[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 149 (Thursday, November 10, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12636-S12637]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IRAQ
Mr. KENNEDY. Earlier this week, Madam President, several of our
Republican colleagues came to the Senate and attempted to blame
individual Democratic Senators for their errors in judgment about the
war in Iraq. It was little more than a devious attempt to obscure the
facts and take the focus off the real reason we went to war in Iraq.
Madam President, 150,000 American troops are bogged down in a quagmire
in Iraq because the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted
the intelligence to justify a war that America never should have
fought. The President wrongly and repeatedly insisted that it was too
dangerous to ignore the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of
Saddam Hussein and his ties to al-Qaida.
If his march to war, President Bush exaggerated the threat to the
American people. It was not subtle. It was not nuanced. It was pure,
unadulterated fear mongering based on a devious strategy to convince
the American people that Saddam's ability to provide nuclear weapons to
al-Qaida justified immediate war.
The administration officials suggested the threat from Iraq was
imminent and went to great lengths to convince the American people that
it was. At a roundtable discussion with European journalists last
month, Secretary Rumsfeld deviously insisted:
I never said imminent threat.
In fact, Secretary Rumsfeld told the House Committee on Armed
Services on September 18, 2002:
. . . some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is
not imminent--that Saddam Hussein is at least 5-7 years away
from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain.
In May of 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether
we went to war because we said WMD were a direct and imminent threat to
the United States. And Fleischer responded, ``Absolutely.''
What else could National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have been
suggesting other than an imminent threat, extremely imminent threat
when she said on September 2, 2002:
We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
President Bush himself may not have used the word ``imminent,'' but
he carefully chose strong and loaded words about the nature of the
threat, words that the intelligence community never used to persuade
and prepare the Nation to go to war against Iraq.
In the Rose Garden on October 2, 2002, as Congress was preparing to
vote on authorizing the war, the President said the Iraqi regime ``is a
threat of unique urgency.''
In a speech in Cincinnati on October 7, President Bush specifically
invoked the dangers of nuclear devastation:
Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the
final proof--the smoking gun--that could come in the form of
a mushroom cloud.
At an appearance in New Mexico on October 28, 2002, after Congress
had voted to authorize war and a week before the election, President
Bush said Iraq is a ``real and dangerous threat.''
At a NATO summit on November 20, 2002, President Bush said Iraq posed
a ``unique and urgent threat.''
In Ft. Hood, TX, on January 3, 2003, President Bush called the Iraqi
regime ``a grave threat.''
Nuclear weapons. Mushroom cloud. Unique and urgent threat. Real and
dangerous threat. Grave threat. These words were the administration's
rallying cry to war. But they were not the words of the intelligence
community, which never suggested the threat from Saddam was imminent or
immediate or urgent.
It was Vice President Cheney who first laid out the trumped-up
argument for war with Iraq to an unsuspecting public. In a speech on
August 26, 2002, to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he asserted:
. . . We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to
acquire nuclear weapons . . . Many of us are convinced that
Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.
As we now know, the intelligence community was far from certain. Yet
the Vice President had been convinced.
On September 8, 2002, he was even more emphatic about Saddam. He
said:
[we] do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his
procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order
to enrich uranium to build nuclear weapons.
The intelligence community was deeply divided about the aluminum
tubes, but Vice President Cheney was absolutely certain.
One month later, on the eve of the watershed vote by Congress to
authorize the war, President Bush said it even more vividly. He said:
Iraq has attempted to purchase high strength aluminum tubes
. . . which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an
amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a
single softball, you can have a nuclear weapon in less than a
year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would
be crossed . . . Saddam would be in a position to pass
nuclear technology to terrorists.
In fact, as we now know, the intelligence community was far from
convinced of any such threat. The administration attempted to conceal
that fact by classifying the information and the dissents within the
intelligence community until after the war, even while making dramatic
and excessive public statements about the immediacy of the danger.
In October of 2002, the intelligence agencies jointly issued a
national intelligence estimate stating that ``most agencies'' believe
that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program after inspectors left in
1998 and that if left unchecked, Iraq ``probably will have a nuclear
weapon during this decade.''
The State Department's intelligence bureau, however, said the
``available evidence'' was inadequate to support that judgment. It
refused to predict when ``Iraq could acquire a nuclear device or
weapon.''
