[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 37 (Tuesday, March 23, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1363-H1368]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               IRAQ WATCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Madam Speaker, I applaud the gentleman from Illinois 
(Mr. Kirk) for spending an hour, although I do not quite agree with 
some of the facts that the gentleman stated.
  Mr. KIRK. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I will say 
that the gentleman is an absolute leader on human rights around the 
world, and on that we completely agree.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Madam Speaker, on that I echo the kudo.
  I am joined tonight by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee). I 
anticipate that we will be shortly joined by two other colleagues, the 
gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) as well as the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Strickland), for another session that we have labeled as Iraq 
Watch to discuss issues concerning the Middle East with a particular 
focus on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror.
  There is much to talk about tonight. I do not think an hour will be 
sufficient. I also should mention over the course of the past 8 months, 
and we have been doing this for approximately 8 months now, I know that 
the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) and the other Members 
involved have received a number of calls, e-mails, correspondence from 
not just our own constituents but from all over the country. There is 
one question that is constantly asked, and that is why is the House 
empty at this hour of the night.
  I think we should explain to those viewing this evening that the 
legislative business of the House of Representatives has been concluded 
for the day and we are now into a phase that is called Special Orders. 
Each side of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, are allocated an 
hour, actually two hours, to just have a conversation or make a 
presentation about issues that they have a particular interest in or 
issues which they feel the American people need more information on. I 
am sure many who watch C-SPAN note that during the course of the debate 
on particular proposals, the time is very limited, given the numbers of 
Members that wish to speak. In fact, the usual course allows for at 
most a maximum of some 5 minutes for each Member to speak. On those 
issues that have a particular interest on both sides of the aisle, what 
occurs is the individual Member who happens to be managing the bill, 
either Republican or Democrat, is responsible for allocating time and 
often rather than 5 minutes, the likelihood is that a Member will only 
have 2 or 3 minutes to explain his or her perspective on a particular 
issue.
  So this phase is called Special Orders. Earlier there were three of 
our friends and colleagues from the Republican side who discussed the 
budget. Prior to their coming to the floor, three or four Democratic 
Members spoke about the budget and the perspective of Democrats as to 
the proposal put forth by the Republican Party, and also clearly an 
alternative that will be presented by the Democrats in terms of the 
debate on where we go as far as a Nation is concerned, because in many 
respects the budget does reflect our values. And as Members heard 
earlier from our colleagues on the Republican side, there is a growing 
and profound concern about the escalating deficit that has been brought 
about by the actions of this particular administration and this 
Republican majority in both the House and the Senate.
  I think it is important that the American people remember that the 
Republican Party controls the House of Representatives, controls the 
United States Senate, and obviously the current incumbent in the White 
House is a Republican. So when we speak of deficits, this is a deficit 
that was engendered by the majority party in this country. I know the 
Democrats are extremely concerned about the deficit because the 
interest that is paid on the national debt detracts from other 
investments that could be made in a wide variety of initiatives such as 
infrastructure, education, health care, and a long litany of issues 
that I believe are a priority to the American people.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee).
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, just to follow up on the comment and the 
discussion of the deficit, it is not only Democrats who are concerned 
with the deficit; it is Republicans as well. Last night I was in a town 
hall meeting attended by about 150 people in Snohomish County, 
Washington, and I had a fellow stand up who said he was a Republican 
and was extremely concerned that this government, which he understood 
was controlled by the Republican Party lock, stock and barrel, was 
running up these enormous deficit. His basic question was, What is 
going on? He was flabbergasted to see that happening.
  What I had to tell him was the news was actually worse than he had 
heard. He had heard the number that the Republican government had run 
up a $500 billion deficit, and it bothered him. It bothered him even 
more when I told him the deficit was actually higher than that because 
the administration and the Congress to some degree have played with 
some funny numbers that make Enron blush how accounting is done.
  One example, I had to tell him the President's budget, which has been 
forwarded to the Congress proposing expenditures for next year, omitted 
any sums for fighting the Iraq war, any sums for fighting the 
Afghanistan war. You can kind of understand how a government can run up 
giant deficits, the largest deficits in American history if they play 
funny games of sending up budgets when we are in the middle of a war 
spending $100 billion a year in Iraq, or a little short of that, and 
then assess zero cost to that.
  I just cannot understand, this administration must not think anybody 
can read in America when they try to play games like that. I can inform 
the White House that my Democrat and Republican constituents are very 
aware of this and are very concerned about it.

