[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15178-15179]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          PRESIDENTIAL INQUIRY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the House has adjourned its regular 
business for today, and they have gone off to the White House for a 
picnic; so I do not suppose very many of them will be in their office 
listening to this, but I think they should at least consider the fact 
that today's newspapers and the BBC news, the ABC news, the Economist, 
all come together in saying the war is not over, boys. Three more dead 
in Baghdad in violence. There was a drive-by shooting at a petrol 
station. It sounds a little like some of our cities. And we are there 
bringing them democracy. I guess that is what democracy means to our 
President. I do not know. It is hard to know. But when I was reading 
these articles, I thought of one that I read recently. This is dated 
March 21, not so long ago. ``A United Nations survey of civilian damage 
caused by the allied bombardment of Iraq calls the results near 
apocalyptic. The survey, which was made public today, recommends an 
immediate end to the embargo on imports of food and other essential 
supplies to prevent imminent catastrophe.''
  This article went on further to say that the U.S. position is that by 
``making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people, it,'' meaning 
sanctions, ``will eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam 
Hussein from power.'' This is what the situation was. This is from 
1991. We intended to get rid of Saddam Hussein from 1991 on, at

[[Page 15179]]

least. And for the President and his advisers to come around here 
saying it just happened since 9/11 and all that kind of stuff is 
absolutely nonsense.
  At the time that one of the Air Force planners said big picture, we 
want people to know, get rid of this guy and we will be more than happy 
to assist in the rebuilding. We are not going to tolerate Saddam 
Hussein and his regime. Fix that and we will fix their electricity. 
That is what the United States was saying in 1991. This is the country 
that wants to bring democracy to Iraq. And it goes on.
  I mean, it is really wonderful. One planner said, people say you did 
not recognize that it was going to have an effect on water or sewage? 
Well, what were we trying to do? Help out the Iraqi people? No. What we 
were doing with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the 
effect of sanctions. We bombed the sewer pumping stations. We bombed 
the water pumping stations. We bombed the television. We bombed the 
telephone. We bombed the electrical. We bombed everything because we 
were going to inflict pain on the Iraqi people.
  Now if we roll fast forward to today, people in the White House, and 
I do not know how they could have been thinking about it, Mr. Speaker, 
that these people were going to be just waiting, so excited to have the 
Americans come in and bring them democracy.
  What kind of fools could plan and state publicly what they were doing 
and then expect people to be grateful that they were bombed, that their 
hospitals had no electricity for the refrigeration to save the children 
and the blood and all the things that go on in a hospital that require 
electricity? We did it deliberately. And the President says, well, we 
had to wage this war because they had these weapons of mass destruction 
that were an imminent threat to us. We had destroyed their electrical 
system. We destroyed all kinds of things. We had reduced the value of 
their money.
  I mean, I carry a 250 Dinar note in my wallet just to remind me of 
what this country can do. This is a 250 Dinar note. These are printed 
in Iraq. This was worth $875 in 1991; today, 12 cents. Do the Members 
think we did not crush their economy? Of course we did. And it was all 
because we wanted to bring them democracy, because we were going to 
free the world from weapons of mass destruction.
  Mr. Speaker, I think we ought to have an inquiry in this House, 
conducted in public, as to what the President knew, when he knew it. 
How could he come to the well of the House and give us information that 
was known to be forgery about nuclear material?
  It is time, Mr. President, when the picnic is over, you had better 
come up here and tell us the truth.

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