Item 500

Letter to Sen. Ron Wyden:

Dear Sen. Wyden,

It’s long past time for Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to stop giving President Bush the benefit of the doubt. Over and over, every claim they’ve made about issues ranging from WMDs in Iraq to warrantless wiretapping has been proven false with time. Every member of the administration has repeatedly told things to the Congress and the American people that were simply not true.

In the past, some of those claims have been explained away as errors and not lies, but so many of them have been exposed now as truth shaved so bare that it bleeds or outright falsehoods — as in the case of the NSA phone data collection program — that the preponderance of evidence is on the side of them all being lies.

It’s time for you and your colleagues to speak out. Intelligence is one of the most important issues in a world where continued tensions over fake nuclear threats in Iran could draw us into real nuclear conflict with Russia and China. If Democrats want to be seen as serious about national security, they’d better treat intelligence as a serious issue instead of another arena for national political strategy.