Why isn't Congress acting on the Iraq crisis?

Why is Congress playing politics instead of requesting an updated National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq?

Iraq is out of control and in a civil war. Almost a thousand Iraqi's are dying each week. The last NIE was done in 2004. "The NIE is a crucial document . . . that tells you how to tweak your policy," a former CIA officer said. "That's hard to do if you don't want to look at it."

"...senior figures at the CIA, along with a number of Iraq analysts, have been pushing to produce a new NIE. They've been stonewalled, however, by John Negroponte, the {Bush] administration's Director of National Intelligence, who knows that any honest take on the situation would produce an NIE even more pessimistic than the 2004 version. That could create problems on the Hill and, if it is leaked as the last one was, with the public as well."

Another CIA source stated that Negroponte, "doesn't want the president to have to deal with [the potential impact of a pessimistic assessment]....[The administration] can call it whatever they want," said a former CIA officer. "There's a civil war going on in Iraq."

Meanwhile our troops in Iraq don't have the option of NOT dealing.

Why doesn't Congress have to deal with it? We already know Bush isn't. What plan? heh heh....I imagine Bush laughing and looking for the plans as he once joked with the press and looked for imaginary WMD's.

It's disgusting that we must push Congress to get on the job. Our troops are waiting.