[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 98 (Thursday, July 15, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H5901-H5905]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FLIPFLOPS ON IRAQ AND AL QAEDA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. King of Iowa). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr.
Pearce) is recognized for the remaining time until midnight as the
designee of the majority leader.
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I would assume that is eastern time midnight
and not time in my district midnight. We could always hope, but I will
make the assumption that is eastern time.
Mr. Speaker, before I start into the text of my discussion tonight, I
would like to commend the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) for
her comment that the U.N. Security Council must pass a resolution that
has teeth. That was exactly the position many of the Members on this
side of the aisle felt like 1441 should have been, a resolution that
had teeth in it. But, actually, it turned out not to be, and that is
unfortunate. But her point is well made that the Security Council lacks
the ability to enforce things that should be enforced.
Mr. Speaker, I am joined tonight by the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Burgess), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter), and the gentleman
from Utah (Mr. Bishop). We want to talk about Iraq and al Qaeda.
It is one thing when politicians flipflop, and we have an example
now. One of the Presidential candidates, Senator Kerry, has shown a
willingness to flipflop and play both sides of an issue. But it is
especially reprehensible when our media begins to flipflop. As we
discuss this issue tonight on Iraq and al Qaeda, we are going to show
instances where the media, in 1999, 2000, and beyond, were perfectly
content, under the Clinton administration, to acknowledge the ties
between al Qaeda and Iraq. Yet under President Bush, they have decided
that they will disaffirm that; that instead of the truth, their agenda
is more important. They have elected to now say that there is no
connection, when the facts clearly show that there has been a strong
connection between al Qaeda and Iraq.
In reviewing this, I am reminded of the New York Times scandal where
the
[[Page H5902]]
writer from the New York Times was just simply making up stories and
writing things without facts. CNN produced even an eye witness, a
teenage boy, that they declared was talking about how the President had
coerced him into denying pressure. When the young man was actually
talked to, he explained that, no, the White House had never contacted
him at all. The CNN reporter simply made up the story and was allowed
to do that by her superiors.
It is this manipulation of the truth, it is this flipflopping on the
issues that makes it very difficult for Americans to understand exactly
what is happening.
For the first section on tonight's discussion, I would like for the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) to discuss an account that occurred
today when Iraqi women visited in this Capitol and visited with Members
of Congress. The Iraqi women were being asked, should America have come
to Iraq, and was the war the right thing to do.
Mr. Speaker, I would yield to the gentleman to discuss the responses
that were given today.
Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me,
and I also thank him for putting this hour together this evening.
I think this is extremely important. Some of these things that we
will not ever read of in the newspapers get reported here on the floor
of the House because they do not seem to come out anywhere else.
Today, on Capitol Hill, in our Subcommittee on Health Policy, we were
joined by about 25 women from the country of Iraq. They had been here
for about a week studying various Federal agencies and how democracy
works and how the business of our government runs. And, in fact, after
our policy meeting today, several of the Members of Congress had one of
the Iraqi women go with them for the remainder of the morning. I took
one of the participants to the Committee on Science, where we were
talking about space exploration.
It was kind of ironic, because we were talking about the bravery
involved in space exploration, but these women showed great bravery in
coming to this country to learn about democracy, to learn how disparate
peoples work together to gain a common good. They took a big chance in
doing that. In fact, some of them were too concerned to come out of the
briefing room, where there were television cameras, because they did
not want their faces filmed, for fear that they or their families would
suffer back in Iraq.
{time} 2330
Surely these women showed a lot of bravery by coming here today and
they shared a lot of stories with us.
There was, of course, some question about can all of the various
different groups exist in the country of Iraq. One of the spokeswomen
from the group said that truly religious imbalance in that country is,
in fact, propaganda. They are a tightly interwoven and interconnected
country, and they have been for years. They said playing politics with
ethnicity is wrong, not only in Iraq but in this country, I believe,
but certainly that was the message they wanted to give us.
They were generally happy with the new Prime Minister, Dr. Alawi.
Several of them said it is too early to tell a lot about that
administration, but the consensus of the women was that this is an
Iraqi government and, therefore, it is good.
There is a big distinction between what is Iraqi and what comes from
abroad, even to the point that the situation in Fallujah, a lot of the
problems that have occurred in Fallujah, according to the women, were
caused by people who came from abroad, that is, people who came from
other countries.
