[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 127 (Tuesday, September 16, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H8224-H8226]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          ADMINISTRATION PLAYING FAST AND LOOSE WITH THE FACTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Boozman). Pursuant to the order of the 
House of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr.

[[Page H8225]]

McGovern) is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, it is becoming increasingly and 
disturbingly clear that the Bush administration is not being truthful 
with the American people. From the economy to the environment to the 
war in Iraq, too often members of the administration play fast and 
loose with the facts.
  They said their massive tax cuts for the wealthy would produce 
thousands of new jobs. In fact, we have lost not thousands but millions 
of jobs.
  They pledged that no child would be left behind, when, in fact, their 
education budget fails to live up to its promises and many children are 
being left behind.
  They say there is no real evidence of global warming when, in fact, 
the vast majority of the scientific evidence disagrees, and it is 
absolutely stunning to see how hostile this administration is to our 
precious environment.
  On foreign policy it is even worse. For example, in a television 
interview over the weekend, Vice President Cheney rejected suggestions 
from Democrats, Republicans and people around the world that perhaps a 
different approach is needed in Iraq. The Vice President insisted that 
the administration's Iraq policy is a rousing success, but after 
hundreds of American casualties, billions of American taxpayer dollars, 
zero weapons of mass destruction and facing a long-term occupation of 
Iraq, that does not seem like the definition of a rousing success.
  Before the war, the administration said it would cost between $50 and 
$100 billion. Mr. Speaker, we now know that the cost of the war in Iraq 
is at $166 billion and counting.
  According to the Washington Post, the Vice President pointed to 
Iraq's prewar possession of 500 tons of uranium as evidence of their 
reconstituted, to use his word, nuclear program. The reality is the 
material was low-grade uranium that could not be used for weapons 
without sophisticated processing that Iraq could not do.
  Perhaps most disturbingly, the Vice President and other members of 
this administration continue to cloud the issue regarding the link 
between Iraq and the terrible tragedy of September 11.
  The Vice President on Sunday insisted that the relationship between 
Iraq and al Qaeda ``involved training, for example, on biological and 
chemical weapons, that al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get 
trained on the systems.''
  According to a report in today's Boston Globe, however, those claims 
are based on the hearsay of a terrorist, have never been verified, 
cannot be proven, and are questionable at best, and Mr. Speaker, I 
would put the full story of the Boston Globe in the Record at this 
point.

                        [From the Boston Globe]

                  Cheney Link of Iraq, 9/11 Challenged

         (By Anne E. Kornblut and Bryan Bender, Sept. 16, 2003)