                              {time}  2200

  Let me turn, if I can, to the Iraq issue which we have now been 
talking about for some months.
  The reason we are here is twofold: One, our proud men and women are 
doing a job in Iraq tonight which all Americans are proud of. Over 500 
of them have paid the ultimate sacrifice to the duty to which they 
pledged honor to our country. Their sacrifice demands that the 
government of the United States tell the truth to the American people 
about what happened in Iraq and why this war started, based on false 
information.
  Just to set the stage for our discussion tonight, I would like to 
point out at least some of that false information that ended up 
starting this war. I want to be very specific on this so no one can say 
that we have gilded the lily.
  The fact is, sadly, that on March 17, 2003, the President of the 
United States of America went before the American people and in an 
address to the Nation said, and I quote, ``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.'' That statement was false and the information gathered over a 
year of spending over $100 million of seeking with a fine-toothed comb 
in Iraq has demonstrated with some conviction that that statement was 
false, unfortunately.
  On August 2, 2002, the Vice President of the United States, Dick 
Cheney, went before the Veterans of Foreign Wars and stated, ``Simply 
stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass 
destruction.'' That statement was false, false both on the issue of the 
presence of weapons of mass destruction as indicated by Mr. David Kay, 
who was the person hired by this country to find out, but also false in 
saying there was no doubt, because a review by this Chamber, by the 
three of us and others, has showed there was plenty of doubt about this 
issue in Iraq that was covered up, was suppressed by this 
administration.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I think it is important to remember that when the 
Director of the CIA testified recently before

[[Page H1364]]

the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he acknowledged that on several 
occasions he privately spoke to both the President and on multiple 
occasions spoke to the Vice President about errors that they had made 
in terms of misstatements, let us use that term for the moment, 
misstatements, yet we have heard nothing specifically from the Vice 
President. And the gentleman alluded to the incident earlier, being 
forthright with the American people that subsequently he received 
information from George Tenet in private that corrected a public 
statement that he had made, and yet he does not acknowledge that today 
publicly.
  Mr. INSLEE. Let me, if I can, say why that is a problem. We need the 
administration to fulfill its obligation to the American people to help 
get to the bottom of what happened in this situation. The fact is, I 
will indicate in just a moment, every single chance we have had to peel 
back the onion and peel back the draperies to find out what happened, 
this administration has continued to suppress information.
  I want to give the gentleman this one example. On January 28, 2003, 
the President went before the Nation in the State of the Union address, 
stood right behind where the gentleman is standing right now and said, 
``The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently 
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence 
sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength 
aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.''
  That statement was false. The reason we know that is that the person 
sent by the administration to Africa to find out whether it was true or 
not, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who, at the request of the administration, 
went to Africa and reported back before the State of the Union address 
that that was a bunch of hokum, it was a bunch of malarkey, and it was 
false.
  And the President, in the State of the Union, despite that specific 
response from our intelligence service, if you will, or someone acting 
in their behalf, put it in the State of the Union anyway, or someone on 
his behalf.
  Everybody can make mistakes. We are all human. But let us see what 
this administration's response to this falsehood and disclosure of 
falsehood was. Was it a thank you to Mr. Wilson for helping us get to 
the bottom of this? Was it a further inquiry to find out who was 
responsible for putting this gross misstatement in the State of the 
Union address? No.
  What did they do? They tried to punish Joe Wilson, the citizen who 
did his patriotic duty to disclose this misstatement, by outing his 
wife who worked for the CIA, attempting to destroy her CIA career, to 
send a message to the world and to America, ``Don't tell the truth 
about this administration because we'll attempt to destroy you.'' That 
is what they have attempted to do.
  Thank goodness there is a grand jury investigating what could be a 
Federal crime here, because this is a pattern with this administration. 
Look what is happening tonight.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. If the gentleman will yield, the gentleman makes 
reference to the question of a grand jury. I believe that if one takes 
an oath to speak before a committee of the Congress or one that is 
authorized by the Congress and the executive, that one is subject to 
perjury. I believe that is the case.
  I would have to defer to the gentleman from Massachusetts, I suppose, 
on the question of prosecution of that, but we have a commission now, 
the so-called 9/11 Commission, which is now meeting, and there have 
been severe criticisms that amount to open accusations that Mr. Richard 
Clarke, referred to in various ways by different officials in the 
administration as someone who apparently, if one is to believe the 
designations attached to him by members of the administration, is 
lying. Not distorting, not misinterpreting, not misunderstanding, not 
having a different point of view, not engaged in an academic exercise 
of confrontation and different contending visions of what might have 
taken place, but on the contrary, specifically that Mr. Clarke is 
lying, that he is not telling the truth.
  I believe Mr. Clarke is going to testify to the Commission tomorrow. 
I am not familiar with whether or not the witnesses taking the stand 
there in front of that Commission are under oath. But given the 
seriousness of the circumstances, I certainly hope that they are.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I think that we should remind the audience that the 
gentleman from Hawaii has just joined us. In terms of what Mr. Clarke 
testifies to tomorrow, I think we should suspend our judgment tonight.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. If the gentleman will yield on that point, I have no 
difficulty with that. My point here was in response to the gentleman 
from Washington's observation that there is at least one grand jury 
meeting right now.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. One grand jury that we are aware of.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. That is what I say, at least one meeting now. 
Perhaps there may be more. My point is that there are so many 
accusations with respect to why, how, when, should we, et cetera, 
having to do with Iraq that you simply cannot continue to assassinate 
the personalities or the characters of the various individuals that we 
have been citing and at some point not say, look, somebody's either 
telling the truth or not, and let's put it to the test.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Does this come as a surprise to the gentleman?
  Let us be honest among ourselves and with those people that are 
viewing. If the gentleman remembers, it was the Bush-Cheney campaign 
that back in 2000 during the primary season, there was an ad that ran 
in New York. It was a 60-second radio spot in the days before the 
primary which was March 7 of 2000.
  Let me just give the gentleman a condensed version of that ad:
  Hello. My name is Geri Barish and I am a breast cancer survivor. It 
is a woman introducing herself to the listening audience. Like many, I 
had thought of supporting John McCain in next week's presidential 
primary. So I looked into his record.
  What I discovered was shocking. John McCain opposes many projects 
dedicated to women's health issues.
  It's true. McCain opposes funding for vital breast cancer programs 
right here in New York. John McCain calls these projects just ``garden 
variety pork.'' That's shocking.
  The truth, of course, was that Senator McCain did not vote against 
this bill because of the breast cancer projects, but because it was a 
military spending bill that did not provide adequate increases, in his 
judgment, for our troops.


