1115.org

Remember the Senate Intelligence Committee’s so-called investigation into the possible misuse of pre-war intelligence on Iraq by the Bush administration? The one that kept offering deadlines and promising reports, but that somehow could never manage to get completed?

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the new Democratic chairman of the committee, has come out and pointed the finger squarely at Vice-President Dick Cheney for all the foot-dragging:

Vice President Dick Cheney exerted “constant” pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration’s use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel’s Democratic chairman charged Thursday.

In the 45-minute interview, Rockefeller said that it was “not hearsay” that Cheney, a leading proponent of invading Iraq, pushed Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to drag out the probe of the administration’s use of prewar intelligence.

“It was just constant,” Rockefeller said of Cheney’s alleged interference. He added that he knew that the vice president attended regular policy meetings in which he conveyed White House directions to Republican staffers.

Republicans “just had to go along with the administration,” he said.

In an e-mail response to Rockefeller’s comments, Cheney’s spokeswoman, Lea McBride, said: “The vice president believes Senator Roberts was a good chairman of the Intelligence Committee.”

That, of course, is exactly what Cheney has been saying to Roberts for the last three or four years: “Good chairman! Good chairman! That’s a good chairman now! Good boy!”

Roberts couldn’t restrain himself from putting out a whopper his own. His explanation for the never-ending delays may not be novel, but it’s still striking under the circumstances: the Democrats did it.

Roberts’ chief of staff, Jackie Cottrell, blamed the Democrats for the investigation remaining incomplete more than two years after it began.