[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 41 (Monday, March 29, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H1619]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          CONNECTING THE DOTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MEEKS of New York. Mr. Speaker, I believe it was Abraham Lincoln 
who said, ``You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of 
the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all 
of the time.'' Until recently, the Bush administration has fooled some 
of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time on 
Social Security, Medicare, tax cuts for the rich, economic recovery, 
the No Child Left Behind Act, nation-building, the war against 
terrorism, and, most especially, the war in Iraq. The President has 
been able to do this because most Americans simply do not believe that 
the President of the United States would distort and deceive on such 
basic issues as war and the well-being of children and the elderly.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair will remind the gentleman not to 
make personal references to the President.
  Mr. MEEKS of New York. Mr. Speaker, during the 2 days of the hearings 
of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, 
it was clear that the time for the fooling of the people may be running 
out. Of course, there are those Americans inside and outside of 
Congress who always question the veracity of the President's arguments 
for going to war. My hope is that the testimony at the hearings, along 
with a series of widely publicized books and articles published in the 
last year or so, the latest being Richard Clarke's ``Against All 
Enemies,'' will enable the broader public to connect the dots to the 
truth. I believe they will see that the dots of deception lead straight 
to the Oval Office.
  This response of administration officials to Mr. Clarke's charge that 
the President has done a terrible job on the war against terrorism is 
typical: throw sand into the public's eyes. Bait and switch. In other 
words, attack a person's motives while refusing to address the 
substance of the critique. Hide the facts. Concoct data. Delay. Blame 
everything on Clinton. Do the opposite of what you say. Claim not to 
remember a conversation or a meeting. Insist on redacting critical 
portions of critical congressional reports. Accuse critics of being 
disgruntled employees. All to cover up arrogant, reckless, and 
disgraceful conduct of foreign and domestic policy.
  We should commend those public servants who, in the aftermath of 9/
11-PATRIOT Act hysteria, have put loyalty to country above loyalty to 
the President, risking their careers to shed light on the dark 
underside of George W. Bush's Presidency. This lengthening list 
includes the Minneapolis and Phoenix-based FBI agent who revealed that 
FBI field operatives tried to get higher-ups to pay attention to 
individuals on the counterterrorism watch list, including several who 
later crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 
were in the United States taking flying lessons; the joint inquiry of 
the House and Senate Intelligence Committees that revealed serious 
lapses on the part of the senior administration and intelligence 
officials during the lead-up to 9/11; John Wilson, a former ambassador, 
who disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium fuel in 
Niger, Africa. Wilson rejected the tales of the President and Vice 
President, Defense Secretary, Secretary of State, and National Security 
Adviser were telling about Saddam's alleged nuclear weapons program 
and, as we now know, the White House retaliated by telling a journalist 
that Wilson's wife was a covert CIA operative.
  In a book by Ron Suskind, former Treasury Department Paul O'Neill 
insists that from the very beginning, the administration and the 
President were fixated on invading Iraq, Mr. O'Neill, who told the 
President that a second round of tax cuts would damage the economy, and 
also reveals that Vice President Cheney contended that Ronald Reagan 
had proved that deficits do not matter.
  David Kay head of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, congressional 
testimony that no weapons of mass destruction had been found, that no 
weapons of mass destruction were likely to ever be found, and that 
frankly, the administration and the intelligence community had it all 
wrong. And now, Richard Clarke, a senior counterterrorism official in 
the Reagan, Clinton, and both Bush administrations, who says 
immediately after 9/11, the President and other senior officials were 
focused more on finding a pretext for attacking Iraq than on finding 
Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

                              {time}  2015

  Clarke quotes Defense Secretary Rumsfeld as saying there were not any 
good targets to bomb in Afghanistan but plenty in Iraq. Mr. Clarke also 
contends that invading Iraq was a priority even before the President 
took office.
  If what Clarke, Kay, O'Neill and others have said is true, then it is 
fair to not only say weapons of mass destruction was a hype but also 
that every new explanation the administration has given since it 
declared an end to major operations is part of a cover-up of a war of 
choice, not necessity.
  This is the context in which the public can connect the dots of the 
administration's attempts to obstruct the joint congressional Permanent 
Select Committee on Intelligence investigation of 9/11 and its belated 
cooperation and then only under the threat of subpoena with the 
independent commission investigating intelligence.

                          ____________________