[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 100 (Monday, July 19, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H5975-H5978]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IRAQ WATCH
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hensarling). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Washington (Mr.
Inslee) is recognized until midnight.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we come to the floor this evening in the
continued responsibility of keeping a very close eye on this
administration's policy in Iraq in the continued series of what we
style the Iraq watch.
I will be joined by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt)
this evening, and hopefully the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland.)
We have been now coming once a week to the floor of the House because
we believe that the House has a duty not to sweep under the rug the
accumulation of errors, misjudgments and deceptions that have been
foisted on the American people by the Bush administration leading to
the war in Iraq.
The reason we are here every week is that there is too much tendency
to forget the sacrifices that are being made by our men and women in
uniform in Iraq; to treat them as sort of background noise; to sort of
say, well, the casualties are down to several a week, so we can just
sort of forget about Iraq. That is wrong.
We have been here for months blowing the whistle on this
administration's repeated failures in Iraq, and we will continue to do
so, because this Nation owes it to our men and women in uniform to
continue to be vigilant about what this administration is doing and not
doing in Iraq.
{time} 2320
Perhaps, even more importantly, we owe it to the cause of democracy
itself not to allow it to go unnoted when a President of the United
States starts a war based on deception of the American people. We are
here to say there is perhaps no greater abuse of democracy, no more
dangerous event in the great American democratic experiment, than for
an American President to foist falsehoods on the American people to
start a war, which we believe occurred in this case.
Now, I would like to start our discussion tonight by quickly setting
the stage for the history of the Iraq war to date. Unfortunately, this
administration has made not 1, not 2, but 10 serious mistakes,
deceptions, errors of judgment, negligence, and carelessness that have
led to the troubles that our people are facing in Iraq. I would like to
run through those very quickly before I yield to the gentleman from
Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).
There are 10 major errors the Bush administration has made in Iraq.
Error number 1: This administration told America in no uncertain terms,
with no doubt, with no vagueness, with no ambiguity whatsoever, that it
was required to start a war in Iraq because Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction. The President said, in a culmination of his multiple
statements, and this must not be forgotten; on August 26, 2002, the
President said, ``Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein
now has weapons of mass destruction.'' And there was not only no
weapons of mass destruction, there was plenty of doubt. This
President's statement was false, and this was falsehood number 1.
Error number 2: The President told us on repeated occasions, and his
administration, that they had clear, convincing and cogent evidence
that there was a working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al
Qaeda which led to the attack on September 11. They told us this over
and over and over again, and now that the evidence has been made clear
from the multiple reports that have come in on a bipartisan basis, this
President's statement that Saddam Hussein was associated with the
attack on this country, this venal, evil attack on this country was
false, and it led to a war. And there is no greater error, breach of
democracy than an American President saying that when this was false.
And it continues to this day. With all of this mountain of evidence
showing the falsehood of this President's statement, the Vice President
of the United States has the chutzpa, if one can stretch that word that
far, to try to continue to foist this on the American people, and it is
falsehood number 2.
Number 3: The American people were told repeatedly that we would be
welcome as liberators in Iraq. We would be welcome with rose petals at
our feet. We would be welcome with nothing but clear sailing because
the people would see us as liberators. There is no question in the
belief that Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant, and there is no question
he abused thousands of Iraqis. But this President made a massive
misjudgment by listening to Mr. Chalabi, one of the great sycophants in
failures of predictions in international history, and the President was
suckered and the American people were suckered by this misstatement,
and we have paid dearly with our treasure and our lives and the health
of our service personnel in Iraq.
Falsehood number 4: This President ignored the clear, professional
judgment of people who said we needed to have more boots on the ground
to prevent anarchy in Iraq, but this President ignored that advice
because he has wanted to fight this fight on the cheap from day 1, and
we have suffered as a result. General Shinseki told him that we needed
several hundred thousand people in Iraq to quell disturbance after the
Iraq war, and he ignored it, and our people paid dearly for error and
falsehood number 4.