                Announcement By the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida). The 
gentleman is reminded to please not make references to individual 
Senators.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I apologize to the Chair.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Madam Speaker, point of inquiry to the Chair. So 
that we can be sure that we do not violate any of the rules, I believe 
the gentleman was not making specific reference. He was referring to an 
article by way of reference. He was not referring directly. He was 
reporting something else.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I will eliminate reference.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. For clarification, the gentleman is not 
allowed to quote material that makes references to an individual 
Senator that would be out of order if spoken in his own words.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I thank the Chair. What I want to explain is that in 
this particular case, the attack on Senator McCain failed to mention 
that his sister was a breast cancer survivor.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. If the gentleman will yield, because I do not want 
to incur the ire of the Chair, I think what we need to do here, and 
perhaps the Chair can enlighten us if we are in violation, if we would 
refer to a Senator unnamed who happened to be running for President at 
a particular time, people can make their own reference. Is that 
allowed?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. From the State of Arizona, I would add.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Parliamentarian indicates that the 
gentleman should refrain from making references to individual Senators.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Again, I thank the Chair.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. We do not want to violate anything. We would not 
refer

[[Page H1365]]

to a particular Senator, but at least one Senator ran for President in 
the last election. Can we do that? Can we at least refer to the fact 
that there was a Senator who ran in the last election?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. General references may be made without 
referencing an individual Senator.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I thank the Chair. I appreciate the Chair taking the 
time to make that clear.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. If I can, what I am going to do is what is rather 
boldly stated here on the cover of Time magazine in February, when the 
question is posed, and I would suggest that the question is now being 
posed in very real terms as we witness the string of revelations that 
are occurring now on an everyday basis: Believe Him Or Not: Does Bush 
Have a Credibility Gap?
  This is about credibility. It is not just about the President, 
because the President speaks for the United States. The President's 
credibility becomes our credibility. Not Republican credibility, not 
Democratic credibility, but the credibility of the United States in a 
very dangerous moment in world history, when we are all united to 
defeat terrorism.
  There was a fascinating story in my hometown paper, the Boston Globe, 
this morning. I think it is worthy to present it to the gentleman 
tonight and to have the viewing audience listen.
  The former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq warned yesterday that 
the United States is in grave danger of destroying its credibility at 
home and abroad if it does not own up to our mistakes in Iraq.