One of the ladies there who was from the city of Fallujah said, ``In
so many ways Iraq is much more beautiful now. For the first time in
years I have the freedom to drive in a car. The situation is getting
better daily.''
But Fallujah remains the magnet for terrorists and for outsiders
seeking to influence the outcome in Iraq. She was very emphatic about
Fallujah. She said, ``Please finish the job.''
I promised that I would relay that information to the Secretary of
Defense, so, Mr. Rumsfeld, I hope you are paying attention this
evening.
They went on to say, why give them a chance? Why should we give the
foreign fighters a chance in Fallujah? It should have been stopped at
the beginning. We are only giving them increased determination to do
what they came there to do, which is to cause trouble for the country
of Iraq. Unfortunately, from Fallujah on to Karbala and Najaf, the
terrorists have moved.
One of the city leaders from Karbala was very well spoken and
emotional in her talk. She said no one from Karbala was involved in the
insurgency in that town. In fact, all of the victims of the fighting,
all of the fighters who fell in that siege taken to the hospitals, none
had identification on them that identified them as natives of the city
of Karbala. They were all from outside the city. Unfortunately, now the
city has been destroyed.
She wound up to say that she felt that women are the best ally that
civilization has in dealing with extremism. I would agree with her
about that. She said that Iraqi women have suffered a lot.
Discrimination was common in Iraq for the past many years. There have
been over 120 Assyrian villages that are just gone, destroyed. No one
knows where the people have gone. Liberation for that individual was
really one of the best things that had ever happened.
In response to a question that perhaps this country went into Iraq
under false pretenses and perhaps we should not have gone, a woman
stood up, and really this brought out a lot of participation from the
ladies in the audience. The first woman stood up and quite accusatively
said, ``Why did you delay?''
Again, the city leader from the city of Karbala said, ``Forty-eight
people in my family are gone, and I don't know where they are. I don't
know whether they're dead or alive. If they're dead, I don't know where
they're buried. Why would you even ask this question?''
Another woman stood up and said, ``Chemical warfare was used on my
family. So many have been lost. Again, we don't know where they have
gone. The liberation should have begun in 1991.''
``Liberation was late,'' another woman said, ``and we were left to be
tortured.''
Another woman told a very touching story of having to hear on the
telephone from a relative who had been in prison, had his tongue cut
out and his hand cut off and he was telephoning to try to tell them
what had happened to him and her story was very, very difficult to
listen to, I promise you.
So did we do the right thing in Iraq? History will judge. History
will tell. Certainly these women who will do a lot to restore civil
society in Iraq, in this group of women today, the answer was a
resounding, yes, we did the right thing. Perhaps we took too long to
get it done.
Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman from Texas for those comments.
Liberating Iraq was the right thing to do, and these women had the
courage to come here to the United States Congress and to testify about
the evils that have occurred under terrorism, under Saddam Hussein.
I think the compelling question that I heard from people who attended
the event was, why did the world take so long? Why did you watch
millions tortured and hundreds of thousands die before we came? Forty-
eight members of one woman's family just cannot be found. She does not
even know where they are buried. And we in this country have a press
who is trying to indicate that there was no reason to be there.
I was especially ashamed when former Vice President Al Gore was
quoted as saying, ``The President convinced the country with a mixture
of documents that turned out to be forged and blatantly false
assertions that Saddam Hussein was in league with al Qaeda.'' I am
sorry, but Mr. Gore must not have read the comments from the 9/11
Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, the comments made on the News Hour
with Jim Lehrer, June 16, this year.
Mr. Kean said, ``Yes, there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda,
a number of them, some of them a little shadowy. They were definitely
there.''
Richard Clarke was quoted as saying, ``There's absolutely no evidence
that Iraq was ever supporting al Qaeda. Ever.'' Mr. Clarke was the head
terrorism expert under President Clinton. It appears that he is
covering his own trail because, again, the Vice Chairman
[[Page H5903]]
of the 9/11 Commission says, ``I don't think there's any doubt that
there were contacts between Saddam Hussein's government and al Qaeda,
Osama bin Laden's people.''
