“Bush Dealt Defeat on Iraq Bill”

Um… We can all celebrate the Senate’s soon-to-be vetoed passage of the GI Bill. This is doubtless a good thing.

But lost in the hoopla over Jim Webb’s amendment to boost the college tuition benefit of War on Terror vets, is the fact that the Democratic Senate just gave Bush a $165 billion blank check for war.

I recently interviewed Lincoln Chafee — the Rhode Island Republican Senator who lost his seat in the anti-GOP tide of 2006 — and he was furious over the fecklessness of Democratic opposition to the war.

Chafee: They’re very wary of taking on any ownership of the war. They’re just letting the administration take all the blame — because any reduction of funds, or timetables, leaves them open to the criticism that is their fault if things go poorly.

Rolling Stone: So was it your sense that the decision was made to let Bush hang himself with his war policy, rather than risk becoming complicit in things going worse.

Chafee: Yes absolutely that’s what I’m saying.

Rolling Stone: Just let him have the wheel…

Chafee: Yeah. And let him take all the blame. In the meantime, the casualties mount.

Yes, it’s April Fools’ Day, but we swear we’re not making this up.

This is an open thread.

An exhaustive Pentagon review has established definitively that there was no pre-war operational link between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Al Qaeda.

So here’s the question for Hillary Clinton. In the senator’s war-authorization speech in October 2002, she claimed this:

Saddam “has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members.”

The National Intelligence Estimate at the time cast serious doubts on any Al Qaeda/Iraq link. But Clinton has acknowledged she did not read the NIE.

So what was her source for this faulty intelligence?

And why did Senator Clinton believe it credible enough to use as a linchpin justification for war?

In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi dissects the Democrats’ betrayal of voters on Iraq for personal political gain. To read all of Taibbi’s piece, click here.

The final accounting of the hundreds of false administration statements that led us into war with Iraq has been assembled by the inestimable Center for Public Integrity.

Per their numbers, George Bush made 28 statements falsely linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein, inarguably the most explosive — and least defensible — claim in the run up to war.

Bush, Cheney & Co. were not alone in pushing this falsehood. They got an invaluable assist from Senator Hillary Clinton, who echoed their claim in her October 2002 floor speech before her vote “with confidence” to authorize the war:

There was never any proof for this claim of a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Indeed, this alleged relationship was explicitly debunked in the National Intelligence Estimate… the one that the New York Senator never bothered to read before she voted:

From the New York Times:

In fact, the classified reports available to all senators at the time found that Iraq was not allied with Al Qaeda, and that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden harbored feelings of deep mistrust and enmity for each other… In an interview, [Former Florida Senator] Bob Graham said: “I don’t think any agency pretended to make a case that there was a strong linkage between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. It wasn’t in the N.I.E.”

Maybe Hillary got snowed on the question of Iraq’s WMD. A lot of decent people did.

But she went out on a limb to promote the non-existent connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda — and in so doing participated in the snowing of America.

Rolling Stone political correspondent Matt Taibbi appeared on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday night to discuss how the media has been covering primary season. This is the first of many appearances for Taibbi, who will serve as a frequent contributor to Maher’s program, which airs every Friday night at 11 PM on HBO.

The smart money — not to mention the latest polls — gives an edge to Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in tonight’s Iowa caucuses.

But take a couple hundred thousand Midwesterners, pack them into gyms and libraries and town halls on a frigid Iowa night, add a heaping measure of peer pressure to the equation, and, well, anything can happen.

Here are five unlikely results you that shouldn’t be shocked to see when the final precinct tallies come in:

1) John Edwards Wins Going Away

No one in presidential campaign history has ever worked a state like John Edwards has worked Iowa. No one. But for a brief hiatus for the 2004 general election, Edwards has been campaigning there non-stop since early 2003. He’s answered more questions from more voters at more diners and summer cookouts — in every last corner of the state — than Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama combined. (more…)