                              {time}  2215

  That is David Kay. That is the individual who universally has 
received praise and respect from policymakers and people involved in 
this particular issue. He was appointed by this White House, this 
administration, to lead a team to go to Iraq and determine whether 
there were weapons of mass destruction. It is he now that is imploring 
this White House, this President, this Vice President, to use his 
words, to ``come clean with the American people'' because, as he points 
out, the cost of our mistakes with regard to the explanation of why we 
went to war in Iraq are far greater than Iraq itself. This issue is so 
profound that it is now the credibility of the United States, the 
prestige that we have earned through decades, through the centuries, 
that is at risk.
  ``We are in grave danger of having destroyed our credibility 
internationally and domestically with regard to warning about future 
events. The answer is to admit you were wrong, and what I find most 
disturbing about Washington is the belief you can never admit you are 
wrong.''
  It is like I indicated earlier, there have been newspaper reports 
that the director of the CIA, Mr. Tenet, privately corrected the Vice 
President on his statements linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. And yet 
the Vice President has not had the decency to come forward to the 
American people and say, I was wrong, when I was wrong.
  And in another interview Mr. Kay goes on, and when asked what his 
opinion was of the statement of Vice President Cheney that weapons of 
mass destruction might still be found in Iraq, his response was, ``What 
worries me about Cheney's statements is I think people who hold out for 
a Hail Mary pass delay the inevitable looking back at what went 
wrong.'' That is what this 9/11 commission is hearing this week. The 
message that we send out to the rest of the world is that we are strong 
and a mature democracy if we tell the truth, and we will not have a 
credibility gap.
  I believe we have enough evidence now to say that the intelligence 
process and the policy process obviously crafted by the President, 
President Bush, and Vice President Cheney that used that information 
did not work at the level of effectiveness that we require in the age 
we live in. I mean, this is absolutely the most profound issue, in my 
judgment, that is currently confronting the United States with long-
term implications.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield on that 
point?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I yield to the gentleman from Hawaii.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Madam Speaker, it is quite clear that Mr. Kay is 
clearly taking the high road in terms of his characterization of what 
took place and is giving the broadest benefit of a doubt with respect 
to whether there were misinterpretations or misunderstandings as to 
what the true facts were and what the implications of those facts were 
in terms of whether we went into Iraq or not.
  Others have a different interpretation. I quite agree with the 
gentleman that this is the most profound issue that we have faced 
perhaps in our lifetime because we have to go all the way back to the 
Nixon Administration to find a situation in which there was a 
deliberate misleading of the American people as to what the facts were 
with a given situation, in this instance the general question of 
Watergate, everything that that implied and involved. But at least 
there what was being done was a cover-up, essentially, of rather sordid 
and almost banal and mundane political machinations. The rather sad 
spectacle of the President of the United States engaged in third-rate 
theatrics, burglaries, false presentations as to where money came from 
and where it went and so on, sordid and stupid and tawdry.
  But in this instance, I would posit for my friend and for those who 
are listening, in this instance we have accusations made that there was 
a deliberate undertaking geared towards moving this Nation to war, a 
preemptive war, based on information and perspectives presented to the 
American public which were untrue, were known to be untrue, and were in 
fact the ideological leanings of a small group of people determined to 
take this Nation into war with Iraq regardless of whether it served 
either the strategic interests of this Nation or whether it satisfied 
anybody's definition by any measure of the truth.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I think the proper characterization, I 
heard one of our colleagues at a town meeting say to one of our 
colleagues never in this country have so many been misled by so few, 
and now we are going to find the truth as to why that happened. And the 
reason we are going to find the truth are two principles: principle 
number one, facts are stubborn things; and, two, the truth comes out. 
It is coming out now, and it has come out yesterday on television, and 
it is coming out tomorrow in the commission.
  I want to read some of this truth that I believe we are going to 
hear. The question is whether or not this administration was compelled 
by intelligence reports of weapons of mass destruction that forced them 
to action in Iraq or whether this administration had a preconceived 
judgment and decision to go after Iraq and then went looking for 
something to substantiate that preconceived decision to the American 
public. And it is the latter, and we know it is the latter, because 
every day more and more truth is leaking out of this White House.
  What did we hear last night? We heard in a book by Mr. Richard 
Clarke, who was the White House's former counterterrorism chief, a 
pretty high individual in the White House who is responsible for 
counterterrorism, which was quoted in the New York Times, where he said 
that Mr. Bush pressed him, Mr. Clarke, three times to find evidence 
that Iraq was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the 
Pentagon. The accusation is explosive because no such link has ever 
been proved. Mr. Clarke says, quoting the President, `` `I want you, as 
soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything,' '' Mr. Clarke 
writes, and Mr. Bush told him `` `See if Saddam did this. See if he's 
linked in any way.' '' When Mr. Clarke protested that the culprit was 
al Qaeda, not Iraq, Mr. Bush ``testily ordered'' him, he writes, to `` 
`look into Iraq's Saddam,' '' and then left the room; then demanded a 
report, which was prepared, which came back and gave the same answer 
that there was not a meaningful connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, 
sent the report up the chain from CIA and FBI. It got bounced back and 
sent back saying, `` `wrong answer, do it again.' ''

