With the Democratic victory in the House and Senate will come a slew of investigations, inquiries, and probably countless hours of testimony about what really happened in relation to just about everything: torture at Guantanamo, fraud and waste in Iraq, how the federal government failed to assist Katrina victims in a timely manner and many many more. And the Republicans' inability to hold the federal government's actions to account will be remembered; see this NYT editorial. However, NYT seems to think they will stay away from investigating how we got to Iraq in the first place.

Democrats are also going to save from certain doom the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (and I have to concede, it is nice that Senator Lieberman is a cosponsor of this bill). The work of this Special Inspector has been so little publicized, enough so that James Baker could contend the other day (see earlier post) that little abuse by the big guys like Halliburton and Bechtel had been found; in fact, the Special Inspector has found abuses and has brought to justice those guilty of bribery and shoddy constructions.