Posted by Jeff from pcp02828637pcs.roylok01.mi.comcast.net (68.85.157.147) on Sunday, October 20, 2002 at 8:58PM :
Editorial Note: Yes, he was on Star Trek the Next Generation... and he is very smart... He wrote the following:
October 14, 2002
Marching off to war.
I don't support the resolution that congress just passed. I don't support the Bush administration's obsession with Oil^H^H^HIraq, and I think it gives way too much power to the president.
So I wrote my senators (my US Rep is a hardline Republican so I didn't bother) and I asked them to please oppose the vote.
Boxer voted no, Feinstein voted yes.
I was very upset with Feinstein's yes vote...but after reading this from her, I am absolutely apoplectic.
"I serve as the senior senator from California, representing 35 million people. That is a formidable task. People have weighed in by the tens of thousands. If I were just to cast a representative vote based on those who have voiced their opinions with my office -- and with no other factors -- I would have to vote against this resolution
Yeah.
If she'd, oh, respected the wishes of her constituents, and *gasp* represented> us, she'd have to vote no.
If she'd listened to those pesky voters who put her into office so that she'd carry out our wishes in this silly representative republic we have here.
But there are these mysterious "other factors" that she speaks of, right? Maybe she knows something that we don't, because she refers to herself as
"...a member of the Intelligence Committee, as someone who has read and discussed and studied the history of Iraq...
Well, that's pretty compelling stuff, isn't it? I know that after a year of nebulous warnings I've certainly learned to be afraid of my own shadow and turn to my big government to protect me...maybe she's onto something there, and we shouldn't mobilze the entire state to throw her out for failing to cast a representative vote based on those who have voiced their opinions with her office.
But there's this other guy, you see, who ]co-chairs the same committee, and who is privy to the same information. His name is Senator Bob Graham, and he's a Florida Democrat who disagrees with Feinstein:
Iraq is ''the wrong target'' in the war on terrorism, Graham said in an impassioned speech moments before the Senate early Friday gave President Bush sweeping powers to attack Iraq. The Senate overwhelmingly approved the resolution, 77-23, with Graham among the ``nays.''
''I predict we will live to regret this day,'' declared Graham, who is co-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and privy to a gamut of classified information on global terrorism. Graham said it would be ''irresponsible'' to go to war with Iraq before confronting more imminent terrorist threats to the United States.
Surely he can't be serious! Isn't he privy to the same information that Feinstein has? Maybe he's paying more attention to the report from the CIA:
Then there is the awkward matter of the CIA report on Iraq released last week, which concluded that U.N. inspections actually worked before they were halted in 1998, leaving Saddam's military and his chemical-weapons program weaker than they were in the 1980s.
In other words, the head of American intelligence and a top military man don't think Saddam is planning terrorist attacks against the U.S. now, but might if he was convinced we were coming in after his head. And the CIA says that Saddam's military machine poses less of a threat to the U.S. than it did a decade ago.
Boy, it sure seems that anyone who doesn't have something to gain politically is telling us all that the war against Iraq is at best unnecessary, and at worst A Very Bad Idea(tm).
Dianne Feinstein may not be "against us" by the Bush administration's definition, but she's certainly against the wishes of her constituents, and is therefore unfit to represent us in the future.
I'll be thinking about this in November 2006.
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Sources:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/10/11/senate_iraq/print.html
http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/4266351.htm
http://www.salon.com/news/col/scheer/2002/10/09/cia/print.html
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2002/10/10/intelligence/print.html
Posted by wil at 11:26 PM | Comments (189)
-- Jeff
-- signature .