  A war was started on a false premise of a connection between Iraq and 
al

[[Page H1366]]

Qaeda, and the truth as to why that happened is coming out. Basically, 
as far as I can tell, the White House's principle is that their 
Secretary of the Treasury, who essentially said pretty much the same 
thing, that it had been Iraq, Iraq, Iraq even before September 11. 
Their counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, who said on the day of 
the attack they said let us go get Iraq and try to gin up some evidence 
to support this, in a manner of speaking; Joe Wilson, who was sent by 
this administration to find out whether this is a bill of goods about 
this uranium that got into the State of the Union address, the White 
House is saying that all these people who worked for the White House in 
these high positions have no clue as to what was going on. As far as I 
can tell, what the White House says is their position is nobody who 
ever worked in the White House has a clue as to what went on there 
because whatever they said has got to be wrong. And now, instead of 
welcoming a critical analysis as to what went wrong here and where the 
foul-up is, what is this administration doing?
  According to the New York Times, the way they characterize it, and I 
think it is fair, they have ``opened an aggressive personal attack 
against its former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke.'' What did 
they do to Joe Wilson, the ambassador who found out that they told a 
falsehood in the State of the Union address? They tried to destroy his 
wife's career. What did they do to their former Secretary of the 
Treasury, who said essentially that they had been trying to go after 
Iraq from day one in the administration? And I paraphrase a little bit, 
but generally that was the thrust. They attacked him personally.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Madam Speaker, but these are all actions that are 
directed at individuals. And I abhor them, and somebody should be held 
responsible. It is as if there is another enemies list.
  The gentleman alluded earlier to the Nixon years. There is something 
Nixonian about targeting individuals, attacking them, attacking them at 
a personal level, and clearly trying to undermine their professionalism 
and hurt their careers. We have seen it again and again.
  I began earlier with the radio spot that was used during the course 
of the Presidential election, the one that was masterminded obviously 
by Karl Rove, who is the political adviser and I am sure consults with 
the President on a regular basis. But the gentleman talked about former 
Secretary O'Neill. Mr. Clarke now. What happened to General Shinseki 
when he suggested that there was need for 2 to 300,000 troops if the 
peace was to be won in Iraq? He was castigated in an extremely 
dismissive way by Under Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I yield to the gentleman from Hawaii.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Madam Speaker, he was publicly rebuked, the chief of 
staff of the Army who had come up, I will tell the Members, from the 
ranks. I happen to know about General Shinseki because he is a true son 
of Hawaii. The son of humble people whose family was interned in World 
War II for the crime of being Japanese Americans, who served our 
country from the ranks on up to becoming chief of staff of the Army, 
was rebuked by this little man.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Madam Speaker, again as I indicated, I sympathize with 
these individuals, and I am confident that as time moves on, because 
America is truly about, at its essence, the search for the truth, that 
they will be vindicated. What I would submit is that time is 
vindicating them now, whether it be Mr. Clarke or whether it be David 
Kay.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Hans Blix.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Hans Blix. They are all being vindicated. But really 
what is at stake here is the prestige and the credibility of the United 
States.
  We heard a lot in the debate last week about appeasement. There is no 
appeasement when it comes to terrorism. We are all united, Republican, 
Democrat. I cannot imagine one Member of this House not being adamant 
that we pursue justice and that we win the war on terror. But if we 
continue to have our credibility undermined by this White House, we 
risk losing the war on terror.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, frankly, 
again, I want to reiterate we are all human and we have all made 
mistakes and every administration has made mistakes in the past, and we 
ought to be somewhat understanding of that. But this administration has 
been an abject failure in helping us find out what happened here and 
finding responsibility for those and taking action to hold them 
accountable so we can demonstrate to the world and to the American 
people that we are not going to countenance starting wars based on 
falsehood.