Number 5: The President said we did not need the United Nations, we
could go in there alone, as long as we had the Philippines and a couple
of other small island nations. Well, the Philippines have now
withdrawn. This President decided to go it alone in Iraq, and our
people have suffered dearly. Falsehood number 5.
Falsehood number 6: The President said that by implication,
everything would be aboveboard. There would not be any war profiteering
in Iraq, people would not make millions of dollars worth of profits in
Iraq. Now we see Halliburton, this company so intimately tied with this
administration, reaping millions of dollars of taxpayers' money,
wrongfully. The GAO has reported on it. This is a scandal, and Harry
Truman rooted out world profiteering in World War II. We need to get to
the bottom of this war profiteering by Halliburton and the like.
Falsehood number 6.
Falsehood number 7, and error number 7: This President and this
administration led us down one of the most
[[Page H5976]]
embarrassing breaches of American integrity, and that is the horrendous
occasions of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, and it happened because
people at the top of this administration gave a green light to
stretching our well-accepted rules of following the Geneva Convention.
The memos are now in and public information that multiple memos were
sent saying that we did not have to give the protections of the Geneva
Convention to people. This is something we do to protect our own troops
so that they will be not abused if they are captive. This is a long
held principle of America. But out of hubris, out of outright
arrogance, this administration ignored those rules and we have suffered
in the eyes of the world grievously. Make no mistake, 99.9 percent of
our troops are doing a magnificent job, but this was error number 7.
Error number 8: This President sent American troops into battle
without adequate armor. Even today, our troops are driving around thin-
skinned Humvees that should have armor, and I believe our people have
been injured with shrapnel grievously.
Error number 9, and this is one that is going to haunt us for a long
time: The President started and continued a war with absolutely no plan
whatsoever in how to pay for it. He has tried to hide the ball over and
over again on the costs of this war to the American taxpayer, and he is
still doing it. This year, this budget my colleagues in the majority
party put out with $25 billion, we know it is going to be $60 billion
next year. There is no question about this. Why did they hide this
information from the American people? Do they think the American people
will be so sleepy they will ignore the fact that another $60 billion
will go to Iraq instead of schools and health care in America? Do they
think that will be forgotten? I do not think so. This deficit is now in
the billions of dollars and it is growing rapidly because the President
wants our children to pay for the Iraq war rather than us. And this is
that continued attitude of trying to fight this war on the cheap. This
President needs to be honest and forthright with the American people
about the real costs of this war, which are grievous. Error number 9.
And error number 10: And this one rankles me greatly as a person who
has read the casualty reports of what hot steel and shrapnel has done
to our troops, sending our troops into combat without flak jackets, and
it took us a year-and-a-half to get this administration to get flak
jackets. Is that too much to ask of an administration for our troops?
Error number 10.
Those are a quick summary of the errors that have been made in Iraq.
Today we heard about some new ones. We found out that, in fact, it was
Iran that was allowing 10 of the terrorists who injured us so terribly
on September 11, they were passing through Iran, not Iraq. The
President never leveled with us and told us that. It turns out it was
Iran that was trying to buy the Iranian yellow cake, not Iraq. It is
not a good enough excuse that they are one letter apart. That is not a
good enough excuse for this President.
I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Maybe it is the wrong enemy, maybe it is the wrong war.
But before I explore that, I thought I would just take a few minutes
to amplify a bit on two of the points that the gentleman made. The cost
of this war in terms of dollars and cents. I have this memory of the
Under Secretary of Defense, Mr. Wolfowitz, testifying before a
congressional committee saying that there would be no cost to the
American taxpayers because Iraqi oil would obviously be more than
sufficient to pay for the costs, not just of our military presence, our
security presence, but the cost of reconstruction.
