[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 32 (Wednesday, March 16, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H1512]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           NOT ONE MORE DIME

  (Mr. KUCINICH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, today the House is going to be asked to 
approve a supplemental appropriation of $82 billion, most of which will 
go to continue the war in Iraq.
  We now know more than 2 years later that Iraq did not have weapons of 
mass destruction which was the immediate occasion of America's 
intervention. We know that Iraq had neither the intention nor the 
capability of attacking the United States. Yet this country has spent 
over $200 billion and today is determined to spend another $82 billion 
in furtherance of a war we did not have to fight at great cost of human 
life, the lives of our troops and the lives of innocent Iraqi 
civilians.
  Yet while we are contemplating going ahead and spending $82 billion, 
we should be thinking about the fact that on January 30 the Special 
Inspector General for the Iraq reconstruction issued a report that the 
administration's Coalition Provisional Authority mismanaged $9 billion 
in a development fund for Iraq funds. Not a single penny of the $9 
billion could be accounted for by the Inspector General.
  The development fund for Iraq consisted of Iraqi oil revenues 
intended for reconstruction and humanitarian efforts in the war-torn 
country, but they cannot account for a single penny of it. Now this 
government is asking for $82 billion, most of it for Iraq. They could 
not account for a single penny of the money that the Coalition 
Provisional Authority, their authority, was responsible for. How can we 
give them another dime when they cannot account for $9 billion?
  We have people who do not have decent education in this country, 
decent housing, our highways are falling apart except for our 
transportation bill. We need to focus on why they do not and have not 
produced a single shred of evidence of what happened to that $9 
billion. The American people have a right to know.

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