[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17414-17415]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     TIME TO FACE THE FACTS ON IRAQ

  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, last fall I stood out in front of the 
Cannon Building and said I believed that we might indeed be misled by 
our leaders in the stampede to go to war against Iraq. When I was in 
Iraq a few weeks later, I was interviewed by ``ABC This Week'' and 
asked if I stood by that statement. I said I did. I got death threats 
for saying that.
  Well, folks, it is time to face the facts. The American people were 
misled and Members of Congress were misled. But who misled us? 
Apparently we were misled by the White House speechwriters. I do not 
know.
  I do not question that the motive was to do what they sincerely 
believed would be the best thing for our country. I do not question 
that they believed and still believe going to war against Iraq was the 
right thing to do.
  But for those who would not have supported this war save for the 
official dossiers and intelligence and information they relied on, my 
friends, you were misled.
  Those who believed that whatever the President said would have been 
carefully confirmed and who never doubted that what the President said 
in the State of the Union Address would have been gone over with a 
fine-tooth comb, my friends, you were misled.
  So far, 212 young Americans have died in Iraq. Someone will die 
tonight and tomorrow and the day after. And now what? Now the 
administration does not even claim that weapons of mass destruction 
will be found. Instead, we are told that evidence of a program that 
would have eventually created weapons will be found.
  This afternoon, today, according to Reuters, Mr. Rumsfeld, the 
Secretary of War, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that there 
was nothing new going on in Iraq. He said there was ``no dramatic new 
evidence,'' just old evidence seen in a new light.
  Is that the impression you had? I ask, because that is not what I 
heard. I heard urgency. I heard new revelation after new revelation. I 
heard that we were in imminent danger.
  The fact that nothing that we expected, nothing like storehouses of 
terrifying weapons has been found, certainly backs up Mr. Rumsfeld's 
contention.
  What we found are mass graves in Iraq, body upon body, people killed 
for no reason by the government of Saddam Hussein. So this is where the 
administration is turning to justify its actions in Iraq.
  The United States has never, never invaded a foreign country simply 
to get rid of an evil dictator. That is not what our young people 
signed up to give their lives for. That is not what our taxpayers have 
given their money for. That is not what America does. At least until 
now.
  Well, our troops in Iraq, these fine young people went into the 
service to protect America, not to bring democracy to someone else's 
country, not to stop human rights abuses or get rid of dictators, 
because if that was the basis of our military policy, there are a lot 
of governments out there that we would be ready to overthrow.

                              {time}  1930

  Not to get rid of a bad guy because we are tired of messing around 
with containment. They enlisted to protect our country. What did our 
country need protection from? From biological and chemical weapons that 
could be launched within 45 minutes? Apparently not. From a nuclear 
arms program that was not just an aspiration of a madman, but was so 
far along that it was importing uranium from Niger? Apparently not. The 
President denied that today. From gallons of nerve gas

[[Page 17415]]

and rooms full of test tubes and trailers full of equipment so 
sophisticated that biological and chemical weapons could be pumped out 
on Saddam's command? Apparently not that, either.
  We had a policy with regard to Iraq. It was a frustrating policy, but 
it was working. It is the same policy President Reagan used on the 
Soviet Union: containment. We had an embargo in place that the rest of 
the world supported. We had U.N. inspectors in place that the rest of 
the world supported. They did not have as long to look for weapons as 
our people have now had, but they were looking, and while they were in 
Iraq, Saddam was not going to be able to fulfill any of his evil 
dreams.
  Containment worked from the end of the Gulf War until the day we 
invaded. If you believe that the United States should go to war to get 
rid of dictators who would most likely want to have weapons of mass 
destruction if they were not watched closely, I will give you a list. 
If you believe the United States should go to war to get rid of 
dictators who have people tortured, I will give you another list. If 
you believe that the United States should go to war bringing democracy 
to someone else's country is a mission worth the lives of our young 
soldiers, I will give you a list.
  But if you share the belief of John Quincy Adams, the sixth President 
of the United States, that our country is blessed, in part, because 
``she does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy,'' I say to 
my colleagues, we were all misled, and it is time for us to have a 
bipartisan committee, select committee, to look at this issue and find 
out who was it that misled us?
  I read in the paper today that Mr. Blair gave us some bad 
information, and our President took it, swallowed it hook, line and 
sinker, and now says, I did not know; it was Blair that gave me this 
bad information. Mr. Blair answered questions for 2\1/2\ hours before 
the Parliament of the United Kingdom. We ought to have that kind of 
thing going on here.

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