Lee Hamilton, the Vice Chairman, also spoke on the News Hour with Jim
Lehrer on June 16, 2004. Keep in mind that Mr. Hamilton is a former
Democratic Congressman from Indiana who served for 34 years in this
institution, and he is the one who is saying, ``I don't think there's
any doubt that there were contacts between Saddam Hussein's government
and al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's people.''
And so we have members of the other party who are out on the stump
every day accusing the U.S. and accusing President Bush of
manufacturing documents when the 9/11 Commission has been very clear
that there does not seem to be any doubt that there was cooperation
between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
The 9/11 Commission staff statement 15 says, ``Bin Laden also
explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan,
despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. A senior Iraqi
intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally
meeting with bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested
space to establish training camps as well as assistance in procuring
weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports
that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden
had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in
a collaborative relationship.''
We have many, many examples of the cooperation and the attempted
cooperation between al Qaeda and bin Laden.
The Butler report on British intelligence affirms many of the same
things, just in case there are those who believe that only the U.S. 9/
11 Commission is finding the cooperation. The Butler report on British
intelligence says, ``We have reached the conclusion that, prior to the
war, the Iraqi regime, A, had the strategic intention of resuming the
pursuit of prohibited weapons; B, in support of that goal was carrying
out illicit research and development and procurement activities to seek
to sustain its indigenous capabilities; and, C, was developing
ballistic missiles with a range longer than that permitted under
relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.''
The Butler report continues, ``We conclude that on the basis of the
intelligence assessments at the time covering both Nigeria and the
Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy
uranium from Africa in the government's dossier, and by the Prime
Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we
conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union
address of 28 January, 2003, where the President stated that the
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa was well-founded,'' the
Butler Commission concludes.
Before I go on, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan
(Mr. McCotter) to address this issue if he would.
Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, the timing was impeccable tonight, to have
heard the previous speaker from Ohio talking about the 30-something
Democratic Caucus.
{time} 2340
As a 38-year-old Republican, I am disappointed his bipartisan effort
has not reached this far across the aisle to include some of the rest
of us. Especially people my age, we are not baby boomers. We are
Generation X. We grew up through the malaise of the Carter years. We
grew up watching America internationally impotent in the world. We
watched friends, neighbors, family lose their jobs under stagflation.
And then we watched Ronald Reagan's administration come in. We
watched America be truly respected throughout the world. We watched
free market economies grow and expand to provide opportunities for us
as we left our college years, and we were blessed enough to see the
fall of Godless communism throughout Eastern Europe.
But then we are also very practical opinion people for another
reason, because shortly after that, we got to see our generation
quoting Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on the streets of Tiananmen
Square being gunned down by yet another totalitarian government, and we
realized early on in life that life is a struggle between good and evil
and in many ways it is a perpetual one.
My generation also had some difficult lessons to learn too. We were
the first ones to realize that a sexual infection which was once
curable could be superseded by sexual infections that could kill
people; that we would have to continue to work our lives longer and
longer with even the remote chance that we would have Social Security
because we were the first generation smaller than the one that went in
front of us, which was never part of the plan. We have to watch our
parents, who are living longer, come to us for help as we try to watch
the soaring cost of tuition for our own children behind us.
And perhaps because of the realistic, practical nature of my
generation and perhaps something we have gotten from our grandparents,
the Greatest Generation, that I think it is time on Iraq to ask some
fundamental questions, and I think they are exceedingly fair questions
to ask because no one has answered them and no one has bothered to
posit any answers to them.
I want to know what the plan is from the minority party. The
multilateral mantra has been disproved by the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food
scandal, their inability to stop genocide in the Sudan or in Rwanda
prior to that, and their abject anti-Americanism in so many of their
member states.
Would we like to see multilateralism work and the reconstruction of
Iraq? Absolutely. But I do not think we the American taxpayers should
hold our breath until the governmental entity where we pay 22 percent
of their core funding decides that they do not dislike us as much as
they do.
So multilateralism is also not going to work because the Democratic
approach to that has been quite simple. The Democratic Presidential
nominee has derided and criticized our allies whose soldiers are
fighting and dying next to us in the fields of Iraq as the coalition of
the bribed and the coerced, the bought, and the extorted. How do they
build an international coalition attacking their allies? Whom are they
trying to add? One cannot attack their allies and add their adversaries
and call that a true coalition, especially if one is trying to be the
Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces.