About the claims of purchases of nuclear material from Africa, the
State Department's intelligence bureau said that claims of Iraq seeking
to purchase nuclear material from Africa were ``highly dubious.'' The
CIA sent two memoranda to the White House stressing strong doubts about
those claims. But the following January 2003, the President included
the claims about Africa in his State of the Union Address and
conspicuously cited the British Government as the source of that
intelligence.
Information about nuclear weapons was not the only intelligence
distorted by the administration. On the question of whether Iraq was
pursuing a chemical weapons program, the Defense Intelligence Agency
concluded in September 2002 that:
. . . there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is
producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq
has--or will--establish its chemical warfare agent production
facilities.
That same month, however, Secretary Rumsfeld told the Committee on
[[Page S12637]]
Armed Services that Saddam has chemical weapons stockpiles.
He said, ``We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and
biological weapons of mass destruction,'' that Saddam ``has amassed
large clandestine stocks of chemical weapons.'' He said that ``he has
stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons'' and that Iraq has
``active chemical, biological and nuclear programs.'' He was wrong on
all counts.
Yet the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate actually
quantified the size of the stockpiles, stating that ``although we have
little specific information on Iraq's CW stockpile, Saddam probably has
stocked at least 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 500 metric
tons of CW agents--much of it added in the last year.'' In his address
to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin
Powell went further, calling the 100 to 500 metric ton stockpile a
``conservative estimate.''
Secretary Rumsfeld made an even more explicit assertion in his
interview on ``This Week with George Stephanopoulos'' on March 30,
2003. When asked about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, he said:
We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit
and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
The administration's case for war based on the linkage between Saddam
Hussein and al-Qaida was just as misguided.
Significantly, here as well, the Intelligence Estimate did not find a
cooperative relationship between Saddam and al-Qaida. On the contrary,
it stated only that such a relationship might develop in the future if
Saddam was ``sufficiently desperate''--in other words, if America went
to war. But the estimate placed ``low confidence'' that, even in
desperation, Saddam would give weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaida.
But President Bush was not deterred. He was relentless in playing to
America's fears after the devastating tragedy of 9/11. He drew a clear
link--and drew it repeatedly--between al-Qaida and Saddam.
On September 25, 2002, at the White House, President Bush flatly
declared:
You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you
talk about the war on terror.
In his State of the Union Address in January 2003, President Bush
said, ``Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and
statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and
protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda,'' and that he could
provide ``lethal viruses'' to a ``shadowy terrorist network.''
Two weeks later, in his Saturday radio address to the Nation, a month
before the war began, President Bush described the ties in detail,
saying, ``Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties
to terrorist networks. . . .''
He said:
Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda have met
at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent
bomb-making and document-forgery experts to work with Al
Qaeda. Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and
biological weapons training. An Al Qaeda operative was sent
to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in acquiring
poisons and gases. We also know that Iraq is harboring a
terrorist network headed by a senior Al Qaeda terrorist
planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training
camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to
be in Baghdad.
Who gave the President this information? The NIE? Scooter Libby?
Chalabi?
In fact, there was no operational link and no clear and persuasive
pattern of ties between the Iraq Government and al-Qaida. A 9/11
Commission staff statement in June of 2004 put it plainly:
Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that
any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no
credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on
attacks against the United States.
The 9/11 Commission Report stated clearly that there was no
``operational'' connection between Saddam and al-Qaida. That fact
should have been abundantly clear to the President.
The Pentagon's favorite Iraqi dissident, Ahmed Chalabi, is actually
proud of what happened. ``We are heroes in error,'' Chalabi said in
February 2004. ``As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely
successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in
Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration
is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords, if he
wants.''
What was said before does matter. The President's words matter. The
Vice President's words matter. So do those of the Secretary of State
and the Secretary of Defense and other high officials in the
administration. And they did not square with the facts.
The Intelligence Committee agreed to investigate the clear
discrepancies, and it is important that they get to the bottom of this
and find out how and why President Bush took America to war in Iraq.
Americans are dying. Already more than 2,000 have been killed and more
than 15,000 have been wounded.
The American people deserve the truth. It is time for the President
to stop passing the buck and for him to be held accountable.
I yield back the remainder of the time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. Parliamentary inquiry, Madam President: We are in morning
business?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes, for another 2 minutes.
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