{time} 2330
Well, that clearly was a mistake. In fact, I thought it was
interesting that the criticism from the other side of the aisle, from
Republicans, about the costs and the misestimates was probably even
louder than that that came from this side, from Democrats.
I have a memory of reading a particular column that was penned by
Senator Dick Lugar, the prestigious Chair of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, where he described the postwar phase. Of course, I
would suggest we are still at war. When one reads the casualty list, on
a weekly basis it is clear that American troops are still being killed,
and a large number of course are wounded. Many of us have visited them
at Walter Reed and Bethesda Hospital here in Washington, DC, but going
back to what Senator Lugar said, he said the postwar planning was
totally inadequate. And, again, where is that oil money?
And a further observation. If we remember the first Gulf War, the
cost to the American taxpayers was approximately $4 billion. We have
already expended somewhere between $150 and $200 billion, and as you
suggest, many hundreds of billions of dollars more will be added to the
bill, the bill that will be passed on to the American taxpayers for
generations.
In the first Gulf War, there was a real coalition, a genuine
coalition of the willing. There was participation in terms of the
military presence. There were more non-American troops in the first
Gulf War than there were American troops. Other than those forces from
Great Britain, as you indicated, there are only small detachments of
security forces from other countries.
And as was noted in a story last Thursday in the Washington Post,
four countries have already left, four more are due to leave by
September, and others are now making known their intention to lying
down a depart before the political transition is complete next year.
Norway pulled out its 455 military engineers this month. New Zealand
intends to pull out its 60 engineers by September, while Thailand plans
to withdraw its more than 450 troops that same month. The Netherlands
is likely to pull out next spring after the first of three Iraqi
elections, while Polish military officials told the Pentagon that
Poland's large contingent will leave probably in less than a year. And
as you indicated, the Filipinos withdrew already. The Spanish have
withdrawn. We are going to end up there alone, Mr. Speaker, and the
bill will be paid for by the American taxpayers.
Now, much was stated back five or six months ago about a donors'
conference in Madrid, Mr. Speaker, where the coalition was brought
together in an effort to have nations other than the United States
contribute, contribute financially even if they had no military
presence there.
Well, quoting the Los Angeles Times of July 12, ``Little of the $13
billion promised for rebuilding has been donated, and countries are
hesitant to waive that, frustrating the new Iraqi government.''
Countries have provided only a small fraction of the reconstruction aid
they promised at a conference nine months ago, Mr. Speaker. Of the $13
billion in nonAmerican aid pledged, less than $1 billion has been
turned over to the United Nations and the World Bank, funds set up to
take in most of the donations.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DELAHUNT. I will yield to the gentleman.
Mr. INSLEE. I think it is important to realize what this President's
unilateralism has done to the American taxpayer by putting it in
context, vis-a-vis the first Iraq war, because the first President Bush
did in fact work with the rest of the world community, and as a result,
the rest of the world paid well over the majority. I think it was close
to 80, 90 percent of the total cost of the first Iraq war. It was not
borne by the American taxpayer.
But the cost of this second President Bush's go-it-alone strategy to
the American taxpayer is enormous, because as of May the American
taxpayers had spent $174 billion. Now, to put that in perspective, we
are going to pass the total inflation-adjusted cost of World War I
sometime early next year in the cost of Iraq, which was $199 billion.
And, again, the insidious part about this is that the President,
because he is unwilling to do what Winston Churchill did, which was to
call for blood, toil, sweat and tears, this President just wants to put
this war on the credit card, and every single dollar of the Iraq war is
going to deficit spending.
We have a $7 trillion debt. This President Bush's budget is out of
balance $368 billion a year, and he is adding every single dollar of
this going straight on our national debt. And it is our children that
are going to suffer as
[[Page H5977]]
a result of this. Why? Because the President is unwilling to really
face the truth in Iraq. He was unwilling to face the truth about
weapons of mass destruction. He was unwilling to face the truth about a
purported connection with al Qaeda. He was unwilling to face the truth
about how many troops we were going to need. He was unwilling to face
the truth about the armor that we needed. He was unwilling to face the
truth, you name it, about anything you can think of in Iraq. And this
is a continuing sore on our fiscal house as well as the suffering that
we have had.
