On Tuesday, Senate Democrats will decide the turncoat Joe Lieberman's fate as the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. But whether Lieberman retains his chairmanship or even his place in the Democratic caucus, President-elect Barack Obama will apparently play little to no role. It's just another stark contrast with George W. Bush, whose campaign of retribution against Jim Jeffords in 2001 drove the Vermont Senator out of the Republican Party.

That some of Joe Lieberman's former colleagues are turning up the heat is clear. After the milquetoast Senators Evan Bayh and Amy Klobuchar called for Lieberman merely to apologize for his treachery, a growing chorus of voices is now calling for payback. Vermont's delegation of Pat Leahy and Bernie Sanders insisted Lieberman must face real consequences for carrying John McCain's water. And on the eve of Tuesday's secret vote by Democrats on chairman Lieberman's fate, Byron Dorgan (D-ND) simply deemed the Connecticut Quisling's support for McCain and Republican Senate candidates unacceptable.

But one voice counseling restraint is that of Barack Obama. The man most impacted by Joe Lieberman's scurrilous attacks and scorched earth campaigning has announced he does not "hold any grudges."

To be sure, no one could fault Obama for seeking vengeance against the supposed independent Senator from the Nutmeg State. After all, Obama campaigned for Lieberman (at the Lieberman team's request) during his bitter reelection battle against Ned Lamont in the 2006 Democratic primary:

"I am absolutely certain Connecticut is going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the U.S. Senate so he can continue to serve on our behalf."

Lieberman repaid Obama's support for him in 2006 by stabbing him in the back in 2008. Luckily for Joe Lieberman, Barack Obama is not George W. Bush.

When Vermont Republican Jim Jeffords bucked President Bush over his planned $1.6 trillion tax cut for the wealthy in 2001, Bush retaliated with the same vicious "politics of payback" that came to define his tenure in the White House. As I noted in 2004:

An early indication of the vindictiveness of this administration came with the saga of Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords' defection from the GOP in 2001. This is a tale of double-retribution. First, Jeffords refused to back the Bush tax cut plan in 2001. As The New Republic reported in June 2001, the White House responded by gutting special education programs supported by Jeffords and by threatening the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact critical to the Vermont milk industry. To add insult to injury, the Bush team took the unprecedented step of not inviting Jeffords to a White House event honoring a teacher from Vermont. They even denied Jeffords' office White House tour passes for his constituents. His departure from the GOP seemed understandable then and now; his one-time colleagues of course are making his tenure as an independent a lonely one.

Like General Eric Shinseki, counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Medicare actuary Richard Foster and many more, Senator Jeffords paid the price for crossing George W. Bush and his Republican allies. When Jeffords in May 2001 declared himself an independent and temporarily turned control of the Senate over to the Democrats, Trent Lott (R-MS) called it "a coup of one" and groused, "There is only one person to blame for all this, and that's Jim Jeffords." Ironically, Joe Lieberman responded to Jeffords' joining the Democratic caucus by announcing:

"This is historic. It gives us the opportunity to set the agenda."

Ultimately, Jeffords was shunned by his Republican brethren and was even booted from the Singing Senators, a group of GOP colleagues which ironically included Idaho's Larry Craig. Ostracized and isolated by his former friends, Jeffords retired from the Senate in 2007.

As for Joe Lieberman, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would welcome him with open arms. After Lieberman's disgusting, cowardly betrayal of the Democratic Party, they can have him. Some principles are more important than a potential filibuster-proof majority on paper.

As for Barack Obama, he's apparently content to stay out of the imbroglio over Lieberman's fate. After all, the President-elect has bigger issues to worry about than expending time - and political capital - on the Benedict Arnold from Connecticut. Besides, payback just isn't his style. Like most Americans now, he's probably asked himself, "What would Dubya Do?" and decided on the reverse.

Nothing focuses the mind, the expression goes, like the sight of the gallows. And so it is for beaten and battered Senate Republicans when it comes to the use of the filibuster to block the judicial nominees of President Barack Obama. After years of insisting President Bush's picks for the bench deserved an "up or down vote," Arizona Senator Jon Kyl and his allies in the GOP minority are now threatening to turn to the judicial filibuster. Of course, after two consecutive election day drubbings and a record-setting term of obstruction in Congress, the Republicans' deathbed conversion comes as no surprise.

Addressing the conservative Federalist Society last week, Senator Kyl fired the first salvo in the coming battle for the future of the judiciary. Regurgitating tried and untrue Republican talking points about so-called "judicial activism," Kyl warned his audience that he would filibuster Supreme Court nominees he deemed too liberal:

Kyl, Arizona's junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said.

"He believes in justices that have empathy," said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.

If that seems like a 180 degree turnabout for the junior Senator from Arizona, that's because it is.

Back in 2005, Kyl was at the forefront of then-majority Senate Republicans threatening Democrats with the "nuclear option" rule change to bar future judicial filibusters of Bush appointees. At a November 28, 2005 campaign event for Kyl, President Bush praised his ally's fight to block the filibuster:

"I can't thank Jon Kyl enough for making sure the judges I nominate get a fair hearing and an up or down vote on the floor of the United States Senate."

When now-Justice Samuel Alito came before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing, Kyl as usual parroted the trusted GOP sound bite:

"I look forward to a dignified hearing followed by a fair up-or-down vote on the Senate floor."

Alas, that was then and this is now. After receiving what President Bush called a "thumping" in the 2006 mid-terms, the Republicans lost their Senate majority. And now, "the Decider" when it comes to Supreme Court nominations will be Democrat Barack Obama.

Earlier this year, that prospect moved the band of hypocrites at the Weekly Standard to praise John McCain for his role in preserving the judicial filibuster. While the Standard's Dean Barnett previously bemoaned McCain's "uncanny ability to drive virtually all conservatives nuts," Adam White and Kevin White in January lauded McCain's leadership in the "Gang of 14" that saved the judicial filibuster. Not because McCain's position on the so-called "nuclear option" was right in principle, of course, but because it preserved the ability of a Republican minority to block future Democratic judicial nominations:

Finally, it must be noted that McCain's opposition to the nuclear option did not merely serve short-term conservative interests in the specific context of Bush's nominations; rather, it served long-term conservative interests in the federal bench generally. As McCain has warned, there will come a day--perhaps soon--when a Democratic president will nominate decidedly non-conservative justices and judges, and a Democratic Senate majority will want desperately to confirm them. When that moment arrives, conservatives will call on the Republican minority to utilize every tool in the Senate minority playbook to thwart those nominations--especially the filibuster...preservation of the filibuster threat may ultimately prevent the ascent of Supreme Court judges that Laura Ingraham and Rick Santorum would dearly regret.

