[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 86 (Monday, June 21, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H4619]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        THE ADMINISTRATION'S FAILURE TO DESTROY A TERRORIST CAMP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gerlach). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, last week the independent 9/11 Commission 
said it found ``no credible evidence to substantiate the charge that 
there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Iraq and 9/11. We 
have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks 
against the United States.'' Yet, 2 days later, Vice President Cheney 
said that, in fact, that was not true, that there were long established 
ties with al Qaeda.
  Now, of course, Vice President Cheney has quite a distinguished 
record as Vice President. He was the gentleman of 3 years ago said 
during the energy crisis in the western United States that those of us 
who thought there was market manipulation were really pretty stupid, 
and this was just market forces at work and there was no manipulation 
of the market. And Enron was a wonderful and upstanding company. Of 
course, now Enron officials, one after another, are going to jail, and 
hopefully Ken Lay will be criminally indicted this week. But the Vice 
President waxed eloquent there as he did here.
  He also has said that deficits do not matter despite the fact we will 
borrow $700 billion against our future and obligate Americans for 
generations to pay that money back. He says that does not matter 
perhaps because his tax policy that he and the President envision says 
that only wage earners and salary earners will repay that and the 
wealthy and those that you normally associate with and corporations 
will not pay. But, nonetheless, he said again trying to raise the old 
saw about this relationship perhaps because although he told us that he 
knew exactly where the weapons of mass destruction were, he failed to 
point any of the U.S. troops, the inspectors or anybody who has been in 
Iraq for the last year and a half to that exact spot where he knew 
those weapons were located.
  So it is a continuing attempt at obfuscation. The one thing they 
point to does have a kernel of truth, and they point to terrorist Abu 
Musab Zarqawi. He is a really bad guy. He has been behind more than 700 
terrorist killings in Iraq it is estimated, a mastermind.
  In June 2002, the United States intelligence service located Mr. 
Zarqawi and they said he had set up a weapons lab in Kirma, in northern 
Iraq. He was producing ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon drafted plans 
and asked the Bush administration to take out Mr. Zarqawi. The Bush 
administration said no.
  Then we went 4 months later, and this is all from a report by Jim 
Miklaszewski, a correspondent for NBC news. Four months later, 
Intelligence showed that Zarqawi was planning to use the ricin in 
attacks in Europe. The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan. The White 
House again killed it. This is a quote from a former national security 
member, ``People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to 
overthrow Saddam than to execute the President's policy of preemption 
against terrorists.''
  Then finally the threat turned real in January. Mr. Zarqawi's group, 
a number of them were arrested in London and they had a ricin lab which 
was directly connected to the lab in northern Iraq. This was a part of 
the country Saddam Hussein did not control. The Kurds controlled that 
area undercover of U.S. air power. So Saddam Hussein did not control 
this area. And, again, the United States flew over it every day. In 
fact, we might remember that Colin Powell famously pointed to it when 
he made his presentation to the National Security Council and said 
there are terrorists in this camp training in an area where we control 
the air space and we fly over it every day. But we did not take it out.
  And because the Bush administration was more obsessed with building 
its coalition of the willing, worried that countries some of those the 
new Europe might fall off from our coalition, those who sent five, ten, 
or 15 troops to the coalition, if we took out this terrorist camp, they 
did not do it. And U.S. troops and many others have died because this 
administration failed to take out that terrorist camp on the three 
occasions when the Pentagon asked them to do it because they were so 
obsessed with pursuing a war against Saddam Hussein and his non 
existent weapons of mass destruction. Now, he was a bad guy in the 
world and we are well quit of him, hopefully permanently quit of him 
soon.
  But the point is when this administration turned its eyes away from 
al Qaeda, and turned its eyes away from the terrorists, and refused to 
take out Zarqawi, they were making a grave error and people have died 
because of that error.

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