Up until today, one of the arguments against impeaching Bush immediately has been the argument that we can't remove him from office, because the Republicans in Congress won't vote for it.  

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What is the cost of a failed impeachment attempt, or of Congrssional investigations that don't adequately make a case for impeachment?  The Iran/Contra affair offers an example.

Lawrence Walsh, the Independent Counsel for the Iran Contra Affair, wrote

The underlying facts of Iran/contra are that, regardless of criminality, President Reagan, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the director of central intelligence and their necessary assistants committed themselves, however reluctantly, to two programs contrary to congressional policy and contrary to national policy. They skirted the law, some of them broke the law, and almost all of them tried to cover up the President's willful activities.

What happened as a result of Reagan's adventure?

Apparently the guys at TNR weren't amused by the outrage from the CryptoIslamoHateoAmericaoFascistoLeftistBlogosphere: