SEN. DURBIN SAYS HE KNEW NUCLEAR REASONS FOR IRAQ WAR WERE BOGUS

I heard On The Media today with Bob Garfield interviewing Senator Richard Durbin (D-Illinois). Sen. Durbin was on the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2002 and he contrasted the difference in intelligence information detailed by analysts to senators behind closed doors with what Bush/Cheney/Rice were telling the public in the lead-up to the War. For example, those infamous aluminum tubes that Bush & Co. held up as proof positive that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were developing nuclear weapons. Apparently the Senate Intelligence Committee knew that the tubes were for anything but nuclear fuel production.

Bob Garfield asked Sen. Durbin THE KEY QUESTION: how come you Senator Dubin did not go public and disclose that the administration was lying and fudging on Saddam's purported nuclear build-up? Durbin answered he was bound by rules of secrecy of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

But this is not, and cannot be, a sufficient answer. The War in Iraq has cost over 3,000 lives of U.S. troops and over 650,000 lives of Iraqis. A pledge of secrecy in this case is trumped by Durbin's fundamental duty to go out and tell the truth. Had Durbin done this, it might have stopped the damned war. And not only was it a duty of Durbin. This was a duty of every member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, both Democratic and Republican alike.