       Washington.--Vice President Dick Cheney, anxious to defend 
     the White House foreign policy amid ongoing violence in Iraq, 
     stunned intelligence analysts and even members of his own 
     administration this week by failing to dismiss a widely 
     discredited claim: that Saddam Hussein might have played a 
     role in the Sept. 11 attacks.
       Evidence of a connection, if any exists, has never been 
     made public. Details that Cheney cited to make the case that 
     the Iraqi dictator had ties to Al Qaeda have been dismissed 
     by the CIA as having no basis, according to analysts and 
     officials. Even before the war in Iraq, most Bush officials 
     did not explicitly state and Iraq had a part in the attack on 
     the United States two years ago.
       But Cheney left that possibility wide open in a nationally 
     televised interview two days ago, claiming that the 
     administration is learning ``more and more'' about 
     connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Sept. 11 
     attacks. The statement surprised some analysts and officials 
     who have reviewed intelligence reports from Iraq.
       Democrats sharply attacked him for exaggerating the threat 
     Iraq posed before the war.
       ``There is no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein had 
     anything to do with 9/11,'' Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat 
     running for president, said in an interview last night. 
     ``There was no such relationship.''
       A senior foreign policy adviser to Howard Dean, the 
     Democratic front-runner, said it is ``totally inappropriate 
     for the vice president to continue making these allegations 
     without bringing forward'' any proof.
       Cheney and his representatives declined to comment on the 
     vice president's statements. But the comments also surprised 
     some in the intelligence community who are already 
     simmering over the way the administration utilized 
     intelligence reports to strengthen the case for the war 
     last winter.
       Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism 
     specialist, said that Cheney's ``willingness to use 
     speculation and conjecture as facts in public presentations 
     is appalling. It's astounding.''
       In particular, current intelligence officials reiterated 
     yesterday that a reported Prague visit in April 2001 between 
     Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent had been 
     discounted by the CIA, which sent former agency Director 
     James R. Woolsey to investigate the claim. Woolsey did not 
     find any evidence to confirm the report, officials said, and 
     President Bush did not include it in the case for war in his 
     State of the Union address last January.
       But Cheney, on NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' cited the report 
     of the meeting as possible evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link 
     and said it was neither confirmed nor discredited, saying.
       ``We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, 
     either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just 
     don't know.''
       Multiple intelligence officials said that the Prague 
     meeting, purported to be between Atta and senior Iraqi 
     intelligence officer Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, was 
     dismissed almost immediately after it was reported by Czech 
     officials in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and has since been 
     discredited further.
       The CIA reported to Congress last year that it could not 
     substantiate the claim, while American records indicate Atta 
     was in Virginia Beach, Va., at the time, the officials said 
     yesterday. Indeed, two intelligence officials said yesterday 
     that Ani himself, now in U.S. custody, has also refuted the 
     report. The Czech government has also distanced itself from 
     its original claim.
       A senior defense official with access to high-level 
     intelligence reports expressed confusion yesterday over the 
     vice president's decision to reair charges that have been 
     dropped by almost everyone else. ``There isn't any new 
     intelligence that would precipitate anything like this,'' the 
     official said, speaking on condition he not be named.
       Nonetheless, 60 percent of Americans believe that Hussein 
     probably had a part in attacking the United States, according 
     to a recent Washington Post poll. And Democratic senators 
     have charged that the White House is fanning the 
     misperception by mentioning Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks 
     in ways that suggest a link.
       Bush administration officials insisted yesterday that they 
     are learning more about various Iraqi connections with Al 
     Qaeda. They said there is evidence suggesting a meeting took 
     place between the head of Iraqi intelligence and Osama bin 
     Laden in Sudan in the mid-1990s; another purported meeting 
     was said to take place in Afghanistan, and during it Iraqi 
     officials offered to provide chemical and biological weapons 
     training, according to officials who have read transcripts of 
     interrogations with Al Qaeda detainees.
       But there is no evidence proving the Iraqi regime knew 
     about or took part in the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush 
     officials said.
       Former senator Max Cleland, who is a member of the national 
     commission investigating the attacks, said yesterday that 
     classified documents he has reviewed on the subject weaken, 
     rather than strengthen, administration assertions that 
     Hussein's regime may have been allied with Al Qaeda.
       ``The vice president trying to justify some connection is 
     ludicrous,'' he said.
       Nonetheless, Cheney, in the ``Meet the Press'' interview 
     Sunday, insisted that the United States is learning more 
     about the links between Al Qaeda and Hussein.
       ``We learn more and more that there was a relationship 
     between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of 
     the decade of the '90s,'' Cheney said, ``that it involved 
     training, for example, on [biological and chemical weapons], 
     that Al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the 
     systems.''
       The claims are based on a prewar allegation by a ``senior 
     terrorist operative,'' who said he overheard an Al Qaeda 
     agent speak of a mission to seek biological or chemical 
     weapons training in Iraq, according to Secretary of State 
     Colin Powell's statement to the United Nations in February.
       But intelligence specialists told the Glove last August 
     that they have never confirmed that the training took place, 
     or identified where it could have taken place. ``The general 
     public just doesn't have any independent way of weighing what 
     is said,'' Cannistraro, the former CIA counterterrorism 
     specialist, said. ``If you repeat it enough times . . . then 
     people become convinced it's the truth.''

  Mr. McGOVERN. Before the war, we were told that Iraq possessed 
stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. Today, the 
administration is singing a very different tune. They now talk about 
Iraq ``maintaining the capability to develop'' those weapons. 
Maintaining the capability to develop? Is that what passes for proof in 
the Bush administration?
  There are those who occasionally attempt to give straight answers. 
Larry Lindsay gave an accurate prediction of how much the war would 
cost. He got

[[Page H8226]]

fired. General Shinseki told the truth about how many troops would be 
needed in Iraq. He has been replaced.
  In the Bush administration, it seems loyalty to the party line is 
more important than candor.
  Mr. Speaker, we are talking about important issues here, issues of 
war and peace, life and death. The American people deserve to know the 
truth. They deserve straight talk, not some intentionally muddied 
rationale created for political purposes. They deserve a lot better 
than they are getting from this administration.

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