So then we have to ask, what is the plan? We have not heard a plan.
We have to ask, on the question of weapons of mass destruction, what
constitutes a significant tie with al Qaeda? If one does not believe
there were significant enough ties, there were contacts, although the
same intelligence which is being derided is also being used to disprove
that they were collaborative, which is quite an interesting feat
rhetorically. I want to know under what circumstances, what was the
threshold the minority party would hold Saddam Hussein to before they
would engage in defending the United States of America without a veto
from the U.N. When could we unilaterally protect ourselves if
necessary?
Ten tons of yellow cake from Niger, which the French Government, the
Italian Government, and the British Government still stand by exclusive
of the bogus material, the one bogus document. What is the threshold?
What is a collaborative link? What is their standard for defending the
United States against an external threat from a terrorist-sponsoring
state and a terrorist-sheltering state? If they did not like President
Bush's, if they do not believe he had enough, then I ask them to tell
us what their standard is so as we head into this election we can have
a debate on issues, not individuals, because the American people
deserve to know what they are going to do to defend this country if
they hold public office today and tomorrow and probably for our
lifetime in this war on terror. I think those are fair questions to
ask.
I think we should also ask the question about the moral equivalency
that we used to see between the Soviet Union and the United States and
the left in this country, I want to ask the question where did the
moral equivalency go? There is more outrage over
[[Page H5904]]
Abu Ghraib prison than there is the treatment of American soldiers that
are shot and killed by the insurgents and terrorists in Iraq. The
actions at Abu Ghraib were horrible, but the purpose behind them was to
gather information from people who were shooting at and trying to kill
our troops to protect our troops and protect the United States
citizens, just as it was at Guantanamo Bay. The goal of the terrorists
that are violating every civilized notion of captivity, their goal is
to foist terrorism back upon Iraq and back upon the rest of the world.
It is so sad, I would not even settle for moral equivalency from the
left these days that would wax nostalgic for it.
Finally, I just find it very difficult to see this debate continue
and not to see a plan. I reiterate that. We are sentient human beings.
We have the gift of reason if we so choose to use it. And as we head
into this troubled time for our country, deeper and deeper we go, the
longer and longer it takes us to come to each other with ideas to
debate and discuss for the common good that can be objectively analyzed
and assessed by the electorate and by each other, the worse off we are
going to be.
So in the future I would just ask a simple question of anyone who has
any opinion on this, on Iraqi reconstruction, on weapons of mass
destruction, on the role of the United Nations in this world. It is
nice to have their protestation and opinion, but show me their plan and
perhaps we can proceed together.
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments and
appreciate his attention to the key questions in this conversation.
I traveled to Iraq at the end of October and the first part of
November with the gentleman from Michigan, and we saw the same things
each day at noon for 3 days. Each day at noon and in the evening meal
we were in chow halls with 6 and 7 and 800 young men and women from
America. I would wander throughout giving New Mexico flag lapel pens to
young men and women. The constant question I heard from young men and
women there was why do my parents not know the truth about this war and
why do they not know the truth about what we are doing here, the good
that we are doing in reconstruction? Those were random contacts
throughout every chow hall from Kirkuk to Baghdad to Tikrit. There is
no explanation why the press refuses to tell the accuracies and instead
to tell just one side, often not even telling that side with truth.
To address the concepts of why the press might act in such ways, I
yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop).
Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, the State of Utah has the honor of
having a higher percentage of our members in the Reserve and the
National Guard involved in the Mid East conflict than any other State
in the Nation, and we bear that statistic with a great deal of pride.
I have attempted to make sure I was there to visit with every group
of returning Reservists and Guardsmen from the State of Utah. And
almost inevitably, as those individuals were coming back and we had a
chance to talk briefly with their families, the message they were
telling us is that what they are seeing or their families are seeing
about the situation in the Mid East is not the same thing that they
experienced as soldiers serving there. One of the great Utahans, Bob
Gross, who has just returned from a year as a special senior adviser to
the Iraqi ministry of labor and social services, had the same message
to say, that what he experienced in his time there in Baghdad was not
the same thing as the message that has been given. The question has to
be why is this message seeming to be so garbled. Those experiencing the
situation in Iraq and those talking to us who have lived there have a
different message than what we may be having over the media.