Of course, the "up or down vote" talking point long ago disappeared from the vocabulary of the Senate GOP. The minority "roadblock Republicans" of the 110th Congress easily set the record for blocking legislation via the filibuster.

As Robert Borosage detailed, while Democrats in the House kept their promise to pass a raft of bills including Medicare drug negotiation, the minimum wage, student loan reform and more, Republicans in the Senate stymied overwhelmingly popular bills at every turn:

"Bills with majority support -- raising the minimum wage, ethics reform, a date to remove troops from Iraq, revoking oil subsidies and putting the money into renewable energy, fulfilling the 9/11 commission recommendations on homeland security--get blocked because they can't garner 60 votes to overcome a filibuster."

Former Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS) was one of the essential architects of the filibuster fever in the Grand Obstruction Party. While Lott decried that "the Senate is spiraling into the ground to a degree that I have never seen before" and "all modicum of courtesy is going out the window," Lott was also brutally frank in 2007 about his strategy to prevent any Democratic wins come hell or high water:

"The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it's working for us."

As John McCain's junior partner in Arizona Jon Kyl made clear, that same strategy will be in place for President Obama when the time for judicial confirmations comes. As for the defeated and disheartened right-wing bloggers who once called the Gang of 14 "disappointing", "a nightmare" and "a bunch of m-fing cowards," they'll be just fine with that.

UPDATE: As a reader rightly noted by email, the GOP's unsurprising pledge of obstructionism makes the outcomes in the Alaska, Minnesota and Georgia Senate races all the more important.

Comparing himself favorably to Osama Bin Laden, Abramoff in a letter to the judge in his case proclaimed, "I am not a bad man." Unfortunately for Ralph Reed and Bob Ney's partner in crime, the judge wasn't buying it.

Abramoff, 49, already has served nearly two years for his conviction in a related Florida fraud case. The sentence yesterday by U.S. District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle means that the former Republican lobbyist will likely remain in prison until 2012.

Given that his cooperation with prosecutors saved him from a maximum of 12 years behind bars, Abramoff's feigned remorse Thursday was all the more shocking. While he "choked back tears" and declared to the court he had "happily and arrogantly engaged in a lifestyle of political corruption and business corruption," Abramoff has apparently started working on tell-all, payback book to clear his name:

The Associated Press reported yesterday that although Abramoff expressed remorse in court, he has spent his time in prison cooperating with a book that portrays him as an innocent man targeted by biased prosecutors, reporters and political enemies.

To date, Abramoff's Indian casino bilking operation has led to guilty pleas from 13 lobbyists and public officials, including Ney and Tom Delay's former deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy. As for Delay himself, he remains under scrutiny in the Justice Department investigation.

But in Austin, Texas, Tom Delay got some very good news. Almost three years after his indictment on conspiracy and money laundering charges, the Hammer may escape prosecution. Thanks to a technicality in Texas' money laundering statute, the man who once compared himself to Jesus may walk out of court, if not on water.

The Austin Statesman reported two weeks ago that the charges against Delay and his two co-conspirators John Colyandro and Jim Ellis "may be dismissed because the 2002 campaign finance case involved checks and not cash." Delay's possible get-out-of-jail free card, the paper reported, may be found in the fine print of the state's 1993 law:

The state's 3rd Court of Appeals on Friday actually upheld the money-laundering indictments against DeLay's two campaign associates, John Colyandro of Austin and Jim Ellis of Washington.

But the ruling contained a silver lining for the trio's lawyers because it concluded that the state's money-laundering statute - written in 1993 to combat illicit drug activity by focusing on the cash in the criminal transactions - did not apply to checks at the time DeLay is accused of laundering corporate money into campaign donations.

On Tuesday, Delay scored another victory when the Court of Appeals rejected "a call from one of its members for a full-court rehearing of a case involving Tom DeLay's onetime political associates." As the Houston Chronicle reported on Tuesday:

Third Court of Appeals Justice Diane Henson, a Democrat, unsuccessfully asked the six-member court to reconsider a decision, reached last month by a panel of three Republican justices, that DeLay's attorney believes will eventually throw out the prosecution's case against the former congressman.

Delay's indictment arose from his unprecedented - and successful - 2002 scheme to redesign Texas state legislative districts to ensure a Republican majority in the state. Since Texas law forbids corporate contributions to candidates, Delay's co-defendant Colyandro sent $190,000 in checks collected by Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) to the Republican National Committee. Days later, the RNC then funneled the $190,000 directly back to seven GOP candidates. Ultimately, the gambit worked perfectly, as Delay's new map produced a 21-11 Republican majority in 2004, a sweeping change from the 17-15 Democratic edge previously. (In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Delay's redistricting dirty work by a 7-2 vote.)

Once again, it's looking like Tom Delay will get away with it. Having left the House of Representatives in disgrace, the pioneer of the Republican "criminalization of politics" defense may yet enjoy a political resurrection. Given his past comparisons to Christ and his insistence that God speaks to him, Tom Delay will no doubt consider that altogether fitting.

Almost three years after his indictment on conspiracy and money laundering charges, former House Majority Leader Tom Delay may escape prosecution. Thanks to a technicality in Texas' money laundering statute, the man who once compared himself to Jesus may walk out of court, if not on water.

The Austin Statesman reported this morning that the charges against Delay and his two co-conspirators John Colyandro and Jim Ellis "may be dismissed because the 2002 campaign finance case involved checks and not cash." Delay's possible get-out-of-jail free card, the paper reported, may be found in the fine print of the state's 1993 law:

The state's 3rd Court of Appeals on Friday actually upheld the money-laundering indictments against DeLay's two campaign associates, John Colyandro of Austin and Jim Ellis of Washington.

But the ruling contained a silver lining for the trio's lawyers because it concluded that the state's money-laundering statute - written in 1993 to combat illicit drug activity by focusing on the cash in the criminal transactions - did not apply to checks at the time DeLay is accused of laundering corporate money into campaign donations

Should the Texas' courts ultimately rule in his favor, it would mark the second time Delay would be beneficiary of legal technicalities. In December 2005, a Texas judge threw out a charge of conspiracy to violate the election code by making an illegal corporate contribution. That ruling was upheld by an appeals court panel which concluded that timing is indeed everything:

Last summer the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals confirmed the dismissal of a separate indictment against DeLay and his associates on a charge of conspiring to violate the state election code. The court ruled that conspiracy did not apply to election code violations until 2003 - a year after the $190,000 exchange - when the Legislature changed the law.

