[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 125 (Thursday, September 11, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11406-S11408]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TELLING US THE TRUTH

  Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, September 11, 2001, was a day of infamy 
that will rank down with the very worst, most cowardly and vile actions 
ever taken against this Nation or any other nation on this planet, a 
sneak attack, murdering thousands--innocent children, women, and men--
with no provocation, no forewarning, with no justification or rational 
reason, just the demented ravings and rantings of a fanatic who has 
perverted the principal teachings of his professed faith, of its 
greatest prophet, Mohammad. He twisted Mohammad's words into support 
for wars, with himself to play God and decide who deserved mercy and 
who did not.
  Innocent civilians died in the United States as a result of that 
fanaticism. His soldiers died on September 11. And he is off somewhere 
hiding in a cave.
  Ten Minnesotans or Minnesota natives lost their lives in the attacks 
that terrible day: Gordon Aamoth, Jr., whose parents are good friends 
of my parents, an investment banker with offices on the 104th floor of 
the World Trade Center; as did Ann Nelson, a bond trader. Others were 
killed at work at the Pentagon: Captain Charles Burlingame, III, was 
the pilot of the hijacked American airlines plane which struck the 
World Trade Center. Tom Burnet was a passenger on United Airlines 
Flight 93, and one who led the counterattack against the hijackers on 
that plane. Tom and the other American heroes could not save 
themselves, but they may have saved us, as that plane's target was 
reportedly this very Capitol in which I stand with you today--alive, 
all of us, thanks, possibly, to Tom Burnet and the other American 
heroes.
  These were good, hard-working Minnesotans, good, hard-working 
American citizens, who had the terrible misfortune to be living their 
lives in the wrong places on that day, September 11, 2001. They have 
been forever taken away from their families and friends, from their 
lives. So to those families and friends I express my very deepest 
condolences.
  I remember leaving the Russell Senate Office Building that morning, 
going over to a hotel just a couple of blocks away from the Capitol 
where I was residing at the time, and I was asked by the general 
manager if I wanted to go up on the roof of the hotel, which I did, 
about 10:30 in the morning. The sky was totally clear except for a dark 
plume of cloud coming up from the Pentagon. There was no air traffic in 
the sky, no planes going in and out of National Airport, no 
helicopters, as is usually the case, going across the river.
  All was quiet there until suddenly this one F-16 fighter plane came 
streaking down The Mall, seemingly just a few hundred feet right over 
the top of the Capitol. I thought to myself, I just never imagined in 
my worst nightmares I would ever see a day where a U.S. fighter jet was 
flying over our Capitol to defend it from whatever foreign enemy was 
attacking us. I pray to God I will never, ever see it again--never 
again.
  George W. Bush became our President that week. He hadn't been elected 
our President, not in the traditional way of a democracy, by getting 
the most votes in the election, but that week he became our President. 
He rose magnificently to the enormous challenges and burdens which a 
President of the United States must bear, and must often bear alone, 
for all the rest of us. President Bush did that and he did it well, 
very well. He gained the good will of our entire Nation, and our Nation 
gained the good will of almost the entire world.
  What priceless silver linings there were for all of us who survived 
those dark, terrible, black clouds which engulfed us on that terrible 
day. What opportunities those 10 Minnesotans and

[[Page S11407]]

their fellow citizens gave to their country, at the terrible cost of 
their own lives. We gained the support, the good will, and the alliance 
of practically the entire world.
  The President said, just 4 months later in his State of the Union 
Address to Congress and the American people, on January 29, 2002:

       As we gather tonight, our Nation is at war, our economy is 
     in recession, and the civilized world faces unprecedented 
     dangers. Yet the State of our Union has never been stronger.

