed to provide oversight on the executive's use of military force, so State keeps the senate informed... by talking to the sixteen senators on the committee, who are sworn to secrecy and, as such, can't actually do anything with the information they're given, even when it directly contradicts the president's stated reasons for taking the nation into a war. Even when it directly leads to thousands of dead and maimed Americans. And tens of thousands of dead and maimed and displaced Iraqis. Oh, and the draining of the treasury. And the forfeiture of America's moral authority. Ethically, there was nothing the members of the committee could do. Ethically.

The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn’t believe it. I was angry about it," Durbin said. "[But] frankly, I couldn’t do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy. We can’t walk outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this Congress.

You know, because that would just be wrong.

Amazingly, the allegedly liberal-biased mainsteam media have been a little slow to pick up on this one. Olbermann was all over it, of course, but the Google can only come up with a Fox (!) story to complement the People's Voice and Pacific Free Press (also picked up by an Iraqi-Italian website) sources.

What does this admission do to John Edwards, who was also on the Intelligence Committee and thus, if he was paying attention, knew the war he voted for was a sham? Does his apology for his yea vote still absolve him, now that we know he knew it was bullshit all along? How can we forgive any of those 16 senators? Absolution is for the confessional box. And ain't none of us priests.