Delay's indictment arose from his unprecedented - and successful - 2002 scheme to redesign Texas state legislative districts to ensure a Republican majority in the state. Since Texas law forbids corporate contributions to candidates, Delay's co-defendant Colyandro sent $190,000 in checks collected by Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) to the Republican National Committee. Days later, the RNC then funneled the $190,000 directly back to seven GOP candidates. Ultimately, the gambit worked perfectly, as Delay's new map produced a 21-11 Republican majority in 2004, a sweeping change from the 17-15 Democratic edge previously. (In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Delay's redistricting dirty work by a 7-2 vote.)

Once again, it's looking like Tom Delay will get away with it. Having left the House of Representatives in disgrace, the pioneer of the Republican "criminalization of politics" defense may yet enjoy a political resurrection. Given his past comparisons to Christ and his insistence that God speaks to him, Tom Delay will no doubt consider that altogether fitting.

In Ohio, Bob Ney was released after serving 18 months of his two and a half year term for public corruption. (Ney's time was trimmed by a year after he pulled a "full Foley" and entered an alcohol rehabilitation program.) In November 2006, Ney pleaded guilty to conspiracy and making false statements after receiving gifts and golf trips in exchange for favors for Abramoff clients. In February of this year, Ney was moved to the halfway house to serve out the rest of his time.

But while John McCain certainly had no role in Ney's wrongdoing, his attendance at the Reed fundraiser on August 18th is a self-inflicted wound. In June 2006, Indian Affairs Committee then chaired by Senator McCain issued a report detailing $5.3 million in payments Reed garnered from Abramoff's Indian casino clients. Amazingly, McCain never called Reed to testify, despite the Committee's conclusions that Reed had in essence laundered money for Abramoff while working both sides of the casino issue. As the New York Times noted:

In many cases, the report found, payments to Mr. Reed were handled through third parties in what appeared to be an effort to disguise the fact that the money was from tribes with large casino operations.

The report quoted a tribe leader from Louisiana as saying he was told to keep quiet about Mr. Reed because "he's Christian Coalition - it wouldn't look good if they're receiving money from a casino-operating tribe to oppose gambling."

Ultimately, that appearance of impropriety doomed Ralph Reed's political career among the very Christian conservatives he once championed. Reed's defeat in the 2006 race for Georgia's Lt. Governor can be explained by Phil Dacosta, a Georgia Christian Coalition member and former Reed backer:

"After reading the e-mail, it became pretty obvious he was putting money before God. We are righteously casting him out."

Far from casting him out, John McCain is joining Ralph Reed and the moneychangers in Atlanta on Monday. But while McCain has boasted of leading the Abramoff investigation, on the 18th he'll stand with Reed, a man who once asked Jack Abramoff to help him start "humping in corporate accounts."

After members of the House offered their condolences and eulogies to Russert while discussing a resolution in his honor, Issa took to floor to make a pitch for off-shore drilling:

"We are going to miss Tim Russert when it comes to the people on both sides of the issue of why we have $5 oil - $5 gasoline and $135 oil. I think Tim Russert would have been just the right guy to hold people accountable, who would talk about the 68 million acres that are, quote, inactive, while in fact 41 million are under current lease and use and are producing millions of barrels of oil and natural gas a day...

...So, Madam Speaker, I am going to miss Tim Russert because this debate is too important not to have a fact-oriented, unbiased moderator who could in fact bring to bear the truth that we need to have."

Still, as abominable as Issa's performance today was, it hardly ranks as his worst. Here, then, is a look back at Top 10 Moments from Darrell Issa's Hall of Shame:

A year after he admitted "you've stumped me" when asked whether contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV, John McCain once again finds himself in the AIDS spotlight. On Wednesday, Americans learned that arch-conservative Tom Coburn (R-OK) is blocking Senate action on a proposed tripling of President Bush's global AIDS program. That would be the same Tom Coburn John McCain extolled in March 2007 as "the guy I really respect" when it comes to policy for AIDS and contraceptives.

As Politico detailed, Coburn and a group of six other socially conservative GOP Senators have placed a hold on the reauthorization of one of President Bush's few popular initiatives, the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Enjoying broad bipartisan in Congress, the Senate has proposed boosting funding to $50 billion over five years. But the Senate bill would do away with the previous requirements "that 55 percent of the HIV/AIDS appropriation be spent on treatment and drugs and that about 30 percent of prevention funds be allocated to abstinence education."

Which is what raised the ire of John McCain's AIDS mentor Tom Coburn. Rather than see American aid dollars flowing to the "C" in the U.S. "ABC" strategy against AIDS ("abstinence, be faithful, condoms"), the physician Senator and his group of 7 socially conservative colleagues are demanding that treatment receive the lion's share of the expanded PEPFAR funding. Otherwise, Coburn insists:

"The vast majority of the money is going to get consumed by those wanting to help people with HIV, rather than [by] people with HIV."

The overwhelming consensus in both the Senate and the public health community, of course, holds just the reverse:

"Most experts agree that treatment is only one small part of the prevention agenda," said Denis Nash, director of monitoring, evaluation and research at the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs at Columbia University.

"The prevention effect of treatment is not likely to be anywhere near the magnitude of prevention through prevention," including safe-sex education and condom distribution, said Mead Over, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Which is why John McCain found himself in hot water at a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania on Wednesday. The first question came from health care activist Kaytee Riek, who asked whether McCain would work to advance the bill in the Senate now being blocked by Coburn. Despite his grand December 1, 2007 proclamation recognizing World AIDS Day ("Today is a call to action to roll-back the scourge of HIV and save lives"), McCain on Wednesday was caught off guard and in the dark:

"I'll be glad to assist. I'm sorry to tell you I'm not that familiar with the process of this legislation."

That McCain was asked to "look into talking to his Senate buddy Tom Coburn" about the PEPFAR reauthorization should have come as no surprise to the supposed maverick. After all, during an even more uncomfortable March 2007 ride with reporters on his campaign bus in Iowa, McCain identified Dr. Coburn as the man with the plan when it came to HIV/AIDS and abstinence.

That infamous exchange, so bizarre and so unsettling, requires to be seen in its entirety to fully appreciate John McCain's ignorance and confusion when it comes to HIV/AIDS:

Reporter: "Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?"

Mr. McCain: "Well I think it's a combination. The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes - and I was just reading the thing he wrote - that you should do what you can to encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where that doesn't succeed, than he thinks that we should employ contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I'm not very wise on it."

(Mr. McCain turns to take a question on Iraq, but a moment later looks back to the reporter who asked him about AIDS.)

Mr. McCain: "I haven't thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don't know if I would use taxpayers' money for it."

Q: "What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush's policy, which is just abstinence?"

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) "Ahhh. I think I support the president's policy."

Q: "So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?"

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) "You've stumped me."

Q: "I mean, I think you'd probably agree it probably does help stop it?"

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) "Are we on the Straight Talk express? I'm not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I'm sure I've taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception - I'm sure I'm opposed to government spending on it, I'm sure I support the president's policies on it."

