[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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