Donkeys were already gone when the barn door closed

Excellent point from the WSWS:

In his speech Tuesday, Reid said that “a cloud now hangs over this administration,” adding, “unfortunately, it must be said that a cloud also hangs over this Republican-controlled Congress for its unwillingness to hold this Republican administration accountable...”

But when the vote was taken to give Bush unfettered power to wage a “war of choice” against Iraq, the Senate was in the hands of the Democrats. How did they hold the administration “accountable?”

Did Reid and other Democratic leaders—who then controlled the Senate Intelligence Committee—press for investigations into the false claims made by Bush, Cheney and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons and posed a “grave and imminent” danger to the US? Neither Reid nor any other leader of his party contemplated such an investigation then, when the Democrats controlled the Senate Intelligence Committee. On the contrary, they echoed these claims.

The WSWS goes on to pop our bubble of hope about Tuesday's shenanigans:

Those looking to the novel parliamentary tactic and verbal pyrotechnics employed by Reid Tuesday afternoon as a sign that the Democratic Party is at last prepared to offer a serious political alternative to the Bush administration are heading for another disappointment.

The struggle to end the war in Iraq and defend democratic rights at home will no more be advanced through the political maneuvers of the Democrats on Capitol Hill than they were in the party’s 2004 election campaign. There is every reason to believe that the sham fight of calling the Senate into closed session was aimed at distracting public attention from the almost certain refusal of the Democrats to wage any real fight against the installation of the arch-reactionary Judge Alito onto the Supreme Court.