Q: "But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: 'No, we're not going to distribute them,' knowing that?"

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) "Get me Coburn's thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn's paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I've never gotten into these issues before."

Just as disturbing as McCain's incomprehensible response to a simple question on American global AIDS policy is his reliance on Tom Coburn as the authority on the topic. The anti-earmark crusader blocked funding for breast cancer and ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) research. Coburn, an obstetrician, has said he favors the death penalty for abortion providers and called his home state legislators "a bunch of crapheads." The good doctor, who called his 2004 race against Brad Carson a choice between "good and evil", also has been accused of Medicaid fraud and sterilizing a woman without her permission. And during his 2004 Senate campaign, the Oklahoman famously alerted his fellow Sooners to the threat of lesbians run amok in the their high schools:

"Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us?"

For the American people, the pressing question is, how did Tom Coburn come to have any influence at all on public health policy in general and on AIDS in particular? And how can Americans take a presidential candidate like John McCain seriously when he cites Tom Coburn as the source of his own knowledge on HIV/AIDS?

"The president and his advisers undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the attacks to use the war against Al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein."

While Democratic and Republican committee members battle it out over the implications of the Phase 2 report, Pat Roberts' role in obstructing the investigation of the Bush administration's uses - and misuses - of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq is beyond dispute.

First, a little background. In the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, the absence of weapons of mass destruction there called into question President Bush's pre-war specter of a "gathering threat" (March 6, 2003), "the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud" (October 7, 2002), among other pre-war claims. By October 2003, the interim report of the Iraq Survey Group came up empty, findings confirmed by the final Duelfer Report a year later.

In response, President Bush and his Republican allies in the Senate took great pains to provide the illusion of fact-finding, while ensuring that no outcome detrimental to the President could come to pass before Election Day 2004, if ever.

Let's start in Congress. On June 20, 2003, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence began its work. Led by Republican Chairman Pat Roberts (KS) and Democratic Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller (WV), the SSCI promised a two-phase report on the march to war in Iraq. Phase 1 would examine the failings of the American intelligence community. Phase 2 would investigate the uses of pre-war intelligence and whether the administration had manipulated it to create a causus belli. Conveniently for the Bush White House, the potentially damaging Phase 2 inquiry would not come until after the election.

Not surprisingly, the SSCI Phase 1 Report released in July 2004 sought to lay the blame for faulty intelligence at the feet of the CIA. Chairman Roberts concluded that "what the President and the Congress used to send the country to war was information that was...flawed" and "most of the key judgments in the October 2002 national intelligence estimate on Iraq's WMD programs were either overstated or were not supported by the raw intelligence reporting." But Roberts also presumed the conclusion of the as-yet-uncompleted Phase 2 report, "the committee found no evidence that the intelligence community's mischaracterization or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of politics or pressure."

During the very same press conference, Vice Chairman Rockefeller in response expressed his frustration and alarm over Roberts' statements:

"And I have to say, that there is a real frustration over what is not in this report, and I don't think was mentioned in Chairman Roberts' statement, and that is about the -- after the analysts and the intelligence community produced an intelligence product, how is it then shaped or used or misused by the policy-makers?� So again there's genuine frustration -- and Chairman Roberts and I have discussed this many times -- that virtually everything that has to do with the administration has been relegated to phase two. My hope is that we will get this done as soon as possible."

Rockefeller had good reason to worry. As it turns out, Senator Roberts simply had no intention of ever pursuing the Phase 2 inquiry into the Bush's administration's use - or misuse - of pre-war intelligence. On July 9, 2004, Roberts told reporters, "We will proceed with (that work in) phase two. It is a priority. I made my commitment and it will get done." But on March 10, 2005, a straight-faced Roberts changed his tune:

"It got to be a problem in regard to a subjective point of view. If you ask any member of the administration, 'Why did you make that declarative statement?' ... basically, the bottom line is, they believed the intelligence and the intelligence was wrong. In addition, we were in an even-numbered year and you know what that means. So, we sort of came to a crossroads and that [Phase 2] is basically on the back burner."

Roberts' stonewalling for the Bush administration didn't end there. Upon the release of the Silberman-Robb Commission Report, Roberts on March 31, 2005 concluded, "I don't think there should be any doubt that we have now heard it all regarding prewar intelligence. I think that it would be a monumental waste of time to replow this ground any further." Satisfied that the pretense of an investigation was provided while the Bush administration was still protected, Roberts added, "To go though that exercise, it seems to me, in a post-election environment--we didn't see how we could do that and achieve any possible progress. I think everybody pretty well gets it."

As for the Silberman-Robb Commission, it was designed to avoid the very issues Senator Roberts had so steadfastly refuse to investigate. As with the 9/11 Commission, President Bush initially opposed the formation of an independent panel to investigate Iraq WMD intelligence. And just as with the 9/11 Commission, Bush flip-flopped, caving to public pressure for an inquiry. But Bush's panel, led by Judge Laurence Silberman (the same judge who overturned Oliver North's felony conviction), would not include the subject of intelligence manipulation within its charter. The report concluded that the CIA had been "dead wrong" about Iraq WMD. But as Silberman himself noted:

"Well, on the [that] point, we duck. That is not part of our charter. We did not express any views on policymakers' use of intelligence -- whether Congress or the president. It wasn't part of our charter and indeed most of us didn't want to get into that issue because it's basically a political question and everybody knows -- you can look at the newspaper and see what people said and make your own judgment."

That judgment is what the Phase 2 report finally provided today. As McClatchy summarized, the report determined:

"Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information," the report concluded.

Claims by President Bush that Iraq and al Qaida had a partnership "were not substantiated by the intelligence."

The president and vice president misrepresented what was known about Iraq’s chemical weapons capabiliies.

Rumsfeld misrepresented what the intelligence community knew when he said Iraq's weapons productions facilities were buried deeply underground.

Cheney's claim that the intelligence community had confirmed that lead Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 was not true.

Four years ago, Pat Roberts with a straight face declared his committee's probe "a priority," adding of the critical Phase 2 report, "I made my commitment and it will get done." As it turned out, not so much. As for the truthfulness of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, that too was a fraud perpetrated on the American people.

Just days after rejecting the endorsements of his "ministers of war" John Hagee and Rod Parsley, John McCain may be about to confront another faith-based conundrum. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) is facing withering criticism from prominent conservatives and evangelical leaders over his Senate probe into the finances of Kenneth Copeland and other so-called "prosperity gospel" televangelists. Republican nominee McCain may have to choose between his party's increasingly disgruntled religious right base and a fellow Republican Senator he once called a "f**king jerk."

