Democratic Leadership: Start Revving Up the Moral Indignation

Democratic Leadership,

As we approach the precipice of the outcome in the CIA identity leak investigation, it's time to start planning around positioning your party around the fallout.

No matter what the outcome of the investigation, don't get sucked into the details. You must broaden the picture for Americans, otherwise this hearing could end up deflecting the real problems onto a few White House staffers. As you know, this problem is much deeper and problematic than Scooter Libby and Karl Rove.

This is about an administration that would do just about anything - including terrorize Americans with false information about a Saddam nuclear threat - to go to war with Iraq.

As details of the CIA leak investigation continue to be reported, Americans have started hearing that this administration was hell-bent in finding evidence to support their already-determined mission to unseat Saddam Hussein. This could be seen as an insurgency within our own government. This administration acted like an insurgency when it "went to war" with the CIA, ignored terror experts like Richard Clarke, did not heed the expert advice of then Secretary of State Colin Powell, and worse, intentionally fed Powell bad information to reveal at the U.N. hearings about justifying the war.

This approach to running our government is abhorrent and immoral. It is this morally-guided belief that should be the context for all discussions around the CIA leak investigation.

Don't let any indictments drag you into a legalistic or process debate with Republicans. Stay above the fray, and use any indictments -- and the suspicious acts they allege -- as supporting the case for a larger moral indignation that should be igniting across this country around how this administration has conducted itself at our expense.

Lead in the charge that we need to bring morality back to Washington D.C.