Today there's a slight break in the virtual news blackout about the state of the notorious "Phase Two" investigation into the White House's use and abuse of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq. Since 2004 the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the notorious shill Pat Roberts, has been promising to let this thing be completed. All the while, he's been throwing up obstacles, though what exactly these were hasn't always been clear.

I see via Greg Sargent that Byron York has a piece up at NRO that reveals a fair amount about the Committee's work. His pen is dipped in poison for a Committee staffer, but once you get beyond that there's real news about what has been done on the five parts of the investigation.

It looks like the two most politically sensitive parts could be tied up indefinitely, and one could well be mangled by the Pentagon.

Today Rep. Jane Harman posted a diary at Daily Kos arguing that the next 3 to 6 months will be critical for building a viable state in Iraq, after which the U.S. might be able to leave the country "in better shape than when we found it." That is not far from the position that the Bush administration has been forced back upon, as it becomes ever harder to deny that Iraq is in "bleak" condition, to borrow Tony Snow's term.

I'm not convinced. Iraq is in meltdown, and though they won't let on to the public, the Bush administration knows it full well. In the past, Bush has "known" things and still not permitted them to impinge on his policies. Now, however, it seems likely that the truth about Iraq looms so large that it's actually having practical effects upon Bush's Iran policy.

There are two documents you ought to know about, if you don't already. One is a cable from May 6 by Ambassador Khalilzad. No, not the cable published on Sunday. This was an earlier, equally bleak assessment that got little attention.

The other, an Iranian letter from 2003, was an offer to cut a deal over Iran's nuclear program. Bush's recent shift in Iran policy, in the context of this rejected deal, suggests that he's all but given up on succeeding in Iraq.

Royalties from oil and gas companies are a huge element in federal revenues. You'd think in an era of soaring deficits that the government would take some care to maximize income from mineral rights. You'd be wrong. The failure by oil and gas companies to pay the full royalties they owe is one of the largest and longest-running scandals in recent history. Underpayments in recent years appear to run into tens of billions of dollars of lost revenues.

Every now and again, Congress decides to stop embarrassing itself and rein in the oil companies. 2006 may be one of those years. As I describe below, the House has passed a bill that is awaiting Senate action. If enacted, this legislation might bring an additional $10,000,000,000 into the US Treasury.

And there's a lot more at stake than that $10 billion. Worth talking about, then?

Could we have universal health benefits by 2012? A non-partisan panel created by Congress to study what Americans want is urging just that. Pie in the sky? The politics of the issue--and this is all about politics, because Americans have been in favor of universal benefits for a long time--appear to be moving in the right direction at the moment.

The panel, the Citizens' Health Care Working Group, was created by Congress with the task of determining what Americans want from the nation's health care system, and formulating policy proposals. They found that 90% of citizens whom they met with wanted universal health benefits.

At this stage, CHCWG is calling for 90 days of citizens' input; in September it will submit its final report. The President will be required to comment on their recommendations, and Congressional hearings will also have to be held. Could we be looking at the start of real reform?

If you're worried about the fairness of elections in the U.S., and fed up with the national failure to investigate the issue seriously, prepare yourself for another shock. Today the Government Accountability Office finally delivered its assessment of the 2004 election. This involved surveys of local and state election officials, as well as visits to dozens of counties around the country.

Though I haven't read all 519 pages yet, the report appears to be a colossal floperoo. A dud. An opportunity missed. It appears to ignore, circumvent, or tiptoe around all the most awkward issues. Instead of getting to the heart of why so many Americans are deeply troubled about the state of elections, it serves up page after page of pablum. If you did not already know about these controversies, you would hardly be able to surmise their existence from this muted and elliptical report.

A few months ago I proposed a plan to place Republican Congressional war hawks on the defensive politically and force them to take positive steps to fix the real problems in Iraq. The plan was, I thought, brilliant in its simplicity. Yet it attracted so little support I decided it was a dead letter. Today, I'm reviving it because I cannot stand by and watch impassively as the unmitigated horror unfolds for the people of Iraq and for our own troops sent into that quagmire.

Here is the idea: Inundate the offices of Congressional Republican war hawks with requests that they travel to Iraq this summer and report back to constituents on the situation as they observed it. If I were in their position, that is just about the last thing that I would want constituents to demand I do.

Follow me on the jump; this is a call to action to the netroots.

Oh this new report from the Center for Public Integrity should be required reading. It tracks the privately sponsored trips that members of Congress and their aides have made during the Bush administration. This is the kind of information that will make voters angry this fall. Quite angry. And unless Democrats drop the ball badly, that anger will be directed mainly at Republicans, whose corruption is fully on display here in the most tawdry way.

The bottom line? During the last five and a half years, our Representatives and Senators, and their spouses and aides, have taken over 23,000 trips sponsored privately, by corporations and other groups "with business on Capitol Hill". The total value of these trips was some $50 million. Many were to top vacation destinations, and hundreds of these trips cost in excess of $10,000.