As the Washington Post details, the Senate Finance Committee's inquiry to determine whether Copeland and five other televangelists "are improperly using their tax-exempt status as churches to shield lavish lifestyles" is raising hackles among Christian conservatives. In January, former Arkansas Governor, Baptist minister and now McCain VP hopeful Mike Huckabee stood by Copeland, a supporter who raised - perhaps illegally - over $100,000 for his presidential campaign. Now Copeland and Georgia minister Creflo Dollar are refusing to cooperate further with Grassley's probe.

Alleging bias by the Baptist Grassley against the Pentecostal preachers, Copeland and many familiar faces among the religious right are fighting back. Copeland has launched a web site called Believers Stand United, which claims the Iowa Republican is "publicly questioning the religious beliefs of the targeted churches, their ministers, and their members while ignoring televangelists of other denominations." Copeland went on to liken Grassley, the man John McCain labeled a "f**king jerk," to the devil himself:

"Satan has an agenda. He is looking for a way to drive a wedge and get strife between one another."

Other high profile conservatives are lining up with Copeland. Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich, former Ohio secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell and Anthony Verdugo of the Christian Family Coalition joined other figures in the religious right in sending a letter to the Senate Finance Committee. Their missive claims that ministries were under investigation because they shared "the same branch of evangelicalism" and that Grassley's inquiry infringes the churches' First Amendment rights. Signatory Matthew Staver, dean of the law school at the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, personally attacked Senator Grassley while warning that the probe:

"Sets a terrible precedent that...should be a concern to all houses of worships across the board -- Christian and non-Christian." It may be that Senator Grassley has some kind of personal opinion with regards to the doctrines of these churches."

Doug Wead, an informal adviser to President Bush who also served as a liaison to the evangelical community during his father's presidency, revealed the stakes for John McCain and the GOP:

"You've got a Baptist senator attacking six Pentecostals. The timing is not good for the Republican Party."

The timing is especially dangerous for John McCain. In the wake of McCain's rejection of the Hagee and Parsley endorsements he previously sought, evangelical leaders are increasingly questioning his new-found commitment to people he once deemed "agents of intolerance." Evangelical leader Bishop Harry Jackson complained, "Now folks don't know what he means," adding, "Is he for us or against us?" Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, said simply of McCain's faith-based flip-flop on Hagee and Parsley, "this doesn't help."

McCain's running mate search is also sure to shine a spotlight on the controversy. Back in April, Weyrich joined two dozen other conservative activists in signing a letter titled "No Mitt" calling on McCain to reject Mitt Romney as his vice presidential choice. Governor Huckabee, who like Romney has made no secret of his desire for the #2 slot on the ticket, has made it clear he's with Copeland and not Grassley's committee in the controversy ("Why should I stand with them and not with you? They've only got an 11 percent approval rating.").

As Chuck Grassley's probe of Copeland and the other prosperity gospel ministers unfolds, John McCain may well find he's damned if he does and damned if doesn't. If he backs the Senate investigation, McCain may only further raise the ire of his party's hard right as the November election nears. If he sides with Copeland, Weyrich et al, he will be seen as pandering to social conservatives at precisely the time his campaign is running hard to the center.

But in reversing his 2000 position and embracing the religious right he once criticized, the Episcopalian-turned-Baptist McCain brought his upon himself. Asked by the Daily Show's Jon Stewart in 2006 if he was "going to crazy base world," John McCain replied, "I'm afraid so."

The once-vaunted Republican marketing machine has fallen and can't get up. On Monday, House minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) unveiled a new slogan for the GOP, only to learn that "The Change You Deserve," was fittingly already in use to market the anti-depressant drug Effexor. Now a central promise of the Republicans' 2008 rebranding effort, to balance the budget by 2012, is dead on arrival. As it turns out, Republican nominee John McCain already abandoned his short-lived, first term balanced budget pledge.

In the same unfortunate memo which comically proclaimed the GOP the party of change, Boehner and the House Republican leadership summarized their themes and promises for Americans' health, energy, national and economic security. Attacking the Democrats for "promises made, promises broken," the Republicans offered some bold promises of their own on the economy:

Economy. A stronger economy by stopping the largest tax increase in American history, cutting wasteful Washington spending, balancing the budget by 2012, passing serious entitlement reform and strengthening our housing sector.

Sadly, no one thought to first consult with the presidential nominee of their party. In April, just two months after promising to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term, John McCain gave up his pledge to erase the deficit by 2012.

Before abandoning his balanced budget pledge during his Pittburgh address yesterday, McCain had made it a feature on the campaign trail. For example, during a February 15th rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin, "McCain promised he'd offer a balanced budget by the end of his first term." He told the audience that he could end the red ink by 2012:

"I've got to give you some straight talk: I doubt, given the deficits we're running, that I can propose a balanced budget in the first year. But that's my goal. It has to be our goal, because we're mortgaging these young people's future."

Alas, McCain's life as a deficit hawk was a short and unhappy one.

Even as Mr. Straight Talk was promising a 2012 end date for the budget deficit, his top economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin was reading from a different script, instead targeting the end of a McCain second term in 2017. And he should know. A month later, Holtz-Eakin, an architect of the McCain tax plan, admitted, "It will make deficits expand up front, no question." Just a day before McCain's April 15th economic address, Holtz-Eakin previewed the campaign's new position on balancing the budget:

"I would like the next president not to talk about deficit reduction."

For good reason. During an April 9th appearance at a Westport, Connecticut investment firm, McCain was grilled over his fuzzy math:

"Basically, which is it?" the man asked Mr. McCain. "Straight talk: Do you want to raise taxes, cut entitlement spending, cut defense spending, or have a deficit?"

McCain dutifully cited his idol Ronald Reagan as proivding the answer. Conveniently ignoring the fact that Reagan himself raised taxes three times and bequeathed a $300 billion deficit to his successor, McCain argued:

"That was when Ronald Reagan came to office in 1980. And so what did we do? We didn't raise taxes, and we didn't cut entitlements."

Of course, the McCain tax plan's budget-busting largesse to the wealthiest Americans would make Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush alike blush. As ThinkProgress meticulously detailed in late March, McCain has thrown budgetary caution to the wind:"

Our analysis suggests that the McCain plan shares five key characteristics of Bush policies. First, it is enormously expensive, costing more than $2 trillion over the next decade and essentially doubling the Bush tax cuts. Second, the McCain plan would predominantly benefit the most fortunate taxpayers, offering two new massive tax cuts for corporations and delivering 58 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The Bush tax cuts provide 31 percent of their benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers.

Third, the McCain tax plan continues the shift of the tax burden from investment income onto earned income. Fourth, the plan not only fails to address current tax shelter problems in the tax code but in fact will lead to increased sheltering. Fifth, McCain cannot pay for his tax cuts without massive reductions in Social Security, Medicare, or other key programs that benefit the vast majority of Americans.

