[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 82 (Thursday, June 5, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7462-S7464]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IN IRAQ

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I am going to take two literary allusions 
and put them together as the background for the points I wish to make. 
The first one is a novel that has become a worldwide classic called 
``1984,'' written by George Orwell. You may recall that in this 
particular novel, George Orwell describes a terrifying future. And the 
principal character in his novel, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry 
of Truth.
  His job at the Ministry of Truth is to go back over old newspapers 
and clip out things that contradict the current party line and send 
those down the memory hole; in other words, destroy them, so that if 
someone comes along and tries to determine whether there is any past 
support for the present position, the past has been scrubbed to the 
point where everything there agrees with the present position. Anything 
that was said previously that disagrees with the present position of 
Big Brother, the figure that controls the world in the novel, has been 
sent down the memory hole. It has been destroyed.
  Keep that in mind as I take another literary allusion. This is an 
exact quote from Ben Bradlee, formerly editor of the Washington Post 
and one of

[[Page S7463]]

the great journalists of our time who said:

       Journalism is the first rough draft of history.

  I cite those two because I want to put them together in the debate 
that has occurred on the floor and even more so that is going on out in 
the world of the media--the debate about whether we had proper 
justification for going into Iraq. We are being told over and over 
again that the world was lied to, the American people were lied to, the 
Congress was lied to because we were told that Saddam Hussein had 
weapons of mass destruction. And since we haven't found any, that means 
we were deceived at the very beginning when the justification was given 
to us by the Bush administration to move ahead with respect to the 
operation in Iraq.
  I submit to you, those who make that argument have tried to 
reconstruct their own memory holes. They have tried to take past 
information and scrub it from the record and pretend it was never 
there. In other words, to go back to Ben Bradlee's comment that 
``journalism is the first rough draft of history,'' they are prepared, 
even this quickly after the journalists have reported what was said, to 
try to change the first draft of history and create, virtually 
overnight, a new history that never existed.
  Well, my memory hole has not been used. I have not scrubbed from my 
memory a series of statements and comments that have been made prior to 
Iraq. And I intend to go through those comments here tonight to make it 
clear that those who claim that the President misled the Congress, the 
people, and the rest of the world with respect to his reasons for going 
into Iraq are, in fact, trying to rewrite history.
  The record is very clear. It is very firm. And unless Winston Smith 
is suddenly somehow materialized to change history, the record stands 
in firm denunciation of those who are now attacking the President on 
this issue.
  Let's go back to the question of weapons of mass destruction. I 
remember going to S-407 in this building, the room on the fourth floor 
where we go to receive confidential, highly classified briefings from 
administration officials. I remember sitting there and listening to 
Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State, outline for us in detail the 
reasons we had to attack Iraq. President Clinton, who appointed her 
Secretary of State, was even more pointed in his public statements of 
the fact that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. In the 
President's phrase, ``Saddam Hussein will surely use them.'' We needed, 
according to the President and the Secretary of State, to move ahead 
militarily in Iraq.
  I remember walking out of that meeting in S-407 convinced that the 
bombs would start falling within days. As it turned out, the 
administration changed its mind and moved away from that particular 
decision. They backed off. But they never backed off their statement 
that weapons of mass destruction were there, that weapons of mass 
destruction would be used, and that Saddam Hussein could not be trusted 
long term with weapons of mass destruction.
  Vice President Gore--however much he has attacked this administration 
and its positions--has nonetheless stated on the record his firm belief 
that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I think it is 
clear that if President Bush were involved in some kind of sleight of 
hand to pretend that weapons were there when they were not, and create 
some sort of conspiracy among the members of his administration to 
peddle this false notion, former Vice President Gore would not be part 
of that conspiracy. As Vice President, he saw the intelligence 
briefings. He was in a position to evaluate how accurate they were, and 
Vice President Gore has said publicly on the record, speaking of Saddam 
Hussein on September 23:

       We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological 
     and chemical weapons throughout his country.

  One of the men in Iraq who worked with Saddam Hussein in creating 
those weapons had a piece in the Wall Street Journal where he made this 
statement: ``Inspectors will never find them.'' Also, he pointed out 
that the artillery shells that had been found by the inspectors that 
were hollow were, in fact, a demonstration of the fact that there were 
weapons of mass destruction--that is, chemical and biological weapons--
because when the inspectors said, oh, there is no problem here, the 
warheads are hollow and there is nothing there, this man who worked in 
Iraq to create these weapons said, of course, they are hollow; the 
weapons are not put into the artillery shells until just before they 
are to be used. The artillery shells are prepared for weapons of mass 
destruction--for chemical or biological weapons--and then stored 
hollow.
  So instead of saying that the discovery of these weapons proves they 
don't have chemical or biological capability, in fact, the reverse is 
actually true. We do not have a storehouse in the American military of 
hollow artillery shells because we don't use chemical weapons. The 
Iraqis have hollow shells because they expect to put chemical agents in 
those shells. All of this is part of the record and was available prior 
to the current debate of those who just want to look back and find it.
  Senator Bob Graham, who used to be chairman of the Intelligence 
Committee when all of this intelligence was being developed, and is 
still the ranking member of that committee, had this to say when Colin 
Powell went before the United Nations and laid out the case:

