Are the Dems getting a backbone? Er ...

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid read this statement on the Senate floor on Tuesday:

"This past weekend, we witnessed the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff and a senior Advisor to President Bush. Libby is the first sitting White House staffer to be indicted in 135 years. This indictment raises very serious charges. It asserts this Administration engaged in actions that both harmed our national security and are morally repugnant. The decision to place U.S. soldiers in harm's way is the most significant responsibility the Constitution invests in the Congress. The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really about: how the Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions.

 "When General Shinseki indicated several hundred thousand troops would be needed in Iraq, his military career came to an end. When then OMB Director Larry Lindsay suggested the cost of this war would approach $200 billion, his career in the Administration came to an end. When U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix challenged conclusions about Saddam's WMD capabilities, the Administration pulled out his inspectors. When Nobel Prize winner and IAEA head Mohammed el-Baradei raised questions about the Administration's claims of Saddam's nuclear capabilities, the Administration attempted to remove him from his post. When Joe Wilson stated that there was no attempt by Saddam to acquire uranium from Niger, the Administration launched a vicious and coordinated campaign to demean and discredit him, going so far as to expose the fact that his wife worked as a CIA agent. This behavior is unacceptable."

It's all very well to go on like this, but the Dems are faced with one and one problem alone: what do they do about Iraq? If they don't come out in favor of an immediate troop withrdrawal, they have nothing to say. Until a leading Democrat says this forcefully, and says he wishes his party would say so, and unless this Democrat starts running for President on a platform of immediate withdrawal, the Democrats are not opposing the Republicans in any significant way.

Question: which Democrat wants to take advantage of this issue, which could easily rally the country behind him or her?


2. Here's what The Nation thinks about MIA Dem spine:
Senate Democrats Show Some Spine -- by John Nichols

Remarkable as it may sound, there is reason to believe that Congressional Democrats may finally be waking from their long slumber and stirring into a functional opposition party.

The United States Senate went back into session Tuesday for the first time since Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted for lying to FBI agents and a federal grand jury looking into whether the White House deliberately set out to destroy the reputation of former Ambassador Joe Wilson after he revealed that the Administration's case for war in Iraq relied on a deliberate misreading of intelligence information. But it was not business as usual. Instead, Democrats used a rare procedural move to force the Republican-controlled Senate into a closed session to discuss the status of a promised investigation into the Administration's use and misuse of intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

With a grave tone that seemed dramatically out of character for dormant Democrats in recent years, Senate minority leader Harry Reid took to the floor of the chamber and declared, "I demand on behalf of the American people that we understand why these investigations aren't being conducted."

Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who has never left any doubt that his loyalty is to the Republican Party and his President rather than to the Republic, immediately accused Reid of attempting to "hijack" the Senate by forcing a discussion about accountability in matters of war and peace. Though he did not appear to recognize the irony in his statement, Frist said of the Democrats, "They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas."

But Reid pressed his point, calling for a closed session to discuss intelligence matters. Under Senate rules, which traditionally respect demands for closed-door sessions on intelligence, Reid's request was granted without a vote.

The galleries of the chamber were cleared of all spectators, and the doors to the Senate were shuttered.

Predictably, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, the former majority leader who is always looking for a camera shot, rushed out to accuse Reid of making "some sort of stink about Scooter Libby and the CIA leak" and derided the Democratic leader for seeking a closed-door session to discuss a matter as inconsequential--in Lott's view--as whether the American people and the Congress were lied to prior to the launch of a war that has left more than 2,000 US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead.

But Reid's mission was far more specific than to raise "some sort of stink about Scooter Libby."

The Senate minority leader and his chief aide, Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, were taking up what has been a long struggle, conducted mostly by antiwar groups such as Progressive Democrats of America: to force Senate Intelligence Committee chair Pat Roberts, of Kansas, to keep his promise to conduct a thorough investigation of whether the Administration distorted intelligence in order to "sell" the war in Iraq.

Frist, Roberts and others huddled Tuesday to figure out a strategy to thwart the demand for the promised inquiry. But Reid's actions have finally focused attention on Roberts's past pledges. And there was serious speculation that the Democrat might force the Intelligence Committee chair to stop stonewalling.

Reid--like his predecessor, Tom Daschle--has rarely been as bold as the times have demanded. And the nation has suffered as a result.

But Tuesday he had mounted a challenge that is appropriate and necessary. As such, he merits the high praise of being referred to not as a Democrat or a Republican but as the leader of the opposition that this country has so sorely needed.

We can only hope that Reid will, by his actions in coming days, seek to retain the title.

(John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than a decade. He is currently the editor of the editorial page of Madison, Wisconsin's Capital Times. Nichols is the author of two books: It's the Media, Stupid and Jews for Buchanan.)