[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 96 (Tuesday, July 13, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H5619]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              SHORTCOMINGS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, Saddam Hussein was a murderous despot in 
Iraq, and the world is better off without him. There is no disputing 
that fact. However, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, 
all 511 pages, including the 15 percent that was redacted, raises very 
serious questions about the nature of the threat that Saddam Hussein 
posed to the United States that led to the first-ever preemptive war in 
the history of our country. Even the President says there were ``some 
shortcomings.'' Well, let us look at a few of the shortcomings.
  The aluminum tubes that we were told was slam dunk evidence by Mr. 
Tenet of the CIA that they were going to separate uranium and enrich it 
misrepresented key evidence. It had nothing to do with uranium 
separation.
  Uranium from Niger, obvious sign; a key document was forged, rather 
amateur forgery, actually.
  The revised weapons program; the claim is not supported by the 
intelligence.
  The mobile labs; withheld important information about the sources, 
lack of reliability.
  This is the famous Curveball, showed up drunk at his one meeting with 
a U.S. intelligence representative and did not seem very credible. One 
upstanding individual over at the CIA wanted to raise concerns and go 
on record about how the fact he was not a good source, but the deputy 
chief of the agency's Iraqi task force said we can hash this out in a 
quick meeting. He rejected the worries as irrelevant.

                              {time}  1930

  Here is his quote: ``Let's keep in mind the fact that this war is 
going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't said and 
that the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether 
Curveball knows what he's talking about,'' the CIA official replied in 
an e-mail message obtained by the committee. Basically, they did not 
want to know that this was phony information.
  Smallpox designer germs. Not supported by the intelligence, according 
to the CIA.
  The drones. I saw pictures of the drones. They were these little 
patched-together things, and George Bush was talking about what a 
tremendous threat they were. Did not look like they could fly at all, 
and they certainly could not fly any distance. The head of intelligence 
for the Air Force, they know a little about planes, said, in fact, 
there was no credible threat connected to the drones.
  The list goes on and on and on. And as the President says, there were 
some shortcomings. There were more than some shortcomings; there was an 
extraordinary distortion of very, very poor intelligence and minimal 
evidence that there was any threat posed by Saddam Hussein. In fact, 
the conclusion of this Republican Senate-led Select Committee on 
Intelligence is that the military of Saddam Hussein was on a horrible 
downward spiral, was incredibly degraded, had never recovered from the 
Gulf War, that the sanctions in the containment were working, and that 
he did not pose any credible threat to the United States nor even to 
Iran or some of his other neighbors.
  But the President would still say, as he did seven times in 32 
minutes yesterday, just to make sure people did not miss the message 
behind him, which was to show that American people are safer. Well, 
there is a real question about that since they put us on a higher 
terror alert. They are talking about postponing the elections. 
Postponing the constitutionally mandated elections, I do not know how 
they do that, but I guess it is part of his executive powers we do not 
know about, because of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and al 
Qaeda, who have been over there regrouping and freely operating for the 
2 years the Bush administration turned all our intelligence assets, the 
world's attentions, our military assets to Iraq.
  And they say the world is safer? The world is not safer. In fact, he 
allowed those people to regroup and to raise a threat that is so grave 
that his Homeland Security Secretary is asking how we might be able to 
postpone the elections if we know 3 or 4 days before that George Bush 
is behind in the polls. No, no, I mean do we know there is a credible 
threat or there was a terrorist attack?
  Now, there was one piece of evidence that was good. There is a guy 
named Zakawi; and he is a really, really bad guy. And Colin Powell 
pointed to where he was on the map. Guess where that was? That was in a 
little corner of Iraq, behind the Kurdish territory, which was 
overflown by the United States on a daily basis. Saddam Hussein could 
not get at that guy if he wanted to. But we could have, three times.
  Three times the Pentagon asked to take out Zakawi, who is now 
responsible for killing maybe tens of hundreds of U.S. troops and 
Iraqis in a terrorist campaign, and three times the Bush administration 
said, no, you cannot take him out. Because if you take him out, it 
might disturb our recruiting for the war against Iraq that does not 
pose a threat to the United States of America. What incredibly 
misplaced priorities these people have.
  If it is a war on terrorism, then go after the terrorists: Osama bin, 
al Qaeda, Zakawi. But, no, they distracted us into this war with Iraq 
in some bizarre neoconservative vision of the world, and many Americans 
have died because of their mistakes, and I fear that more might because 
he has allowed the terrorists to regroup.

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