According to the San Francisco chronicle [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2007/04/30/EDG3JPH50O1.DTL&type=printable] there was no exit strategy because there is no exit strategy:

There is to be no withdrawal from Iraq, just as there has been no withdrawal from hundreds of places around the world that are outposts of the American empire. As UC San Diego professor emeritus Chalmers Johnson put it, "One of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn't intend to leave."

The United States maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries across the globe. They exist for the purpose of defending the economic interests of the United States, what is euphemistically called "national security." In order to secure favorable access to Iraq's vast reserves of light crude, the United States is spending billions on the construction of at least five large permanent military bases throughout that country.

A new Iraq oil law, largely written by the Coalition Provisional Authority, is planned for ratification by June. This law cedes control of Iraq's oil to western powers for 30 years .

Maybe Bush is not so dumb - maybe he's just really evil.

and was the RFK shooter, in spite of the fact that Sirhan never got closer than 3 feet to Bobby, and there were powder burns on the back of Bobby's head, and there were bullets retrieved than Sirhan's gun could hold.

As for Oswald being the lone assassin and acting alone. . . yeah, right.

Keep doing until he says Uncle!

In Iran Contra, Ollie's conviction for perjury was overturned because allegedly the Special Prosecutor failed to adequately insulate his investigation from contaminating information garnered thru the Iran Contra Congressional Hearings.

It's up to Justice to adequate create a firewall between the two disparate sets of data, and is only meaningful if there is an intent to prosecute Goodling. As attractive as that might be - I don't believe that Justice has the ability to stop the Judiciary Committee from granting Goodling limited immunity and compelling her testimony.

Are they trying to channel the Washington Times?

May morons everywhere forgive me.

Once granted immunity, her choices are testify or pack a toothbrush and head for Club Fed. As I recall, Susan McDougall was willing to do 18 months for refusing to testify in Whitewater. My guess is Monica Goodling doesn't have the cojones McDougall did.

Ah - Whitewater. America was a simpler kinder place then; I'm nostalgic for quaint scandals involving double-wides and mixing oral sex and pizza. In retrospect, the Clinton presidency has the air of a slightly-naughty PJ party; Bush's presidency is more like Nightmare on Elm Street.

The formalized confedreation of the 5 or 6 nations also contributed to the structure and thinking of the Constitution.

she can still be prosecuted for any criminal acts she committed.

The use immunity statute (18 U.S.C. § 6002) allows the government to prosecute witnesses using evidence obtained independently of the witness's immunized testimony. § 6002 provides:

[N]o testimony or other information compelled under the order (or any information directly or indirectly derived from such testimony or other information) may be used against the witness in any criminal case, except a prosecution for perjury, giving a false statement, or otherwise failing to comply with the order.

In Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441 (1972)the Supreme Court upheld the statute, recognizing the prohibition against the government's derivative use of immunized testimony in a prosecution of the witness, and in Murphy v. Waterfront Commission, 378 U.S. 52 (1964) held the government has the burden to establish that its evidence is based on independent, legitimate sources:

This burden of proof, which we affirm as appropriate, is not limited to a negation of taint; rather, it imposes on the prosecution the affirmative duty to prove that the evidence it proposes to use is derived from a legitimate source wholly independent of the compelled testimony.

The KC Star has been reporting this story for some time, and there is one delicious kink in it that must be emphasized. Todd Graves was a sitting US Attorney in the State of Missouri.

Matt Blunt (son of DeLay flunky Roy Blunt), as newly elected governor of Missouri, had the power to award highly lucrative auto license bureaus to supporters as political spoils, so he - get this - gave a license bureau worth $2.5 million dollars to Todd Graves' wife.

I'm sorry - can it possibly be ethical to give a multi-million dollar gift to the wife of a sitting US Attorney???

Say it ain't so, Joe!

So, when it came time to investigate Matt Blunt's handling of the license bureaus, Todd Graves had to recuse himself, and the job was given to Bud Cummins down in Arkansas, which was one of the reasons he was replaced, as he was sniffing around the Blunt family finances - a very smelly proposition indeed.

My question remains: How can it be legal for a state elected offical to give a multi-million dollar gift to the wife of a US Attorney whose purview includes the state in which the elected offical serves??

Can anyone answer this question?????

Because the law and justice require it.

The biggest mistakes made in the Watergate debacle were

#1 to allow Nixon to resign before he could be impeached; and

#2 the failure to impeach Ford when he pardoned Nixon.

Had Richard Milhous Nixon died a broken man in prison, instead of ensconced atop the palisade above the beach at El Casa Pacifica (the House of Peace) in San Clemente, perhaps the criminals Bush and Cheney would have been less likely to suppose their crimes could and would go unpunished.

If Bush and Cheney are allowed to slink, skulk or slither into comfortable retirement, it will be an inducement to further generations to repeat their crimes and excesses.

In short - a single word answers WHY?

DETERRENCE.

how about you shut the fuck up about what Congress ought to do and answer the fucking questions before you?

The arrogance of this piss-ant flunky of Dubbya's is quite beyond the Pale.