[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 53 (Thursday, April 22, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4334-S4335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, thank you for your indulgence this 
evening. I, for the last couple of nights, have been reading through 
much of Bob Woodward's new book, ``Plan Of Attack.'' It provides, 
believe me, quite an exceptional insight into the timetable and the 
process by which President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and their top 
advisers secretly planned and then engineered our country and the world 
into the Iraq war.
  It is remarkable that virtually every top administration official 
from the President on down provided so much information to Mr. 
Woodward, information that they withheld from Congress and from the 
American people.
  For example, in the fall of 2002, I sat through several hours of top 
secret briefings with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency 
and he never told us it was a ``slam-dunk'' that Saddam Hussein had 
weapons of mass destruction, as he reportedly said to the President. I 
guess I am glad he didn't, because he was wrong.
  I voted against the Iraq resolution that fall because I was not 
persuaded that Saddam Hussein had or was close to acquiring weapons 
that threatened the national security of the United States. So I guess 
I am fortunate that I wasn't slam-dunked.
  I wasn't, either, at the September 26, 2002, meeting which President 
Bush reportedly, according to Mr. Woodward, had with 18 Members of the 
House of Representatives. In the book, the President is quoted as 
saying--Mr. Woodward says initially:

       Putting the most dire spin on the intelligence he, the 
     President, said ``It is clear he, Saddam Hussein, has weapons 
     of mass destruction, anthrax, VX. He still needs plutonium. 
     The timeframe would be 6 months for Iraq having a nuclear 
     weapon if they could obtain sufficient plutonium or enriched 
     uranium.

  That was a significantly shorter timetable than anything that was 
represented to me in any of the briefings that I attended, even under 
those circumstances of procuring from the outside, weapons materials.
  Then the President went to the Rose Garden and said to the assembled 
press corps, and therefore to the Nation and the world:

       The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, 
     and, according to the British government, the Iraqi regime 
     could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 
     45 minutes after the order was given.

  That is an alarming statement, coming from a President of the United 
States, a statement likely to frighten a great many Americans and also 
pressure a great many Members of Congress that Iraq was, right then and 
there, an urgent and immediate threat to our national security.
  Mr. Woodward goes on to say that the CIA Director and others had 
warned the British not to make that allegation, which was based on a 
questionable source and almost certainly referred to battlefield 
weapons, not ones that Iraq could launch even at neighboring countries, 
let alone American cities. He quotes the Director of the CIA as 
referring privately to this as:

     . . . they-can-attack-in-45-minutes shit.

  I know one of my Senate colleagues who has said that he based his 
vote in support of the war resolution on that stated threat, and the 
peril, if true, in which it would have placed coastal cities in his 
State--if true. Of course it was true if the President, the President 
of the United States, said so to the American people from the White 
House, with Members of the House of Representatives, Democrats and 
Republicans, standing right behind him.
  They presumably also believed in the President, that he was speaking 
the truth--a truth that perhaps only he could know. And surely, 
certainly, if he happened to misspeak, someone in the administration 
who knew otherwise, especially the person in charge of our national 
intelligence agency, would make sure the necessary correction would be 
issued quickly so as not to mislead anyone or everyone. But that wasn't 
done.
  That is just one example of the misuse of prewar intelligence by the 
Bush administration. But in that instance the President himself and the 
commission the President appointed to look into the intelligence 
failures, if there were, or successes leading up to and through the 
Iraqi war, that commission will not be looking into that use or misuse 
of intelligence information by the administration officials because the 
President's directive does not permit them to do so.
  If anybody in this body needs sufficient cause to insist upon, as 
members of my caucus have for many months now, a truly independent 
commission, one with full authority to investigate whatever its members 
determine warrants their investigation so that we all can know the 
truth and the full truth about who had what information and who used 
what information truthfully or untruthfully and, therefore, led us into 
that war, if they need sufficient cause, this book certainly provides 
it.
  It is clear to me, however--I say this very reluctantly--that the 
administration won't provide us with the truth themselves--perhaps only 
part of it through Mr. Woodward. I regret to say I am convinced that my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle won't require the 
administration to do so. Instead, it is hunkered down, admitting no 
mistakes, acknowledging no difficulty, keeps spinning the party line 
about how well everything is going in Iraq, how much better and safer 
the Iraqi people are, we are, and the world is as a result of this war.
  That is what we have been told repeatedly and emphatically in every 
Senate Armed Services Committee meeting I have attended and in every 
secret and top secret briefing I received. And in the now dwindling 
number of real opportunities to question the administration's decisions 
about what is going on in Iraq, we get instead the party line about 
what they want us to know--what they won't tell us because they don't 
want us to know. What they tell us is usually contradicted as a result 
of some good investigative journalism. And I thank the Lord for a free 
and vigilant press in this country. It is just an absolute requirement 
for successful democracy.
  Increasingly now what we are finding out is the hard realities--the 
ugly truths about what really is happening or not happening in Iraq--
grab the headlines and seize our attention and sear our consciences as 
more and more Americans are dying there, as more and more are wounded, 
injured, and maimed for life.
  I have been to the hospitals here. I think most of my colleagues have 
as well. I have seen lives that have changed forever. And, of course, I 
have gone to services for those whose lives were ended forever, and 
those families have to struggle and go on.
  It is incredible to watch what is going on in Iraq now and see that 
more and more of our incredibly courageous men and women serving over 
there are being murdered by the people they saved--the people that the 
administration with certainty said would support our troops as 
liberators and not attack them as enemies.
  What do our incredibly brave American troops over in Iraq need to be 
able to do the enormous task that was assigned to them? We keep asking 
that question in Congress. We certainly asked it in the Armed Services 
Committee. We wanted to provide it.
  This Congress and the Congress previous to this one--in which I also 
served--provided the administration with every single dollar it 
requested for the operation in Iraq, whether it was a regular 
appropriation, a supplemental appropriation, or emergency