Mr. Speaker, I will yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr.
Delahunt).
Mr. DELAHUNT. As was indicated, it is only going to get worse,
because I would suggest that what we are going to find is as time moves
on, there will be fewer and fewer even pledges that will be made, let
alone honored. We now know they are not being honored, at least if you
accept the report from the Los Angeles Times.
It is easy to go out and say, yeah, America, you come up with $19
billion to build roads in Iraq, to provide universal health care
coverage, to rehab schools and to build affordable housing. If you do
that, American taxpayer, we will promise that we will pledge or we will
pledge at least half of what you do, and now we find out that less than
$1 billion has actually been transferred to the appropriate agencies.
In fact, half of that $1 billion comes from a single nation, Japan.
But I would like to get on to something else for just a minute. The
President is prone to be saying, particularly at campaign rallies, that
America is safer than ever. It is safer than it was three years ago. In
fact, he extends it to the entire world. He is saying that the world is
safer than it was three years ago. And yet, ironically, yesterday, Mr.
Speaker, I think it was on Fox News, one of the magazine editions,
there was an interview with the current, the so-called interim director
of the Central Intelligence Agency, John McLaughlin.
{time} 2340
And he said that while several al Qaeda plots against the United
States, against our homeland have been foiled, the truth remains that
the threat is as high as it ever was.
Now, there is an inconsistency here. All we have to do is count 14 to
15 days and there will be a new terror alert. How often do we turn on
one of the cable news networks or turn on our TV and we see the
Attorney General or we see Secretary Ridge talking about an elevated
threat? In fact, Secretary Ridge was in my hometown of Boston,
Massachusetts just recently talking about the threat. And here we have
the new Director of the CIA contradicting the President of the United
States who, and maybe he was simply indulging in campaign rhetoric,
saying that we are much safer now and the world is safer. And yet here,
``U.S. Spy Chief: Al Qaeda Threat Strong As Ever.''
Is this what we call winning the war on terror, Mr. Speaker. Is this
making the world safer? I do not know that answer. I do not think the
President really does either.
Mr. INSLEE. The fact of the matter is, and the sad fact is that this
administration has taken its eye off the ball of the people who killed
almost 3,000 Americans on September 11, al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.
When is the last time you actually heard the President of the United
States say the name Osama bin Laden? It is like he is the great
forgotten person in this terrible tragedy that we suffered. I remember
him and I think that our focus ought to remain on him.
Let me give an anecdote why it is not. We found out the other day in
the Committee on Financial Services, the secret of stopping terrorists,
you cut off their money. You cut off their money, you kill the beast,
in part.
We found out that this administration has more people, more agents of
the Treasury Department, this is the agency that is supposed to be in
charge of lopping off the conduit of funds to al Qaeda, this
administration has more agents chasing American tourists going to Cuba
than it does chasing off money that goes to al Qaeda.
That is just one sort of sad indication that this administration has
not focused on where the real threat has been which is al Qaeda which
is still out there and which is still a meaningful threat.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Let me give another example in terms of seriousness.
The administration's position, vis-a-vis tracking down the terrorists.
There was a Committee on Ways and Means hearing where a representative
of the IRS was posed a question and in response to the question
indicated that the IRS's request for an additional 80 investigators who
would be assigned to tracking terrorist financing throughout the world
was rejected by the White House through the Office of Management and
Budget. Is this how you fight the war against terror?
Mr. INSLEE. I bet they have got 80 bean counters that the American
taxpayer are funding who work for Halliburton. This administration has
no problem dishing out the dough for Halliburton and we cannot get 80
inspectors to track down Osama bin Laden. How is that for a sad
commentary on taking your eye off the ball.
