Is Congress AWOL on Iraq?

Is the Congress today doing its job with respect to the continuing war in Iraq? This is now more than ever an appropriate question for Americans to begin to ask.

The Congress is, of course, vested by the Constitution with certain responsibilities of oversight. Its members, as representatives of the people, are expected to ask the difficult questions. They are expected to ensure the proper working of the government. They are expected, to as great an extent as is possible, to make the government responsive to the people. In the eyes of a great many Americans, it is not a stretch to suggest they are expected to protect us and our institutions. This role for the Congress has by now become entrenched, and the members of Congress take it very seriously and do not allow partisanship to play a role. Right?

One way to judge whether or not Congress is doing its job today is to look back on a similar set of circumstances in history and to compare the two.

Although many writers have suggested parallels between the events now unfolding in Iraq and those which unfolded in Vietnam all those years ago, few if any have compared the role of the Congress in both. This is a bit odd since it was the Congress, after all, that initially began to question American policy in Vietnam and, once latched on, doggedly pursued the administration of Lyndon Johnson and exposed the terribly costly and ineffective U.S. efforts there.

Prior to the election of 1964, Democrats in Congress were reluctant to criticize Johnson for fear of hurting his chances at getting elected in his own right. Congressional voices critical of the war in Vietnam remain limited to just a few such as outspoken Senators Wayne Morse (D-Or.) and Ernest Gruening (D-Ak.). Following 1964, and particularly following the major escalation in Vietnam that came in 1965, congressional leaders, Democrats as well as Republicans, became increasingly vocal and willing to cross paths with the domineering Texan over issues considered of grave importance to the nation.

Committees and subcommittees from both houses of the Congress launched a dizzying array of investigations into every aspect of American involvement there. In 1965, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) began an ongoing series of investigations into the war’s generation of large numbers of refugees and concluded that the problem critically undermined the ability of the United States to create an independent South Vietnam that could survive a withdrawal of American aid and military support. Senator Mike Mansfield (D-Montana) continued issuing his somewhat famous “reports” on the situation in Vietnam begun a decade earlier. As the situation worsened, the tone of these reports became more and more forlorn and acerbic. The Senate’s Committee on Government Operations launched its own investigation into improper practices within the aid program, turning up alarming corruption and waste. In the opening days of 1966, even such cold war stalwarts as J. William Fulbright (D-Arkansas), also a close friend of President Johnson, conducted highly visible hearings into administration policy in Vietnam. Such moves were not without personal and political risk; Fulbright and Johnson split over this episode.

In the House of Representatives too, various bipartisan committees fulfilled their oversight responsibilities. The Committee on Armed Services investigated and held hearings on the situation in Vietnam and issued reports of its findings in both 1965 and 1966. The Committee on Government Operations launched the first comprehensive review of every aspect of U.S. policy in Vietnam. In 1966, its members, which included Representatives Donald Rumsfeld (R-Illinois) and Robert Dole (R-Kansas), went to Vietnam and conducted one of the most thorough-going investigations to date and found alarming levels of corruption, waste and mismanagement among and within the U.S. mission.

Collectively, these investigations, reports and hearings exposed a great many shortcomings the administration would rather have kept hidden. In exposing them, the Congress became, if reluctantly, the only force able to move the administration in any direction. At the very least, administration officials were compelled to respond to growing criticism and to mounting evidence which flatly contradicted the rosy reports from the White House.

Are similar investigations being conducted today on the on-going, open-ended and increasingly costly war in Iraq?

Just last week, C-Span carried “A Oversight Hearing on Waste, Fraud and Abuse in U.S. Government Contracting in Iraq.” Present were Iraq watchdog Representative Henry Waxman (D-California) and Senators Byron L. Dorgan (D-North Dakota) and Harry Reid (D-Nevada). They listened to alarming testimony from former employees at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, an attorney representing a group of whistleblowers, and a witness from the group Taxpayers for Common Sense. They described incredible episodes of kickbacks, bribes, deception, waste and profiteering. As far as congressional oversight went, all seemed well.

That committee, the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, is, however, an unofficial committee whose responsibilities lie elsewhere. There were no Republicans present, nor were there any administration witnesses at the table.

The fact is that the committees of jurisdiction have so far refused to conduct proper investigations because they might shed some unfavorable light on the administration’s debacle in Iraq. While several congressional committees have conducted investigations into the much more politically useful oil-for-food program scandal, not a single hearing has been held to examine the mismanagement, corruption and allegations of outright fraud of its successor, the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), an entity the U.S. government has invested with billions of taxpayer dollars and also controls. Those involved charge the DFI has misappropriated many millions and there is little or no oversight or record keeping. The majority-controlled congressional committees have so far refused to conduct legitimate hearings that would give these matters the proper venue and the proper visibility.

These trends seem likely to continue. Bush administration officials are increasingly bold in their refusal to submit to the Congress. A few days following the above ad-hoc hearings, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refused to give details, refused to answer questions and abruptly collected his papers and left hearings before the House Armed Service Committee.

Is the political climate in the nation today more partisan and divided than even during the Vietnam era? It would seem so. If the majority party in Congress willfully ignores the constitutional responsibilities of that body, are we also headed toward even greater disaster than in that earlier example?