Lawmakers are prohibited by law from accepting trips from lobbyists. The trips in question are paid for by non-lobbyists, a practice that remains legal if dubious ethically. What will voters think of these junkets?

I've taken a mind today to compare how our first and our last President respond to the concerns of their religiously minded supporters.

In 1790, while visiting Newport, the new President received a letter bearing good wishes from Moses Seixas, warden of the Hebrew Congregation of Touro Synagogue. George Washington responded to the Congregation in kind. It is a famous exchange; these are widely considered foundation documents of the separation of church and state in the U.S., and more generally of the principle of toleration. My thanks to Hume's Ghost for reminding us of this letter.

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of once class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

That is what our first President thought the new Constitution guaranteed: "there shall be none to make him afraid."

George Bush announced yesterday that he is nominating David H. Laufman to be Inspector General of the Department of Defense. It is a major job even in small times, and for the DoD these are colossal times. So who is this man? The White House provides little more than a skeletal CV:

Mr. Laufman currently serves as Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Prior to this, he served as Chief of Staff for the Office of the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice. Earlier in his career, he served as Investigative Counsel for the House Ethics Committee. Mr. Laufman received his bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his JD from Georgetown University.

You will search in vain for any connection to the military, or any service in an Inspector General's office. Laufman's career as an attorney is neither very long nor particularly distinguished; he has no apparent expertise in contract or military law. Why, then, is he the nominee? I'm puzzled, and not in a good way.

Decoration Day, begun as an occasion to honor our war dead, also became a way to heal a deeply divided nation. Today the U.S. is riven by animosities once again, courtesy of George Bush's duplicitous and divisive policies. Bush had many willing helpers as he set about shattering lives in Iraq, fracturing the military, and trampling upon our laws. Each year brings a new generation of lies, withering and falling like chestnut burrs littering the ground, dangerous under foot.

Those complicit in creating the mess ought to be capable of some gesture on this Memorial Day that would help to heal the bitter divisions and allow the U.S. to face the future undistracted by debates about the past. The question is, what gesture is most needed?

From every perspective, the best way for the complicit to honor those who died in Iraq and to help the nation to recover, is to fess up to what they've been complicit in. What we need as much as anything now are mea culpas from politicians who devised and facilitated this fiasco, and journalists who justified and excused it. It will be essential if we're ever to face up to the crises besetting us.

I don't mean vostra culpas, nostra culpas, or even sua culpas, of the sort that the Richard Cohens and Tom Friedmans have tried to fob off on the world, nor the minime culpas coming out every so often from some conservatives.

The Saviour of Mankind threw his weight behind a Republican candidate for Governor in Florida two years ago, essentially nullifying well in advance both the primary and general election for 2006.

It would not be unusual for a Republican officeholder, such as Katherine Harris, to scheme to fix an election. Yet it does come as a surprise to find that Jesus, normally not associated with this kind of thing, would show his hand so openly.

A reverend [O'Neal Dozier] who introduced Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist during a breakfast with other pastors Monday said the Lord came to him in a dream two years ago and told him Crist would be the state's next governor.

The third part in the NYT series on the security debacle in Iraq, another must read, summarizes the situation as it stands today. It also discusses the outlook for bringing order to Iraq. It is bleak.

I will try to identify the salient points, though in this case the picture is so chaotic that it's a bit of a fool's mission to attempt any summary.

Here's a mark of how bad things are in Iraq now. The earlier installments in the series, parts one and two, had lengthy and detailed introductions summarizing their findings. This part, by contrast, gets to its overview only in a roundabout fashion, and then paints with a very broad brush. I suspect that the reporter, Dexter Filkins, despaired of providing a full summary of exactly how chaotic Iraq has become.

And the problem for a reporter is not just the intense fragmentation of the current Iraqi security structure. It's also that these fragments combine and recombine, and nothing is as it seems, so that a stable picture of the situation is beyond anybody's grasp.

Another trenchant story in tomorrow's Independent by Patrick Cockburn, ruminating on Blair's hasty visit to Iraq today. Blair dashed in to the Green Zone, avoiding as far as possible all the messiness that plagues the real Iraq. He promptly burbled some preposterous but soothing sounds.

Mr Blair said the establishment of a national unity government meant there was no longer any justification for the insurgency. He announced that now at last the "Iraqi people [are] able to take charge of their own destiny and write the next chapter of Iraqi history themselves".

So there. Might as well cut it out now, chaps.

Promoted by Steven D.

The other day I commented on the first in a stunning series of reports in the NYT, by Michael Moss and others, about the debacle in Iraqi policing created by the Bush administration. The second report today practically beggars description.

It details the attempts by British and U.S. forces to train and oversee effective police forces, even while many units that were scraped together hastily became corrupt and then thuggish outfits. The report devotes much attention to Basra, which was supposed to be an isle of calm in Iraq. Now it is an utter mess.