OOPS! Leach (R) Joins Downing St. Memo Wave
Potomac Fever: Leach joins Democrats in backing memo bill
By JANE NORMAN
REGISTER WASHINGTON BUREAU
August 28, 2005
Count on Rep. Jim Leach. He's going to make waves again as, apparently, the first Republican to sign on to a House resolution demanding disclosure of administration documents related to what's known as the Downing Street memos.
Aides to the Iowa City Republican on Friday confirmed an announcement posted on an anti-war Web site, www. afterdowningstreet.org, saying that Leach will become a co-sponsor of House Resolution 375, authored by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
The resolution, which as of Friday had 39 Democratic co-sponsors, requests that President Bush and the secretary of state send to the House all information in their possession relating to communications with the United Kingdom between Jan. 1, 2002, and Oct. 16, 2002, in connection with Iraq.
This includes telephone and e-mail records, logs, calenders, minutes and memos.
Lee said in a July 21 statement that she wants answers to questions raised by the release of classified British memos. The leaked memos, written by aides to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, deal with the decision to invade Iraq, and have become a rallying point for those opposed to the war.
"These documents offer strong evidence that the Bush administration 'fixed' intelligence in order to mislead our country into war, evidence the administration has failed to dispute or answer," Lee said.
At a town hall meeting in July in Oakland, Calif., Lee said, "We knew all along that the president was misleading and lying to the American people about why he wanted to go to war," according to the Contra Costa Times. "We all have a right to know. . . . We're going to force them to answer the questions by any means necessary."
Both Bush and Blair, in a joint news conference earlier this summer, denied trying to "fix" the intelligence leading up to the war.
"No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all," Blair said. "And let me remind you that that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations."
The resolution has been dispatched to the House International Relations Committee, of which Leach is a senior Republican member. There has been some thought that he might become chairman, although there are several candidates likely to compete for the post.
It seems rather unnecessary to add that Republican leadership might not be particularly impressed that Leach is allying himself with a congresswoman who accuses the president of lying about the war.
Nonetheless, Leach goes his own way. There are Democrats who grumble and moan every time his name comes up, as they long for a true-to-the-cause Democratic member from his Democratic-leaning district. But that will be minor compared to the unhappiness this latest move may stir among Iowa members of the GOP.
Quote of the week: "I think I'd have to think about that. . . . I probably would lean toward some of the others. Let me just put it that way." - Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., when asked whether his successor, Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has the "character" to be president, on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Erectile dysfunction update: Sen. Charles Grassley unblushingly continues a strong interest in this area. Grassley on Wednesday wrote to Lester Crawford, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, demanding better disclosure to consumers of the blindness risk associated with erectile dysfunction prescription drugs.
Grassley said he asked Crawford in June to describe in detail any actions that will be taken to ensure that patients who take erectile dysfunction drugs are warned about possible vision loss. The agency said a notice was posted on the FDA Web site and e-mailed to 50,000 people who subscribe to a safety information reporting program.
However, prescriptions for Viagra and similar drugs totaled more than 18 million in 2004, so millions of men remain "in the dark," Grassley said, no pun intended. It's also likely that many men who use the drugs have not followed up with physicians and gotten word from them because the drugs are used on an as-needed basis, he said.
On this, it seems, Grassley once again is looking out for the old folks, particularly the more frisky ones.
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