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If Only Saddam
Had Injected HGH
By Scott Ritter
17/02/08 "Antiwar"
-- -- The recent spectacle of Congressional hearings on the
alleged use of steroids and/or Human Growth Hormone (HGH) by
Roger Clemons, a professional baseball player nicknamed "the
Rocket," throws into question the viability and functionality of
a Congress controlled by the Democratic Party. The House
Government Reform Committee, chaired by Representative Henry
Waxman (D-California), carried out its own made-for-television
version of Court TV, grilling the All Star pitcher and his
former trainer over their contradictory statements as to whether
or not Clemons actually was injected with a banned performance
enhancing substance. While this hearing was underway, thousands
of miles away, in Iraq , American service members continued the
ugly business of occupying Iraq . That Waxman would abuse his
position by pursuing such trivia while Americans continued to
fight and die in a war built exclusively on a framework of lies
is disturbing.
True, Henry Waxman has chaired numerous hearings, and issued
even more statements, which have resulted in several
embarrassing questions being asked by the Government Reform
Committee of a recalcitrant White House. But none of Henry
Waxman's efforts have produced the high drama of the Clemons
hearings, where every word was wrestled with, every context
explored. Forensic data was introduced. Reputations were (and
are) on the line. The consequences are potentially grave:
perjury charges could be brought forward against Clemons and
others. What was the source of this commotion? Simply put, a few
syringes and a game. Baseball might be the national pastime,
perhaps, but it remains a game nonetheless. War is all-too real,
and the war in Iraq has cost nearly 4,000 Americans their lives,
while wounding tens of thousands more, while killing and
wounding hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
At the same time Henry Waxman's committee was grilling the Cy
Young award-winning pitcher, the House Foreign Affairs Committee
was holding hearings of its own, on the issue of Iraq. Another
Democrat, Representative Robert Wexler (D-Florida), raised the
matter of findings from a report issued by the Center for Public
Integrity, issued last month, that document some 935 allegations
of false statements made by the Bush administration in the lead
up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Of particular interest to
Wexler were 56 of those allegedly false statements attributed to
the witness seated before the committee, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, who had served as the National Security
Advisor in the period of time when the alleged false statements
were made.
To his credit, Representative Wexler pressed home his point,
namely that Condi Rice had lied when she helped make the case
for war against Iraq by selectively citing certain intelligence
information while suppressing others. Secretary Rice, of course,
denied any wrongdoing, leaving America with a curt
point-counterpoint exchange which served little purpose when it
comes to the matter of the search for truth and accountability
through oversight. When Roger Clemons denied the charges leveled
at him, the robust overseers of Congressional Constitutional
mandate who populate the Government Reform Committee subjected
him to a withering round of cross-examination full of
recrimination and doubt. Following Wexler's brief moment of
inquiry, Condi Rice was let off without further reproach.
Clearly there are discrepancies between the charges leveled by
Wexler and the responses offered by Rice. That the compendium of
alleged false statements comes from an independent,
non-governmental entity (the Center for Public Integrity) should
not serve as a roadblock to further investigation and hearings
into the matter: the Government Reform Committee was acting in
response to an independent investigation, the Mitchell Report,
authorized not by Congress, but rather the Commissioner of
Baseball. Unlike the Mitchell Report, however, the matter of
Bush administration prevarication concerning the false case made
for war in Iraq delves not into the lives of private citizens,
where the consequences get no bigger than inflated sports
statistics, but rather the words and actions of elected
officials which influenced public opinion and the will of
Congress in a manner which has cost hundreds of billions of
dollars and several thousand American lives.
Congress shouldn't have to wait for a private organization like
the Center for Public Integrity to do its job for it. The
misrepresentation of fact, fabrication of falsehoods, and
outright lies the Center for Public Integrity documents are all
a matter of public record, most of which were derived from
statements made before Congress itself.
That Congress puts the so-called integrity of a game ahead of
its own Constitutional mandate of oversight of legitimate
governance is a travesty. That this travesty is carried out in
the face of a pledge by a Democratic-controlled Congress to
effectively and responsibly carry out its duty to investigate
how and why our nation went to war with Iraq is not only
incomprehensible, but reprehensible.
Perhaps if Saddam Hussein had been accused of injecting HGH
instead of hiding WMD, Congress would have stepped up to the
plate, so to speak, and dug deep into the truth of the matter.
Henry Waxman, as well meaning as he is, sits at the head of a
legislative process which has lost touch with reality and
purpose. Pandering to the no-risk approach of non-governance by
pursuing "The Rocket" and allegations of HGH abuse, while
ignoring the high-risk demands of legitimate government by
pursuing matters pertaining to how the Bush administration
manufactured evidence of illusory Iraqi rockets tipped with
imagined WMD, represents the ultimate indictment of a Congress,
and legislative process, that long ago lost touch with its
ultimate purpose of being: the pursuit of the best interests of
the American people through the defense of the rule of law as
set forth by the United States Constitution.
Scott Ritter is a former
UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq and the author of
Target Iran: The Truth Behind the White House's Plans for Regime
Change (Nation Books, 2006).
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