That assessment came before McCain's widely panned gas-tax holiday proposed last month.

Appearing on Hardball with Chris Matthews that same day, John McCain explained his about-face on a first-term balanced budget by pleading, "economic conditions are reversed." (No doubt, President Bush would offer the same excuse for his broken 2004 promise to halve the budget deficit by 2009.) Sadly for John McCain, the only conditions which have changed over the past two months is that the American people started learning the truth about his tax plan.

Apparently, John Boehner and the House Republican leadership didn't get the memo. And given their third straight loss in Congressional special elections, Effexor might just what the doctor ordered.

On Wednesday, John McCain's home state Arizona Republic did some good excavation work in the ongoing demolition of the GOP nominee's maverick myth. Analyzing his Senate voting record since 1999, the paper found McCain rarely strayed from the Republican Party line. But that's only a small part of the unraveling of the McCain maverick fable. As I previously detailed, John McCain in his eternal quest for the GOP nomination has repeatedly reversed long-held positions and compromised core principles to curry favor with right-wing Republican primary voters.

As the Republic details, when the going got tough, McCain got in line. When it mattered most in the closest votes, Senator McCain since 1999 sided with his GOP colleagues. As it turns out, McCain "almost never thwarted his party's objectives":

The presumptive Republican nominee arguably cast the decisive vote 14 times since 1999 to ensure Republicans got their way, and he had five other close cases where his vote may have made a difference, Senate records show. By comparison, McCain effectively handed Democrats a win on roll-call votes four times in the same period. On one of those occasions, Republicans could still have won if Vice President Dick Cheney had cast a tie-breaking vote.

That voting record is just another feather in John McCain's conservative cap. Congressional Quarterly gave McCain a 90% score for "party unity," making him an even more reliable GOP water-carrier than fellow Arizonan John Kyl, the #2 ranking Republican in the Senate. The Washington Post similarly gave him a score of 88.3%, tying him with South Carolina's Lindsey Graham ahead of 29 other Senate Republicans. It is for good reason that Keith Poole, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, concluded:

"He is a conservative who votes conservative on most issues. By no means is he a liberal or even a moderate."

The Arizona Republic also unearthed more evidence for McCain's iron law of right-wing pandering. That is, McCain's closeness to the GOP party line is directly proportional to the proximity of Republican presidential primaries:

During the 10 years The Republic examined, McCain crossed over to vote with Democrats 19 times in 82 close votes. He did so just once in the four years he was running for president: 1999, 2000, 2007 and 2008. All 12 of the close votes he missed happened in those years, too.

Even so, in 59 of the 82 close votes, Republicans got what they wanted regardless of McCain's position. In those 59 cases, McCain broke with his party 16 times.

But what the Republic's analysis didn't address is John McCain's litany of gymnastic contortions and just-in-time flip-flops during his run for the Republican nomination. As his quest for the GOP nomination heated up, McCain veered hard to the right in an effort to appease his party's conservative base. As I noted last month, McCain changed positions on:

The Bush tax cuts, Jerry Falwell and the Christian right, immigration reform, overturning Roe v. Wade, whether Justice Samuel Alito is a model for the Supreme Court, and France-bashing, just to name a few.

The Arizona Republic piece is a hopeful sign that perhaps, at long last, the American media will reconsider the crown of maverick wrongly placed on John McCain's head. (The story comes just a day after MSNBC's Tim Russert agreed with a recent New York Times survey showing that Americans believe the press has been too easy on McCain.) Perhaps the untold story of campaign 2008 - John McCain's transformation from maverick to political prostitute - will now be told.

Here, then, are five questions for Petraeus and Crocker:

1. Did Iranian personnel play a role in the recent fighting in Basra? If so, on whose side(s)?

The Sunday Times this weekend wrote, "Iranian forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week." But in the three-way Shiite battle for Basra in which Iran was said to back all sides, the issue becomes which forces Tehran supported in the fighting.

No doubt, Moqtada Al Sadr's Mahdi Army militia has received logistical help from Iran. (Prime Minister Maliki's own Dawa Party also has direct ties to Tehran.) But the largest Shiite military-political force in Iraq, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and its associated Badr Brigades, is the biggest beneficiary of Iranian largesse:

Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations noted the ISCI "was essentially created by Iran, and its militia, the Badr Brigade, was trained and equipped by the Revolutionary Guards" - which the Bush administration calls a "terrorist" organization.

Journalist Gareth Porter added the Badr militia is the "most pro-Iranian political-military forces in Iraq." In fact, ISCI leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim "met with [Iranian Revolutionary Guard] officers to be his guests in December 2006, apparently to discuss military assistance to the Badr Organization."

Nonetheless, SIIC's leader Abdul Azziz al-Hakim was warmly greeted by President Bush at the White House in December 2006. Just last month, Vice President Cheney visited Hakim at his Baghdad compound.

As Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) pointed out on March 30:

"The Iranians have close associations with all the Shia communities, not only with Sadr but also Hakim...The notion that this is a fight by American allies against Iranian-inspired elements is not accurate."

2. What is the status of Al Qaeda in Iraq? Is it on the brink of defeat? If so, is the primary rationale for a continued American presence evaporating?

Back in October, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon believed it had dealt "devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months."

As Karen de Young and Thomas Ricks (author of Fiasco, perhaps the defining military analysis of the invasion of Iraq) detailed, the drop-off in Al Qaeda attacks and the improving alliances with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province were leading some American military leaders to advocate a "declaration of victory":

Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of the Joint Special Operations Command's operations in Iraq, is the chief promoter of a victory declaration and believes that AQI has been all but eliminated, the military intelligence official said. But Adm. William J. Fallon, the chief of U.S. Central Command, which oversees Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, is urging restraint, the official said. The military intelligence official, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity about Iraq assessments and strategy.

Senior U.S. commanders on the ground, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, have long complained that Central Command, along with the CIA, is too negative in its analyses. On this issue, however, Petraeus agrees with Fallon, the military intelligence official said.

Given that Al Qaeda in Iraq over the past two years has been responsible for only a small fraction of the attacks against U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians, is there not a Catch-22 for President Bush? That is, does the very dissipation of the Al Qaeda threat in Iraq remove his primary rationale for extending the American presence there?

As de Young and Ricks asked, does a declaration of the defeat of Al Qaeda "fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved?"

3. Can the Sunni "Sons of Iraq" be trusted? Might they come to pose a threat to the Iraqi government in Baghdad?

There's little question that the creation of U.S. funded Sunni "Awakening Councils" have played a critical role in reducing violence against American troops and in beating back Al Qaeda in Iraq.

