[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.

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