In my respected opinion, part of that problem rests in our
understanding of the purpose that we have there in the media. If the
Members would go back with me, when I was a legislator in the State of
Utah, one year we came to the State with a total new restructuring of
the State retirement system.
{time} 2350
I was very excited about this system going in there, because we had
come up with a program that would actually enhance the benefits of the
individuals on the retirement system and cut the costs to the State at
the same time, and I thought we have reached political nirvana. We will
be hailed as the conquering heroes. This is going to be the greatest PR
coup that could ever happen, because we have done the impossible.
As we started the discussion of that restructuring, I realized it was
not being covered by any of the media. Finally, with some courage, I
went to one of the senior reporters who covers the legislature and I
said why are you not covering anything about our total restructuring of
the State retirement system?
He said, ``Rod, you know, you are right. It is probably one of the
four major issues before this legislature. But let's face facts, it is
retirement issues. They are boring. No one wants to read or talk about
retirement.''
I recognized then and there, he was right. Those issues were boring.
They were dull. I also recognized that the purpose of the media is not
merely to explain events, it is not to tell the truth solely, it is
also to sell papers and to attract viewers. And to do so, the emphasis
must be on that which is unusual, on that which is a conflict. No one
is ever going to report that 100 people safely crossed the street
yesterday. They will report the one person who got hit. That is the
reality of the situation.
If we expect all the issues, the truth to come out from the media
sources by themselves, in all respects we are asking them to do
something with which they are not capable, because not necessarily of
intent, but because of the situation in which they have to be in a
competitive world market to sell papers and attract viewers at the same
time.
We always talk about Jefferson who said, ``Were it left to me to
decide whether we should have government without newspapers or
newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer
the latter.''
That statement was made before he was ever president, before he spent
12 years actually in Washington, eight as president.
After his experience as president, Jefferson said, ``The outright
suppression of the press would be no more injurious to the public good
than the newspaper's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.''
Later also he later said, ``The man who never looks into the
newspaper is better informed than he who reads them.''
Now, I not going to go that far, but I am going to tell you that what
I think would be wise to do is look at history as one of the guiding
factors in how we view the future and where we are going.
We all know that after World War II, there were American deaths in
the effort to stabilize Germany, post-World War II, after the fighting
supposedly had ended.
To me the most analogous historical situation is still the Spanish-
American War. Then activist Teddy Roosevelt said it was not much of a
war, but it was the only one we had. Senator Chandler on the Senate
floor said any war with Spain will last between 2 weeks and 90 days,
and he was totally accurate, the war lasted 90 days.
As America became giddy with success in the Spanish-American War,
with very little bloodshed, we realize then we had the responsibilities
of stabilizing the new territory of the Philippines. That stabilization
took 6 years. That is where the bitterness was, that is where the
deaths took place, that is where the cost was, in an effort for that
stabilization, and it did not take place until the capture of the
Filipino rebel leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, at which time the now
President Teddy Roosevelt declared the stabilization effort successful
and the war in the Philippines was over. In fact, the fighting of the
insurrection still lasted two more years. But with the capture, then
the corner had been turned.
We have done the same thing in Iraq. With the capture of Saddam
Hussein, the court hearing of Saddam Hussein, the turning of government
control over to the Iraqis themselves, this stabilization effort in
Iraq is going forward, and it will be successful.
There are some who say there is no chance whatsoever of actually
turning Iraq into a democracy. They said that
[[Page H5905]]
same thing after World War II about Japan, another area that had no
democratic tradition, that had fought a bitter war. But we were
successful in our efforts of reforming that area, changing the system
and moving forward.
May I quote with just some words from Mr. Gross, who once again,
whose returned and his experience first-hand in Iraq, by saying some
people would say, ``Rather than fight in Iraq, we should fight
terrorism. Well, terrorism has moved to Iraq. It is the center of that
war on terrorism. Iraq is the pivotal point. Terrorists had either
tacit or direct support from Saddam, and the U.S. and coalition forces
have created a tremendous problem for the terrorists. And now the
Jordanians and the Syrians and the Saudis will have to rethink their
relationship with terrorists. Iraq is the linchpin.''