Now, I want to suggest how this has happened a little bit, how this
emphasis has been misplaced. And it has because of this President's
administration's focus on Iraq and their efforts to hoodwink the
American people into believing that the real culprit or at least one of
the culprits behind September 11 was Saddam Hussein. I want to spend
just a moment talking about that because I think one of the single most
serious affronts and dangers in a democratic system is for elected
officials, particularly in the powerful position of the President, to
tell things to the American people which are false that end up starting
a war.
We found out that last September a poll of American people said that
65 percent of American people believed that Saddam Hussein was behind
the attacks on us on September 11, and Saddam Hussein has a list longer
than my arm of his depredations against the Iraqi people. But 65
percent of the Americans had been convinced by someone that Iraq was
behind the attack on September 11.
Now, who was that someone? Where did the American people get that
idea which has turned out to be false and it is pretty clear where they
got it. They got it from the President of the United States who was
standing right there and tried to convince, and he did by and large,
convince the American people of something that is false. The President
did not let this slip on one iota. We all make mistakes and misspeak on
occasion. This was a concerted, organized and consistent effort to fool
the American people into believing that the culprit was Saddam Hussein
behind September 11.
Look at some of his quotes. May 1, 2003, the President says, ``The
liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror.
We have removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist
funding.'' Vice President Cheney, September 14, 2003, says, ``If we are
successful in Iraq, then we will have struck a major blow right at the
heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists
who had us under assault for the many years but most especially on
September 11.''
What do we find the truth is? Our intelligence people knew at that
time but was shielded from the American people? The bipartisan
committee under the chairmanship of a Republican Governor Keen
concluded there was ``no credible evidence of a link between al Qaeda
and the attacks against the United States.'' No credible evidence. Not
some credible evidence but not much. Not just a scintilla of credible
evidence. Not a couple of ounces.
They said no credible evidence, but this President stood right there
and started a war based on a falsehood, and he knew he was doing this
to the American people and he is responsible for this. He is personally
accountable for this and the American people need to hold him
accountable for this depredation and affront to democracy as soon as
they can.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Is not it ironic that on Sunday there appears a story
in the New York Times about that report that will be forthcoming later
this week, and the gentleman alluded to it earlier, when he mentioned
Iran. And by the way, the acting director of the CIA confirmed the fact
yesterday on the Fox News Program, yesterday morning that, yes, there
was information that a number of the 9-11 hijackers had safe
[[Page H5978]]
passage through Iran, Iran, not Iraq but Iran. I guess we made a
mistake as far as what country to invade.
But seriously, let me just read several excerpts from the Sunday
editions of the New York Times. ``The final report of the commission
investigating the September 11 attacks will offer new evidence of
cooperative ties between Iran and al Qaeda including information drawn
from intelligence reports suggesting that Iran provided several of the
hijackers with safe passage in the year before the attacks, government
official said. The evidence raised enough questions about why the Bush
administration focused on the possibility of Iraqi ties to be Osama bin
Laden's terror network after 9-11 when there may have been far more
extensive evidence of the Iranian connection. The panel had recently
obtained intelligence showing that Iran had ordered guards at its
border stations not to stop the passports of al Qaeda members from
Saudi Arabia who were moving through Iran after training at terrorists
camps in Afghanistan.''
{time} 2350
My memory is this Iran, according to the President, was a member of
the axis of evil club, but as you pointed out, there is no
collaborative relationship according to the commission between Iraq and
Iran. But why did we end up attacking Iraq rather than Iran?
