Why is Congress becoming more involved in the Downing Street Memos?

Josh Marshall presents a really interesting comment from the Nelson Report. Here is a part of his comment that really interests me:

We can report, not as a partisan, but as an observer who happened to be working for a Congressman deeply involved in the Pentagon Papers fight of 1971, that old hands note eerie similarities to the start-up process of questions raised, and the potential for Congress to become more seriously involved.

He also suggests that Congress is in the process of getting more involved in the following questions:

DOD Secretary Rumsfeld’s pre-positioning of thousands of troops and large stores of equipment, months before the final decision was made; the top-level White House involvement in the “torture memo” process that led directly to the international humiliation of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, despite internal warnings from then-Secretary of State Powell and Deputy Secretary Armitage.

Since this administration is so clearly incompetent at running government, these are all very significant questions. The secrecy, lies and unresponsiveness to media questions they have not planted themselves are all symptoms of that incompetence and their recognition that they are aware many strongly disagree with them.

The members of the administration and their allies naturally believe (like most psychopaths) that anyone who disagrees with them must be wrong. Since they are worng, they are using those disagreements as political weapons. That makes those disagreeing people nothing more than enemies, not honorable opponents. The Bush people and conservatives are so certain that they recognize all truth that they cannot admit to being wrong.

The Republican leaders of Congress are not yet ready to give up the power they have with party control of both major branches of government, so they are putting up with the administration's incompetence. But the failure of the war in Iraq, its obvious lack of connection with the so-called War on Terror, and the stalling of the President's Social Security initiative all lead the more intelligent members of Congress to questioning whether the U.S. can really afford another three plus years of this incompetence.

This administrations' only defenses against these questions are tactical politics and administrative efforts to conceal the worst of the mistakes they have made. Reagan faced a similar crisis with Iraq-gate and the arms-for-hostages mess in the last two years of his second term, but Congress did not have to face an election before Reagan left office. They could let the problems ride. Besides, it was the Democrats who controlled Congress then, so they were distanced from the problems.

A Republican-controlled Congress that has to face the electorate in 2006 may not be able to face just letting the Bush administration drift to ignominiousius end the way the Reagan administration did.

Since the Bush administration has the habit of getting really nasty when it is pushed to the wall, this next sixteen months is likely to get really, really harsh.