[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 151 (Tuesday, November 15, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H10163-H10164]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PRESIDENT BUSH CAN'T REWRITE HISTORY
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, beginning on Veterans Day, President Bush
has begun a series of attacks against his critics on the war in Iraq.
He has been supported by a well-orchestrated set of groupies of
conservative policymakers, Members of Congress and talking heads all
spouting the same line, that the Bush Administration was not alone in
believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Everyone thought
so. And the administration certainly did not manipulate or misrepresent
any intelligence to Congress, the American people or to the
international community.
Mr. Speaker, this is just one more false claim in a history of
falsehoods put forward by this administration in its effort to cover up
its failures in Iraq. Today's New York Times editorial attempts to set
the record straight on the Bush coverup of the truth.
On Veterans Day, President Bush claimed that Congress had access to
the same intelligence as his administration. This is patently false.
According to the Washington Post and The New York Times, President Bush
and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence
information than did lawmakers, who are dependent on his administration
to provide Congress with materials.
More recently, the President has asserted that Congress had more
intelligence information than the White House. This is so patently
absurd, I barely know how to respond. The only intelligence materials
the Congress has, it receives from the President and his
administration.
The President has gone on to state that the bipartisan investigation
carried out by the Senate Intelligence Committee found, and I again
quote, no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence
community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.
This claim is wrong on several counts. First, the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence has not yet done its inquiry into whether
Bush officials mischaracterized or misrepresented intelligence.
Second, the Senate Intelligence Committee's first report did find
that the national intelligence estimate was manipulated.
Finally, the overall soft approach of this first report by the Senate
Intelligence Committee has been disputed by several senior intelligence
officials. Richard Kerr, the former acting CIA director, who led an
internal investigation of the CIA's failure to correctly analyze Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction capability, stated that the intelligence
analysts were pressured and heavily so. Senators Rockefeller, Durbin
and Levin noted in their additional views to the Senate Intelligence
Committee's report that the CIA's independent review found, and I
quote, significant pressure on the intelligence community to find
evidence that supported a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.
A second independent investigation by the CIA ombudsman found that
the, quote, hammering by the Bush Administration on Iraq intelligence
was unusual and that George Tenet confirmed that agency officials had
raised with him personally the matter of pressure on analysts.
President Bush tries to assert that President Clinton believed in the
same threat. What he leaves out is that President Clinton has
repeatedly asserted that he believes it was a mistake to invade Iraq
before the United Nations weapons inspectors had a chance to complete
their investigation. In fact, the U.N. investigation was aborted before
it even had a chance to really begin by the launch of U.S. military
operations.
Mr. Speaker, President Bush asserts that other governments'
intelligence agencies agreed with ours. That is simply false. Many
countries felt that the U.S. intelligence was faulty or overblown and
did not agree with their own intelligence data, and that is why they
opposed us in the United Nations Security Council or declined to
provide troops for our invasion. Even this year we have heard Vice
President Cheney continue to imply that Iraq was somehow tied to the
September 11 attacks and was developing weapons of mass destruction.
[[Page H10164]]
Well, let us set the record straight. There were no weapons of mass
destruction, there were no ties to al Qaeda, there was no imminent
threat. The arguments in favor of war presented to Congress and the
American people by the President deliberately used the most
inflammatory of language.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to say one more word on the President's
latest series of attacks. He says that those of us who criticize the
war, who called for withdrawal, or who focused on how the American
people were deliberately misled into supporting the invasion on Iraq,
that somehow we are betraying our troops and advocating a cut-and-run
strategy.
Mr. Speaker, our troops, who have carried out this mission with
courage, dignity and sacrifice, represent our Nation with honor, but
they have been betrayed. They have been betrayed by policymakers who
rushed into a war on false pretenses, they were betrayed by
policymakers who sent them into harm's way and overruled the good
advice of our top military leaders as to troop strength and post-
invasion planning, and they have been betrayed by policymakers who will
not admit that mistakes were made and significant changes in policy are
required in order to bring them home safe and sound.
Critics of this policy strongly support reconstruction assistance for
Iraq. We strongly support the training and equipping of Iraqi security
forces. We strongly support internationally supported security forces
in Iraq. We do not support cutting and running, but we do not support
lying and hiding. Mr. Bush cannot rewrite history, he cannot rewrite
the intelligence again, and he cannot continue to lie to the American
people. The truth, the ugly truth, is coming out.
[From the New York Times, Nov. 2005]
Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials
To avoid having to account for his administration's
misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President
Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the
intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that
Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as
President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame
the C.I.A. Lately, he's gone on the attack, accusing
Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists.
Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious
deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is
against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions
three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.
It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But
like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the
only problem is that none of it has been true.
Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had--
Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and
members of Congress--and that all of them reached the same
conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was
working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that
is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's
weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was
fresher than about five years, except reports that later
proved to be fanciful.
Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to
American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that
were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress
had nothing close to the President's access to intelligence.
The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a
few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove
dissent and make conjecture seem like fact.
It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says
everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a
widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological
weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded
that inspections and pressure were working--a view we now
know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was
not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had
been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics.
The administration had little company in saying that Iraq
was actively trying to build a nuclear weapon. The evidence
for this claim was a dubious report about an attempt in 1999
to buy uranium from Niger, later shown to be false, and the
infamous aluminum tubes story. That was dismissed at the time
by analysts with real expertise.
The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd
claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow
connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on
two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by
Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and
came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq
trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological
weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency
concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an
informer.
Mr. Bush has said in recent days that the first phase of
the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation on Iraq
found no evidence of political pressure to change the
intelligence. That is true only in the very narrow way the
Republicans on the committee insisted on defining pressure:
as direct pressure from senior officials to change
intelligence. Instead, the Bush administration made what it
wanted to hear crystal clear and kept sending reports back to
be redone until it got those answers.
Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central
intelligence, said in 2003 that there was ``significant
pressure on the intelligence community to find evidence that
supported a connection'' between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The
C.I.A. ombudsman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that
the administration's ``hammering'' on Iraq intelligence was
harder than he had seen in his 32 years at the agency.
Mr. Bush and other administration officials say they
faithfully reported what they had read. But Vice President
Dick Cheney presented the Prague meeting as a fact when even
the most supportive analysts considered it highly dubious.
The administration has still not acknowledged that tales of
Iraq coaching Al Qaeda on chemical warfare were considered
false, even at the time they were circulated.
The president and his top advisers may very well have
sincerely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
But they did not allow the American people, or even Congress,
to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments
of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration
misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his
terrorist connections. We need to know how that happened and
why.
Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in
a time of war, but that ``it is deeply irresponsible to
rewrite the history of how that war began.'' We agree, but it
is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history.
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