  I recall all of us rising up in the House Chamber where we were 
witnessing that speech, and being stirred--shivers down my spine--by 
those words: ``Yet the state of our Union has never been stronger.''
  Today, 2 years later, the U.S. Government, the same Bush 
administration, does not have the support nor the trust nor the respect 
of the nations of the world--not their governments and not the majority 
of their citizens. That is not surprising. For most of the past year, 
the administration has scorned most of the rest of the world. It has 
denounced the United Nations, derided allies of ours who disagreed with 
us, has berated others in order to try to compel their support. And it 
has proclaimed repeatedly the right of the United States, and the 
intention of the Bush administration, to take whatever military action 
it deems necessary--whenever, against whomever, who threatened or might 
at some time in the future threaten our national security.
  No one in this country who cares about this country could question 
our right to protect our Nation's or our citizens' safety, not before 
September 11, 2001, and not after September 11, 2001. No one in the 
world who wishes us well would question our doing so. In fact, the vast 
majority of the world's governments and people supported our war 
against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and against al-Qaida, and our 
stated intention to attack terrorists and terrorist organizations and 
their bases of operation wherever they were throughout the world.
  But instead, the administration chose to go to war against Iraq. That 
action most of the rest of the world did not support. Other governments 
and the United Nations were skeptical about the Bush administration's 
claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which U.N. 
inspectors could not find last fall and this year. They didn't believe 
they constituted an imminent threat to our National Security.
  The Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix, called the evidence the 
U.S. gave him about Iran's weapons of mass destruction ``pretty 
pathetic.'' The rest of the world was skeptical, and the rest of the 
world would be proven right to be skeptical. There were no weapons of 
mass destruction used, thank God, against U.S. troops when they invaded 
Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction were found unused on battlefields 
or command posts or stored in caches anywhere in that country. Not even 
biological, chemical, or nuclear materials that could have been used to 
make those weapons have been found. Not even top level Iraqi scientists 
or former government officials, some of whom have been incarcerated for 
months now, denied any legal representation, denied chances to visit 
with their families--in some cases the families don't even know where 
they are or even if they are alive--not even interrogations under those 
conditions have produced information leading to weapons of mass 
destruction or supplies of weapons of mass destruction materials of the 
kinds and in the amounts that were claimed by the President and Vice 
President and Secretary of Defense and the National Security Adviser.
  The rest of the world didn't believe our fears, but the American 
people did. The American people trusted our leaders. They believed 
them. They supported their decisions. They sent their sons and 
daughters, their husbands and wives, their friends and neighbors 
halfway around the world to fight for, and some to die for, that stated 
threat, that urgent threat that was asserted again and again by our 
leaders.
  On August 26, 2002, Vice President Cheney said in a speech:

       There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of 
     mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them 
     to use against our friends, against our allies, and against 
     us.
  One month later, on September 26, 2002, President Bush stated after 
meeting with Members of Congress:

       All of us are united in our determination to confront an 
     urgent threat to America. The danger to our country is grave. 
     The danger to our country is growing. The Iraqi regime 
     possesses biological and chemical weapons. The Iraqi regime 
     could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 
     minutes after the order were given.

  Ten days later, just before Congress voted on his desire for a 
resolution, the President added that ``Iraq is exploring ways of using 
UVAs--unmanned aerial vehicles--for missions targeting the United 
States''.
  Later, the administration officials admitted those vehicles had a 
maximum range of only about 300 miles and couldn't have been used 
against the United States.
  During the same speech, the President asserted Saddam Hussein could 
have ``a nuclear weapon in less than a year''.
  Supposedly the evidence cited and leaked to the press before that 
speech was that Saddam Hussein was secretly buying aluminum tubes for 
use in producing nuclear fissile materials. But when our own Department 
of Energy concluded they were the wrong tubes to use for such a 
purpose, the State Department's intelligence bureau concluded and 
pointed out they weren't even secret buys and that the purchase orders 
were posted on the Internet. The question was not made known to 
Congress nor made known to the American people.
  In two reports to the Secretary of State, the State Department's 
Bureau of Intelligence and Research concluded there was no reliable 
evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program at all.
  That was, in fact, what Saddam Hussein's own son-in-law had told the 
United States and United Nations officials when he defected in 1995.
  As the Washington Post reported on August 10 of this year, a year 
previously--on August 7, 2002--the Vice President volunteered in a 
question-and-answer session at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, 
speaking of Hussein, that ``left to his own devices, it's the judgment 
of many of us that in the not-too-distant future, he will acquire 
nuclear weapons.''
  On August 26, the Vice President described Hussein as a ``sworn enemy 
of our country'' who constituted a ``mortal threat'' to the United 
States. He foresaw a time in which Hussein could ``subject the United 
States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.''
  Continuing to quote:

       We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire 
     nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten this from 
     firsthand testimony from defectors, including Saddam's own 
     son-in-law.