But there are increasing signs that the "Sons of Iraq," now numbering 90,000, may themselves become a source of instability. In November, Sami al Askari, a Shiite lawmaker who speaks to Prime Minister Maliki daily, worried, "When the U.S. leaves, what we'll have are two armies; one who's loyal to the government and one not loyal." In Diyala province, the Sons of Iraq recently split into two factions. And as the Washington Post reported on March 31, Col. Michael Fuller, chief of staff of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, "said he expects the Baghdad government to incorporate about 20 percent of them into the Iraqi security forces over time." In an April 4 in a piece titled "Iraq's Sunni Time Bomb," former First Calvary Division political advisor Matt Sherman wrote:

"Failure to find a new role for the Sons of Iraq, however, will result in the deterioration of government authority, an inability to draw down our own forces, and a return to militia rule for much of Iraq."

General Petraeus has said they will stay loyal to the American cause "as long as it is in their interests." Is there a still a convergence of interests? Or only as long the Sons of Iraq are paid by the American people?

4. Who is the enemy for the United States in Iraq? Do the United States and the Maliki government share common foes and common friends?

The fiasco in Basra again raises the question as to whether the United States and the Maliki government in Baghdad really share common objectives and common enemies. As I noted in November:

More and more, President Bush's strategy in Iraq resembles an M.C. Escher illustration. Like the hands drawing each other or the elegant depiction of stairways that cannot possibly meet, the military progress of the U.S. surge is producing an image of a future Iraq that, while glorious to behold, can never be built. The very American alliances with Sunni tribal leaders that are reducing sectarian violence and the threat from Al Qaeda also threaten to undermine the Shiite majority government in Baghdad. And the "enduring" U.S. presence announced by President Bush may serve only to protect the Maliki government from its domestic enemies, not its friend and American foe Iran. If anything, the surge may be making the prospect of Iraqi national reconciliation even more remote.

As American forces battle the Mahdi Army in the streets of Sadr City, analysts increasingly view the Maliki assault in Basra as an effort to crush the Sadrists in advance of October provincial elections in which his Dawa party and its ally the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council will lose seats. More importantly, the SIIC seeks to promote a nine-province Shiite regional government in the south, a move opposed by Sadr and his followers. Such a development would seem to run counter to stated American positions.

Meanwhile, as the fighting rages in Baghdad, Iraq faces an ominous deadline as Moqtada al Sadr responds to the Iraqi government demand to disarm the Mahdi Army or face a ban from political participation. Should Sadr choose to stand and fight, will the United States be at the forefront? Will the U.S. demand that other militias currently allied to Maliki, including Hakim's Badr Brigades and the Kurdish peshmerga, also disarm? Will the U.S. press the Maliki government to absorb the Sunni "Sons of Iraq" into the Iraqi security forces, as it has done with 10,000 of the Badr Brigades?

5. Are the Iraqis "Standing Up?"

President Bush has famously (or infamously) argued that "as the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down." In the wake of Prime Minister Maliki's offensive against the Mahdi Army is Basra, are we any closer to that happening?

No doubt, that the Iraqi security forces were able to mount the operation at all represents some progress over its past cut and run performances. But the assault on Basra, launched without prior coordination with the United States quickly ground to a halt. News accounts report at least 1,000 Iraqi personnel abandoned their units, including two high ranking officers. Ultimately, U.S. forces and air strikes were needed to help secure Basra. In addition, the British, who had earlier rejected American requests for a surge back into Basra, played a much larger role in backing the Maliki forces than was initially reported. (In the wake of the fighting, the planned British pull-out from southern Iraq has been put on hold.) Worse still, the carnage in Basra was halted only after Iraqi lawmakers traveled to Iran, where a general of the Qods Force (labeled a terrorist organization by the United States) brokered a deal with the Sadrists.

Since September, President Bush replaced his "we're making progress" talking point with the mantra of "return on success." That is, as the situation improves on the ground in Iraq, more American troops will be coming home. But with General Petraeus' announcement that U.S. force levels will be indefinitely maintained at 140,000 troops following the last planned drawdowns in July, there is apparently no return on success. And negotiations for a new strategic framework agreement between the U.S. and Iraq may codify that open-ended commitment.

While President Bush declared two weeks ago that "normalcy is returning back to Iraq" (a point John McCain echoed Monday when he claimed Iraq was returning to "something approaching normal"), the grim reality in the ground still raises the questions. When can the American people expect to receive the return on success? When can U.S. troops stand down?

The life of the American conservative is a perpetual crisis of cognitive dissonance, especially when it comes to the run-up to the Iraq war. So three new stories this week are certain to cause right-wing minds to explode, or at least to seek the safe harbor of denial.

First came word of a new book from Rumsfeld aide Douglas Feith revealing that President Bush declared "war is inevitable" in December 2002, months before UN weapons inspectors produced their report on Iraq's WMD. Later this week, the Pentagon will release the results of its massive study of pre-war intelligence confirming that Saddam and Al Qaeda had no operational relationship. Last, the Senate Intelligence Committee will soon publish its long-delayed critique of the Bush administration's claims in the buildup to war with Iraq.

Little in Feith's upcoming book, War and Decision, appears new. His revelation about Bush's December 18, 2002 ultimatum merely confirmed the President's use of the UN as a PR smokescreen for the conflict to come. Even less surprising is Feith's finger-pointing at others, especially Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA, General Tommy Franks and Iraq viceroy L. Paul Bremer, for the calamity his own manipulation of intelligence helped produce. (After all, Powell aide Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson said of Feith "seldom in my life have I met a dumber man," while Franks deemed him simply "the f**king stupidest guy on the face of the earth.") Given the devastating February 2007 Inspector General's report on undersecretary Feith's "inappropriate" briefings and "unreliable" intelligence regarding the Al Qaeda-Iraq link, his 900 page score-settling tome due next month was inevitable.

And just in case there were any lingering doubts about Feith's fraud on the Saddam-Al Qaeda nexus during his tenure as Donald Rumsfeld's defense policy chief, his former colleagues at the Pentagon lay them to rest this week. As McClatchy detailed yesterday, the DoD study will confirm the findings of the 9/11 Commission:

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam's regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.

The new study of the Iraqi regime's archives found no documents indicating a "direct operational link" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.

Finally, the Senate Intelligence Committee is set to release - at long last - its findings on the administration's manipulation of pre-war intelligence. Held up for four years by former committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS), the Senate panel will examine of pre-Iraq war claims by President Bush and his administration intentionally left out of its "Phase I" report released prior to the 2004 election. (Despite the Committee's insistence that an investigation of White House misuses of pre-war intelligence not be part of the scope of Phase I, Roberts joined other GOP watercarriers in continuing to proclaim, "we interviewed over 250 analysts and we specifically asked them: 'Was there any political manipulation or pressure?' Answer: 'No.'")

