[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13806-13807]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          REPORT CONCERNING IRAQ'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, as the President arrived in Europe during 
this recent and historic journey, culminating, we hope, in progress 
today in the nation of Jordan, several days ago he was greeted with 
what can only be described as a hysterical European press attack on 
what were called the lies and distortions of this administration 
relative to its pronouncements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction 
in the months leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
  After that hysteria in the European press, even some editorial pages 
in the United States have gone forward with similar recriminations and 
I thought

[[Page 13807]]

that it would be useful tonight, Mr. Speaker, to rise and talk about 
the facts of weapons of mass destruction. I do so having literally just 
come this morning from a briefing by the Under Secretary for Arms 
Control for the United States Department of State, Mr. John Bolton, 
perhaps one of the most distinguished and informed leaders in our 
Nation, on the subject of arms control and weapons proliferation.
  Mr. Bolton spoke before us today of the efforts within Iraq, the Iraq 
survey group, that he believed would bear fruit soon, in his words, in 
finding both evidence of a WMD program and also ultimately weapons of 
mass destruction themselves. He said that he believed that we would be 
soon finding weapons and the means of production in due course. But 
where comes his confidence, Mr. Speaker? Perhaps it comes with a brief 
recitation of the history of the region. People are very quick to 
forget, especially in the European press that seems to suggest that 
this idea of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction was somehow 
invented out of whole cloth.
  Many seem to forget that it was Iraq themselves, 18 April 1991, that 
provided an initial declaration required under U.N. resolution 687 
declaring themselves, Iraq declared themselves in the possession of 
chemical weapons and materials and 53 al Hussein and Scud type long-
range ballistic missiles. At that point in April of 1991, they denied 
the presence of any biological weapons. By May, Iraq submitted a 
revised declaration covering additional chemical weapons and a 
refinement of the missile declaration. And then after pressure from 
UNSCOM, Iraq admitted in August of 1991 that they had a biological 
research program for defensive military purposes.
  According to UNSCOM estimates, Iraq acknowledged that they were in 
possession of 10,000 nerve gas warheads, 1,500 chemical weapons and 412 
tons of chemical weapon agents. 1991. As Under Secretary Bolton said 
today, it has been the unchanged position throughout the Clinton 
administration and through the Bush administration that those weapons 
are unaccounted for to this day. Both administrations held, in Mr. 
Bolton's words as a representative of the State Department, precisely 
the same view of these weapons, that were not invented by some 
political spinmeister in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, they 
were admitted to by the regime in Baghdad, who went on year after year 
delaying inspections, denying their presence and refusing to prove 
their destruction, leading up to the 1998 expulsion of U.N. weapons 
inspectors, resulting in President Clinton's attack on Iraq with cruise 
missiles. And President Clinton, of course, gave the reason at that 
time that he needed to ``attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological 
programs and their capacity to threaten their neighbors.''
  And so I thought it important tonight, after hearing on the 
International Relations Committee, Mr. Speaker, from John Bolton, the 
Under Secretary of Arms Control, that there is confidence that the Iraq 
survey group at the State Department will bear fruit. We will continue 
to find evidence, like the mobile labs, like the unarmed aerial 
vehicles, we will continue to find evidence of a WMD program in Iraq.

                              {time}  2115

  That confidence arises not from the heart of the White House or the 
West Wing, but, rather, from the pronouncements of the regime in Iraq 
about their own possession a decade ago of hundreds of tons of chemical 
and biological agents. The facts speak for themselves.

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