NCM,
Pelosi exceeded the level of her authority, and she should be punished for it. Bush has also exceeded his level of authority (partly because Congress somehow thinks they can change the roles defined in the Constitution without actually changing the Constitution), and he should be punished for it as well. Both Congress (DNC and GOP) and Bush have ignored a lot of what the Constitution says - I'm not particularly happy about that.
There are actually 2 ISGs - both are relevant. One is the Iraq Survey Group and the other is the Iraq Study Group. The Iraq Study Group was a bi-partisan commission run by Baker and Hamilton to offer suggestions to the Administration and Congress to try and fix the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Survey Group was a separate military group reporting directly to Rumsfield that was tasked with hunting WMD. Their report is very interesting; it does state that items could have been shipped outside of the country, but there is no evidence that any items actually were shipped. It does say that Iraq could have re-started weapons production if the sanctions were lifted, but that there was no evidence that any production took place during the time that the sanctions were in place. The rest of their report confirms much of what Ritters and Blix's WMD hunts reported.
I find it very interesting that a lot of people continue to state that Hussein had to have WMD, that it had to have been shipped out, and so on, but that no evidence exists to corroborate that. Is this another example of faith-based policies?
You mention the 'Independent Study Group' with an anti Bush agenda - what exactly is that?
Yellowcake is about as dangerous as the radioactive material in X-Ray machines; which is to say that there is a level of danger, but Iraq could make the same dirty bomb with the yellowcake as with medical imaging equipment (which they do have). Processing it is not an easy thing; Iran is refining, and they have thousands of centrifuges and are at the 3-4% enriched level. You need 30% to make a nuke, but the critical mass needed at that low level of refinement is pretty high. Most nukes are around 75-80% enriched. Iran is a long ways away from being able to build their own nuke. Iraq was even more so.
Oh, and the DNC has not become wise - I doubt they ever will. But the majority of the GOP is right there with them.
Steve