[[Page S4335]]

supplemental appropriation. I personally voted for every dollar the 
President said is needed for military supplies and equipment for the 
Iraqi security force training, for economic development in that 
country, and for social rehabilitation.
  My colleague, Senator Coleman, and I added funding that had been 
overlooked to help pay for those American heroes who are serving over 
there to travel home to see their families during their 2-week leave in 
the middle of what has become a 12-month or 18-month or indefinitely 
extended tours of duty.
  Senator Bob Graham saw to it that the wounded soldiers wouldn't have 
to pay for their own hospital meals during their recuperations. Senator 
Lindsey Graham and Senator Tom Daschle tried to extend the health care 
coverage that is provided to reservists and National Guard men and 
women and their families to make it year round, since their service in 
certainly incredibly increasing numbers of cases have become year 
round, and subject to that at a moment's notice. I was a proud 
cosponsor of that legislation. It was opposed by the administration. 
Despite that opposition, last year we were partially successful, and we 
are going to be trying to accomplish the rest this year.
  Most of my caucus and quite a number of my Republican colleagues have 
also voted several times to restore the funding cuts that the 
administration proposed for the VA health system which is even now 
seriously overloaded.
  When with no forewarning and apparently with very little 
foreknowledge, heavy fighting escalated from where it was before in 
Iraq and erupted where it was not before; when American forces are 
suffering their highest casualties in the years since President Bush 
flew onto the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and proclaimed ``mission 
accomplished;'' when 20,000 of our troops, our constituents, the 
families in our States were told they were literally packing up and 
heading for home, and then told they must stay for an indefinitely 
extended period; then we in the Senate Armed Services Committee meeting 
this week are told by the Deputy Secretary of Defense that ``the 
increase in violence was not entirely unexpected;'' it is hard to 
reconcile what has occurred.
  Just 3 weeks earlier--just hours, in fact, before the four American 
contractors were ambushed and massacred and then part of hell broke 
loose over there--those expectations were not mentioned in a briefing 
we attended. They weren't even suggested. When I made that point--I 
didn't ask in that briefing about Fallujah--well, what about it now? 
``Unsettled,'' I was told this week but U.S. forces will soon secure 
the city.
  The next morning they published a report that a:

       Senior American officer in Fallujah was quoted as saying 
     ``We have the potential to turn it into the Alamo, if we get 
     it wrong.''

  The Alamo? That was pretty unsettling, as I recall from my history 
books, and it kept getting worse thereafter.
  Again at a hearing, I queried that there have been reports that Iraqi 
forces which we have been paying $1 billion through supplemental 
appropriations to supposedly train and equip so they can fight and 
protect their own country and our men and women can come home, there 
were reports some of them in the last couple of weeks--many of them--
would not fight, that they ran away and even left our guns and 
equipment to be used by the insurgents to try to kill our own forces. 
How many did so? In other words, how effective has our training been? 
Didn't know. Estimated maybe 5 to 10 percent.

  That very night I read in an article I overlooked in a morning paper, 
that same day an American general who was in Iraq put the percentage of 
Iraqi forces who failed to fight at 40 percent; 40 percent of our 
supposed allies were not allies when needed and 40 percent of our 
equipment is being used against our own troops.
  The question I most want to be answered is, What is your current 
timetable for bringing our troops home? They are showing a big chart at 
the hearing for the timetable of the transfer of political 
responsibilities and government authority. It is quite detailed. It 
went through 2004, 2005, and into 2006. What, then, I asked, is the 
timetable for the transition of military responsibility to the Iraqis? 
No answer, not even in the closed session following. What is the United 
States force level now projected in 6 months, in 12 months in Iraq? No 
answer.
  Surely these projections are being made. Nobody likes to predict in 
public what the uncertain future might hold, but we have a right to 
know. More importantly, the American people have a right to know. These 
are their sons and daughters over there on the orders of their 
Commander in Chief and they deserve to be told the truth. We are not 
even being told how much money the war in Iraq and the war in 
Afghanistan is expected to cost in the next fiscal year, which starts 
in 5 months.
  We cannot even find out when the $87 billion we appropriated last 
October will run out. That is ridiculous. After all, whose money is it? 
Whose Government is it? It is our Government, all of us here and all of 
the American people, we are all in this together for better or for 
worse. We will pay for it or avoid paying for it together. We will 
benefit from an improved world or suffer from the reported 
unprecedented Arab hatred toward America. We will do that together. Our 
lives and our children's lives, our beloved Nation's future, will all 
be affected for many years profoundly by what is being done in our 
names and by the results and consequences that have occurred.
  Please, tell the truth, Mr. President, the real truth, the whole 
truth, and we will face it together.
  I yield the floor.

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