As the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday, while the upcoming report likely won't go far enough in its assessments for partisans on either the left or the right, the Intel Committee conclusions will present more bad news for the Bush administration and its amen corner:

The long-delayed document catalogs dozens of prewar assertions by President Bush and other administration officials that proved to be wildly inaccurate about Iraq's alleged stockpiles of banned weapons and pursuit of nuclear arms.

But officials say the report reaches a mixed verdict on the key question of whether the White House misused intelligence to make the case for war.

The document criticizes White House officials for making assertions that failed to reflect disagreements or uncertainties in the underlying intelligence on Iraq, officials said. But the report acknowledges that many claims were consistent with intelligence assessments in circulation at the time.

Because of the nuanced nature of the conclusions, one congressional official familiar with the document said: "The left is not going to be happy. The right is not going to be happy. Nobody is going to be happy."

Judging from initial reactions to this latest wave of pre-Iraq war revelations, the discomfort of the right will likely be greater.

Reacting to the McClatchy story, the conservative Gateway Pundit experienced a complete a cognitive shutdown. In denial over the Pentagon story confirming the absence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link before the war, this blogger in the last throes of cognitive dissonance could only pretend instead that McClatchy was denying the presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq today:

"Just when you thought that the mainstream media had hit rock bottom...McClatchy Newspapers reported today that there is no Al-Qaeda in Iraq..."

The vast cottage industry of right-wing politicians, pundits and authors, too, will have to confront facts completely at odds with their unshakable (and irredeemably wrong) narratives. Saddam-9/11 conspiracy theorist and Paul Wolfowitz favorite Laurie Mylroie will have to reconsider her entire body of work (for example, here and here). And 9/11-Iraq fabulist and Cheney biographer Stephen F. Hayes, author of the thoroughly discredited screed, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America, might want to take another look at his notes.

In Hayes' case, unfortunately, those notes are the source of the problem. As ThinkProgress detailed, Hayes' thesis relied on Feith's invented Al Qaeda-Saddam connection, fabrications rejected by the Pentagon at the time - and ever since:

In 2003, Hayes declared "case closed" in an article purporting to show the links between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cheney recommeneded it to the Rocky Mountain news as the premier source of information on the issue. ("[Y]ou ought to go look is an article that Stephen Hayes did in the Weekly Standard here a few weeks ago...That's your best source of information.") Hayes relied on a classified Defense Department memo produced by Douglas Feith. The Defense Department shot down Hayes' article, stating the Feith memo was "not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions."

It's no wonder hardcover copies of Hayes' book are available at Amazon for the eminently affordable price of 1 cent.

In 2006, Stephen Colbert famously summed up the conservative intellectual dilemma in what might be deemed Colbert's Law: "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." Confronted with a flood of inconvenient facts, the right-wing instead resorts (as the endless Cheney-Hayes-Feith loop above illustrates) to its own brand of circular logic.

With the torrent of pre-Iraq retrospective stories, expect another public bout of conservative cognitive dissonance.

UPDATE 1: Here's a look back at President Bush's false statements on the Al Qaeda-Iraq connection.

UPDATE 2: ABC News on Wednesday morning reported that the Bush administration is in essence censoring the Pentagon report on the nonexistent Saddam - Al Qaeda link:

This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's release and will no longer make the report available online...The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website this afternoon, followed by a background briefing with the authors. No more. The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

An executive summary is available here.

Exactly two years ago, I dissected the Bush administration's dubious legal justification for its illicit program of NSA domestic surveillance. Then, I argued that the President's twin claims that his constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief and the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) allowed Bush to operate outside the legal mandate of FISA were specious. As it turns out, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey apparently agree.

In "The Republicans' Constitutional Crisis," I noted:

From the beginning, the administration's amen corner has aggressive claimed that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) and the wartime Commander-in-Chief powers give President Bush the statutory and constitutional basis for sidestepping the FISA process for domestic electronic surveillance. But most in the GOP are downright sheepish when it comes to the third argument that logically flows from their first two: FISA itself is unconstitutional. Their trepidation is well founded; as a matter of law and of politics, an attack by Republicans on the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is bound to fail.

As I documented, only the most extreme Bush supporters such as John Yoo argued that FISA itself was unconstitutional. And sadly for the Bush administration, the overwhelming weight of constitutional opinion is working against them. In a February 13th, 2006 letter, the American Bar Association cautioned President Bush against acting outside of FISA, and urging adoption of its recommendations to ensure the fight against Al Qaeda "is conducted in a manner reflective of the highest American values." On January 9th, 2006, a distinguished, bi-partisan group of American constitutional legal experts and scholars wrote to congressional leaders and strongly rejected the arguments put forth by the Bush administration:

The DOJ also invokes the President's inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief to collect "signals intelligence" targeted at the enemy, and maintains that construing FISA to prohibit the President's actions would raise constitutional questions. But even conceding that the President in his role as Commander in Chief may generally collect signals intelligence on the enemy abroad, Congress indisputably has authority to regulate electronic surveillance within the United States, as it has done in FISA. Where Congress has so regulated, the President can act in contravention of statute only if his authority is exclusive, and not subject to the check of statutory regulation. The DOJ letter pointedly does not make that extraordinary claim.

Fast forward two years and President Bush's DNI and attorney general seemingly agree with that assessment. As Glenn Greenwald details:

In the letter from Chairman Reyes to which McConnell and Mukasey are responding, Reyes pointed out that under the still-existing FISA law, the Government is free to commence surveillance without a warrant where there is no time to obtain one. In response, McConnell and Mukasey wrote:

"You imply that the emergency authorization process under FISA is an adequate substitute for the legislative authorities that have elapsed. This assertion reflects a basic misunderstanding about FISA's emergency authorization provisions. Specifically, you assert that the National Security Agency (NSA) or Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) "may begin surveillance immediately" in an emergency situation. FISA requires far more, and it would be illegal to proceed as you suggest."

Wow, what a blockbuster revelation. Apparently, as it turns out, in the United States it's "illegal" for the Government to eavesdrop on Americans without first complying with the requirements of FISA. Who would have known?

A blockbuster indeed.

All of which makes the Democratic capitulation last August on the FISA revisions in the so-called Protect America Act all the more galling. It wasn't enough that they codified President Bush lawlessness. They not only had the votes to safeguard American civil liberties and prevent the legalization of past Bush White House criminality. On FISA as we knew it before August 5, 2007, Democrats had the law - and public opinion - on their side.

When it comes to the debate over Congressional legislation to ban waterboarding of detainees by the CIA, President Bush is proving Marx's dictum that historical events occur twice, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. After all, while the White House is threatening to veto the new interrogation restrictions passed this week