[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 16 (Tuesday, February 10, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H413-H414]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        A CALL FOR INVESTIGATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Speaker, it is becoming increasingly obvious to 
people across the country that this House of Representatives is failing 
in its responsibility with regard to its oversight of the executive 
branch. I am referring here, of course, specifically to the assertions 
that have been made by various people in the administration, Secretary 
of Defense, the Vice President, others, even the President himself, 
with regard to the necessity to go to war in Iraq.
  This Congress was told and the American people were told that we 
needed to go to war in Iraq because of the association that existed 
between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda and also because the regime of 
Saddam Hussein possessed so-called weapons of mass destruction. Time 
and time again people in the administration raised the specter of the 
mushroom cloud to create the impression that the government of Iraq was 
in the process of creating nuclear weapons that could be used either 
directly or indirectly against the United States and therefore that the 
government of Saddam Hussein constituted a direct and immediate threat 
to the people of our country.
  Here, for example, are some of the words of President Bush himself. 
On September 12 of 2002 he said: ``The history, the logic, and the 
facts lead to one conclusion. Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and 
gathering danger. To assume this regime's good faith is to bet the 
lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble, and 
this is a risk we must not take.''
  We know that he was wrong, and we have every reason to suspect that 
he knew he was wrong when he said that. But what has happened, more 
than 500 American lives have been lost, more than 530 to be exact. Tens 
of thousands of Americans have been wounded and taken out of Iraq as a 
result of those wounds. Hundreds of thousands of others have been 
killed and wounded all on the basis of what now increasingly seems 
clear to be fraudulent information presented to this Congress and to 
the American people.

[[Page H414]]

  This House of Representatives has a responsibility. It has a 
responsibility to ensure that the executive branch is acting within the 
confines of the Constitution. It has a responsibility to make sure that 
the laws of this country are being obeyed, and it has a responsibility 
to make sure that the administration is not acting in ways that put 
American citizens in danger unnecessarily.
  It is increasingly clear that the war in Iraq was not a war of 
necessity but rather it was a war of choice, and that choice was made 
by high-ranking people in the Bush administration.
  So what is our obligation? Our obligation is clear. This Congress 
should at this moment be preparing to conduct a comprehensive and 
complete investigation into the allegations made by members of the 
administration. Supposedly those allegations were based upon 
intelligence that was supplied to the administration from the Central 
Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the Federal 
Government. But evidence that we have now suggests that the 
intelligence supplied to the administration was manipulated by people 
within the administration, perhaps even falsified, in order to justify 
our war in Iraq.
  If that is the case, and it increasingly seems obvious that it is, 
this Congress has a responsibility to engage in an investigation to get 
at the truth. To what extent have our intelligence agencies been 
compromised by this administration? To what extent are our intelligence 
agencies now less reliable than they were before? And if they have been 
compromised, as it seems they have, and if they are less reliable, as 
it seems they are, as a result of the administration's activities, then 
this Congress has a responsibility to engage in that investigation.
  The President just recently has said that he is going to establish a 
commission to look at some of the intelligence; but we know already, 
based upon the language coming out of the administration, some of the 
names of the people who have been suggested as members of that 
commission, and the limited direction and responsibility of the 
commission, we know that that commission is not going to conduct the 
kind of investigation that needs to be conducted if the American people 
can have some sense of security in the sanity and proper conduct of 
their intelligence agencies and the way that that information is used 
by the administration. This Congress needs to begin that investigation, 
and it needs to begin it immediately.

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