We are moving forward in Iraq. It is important as a key element in
this fight against the war on terror. It is possible to create a
democracy in Iraq, which will have immense effects on assisting the
United States in our relationship in the entire Middle East, and it is
one of those things that we are going to have to fight and work through
looking at history, not necessarily referring only to the mass media,
which has different kinds of agendas of their own.
Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I am
most impressed by the gentleman from Utah's understanding of the
Spanish-American War. In fact, I would only add that there were also
front page stories about American troops and captured insurgents in
that war as well.
The gentleman brings up a very good point that I would welcome the
opportunity to address, as my district has many constituents who are
Iraqi and Arab American and, more importantly, many of my friends are.
One of the things we have heard repeatedly throughout this debate is
the Iraqi people will not take to democracy, that they have suffered
too long under a totalitarian yoke.
Well, what country could you not say that about in this world? Half
have suffered under totalitarianism with no history of democracy,
including up until the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian people
themselves? How many Eastern European countries never knew full
freedom, only knew serfdom and feudalism?
So I would like to add to my list of requests for plans one final
one: Those people who believe that there are some human beings that
cannot take to democracy, I would like your test and your complete list
of those who you deem unfit for freedom.
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank both the gentlemen from Utah and
Michigan, and am always compelled to understand that this institution
is inhabited by people with great insights and great skills in
communicating them, and they are demonstrating that tonight.
Mr. Speaker, as we conclude our time, I would like to mention that
not only do we have the 9/11 Commission that has contradicted both
Richard Clarke and former Vice President Al Gore, but also the Butler
Report and the Senate Intelligence report which just came out had
several conclusions, and I will just briefly go through those, because
we have so many things to cover in the last 5 minutes.
But Conclusion 1, Iraq was procuring dual use equipment that had
potential nuclear applications, this from the U.S. Senate Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence reporting on the U.S. pre-war
intelligence assessment on Iraq.
Also the intelligence reporting did support the conclusion that
chemical and biological weapons were within Iraq's technological
capability, that Iraq was trying to procure dual-use materials.
Conclusion 91, that the CIA assessment that Iraq had maintained ties
with Palestinian terrorist groups was supported by intelligence. The
CIA was also reasonable in judging that Iraq appeared to have been
reaching out to more effective terrorist groups, such as Hizbollah and
Hamas.
Conclusion 92, that the indicators of a possible Iraq-al Qaeda
relationship was a reasonable and objective approach to the question.
Conclusion 93 was the CIA reasonably assessed that there were several
likely instances of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda throughout the
1990s.
Conclusion 94 supports it.
Conclusion 95 supports it.
But if we go back to the news media, again looking at the news
media's flip-flop on this issue, back in 1999, many in the news media
were publicly reporting the ties and contacts between Iraq and al
Qaeda.
Newsweek Magazine, the January 11, 1999 issue entitled ``Saddam plus
bin Laden,'' which read in part, ``Saddam Hussein, who has a long
record of supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence
network overseas, assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism
network. U.S. sources say he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists,
including some who may be linked to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi
exile accused of masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in
Africa last summer.''
That article from Newsweek, January 11, 1999.
ABC News, on January 15, 1999, reported that intelligence sources say
bin Laden's long relationship with the Iraqis began as he helped
Saddam's fundamentalist government in their efforts to acquire weapons
of mass destruction. It continues that ABC News has learned in December
an Iraqi intelligence chief named Faruq Hijazi, now Iraq's ambassador
to Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden.
Three intelligence agencies tell ABC News they cannot be certain what
was discussed, but almost certainly they say bin Laden had been told
they will be welcome in Baghdad.
NPR reporter Mike Shuster reported in an interview with Vincent
Cannistraro, who was the former head of the CIA's counterterrorism
center, he says that Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go back some years
to at least 1994, according to one U.S. Government source. Hijaz met
with him when bin Laden lived in Sudan.
Mr. Speaker, when the news agencies declare these contacts under one
President and disaffirm them under another, it makes them appear to
have no more credibility than the National Enquirer.
Mr. Speaker, we have got several quotes here from Senators, and I
recognize that my time has drawn to a close.
Liberating Iraq was the right thing to do. The war on terror, al
Qaeda, have close relationships with Iraq.
We will continue the discussion next week, Mr. Speaker.
____________________