  But as the Washington Post goes on to say, the son-in-law's testimony 
was the reverse of the Vice President's description; the opposite of 
what the American people, were told and what Congress was told. But 
those contradictions were never disclosed to the American people nor to 
Congress. In fact, the President and the Vice President continued to 
insist right up until the invasion that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear 
threat that was an imminent and urgent danger to the United States.
  The Vice President said on a network show on March 16 of 2003 that 
``We believe he--Saddam Hussein--has in fact reconstituted nuclear 
weapons.''
  The President, in his address to the Nation on March 17, 2003, cited 
intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves ``no doubt 
that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most 
lethal weapons ever devised.''
  If the Vice President of the United States asserts there is no doubt, 
and if the President of the United States asserts there is no doubt, 
then what is there to doubt? If you can't trust your own President and 
Vice President to tell you the truth about matters of life and death, 
such as nuclear threats, wars, and the future of this Nation, then what 
can you trust?
  Another thing the American public believes is that Saddam Hussein is 
directly linked to al-Qaida and to the terrible events of September 11, 
2001. According to the national surveys, over two-thirds of the 
American public believes that. Why? Because that assertion has been 
made repeatedly by this administration.
  In fact, in the President's speech to the Nation last Sunday, he 
mentions

[[Page S11408]]

the word ``terrorists'' or ``terrorist organizations'' 27 times--27 
times. He cited the weapons of mass destruction once, in a rhetorical 
reference.
  The fundamental basis on which we went into Iraq as proclaimed before 
the war began was only cited one time in that entire address to the 
Nation. But ``terrorism,'' or the connection of terrorists to Iraq, al-
Qaida, and the West dominated the President's remarks, and his 
continued assertions to the American people of what the real situation 
is in that country for which Americans are still giving their blood, 
bodies, and lives.
  On the other hand, as reported in the Washington Post recently, key 
administration figures have largely abandoned any claim that Iraq was 
involved in the 2001 attacks. ``I am not now sure that Iraq had 
something to do with it,'' Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said 
on August 1.
  The CIA's report--the administration's main source of information 
about these connections or lack of them--to the President and the 
administration, as reported in the New York Times on February 2 of 
2002, found ``no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations 
against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is 
convinced that Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological 
weapons to al-Qaida or related terrorist groups.''
  Maybe former Marine General Anthony Zinni, who has been on missions 
representing the administration and the President in the Middle East, 
has the best analysis of this changing rationale for our actions. He 
said:

       Initially, there was at least an implication that Iraq was 
     linked to terrorism. When that link couldn't be made, it was 
     possession of weapons of mass destruction. When that link 
     couldn't be made, it was lack of cooperation. Right now it is 
     about ``we will not let you talk to our scientists,'' and it 
     is the reason we will go to war. We know what the Iraqis 
     have, and we can't tell you. I just think it is too 
     confusing.

  What is not confusing is the casualties mount. The number of 
Americans being wounded or killed in action in Iraq last month exceeded 
the previous month by over a third. Director Tenent told us this week 
that they are averaging 15 attacks a day on United States forces after 
the victory we won so courageously and magnificently in 3 weeks over 4 
months ago. But we in the Senate owe the American people and those 
soldiers over there our continued search for and insistence that the 
truth be told to us and to the American people about the circumstances 
that got us into this war, the circumstances that exist in this war, 
and how we are going to get out of this war preserving the victory 
which was won but also bringing our men and women home. They have 
performed and continue to perform with patriotism that goes beyond 
anything I can imagine. But they want to come home. Their families want 
them home. They deserve to come home.
  In his Gettysburg address, recognizing and paying tribute to other 
American heroes who lost their lives, President Lincoln concluded that 
``we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and 
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not 
perish from the earth.''
  A government of the people, by the people, and for the people is a 
government that tells the truth to its citizens. If it doesn't, it is 
not a government of them, not by them, and certainly not for them. It 
is imperative.
  Today, in commemoration of those who did not die in vain 2 years ago, 
there should be once again a rebirth of our freedom and our assertion 
to this Government or any Government of the United States of America to 
tell us the truth.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Specter pertaining to the introduction of S. 1611 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

                          ____________________