I don't expect that much from my elected officials. As a small-government conservative, I'm really just looking for our leaders to take care of the big things like defense and security. Turns out, our elected officials are too bogged down with important things like banning online poker (a pet peeve of mine despite the fact that I don't play online) and granting amnesty to millions of people that broke the law to get into this country, to do things like read the National Intelligence Estimate in October of 2002, a document that detailed Iraq's weapons program.

That document was one of the reasons we invaded Iraq yet only six Senators read it. I was in favor of the war in Iraq, based on the information available to the public at the time, and I am still for the war partly because I believe it is irresponsible to support a war and then pull that support when things don't go as planned. But I can't imagine anything more irresponsible than what our elected officials have done here. This is not leadership. They seem to be following public opinion more than the information available to them. Back in 2002, the war in Iraq was very popular with the public and so most elected officials supported it. Today, the war is unpopular and so our leaders are abandoning the effort.

It doesn't matter if you supported the war or if you didn't. It isn't too much to ask of our Senators to read the intelligence available to them before making the decision to go to war. I mean, I realize it will cut into their time to debate the real issues like the Junk Fax Prevention Act of 2005 or the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 but perhaps they can clear their busy schedules and actually do the job Americans pay them to do.

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Karol Sheinin blogs political at Alarming News and blogs poker at I Had Outs. She enjoys meeting right-leaning people in NYC.