I have never spoken to Speaker Pelosi nor anyone on her staff, so I can only surmise what was in her mind regarding impeachment when she took the gavel. Recall that the Senate had a working majorit on paper only, that Turncoat Lieberman was a solid champion of the Bush foreign policy, and that Senator McConnell could run parliamentary rings around Harry Reid in his sleep on a bad day. So no freakin' way George Bush was going to be impeached. Not even clear that an impeachment trial ever would have been scheduled.

In that context, Speaker Pelosi is looking at a fractious process to get articles of impeachment through committee, much less past the full House. And reaching a majority at either committee level or full House level would have been possible only if House members in uncertain districts were "forced" to vote "aye". We often criticize for failure to take a long term view of things.

IMHO, Speaker Pelosi looked at the minimal, if any, gain that would arise from impeaching but not convicting the President, compared that to the maximum loss if House members had to vote yea or nay on the matter (loss of the House to the GOP in the 2008 election) and concluded that the risk was not worth taking, in light of the inability to actually remove his butt from the chair.

Symbolic victory is nice for the tombstone but not much use in daily life.

I recall some reports our of the General Accounting Office, or whatever the heck they call it now, on things like body armor, humvee armor, strategy, contractors, etc., but nothing explicitly regarding the behavior of senior administrators. That will come out but it will be after the change in January.

"The white men were as thick and numerous and aimless as grasshoppers, moving always in a hurry but never seeming to get to whatever place it was they were going to." Dee Brown