       I applaud Secretary Powell for finally making available to 
     the world the information on which this administration will 
     base its actions in Iraq. . . . In my judgment, the most 
     significant information was the confirmation of a linkage 
     between the shadowy networks of international terrorists and 
     Saddam Hussein, the true coalition of evil.

  All of this information was available to all these individuals prior 
to the time we went into Iraq, and all of them were satisfied that it 
was sound information. All of them were satisfied that it was real. And 
now the press is pretending that nobody--nobody--believed there were 
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq except the Bush administration, and 
that everybody simply took the Bush administration at its word and now 
is being betrayed by the facts because we have not found enough of it 
to satisfy them; we have only found hollow artillery shells; we have 
only found chemicals that could be used for pesticides.
  I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of just how many pesticides 
Iraqi agriculture requires. Looking at the stores of chemicals they 
have found, chemicals that have dual use--yes, they could be pesticides 
or they could be a component part of a chemical weapon. Look at the 
quantities we have found and ask yourself: Do the Iraqis really need 
this much for pesticides? Or do they have another purpose?
  We have not yet found Saddam Hussein. As Kit Bond said today at 
lunch, if we don't ever find Saddam Hussein, is that proof of the fact 
that he doesn't exist? If we don't find him, will that be evidence that 
the Bush administration made him up? If we don't find him, is that 
proof that he never was in Iraq? That same kind of reasoning is being 
applied here. We have not found all of the weapons of mass destruction 
that all of the critics would like to have as proof of their position, 
so our failure to have done that so far is, in their logic, proof that 
these weapons never existed or proof that they were never in Iraq.
  I think Senator Bond's question is a legitimate one. If we don't find 
Saddam Hussein, does that mean he never existed or he was never in 
Iraq? Of course not. It means something happened. Either we killed him 
the first night with that first strike and his remains have been 
removed by the SSO--his central group of key supporters--so that his 
body will never be found or he has left the country or he was killed 
somewhere else. But we know he was there. Everybody knew he was there, 
and our failure to find him now does not mean he was not there when the 
attack began. Quite the contrary. Everybody is satisfied he was there.
  The same thing applies to the weapons of mass destruction. As I have 
demonstrated, starting with President Clinton, we have known they were 
there, we have known they had them. If we cannot find them all, that 
means either they were destroyed by us or by the Iraqis or they have 
been moved somewhere. It doesn't mean they never existed. The evidence 
that they existed cannot go down the memory hole just to make the 
present arguments sound more convincing.

[[Page S7464]]

  I read a commentator who quoted Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, in what 
the commentator thought was a damning admission on this story, when he 
said:

       Yes, we had other reasons for going into Iraq, but we 
     stressed weapons of mass destruction because that was the one 
     everybody was focused on.

  According to the commentator, that is a damning admission on the part 
of the Secretary that we had other motives, and that is part of the 
attack that is being mounted on the floor, that the Bush administration 
was duplicitous: They told us they were going after weapons of mass 
destruction, but they had other motives. And here, Secretary Wolfowitz 
has admitted it; a smoking gun.