                              {time}  2230

  Let us look at the record of this administration in that regard.
  How many people have been held to account for the fact that a war 
started based on false information? How many people? The answer? Zero. 
Zero. Five hundred people have lost their lives in Iraq, but zero 
people has George Bush held accountable for this false information, and 
it is wrong. Only one person in America has lost their job over this 
false information, and that was a radio talk show host.
  We need accountability for this mistake, and this administration 
needs to get busy, instead of stonewalling and covering up the truth, 
to help us find the truth and find who is accountable.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Let us hope that they listened to David Kay, who is 
imploring them to come clean with the American people. It is so 
important, because, well, let us look at the most recent example.
  If we are serious about the war on terrorism, we need to have the 
respect and cooperation and commitment of the entire world. If you 
remember, in the aftermath of September 11 there was information that 
came pouring into the United States about al Qaeda cells in some 60 
different countries. In fact, we heard there were dozens of al Qaeda 
cells operating right here in the United States.
  What is happening now? The most recent statement by one of those 
nations that actually participated and has a number of troops in Iraq 
today, and I refer to the Polish nation, their President said, ``We 
were misled. They took us for a ride.'' That is his quote.
  The Spaniards, we are castigated by our friends for appeasement. I 
thought that was rather arrogant, considering the fact that the Spanish 
have dealt for years attempting to rid their nation of the terrorists 
who claim to be seeking independence, the so-called ETA.
  I found very interesting in the aftermath of the election in Spain 
that the new leader there declared that his most immediate priority 
will be to fight terrorism. There was a disagreement that Iraq was a 
distraction, that we went after the wrong enemy. And more and more 
people are coming to that belief.
  The South Koreans just this past week indicated that they did not 
want their troops transported to a venue that would most likely create 
a potential where they would be engaged in violence.
  The problem is, this is not about appeasement; this is about 
credibility in winning the war on terror.
  Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield, the question you are asking 
is what Americans are asking all over the country. Yesterday, one of my 
constituents asked, I thought, a very interesting question. He said, 
after September 11, who did the President focus on? According to Paul 
O'Neill, the Secretary of the Treasury, including the President's own 
counterterrorism chief, Richard Clark, the answer was Iraq.
  What my constituent asked me then, he said, well, you know, 15 out of 
the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Did the President ever ask 
about Saudi Arabia, the country where historically a lot of these 
companies he has had dealings with in the oil and gas industry are? No. 
He never asked about Saudi Arabia. Iraq, Iraq.
  I wanted to read what the counterterrorism chief says happened, 
because it is important, in trying to find out whether they focused on 
Iraq without justification.
  Mr. Richard Clark said, ``Mr. Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb 
Iraq, and we all said no, no, al Qaeda is in Afghanistan; we need to 
bomb Afghanistan. And Mr. Rumsfeld said, there aren't any good targets 
in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good

