[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 21, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H66]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            THE WAR IN IRAQ AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, last night the President gave his State of 
the Union address to the Nation and to the Congress; and he brought up, 
rather surprisingly, weapons of mass destruction. The President said 
that American inspectors have ``identified dozens of weapons of mass 
destruction-related program activities'' in Iraq.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not know what a weapons of mass destruction-related 
program activity is. I would like to find out. I do know this: it is 
not weapons of mass destruction. We have not found weapons of mass 
destruction in Iraq. David Kay, the American inspector, has not found 
them. The international inspectors did not find them.
  Like many Members of this House, I voted in favor of the war in Iraq. 
I did so in order to disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass 
destruction. I am glad that we have defeated Hussein. I am glad he is 
in our custody. We and the Iraqi people are better off with him in 
custody. He was a murderous tyrant. But we have not found the weapons 
of mass destruction, and it is clear that an extraordinary amount of 
exaggeration and deception occurred from the White House on the subject 
of weapons of mass destruction before we went to war in order to win 
congressional support for going to war.
  The President talked last night about our international coalition. 
The President would like us to believe that we have a broad-based and 
effective international coalition in Iraq to move forward with securing 
what is still an unstable country and to move forward with 
reconstruction. He listed a long number of nations that have supplied 
some number of troops to the efforts in Iraq.
  The fact is that well over 90 percent of the troops in Iraq are 
American. About 95 percent of the money being spent in Iraq is American 
taxpayer dollars, well over $160 billion to date. The fact is that we 
did not turn effectively to our traditional and historic allies and 
move forward with the international community in order to build a 
coalition to defeat Hussein in Iraq.
  The President, when he won his authority to go to war, made a number 
of commitments. He said that he would exhaust diplomatic options before 
going to war. He did not. He said he would allow the international 
inspectors the opportunity to complete their work in Iraq. He did not. 
He said he would go to the United Nations and build a coalition, and he 
did not. And now the President would still have us believe that we are 
on a successful hunt and are turning up weapons of mass destruction in 
Iraq as part of a broad-based coalition in that country, and neither of 
those statements is true.
  The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, that the arrogance, the 
unilateralism, and the cowboy diplomacy of the President and the White 
House have made our challenges in Iraq much harder than they should 
have been and have made our war on al Qaeda and terror riskier and 
harder than it should be.

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