  Back to my memory. I remember very clearly that the Bush 
administration openly and directly said they had other motives. Let me 
go down them as I remember them.
  Weapons of mass destruction--there are many countries that have 
weapons of mass destruction. If we were to go after the country in the 
world, other than ourselves, that has the highest stock of weapons of 
mass destruction, we would go after Russia. Why don't we? Because 
weapons of mass destruction alone are by no means justification for 
attacking another nation. They must be tied to other motives. This is 
what I am sure Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz was talking about.
  Right now President Putin and President Bush have a good 
relationship. Russia and the United States have a trusting 
relationship. Why should we attack Russia just because it has weapons 
of mass destruction when that relationship exists?
  Iraq was ruled by a tyrant, and not just your everyday tyrant but a 
brutal, bloody tyrant who had demonstrated that he not only possessed 
weapons of mass destruction, he was willing to use weapons of mass 
destruction and has done so--the only person in the world whose 
government has employed weapons of mass destruction against anyone 
else--in this case it was his own people--in the last half century. So, 
yes, there are other motives besides possessing weapons of mass 
destruction. They are the man's personality and his history.
  We are not just interested in nations that have WMD. We are 
interested in brutal tyrants who will use weapons of mass destruction.
  Next, Iraq was clearly a crossroads of terrorist activity. That is 
what Senator Graham referred to, not just al-Qaida. Iraq was one of the 
principal financial supporters of the terrorist suicide bombings in 
Palestine. They offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who would kill 
himself as long as he took a few Jews with him. How many tyrants around 
the world are willing to harbor terrorists and support terrorists? The 
list gets a little smaller.
  North Korea has weapons of mass destruction. North Korea is ruled by 
a brutal tyrant. But North Korea has not invaded any of its neighbors 
for half a century, and North Korea is not a haven for al-Qaida, Hamas, 
Hezbollah, and the other terrorist organizations. We are closing down 
here on the other motives.
  Attacking your neighbors. Saddam Hussein has attacked his neighbors 
twice in the last dozen years, set off two major wars, and is 
responsible for killing more Muslims than any other person on the 
planet.
  The other motives that the Bush administration had in dealing with 
Iraq were the totality of the situation. Yes, they wanted to deal with 
WMD. Yes, they wanted to deal with a tyrant who was brutalizing his own 
people. Yes, they wanted to deal with terrorism. And, yes, they wanted 
to deal with somebody who was threatening his neighbors. If you take 
that criteria and apply it to all the countries in the world, you come 
up with only one that qualifies on every count.
  It was not the single issue that current commentators and candidates, 
pundits and pollsters are talking about that prompted President Bush to 
give the order to go ahead in Iraq. It is a distortion of history to 
hammer again and again on the fraud that says only weapons of mass 
destruction drove us to go into Iraq, and it is our failure to find 
weapons of mass destruction in this time period in Iraq that 
demonstrates we were wrong.

  Nobody has gone to the last part of that sentence. Nobody has said 
yet that we were wrong to have taken out Saddam Hussein. They come 
close to that in their attack on the President. They say he lied. They 
say he manipulated. They say he distorted. But they cannot quite bring 
themselves to say we were wrong to have done it, and no one will say 
the world would have been a better place if we had not. Why? Because we 
have discovered some other things we did not know.
  If you are going to talk about intelligence failures, our 
intelligence community did not know until we got into Iraq about the 
mass graves. We did not know about the prisons holding children who 
were put in there as young as 4 and 5 years of age and have been there 
for 5 years or more.
  We did not know the details of the brutality of this man. We did not 
know that he treated his own population, those who were hostile to him 
or, indeed, simply suspect in his eyes, as brutally as Adolf Hitler 
treated the Jews in World War II in Germany. We did not know that. We 
have discovered that now. So no one will quite go to the point of 
saying we made a mistake, that Bush did the wrong thing.
  One commentator closed his attack on the Bush administration with 
this interesting quibble, in my view. He said: It was the right war but 
it was fought for the wrong reason. I find it very difficult to 
reconcile those two. If it was the right war and has achieved the right 
result, it was the right thing to have done, and it was the right thing 
to have done for all of the reasons that people who hate this 
administration are now conveniently forgetting all of the historical 
buildup to this that has gone down the memory hole that people are now 
conveniently saying never happened.
  This is a historic Chamber, and it has seen all kinds of debates, 
high and low. It has seen all standards of rhetoric, good and bad, and, 
yes, if I may, true and false. There has been a call for the rafters 
here to be ringing in a discussion of the Iraqi war and America's 
activity. I wanted to answer that call and do what I can to see that 
the rafters are ringing with the truth; that the rafters are ringing 
with real history, not invented history; that the rafters are ringing 
with a recognition that what the Bush administration has done in Iraq 
was the right thing to have done; it was based on sound and careful 
analysis that ran over two administrations; that was vetted thoroughly 
with our allies abroad, bringing Great Britain, Australia, Poland, and 
others, into the fight, and the result has demonstrated that the world 
is a safer place.
  The Iraqi people live in a safer society, and the prospects for the 
future are better than would have been the case if we had gone to the 
brink, as President Clinton did, and then changed our minds. President 
Clinton thought the evidence was overwhelming but decided not to act. 
President Bush thought the evidence was overwhelming and did act, and 
the rafters should ring with at least one speech that applauds that 
decision and that level of leadership.
  I say to my colleagues, I say to the country, I say to my 
constituents, I believe the history is there that justifies the 
decision, and I believe the evidence is there after the fact that more 
than justifies the decision.
  In this case, America and her President can stand proud before the 
world as having done the right thing for the right reason.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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