[[Page H1367]]

targets in Iraq. I said, well, there are a lot of good targets in a lot 
of places, but Iraq has nothing to do with it.''
  This is the counterterrorism chief of the White House. He went on: 
``Initially, I thought when he said there aren't enough targets in 
Afghanistan, I thought he was joking. Initially. I think that they 
wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting 
there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there, saying we have 
looked at this issue for years; for years we have looked, and there is 
just no connection.''
  This is the White House's counterterrorism chief telling the 
Secretary of Defense there is no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.
  And what did the President tell the American people over and over and 
over? He said essentially you cannot even think of them as distinct 
entities. He wanted to create a fear, to create an image in America 
that al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden had been morphed into Saddam Hussein, 
because he believed it was in the Nation's best interest, for whatever 
the reasons are.
  But he did not have the right to tell these falsehoods to the 
American people. Now that the truth is coming up, he owes us an 
obligation to hold accountable in his administration whoever is 
responsible for this, and he owes us the obligation to stop 
stonewalling the distribution of truth to the American people, and he 
needs to come clean, as his arms inspector, David Kay, says he should 
do. This is an obligation to the people who are serving in Iraq 
tonight, our brothers and sons and daughters and husbands and wives.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Do you find it interesting that in the United Kingdom, 
and I disagreed with the Prime Minister there, Tony Blair. As you know, 
I voted against the resolution authorizing military action against 
Iraq. But I respect Tony Blair. He went before the Parliament, and for 
hour after hour after hour stood his ground in a respectful fashion and 
answered each question that was posed to him.
  There is a commission going on right now. I would hope that the 
President would reconsider and go before that commission, not behind 
closed doors, but for the American people to hear, so that the 
credibility not just of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, but 
the credibility of the United States can be restored and replicate 
exactly what the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom did in response 
to questions about the British role in Iraq.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. If the gentleman will yield, the gentleman might be 
interested in the view of former President Carter in that regard.

  In an interview today in the Independent, the British newspaper, the 
Independent reports that President Carter ``strongly criticized'' Mr. 
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair ``for waging an unnecessary 
war to oust Saddam Hussein, based on lies and misinterpretations.''
  This is not me speaking; this is former President Carter. This is not 
a reporter giving an editorial point of view. This is former President 
Carter.
  I will repeat: ``for waging an unnecessary war to oust Saddam 
Hussein, based on lies and misinterpretations. There was no reason for 
us to become involved in Iraq recently. That was a war based on lies 
and misinterpretations from London and from Washington claiming falsely 
that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9-11 attacks, claiming 
falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And I think that 
President Bush and Prime Minister Blair probably knew that many of the 
allegations were based on uncertain intelligence. A decision was made 
to go to war. Then people said, let's find a reason to do it.''
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Well, you know, again if I can take the time for just a 
moment, what I would propose, because I understand that the 9/11 
commission that is currently sitting here today has agreed to, and I 
think mistakenly, has agreed to a 1-hour interview with President Bush, 
and only two members of the commission are going to be entitled to 
inquire of him. That just simply continues to raise questions. It will 
be interpreted as a lack of being forthcoming.
  What is necessary now, more than ever, as David Kay has said, let us 
open up. We are a democracy. I would go so far as a Democrat to suggest 
that the former President, President Clinton, and President Bush, go 
before that commission, one after another, sequentially, and stay there 
as long as there are questions to be asked regarding terrorism and the 
threat of terrorism to the United States. I would issue a challenge to 
both of them. Make it a bipartisan challenge. We have to take this out 
of the political realm.
  Yes, I am not naive; I know there is a Presidential election, and 
these are issues that should be discussed in a Presidential election. 
But they have to be vetted in a forum such as a commission, where all 
of the answers are put out. And if there are mistakes that have been 
made, both during the Clinton administration and in this 
administration, the American people will be better off, and, more 
importantly, America's role in the world will once again be respected.
  One only has to look at the polls. There was a recent study done, and 
I am not going to take the time, but let me just give you a quick 
example, and then one of you gentleman can close.
  This is rating George Bush, but substitute George Bush for America. 
In Britain, our closest ally, the favorability of George Bush is 39 
percent; the unfavorably is 57 percent. In France, the favorability is 
15; 85 unfavorable. Fourteen percent favorable in Germany; 85 
unfavorable. In Russia, 28 favorable; 60 unfavorable. In Turkey, 21 
percent favorable; 67 percent unfavorable. Pakistan, 7 percent 
favorable; 67 percent unfavorable. In Jordan, 3 percent favorable; and 
96 percent unfavorable.
  This is true all over the world, not just in the Mideast, but Asia, 
all over Latin America. It is about the United States. We need allies. 
We are finding that out. We need cooperation. We have got to win the 
war on terror. We cannot tolerate appeasement, but we should not be 
doing it alone.
  Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield, the obligation that I think 
is paramount, forgetting for the moment the need for allies, but the 
real paramount obligation is to the families who have lost loved ones 
in Iraq.
  Now, the family I think of is one that I spent some time with last 
weekend who lost their husband and son in the Tigress River, a U.S. 
soldier awarded the Bronze Star for his heroism and service in Iraq. 
That family is owed an explanation by its government as to why their 
husband and son died in a conflict that was started based on false 
information from the Government of the United States, and that ought to 
be a bipartisan position that that obligation is owed.
  Amongst questions that need to be answered are these: Why did the 
President of the United States of America and his administration 10 
times on nine separate public appearances tell the American people that 
Saddam Hussein and Iraq had obtained aluminum tubes for use in a 
reconstituted nuclear program, when its own Department of Energy had 
told it that that was false before they made those statements?
  How can they possibly now stonewall this information when we have 
already peeled back the onion to find out that the Department of Energy 
had told the White House that they were wrong about this claim and they 
still used it to start this war? That is a question this family is owed 
an answer to.
  Second, why did this administration tell Americans that Iraq had 
developed these robot drone aircraft for the purpose of spraying 
chemical and biological weapons on us here in the continental United 
States when its own Air Force in analyzing the information had 
concluded that these robots were used for photography, not aerial 
spraying of biological and chemical weapons?

