The U.S. Senate returned to its daily work late Tuesday after Democrats enacted a rare parliamentary rule forcing a private session (search) of the chamber so senators could speak in secret about the lead-up to the war in Iraq.
As a result of the session, in which Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (search) and the panel's Ranking Democrat Jay Rockefeller sparred for 40 minutes about whether Republicans had failed in their oversight of the Bush administration, lawmakers set Nov. 14 as a deadline for six members of the Senate � three from each party � to assess the progress of the committee's investigation into pre-Iraq war intelligence.
"Today the American people are going to see a little bit of light. On Nov. 14, we're going to have a phase-by-phase idea of how they are going to complete this (investigation), finally," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.
Democrats say the demand for a closed session was prompted by "misinformation and disinformation" given by President Bush (search) and his administration prior to entry into the war in Iraq and a failure of Republicans to look into it.
"If the administration had all the information that they have now back then, they wouldn't even have brought it to the Congress for a vote," Reid said of the Senate's 2002 consent to launch a war against Iraq.
Republicans, who were clearly caught off guard by the Democrats' maneuver, called the move to shut down regular debate "gutter" politics. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (search), R-Tenn., said the chamber was "hijacked" by Democrats.
"Once again, it shows the Democrats use scare tactics. They have no conviction. They have no principles. They have no ideas," Frist said. "But this is the ultimate. Since I've been majority leader, I'll have to say, not with the previous Democratic leader or the current Democratic leader have ever I been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution."
But Roberts said Democrats misconstrued the facts about phase two, which aims to look into pre-war intelligence assessments. He said that plans were well under way to finish the work before Democrats held up Senate actions.
"It seemed to me a little convenient for all of a sudden to go into a closed session of the Senate, and call for a full Senate investigation of phase two when the committee is already doing its work. And I think that basically is an unfortunate stunt," Roberts said on the Senate floor after the closed session.
Roberts said phase one oversight involved the Intelligence Committee's probe into the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate issued prior to the lead-up to the Iraq war. The 511-page report that resulted from the phase one investigation was presented to the Sept. 11 commission convened to review the quality of U.S. intelligence prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. It issued its report in July 2004.
Roberts said phase two of the investigation grew as a result of the phase one work. The second part of the probe began on Feb. 12, 2004.
Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., a member of the Intelligence Committee, and other Republicans said if Democrats had wanted to take issue with Roberts, they could have just asked him.
"Sen. Reid made a number of charges about Sen. Roberts without giving him or me a chance to respond, and then went into closed session. ... It goes a long way to show the level to which politics is dominating procedure here," Bond said.
"If Sen. Reid had come to me and said, 'This is a problem,' which he never did, I would have said, 'Let's talk about it.' I would have said, 'Let's bring in the Intelligence Committee or the leaders, and let's talk about it in a civil, a dignified, a respectful way,'" Frist said.
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