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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (714596)	11/22/2005 2:01:48 PM
From: Mr. Palau	Respond to of 769670

John McCain strengthens his credential to be the GOP standard bearer in 2008: "Dems win McCain’s backing By Alexander Bolton Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has emerged as a leading opponent of the Bush administration’s policy on interrogating detainees in the war on terrorism, wants Senate investigators to interview senior administration officials about their statements regarding the threat posed by Saddam Hussein before the war. McCain backed Democratic calls for interviews of top-level administration officials in an interview last week. But his position is at odds with many in his party, including Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), whom McCain may face in the 2008 GOP presidential primary. Lawmakers facing a difficult reelection in 2006 and have an eye on the 2008 presidential election seem torn between McCain and their party line. Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), a centrist Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee who is one of the chamber’s most vulnerable incumbents, said he would reserve judgment on whether senior administration officials should testify before the intelligence panel. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who is also expected to run for president in 2008, noted that Roberts is his home-state colleague and deferred comment until he learned more about the matter. McCain, who is a senior member of the Armed Services Committee but does not sit on the intelligence panel, said the interviews could give senators and the public a way to evaluate the officials’ statements, but he also said he recognizes boundaries protecting the president and vice president. “In general, I think everyone should be interviewed that was involved,” he said. “The president of the United States and the vice president of the United States have a special status, and you’ve got to be concerned about the executive-congressional relationship.” “I think certainly Cabinet secretaries who are confirmable by the Senate should be interviewed,” he said, acknowledging that he is not intimately familiar with the mechanics of the Senate probe. McCain said that the former national-security adviser should also be exempted from Senate interviews because of the sensitivity of that official’s communications with the president. McCain’s parameters appear to include Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense who played an important role in the months before the war in analyzing Iraqi intelligence for the White House. Democrats have accused Feith of overstepping legal boundaries and want to interview him about his activities. So far at least one other Republican, Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), who is also facing a difficult race next year, is siding with McCain. “Why not come in and defend what you say?” said Chafee. “I agree with McCain.” Senate Democrats have called for an evaluation of pre-invasion statements about the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons capabilities by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is pressing for some of those officials to be interviewed as part of that evaluation process and has argued that a thorough report cannot be written without interviews, but Republicans have so far resisted. Roberts said it is too early to decide whether or not to interview senior administration officials about their statements. He said that those decisions should be made after the committee completes its report on prewar intelligence, known as phase two of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s investigation into pre-war intelligence. “That would be premature until we get the report done,” he said. Roberts has also said that he doesn’t want to subpoena or investigate Feith until the Department of Defense inspector general has finished a review of Feith’s work. Republican strategists fear the prospect of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz trying to justify statements they made about the Iraqi threat using hazy intelligence. Democrats recognize this and have stepped up their efforts in recent weeks to spur action on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s plodding investigation. Earlier this month, Democrats forced the Senate into closed-session to pressure Republicans to speed up the pace of the probe. Lack of agreement between Republicans and Democrats over the interviews is one of the main hurdles to completing the probe. Three Democrats on the Intelligence Committee highlighted the issue in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) last week. In recent weeks, Democrats have tried to focus media and public attention on the prewar statements of Bush administration officials as polls have shown waning public support for the war. Senate Republicans have tried to remind the public about statements Democrats made at the time about the threat posed by Hussein. Frist distributed a memo during a closed-door luncheon meeting of the Republican conference last week urging Republicans to counter the Democrats’ attack. “Democrats are claiming the Bush administration manipulated and “cherry-picked” intelligence before commencing military operations in Iraq,” he wrote. “By making such claims, they are waging a public-relations campaign of mass deception.”