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I will answer that question. The reason we
attacked Iraq is that the day after September 11, maybe it was 2 days
after, it has been reported that the Secretary of Defense goes in to
the President and says now is our chance, now is our chance to go after
Iraq. This was like 48 hours after September 11. There was no evidence
whatsoever that Iraq was associated with September 11, but this
President and his political advisers knew one thing. They knew if they
could fool the American people into believing that Saddam Hussein was
behind September 11, the neo-cons could con the American people into
supporting a war in Iraq, and to some degree, their maliciousness was
successful to the detriment of our proud men and women in service who
are there tonight in the heat of Iraq, 130 degrees, suffering, dying in
the sands of Iraq because an American President's administration was
not forthright with the American people and consciously, willfully gave
false information to our fellow countrymen.
This is not just a little happenstance. We have a memo from a
political operative of the President about how to talk about this. This
was a cold-blooded, calculated act, and you talk about having your
missed priority and what country you would be involved in.
I have been asked by one of my constituents if I have seen the movie
``Fahrenheit 9/11.'' He said, Jay, is it true, did the President allow
the family members of Osama bin Laden, who are Saudi Arabian, to fly
out of the country when all the other planes were grounded in the
country? Did this administration let his friends from Saudi Arabia fly
out of the country without a full and thorough investigation of their
relationship? Did that really happen?
The sad fact is, yes, it did, and we have discovered that, in fact,
did occur in our Committee on Financial Services hearing, and I pressed
for an answer of who made that decision. I never got that answer, who
made that decision, and 3 days later, the President is on the south
portico of the White House smoking cigars with Prince Bandahar, the
ambassador of Saudi Arabia, where two-thirds of the terrorists came
from that attacked this country, and we let their families fly out
without even a decent interrogation of them. Talk about having a mixed-
up relationship about who our enemies are and who our friends are.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Does it come as a surprise to you that at least
according to Bob Woodward in his most recent book, a book that was
praised by the White House, in fact, there are excerpts of it I
understand on the President's campaign Web site, but in that particular
book, it was noted by the author that Prince Bandahar was informed of
the attack on Iraq prior to the Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Let me go back just for a moment, because I know we are wrapping up,
to another observation by Mr. Woodward, and this I would suggest is
where ideology colors reality and affects the truth, the objective
truth.
The passion of some in this administration, and I put beside you
there a Newsweek cover with a picture of the Vice President Dick
Cheney, emblazoned that says how Dick Cheney sold the war. It was clear
that this individual was obsessed with Iraq, for whatever reason. I am
not questioning his motives.
But in the book by Mr. Woodward, it is noted on page 175, for those
who might have it, that the Secretary of State ``detected a kind of
fever in Cheney. He was not the steady, unemotional rock that he had
witnessed a dozen years earlier during the run-up to the Gulf War. The
Vice President was hell-bent for action against Saddam Hussein.'' It is
very dangerous when ideology colors the objective truth and reality. In
the end, it gets us in a mess, and this is where we are now.
Mr. INSLEE. Well, I am going to close with a couple of comments.
We are here to discuss a basic principle of American democracy, and
that is, accountability, that people in public service need to be held
accountable, both for their successes and their failures.
There is a group that we should recognize for valor and effectiveness
and honor in our government and our government personnel, and that is
our Army, navy, air corps, Coast Guard, marines, who are serving in
Iraq. Those folks deserve to be held accountable by being praised for
their tremendous service to this country in difficult circumstances
tonight, and they are still continuing to suffer the pangs of war
tonight, and we have come here to make sure that their sacrifice is not
forgotten and that we treat them with as great an honor as we can and
that we restore our Veterans Administration health care system so that
when they come home they are not exposed to the cuts in the veterans
health care system that this administration has proposed.
This group of public servants, we cannot forget their contribution.
It should never be forgotten, but there is another group of public
servants whose massive failures and deceit should not be forgotten
either, and that is the Bush administration who has made at least 10
major failure, falsehoods, negligence and carelessness, to the great
cost of the American public, and those public servants should not be
forgotten in their failure either and should be held accountable, and
we will continue to have this discussion until they are.
Would the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) like to close?
Do you have any closing comments?
Mr. DELAHUNT. No, I concur with those sentiments.
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