[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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