                              {time}  2245

  Why did the President of the United States authorize doing that, and 
if he did not do it, who did? Who did that? Because those people need 
to be held accountable, if necessary, with their jobs at least. This 
administration has done nothing of the sort.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield on that 
point, there is a lesson for all of us, and I think we have all said 
tonight, and if I have not said it yet, I will certainly reiterate the 
gentleman's point that we all make mistakes, we all have our 
weaknesses, we all have our elements of shortsightedness. But I will 
tell my colleagues this: as much as I opposed this attack on Baghdad 
and, as I

[[Page H1368]]

termed it at the time that a war would break out after we made this 
dash to Baghdad which is, in fact, what happened, as much as I opposed 
that, we bear responsibility too. And I want to indicate to people that 
we are down on this floor not just because we need to hear ourselves 
talk; we are down on this floor because this Congress needs to be 
accountable too. The very questions that the gentleman from Washington 
(Mr. Inslee) has been asking, this Congress should have been asking. We 
should not have allowed ourselves to be pushed into doing the most 
profound and fundamental thing that any Congress can do and that any 
President can do, which is take us into war. This should be a lesson to 
all of us, including and perhaps starting with the Congress.
  The Constitution says only the Congress can declare war. When did it 
happen that we turned it over to the President to make his or her own 
decision on that issue? We have a responsibility, too; and I want to 
indicate to everybody, at least for this Member, and I think I am 
probably speaking for the other Members on the floor here, we intend to 
come back here, not because we are doing penance, but because we are 
doing oversight, the oversight that we should have done before. Maybe 
the same conclusion would have been arrived at, I do not know, I doubt 
it; but we should have been doing these things.
  No commission should be looking into this right now. The plain fact 
is we should be looking into it, and that is what this Iraq Watch is 
going to do. We may not have the benefit of having the President in 
front of us or Mr. Cheney or others, but we have the benefit of 
understanding what the revelations have been and what their meanings 
are and to search for the truth, and that is our obligation. And I hope 
that if nothing else comes out of all of this, that in future the 
Congress will take seriously its obligation and carry forward on the 
understanding that only the Congress can declare war; and it should be 
only done over the most thorough and complete examination as to what 
has taken place and what the strategic and moral interests of the 
United States are.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Madam Speaker, I am reminded of the words of Brent 
Scowcroft and others in the first Bush administration, those that 
served under President George Herbert Walker Bush, but particularly 
what Brent Scowcroft stated in a column that he wrote. He expressed a 
fear that a unilateral rush into a preemptive war would undercut 
worldwide support for the war on terror and cast America as an 
aggressor Nation for the first time in our history. Now, here is a 
gentleman, a lifelong Republican, presumably, a man well respected 
internationally, has an excellent reputation here in Washington as a 
serious person, a man of unimpeachable integrity. And I think we have 
all been saying in our own different ways what he said so eloquently. 
And sadly, we find ourselves in that very, very tragic moment where we 
are losing allies, we are losing the respect of the international 
community; friends are beginning to turn their backs on us. And, if 
that occurs, the war that we must win, the war on terror, is very much 
at risk.

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