[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 18849-18850]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   IN SUPPORT OF INDEPENDENT COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE DISTORTION OF 
                    EVIDENCE OF IRAQ'S WMD PROGRAMS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I first thank the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Paul) for his intellectual honesty and consistency and his 
clear vision on so many foreign policy issues.
  A hundred sixty-five years ago, Madam Speaker, the United States 
Congress, amazingly enough, the House of Representatives, passed a rule 
prohibiting its Members from debating the great issue of slavery, the 
greatest blemish on American history. In those days, John Quincy Adams, 
former President, then elected to the House of Representatives, came 
down to the well of the House week after week reading letters from his 
constituents, reading what he called petitions from groups in his State 
of Massachusetts, many of them written by women in women's clubs, women 
who actually could not in those days, as we all know, vote in American 
elections. He read these letters protesting this rule prohibiting the 
discussion of slavery and protesting the institution of slavery itself.
  Today, we find ourselves in a Congress where this Congress has 
refused to discuss and investigate what exactly the President did and 
said about weapons of mass destruction. As the gentlewoman from 
Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) said earlier in the evening, an organization 
called MoveOn.org, an organization of 1\1/2\ million Americans, tens of 
thousands in my State of Ohio, asked its members to sign an on-line 
petition saying that we believe Congress should support an independent 
commission to investigate the Bush administration's distortion of 
evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.
  Tens of thousands of those members, in addition to signing the 
petitions, wrote letters to Members of Congress. And similar to John 
Quincy Adams's coming to the House floor to expose the Congress' 
inability and unwillingness to discuss issues of national import, many 
of us have come to the House floor every night to share the concerns, 
not just our concerns, Members of Congress, but to share the concerns 
of people in my district in my State. And I would like to share a 
handful of those letters.
  Dennis Gadel of Akron, Ohio wrote: ``What makes this tragedy 
especially difficult for freedom-loving people to come to terms with is 
that, unlike September 11, this tragedy was self-inflicted. In order to 
have a strong democracy, we must hold leaders accountable for their 
deception.''
  Ms. Barbara Hanselman from Wadsworth wrote: ``I consider it my 
patriotic duty to give my informed support to those who represent our 
people. When I cannot trust my government to speak the truth,'' Ms. 
Hanselman wrote, ``our very basic freedoms are eroded. To lead a 
country to war, when many U.S. citizens and millions of people around 
the world were against this act of aggression without clear evidence, 
by calculated misrepresentation of the facts, is so beneath what my 
country stands for.''
  Jim Miraldi of Lorain, Ohio, my hometown, writes: ``Our leaders must 
respect democracy. If our leaders lie or mislead their own people to 
support military action to make an immense change in foreign policy, 
then this greatly undermines our country'' `` . . . Saddam Hussein 
was'' . . . ``evil,'' certainly. ``Maybe we should have gone ahead with 
this invasion. But that decision should have been based on accurate 
reporting by our leaders and not by deceiving the American people.''
  Patrick and Sandra Garrett, Mr. and Mrs. Garrett of Avon, Ohio, in 
northern Ohio, write: ``Democracy cannot endure without truth and 
integrity from its leadership. Look at what the Vietnam war, the Iran 
Contra scandal, and Watergate did to the public's confidence in 
government,'' the Garretts wrote from Avon.
  Cheryl Elman from Akron, Ohio, wrote: ``You and a handful of others 
may truly be all that stand between public ignorance about possible 
manipulations of policy in the Iraqi war. An

[[Page 18850]]

enlightened public is a prerequisite for functioning democracy.'' 
Please continue your commitment ``to free flow of information. Do what 
you can to shed light on this issue.''
  Teri Egan from Shaker Heights, Ohio, writes: ``As the toll rises 
daily in Iraq with our troops in harm's way, we need to know if there 
is any credible reason for continuing in this manner.''
  Wanda Crawford from Cincinnati, Ohio, in the other end of the State, 
writes: ``With American soldiers' lives at risk and American soldiers' 
lives lost already, the American public needs to know the true reason 
for our entry into war with Iraq. Covering up the truth dishonors the 
sacrifice of those in uniform. As a daughter and a sister of 
veterans,'' Ms. Crawford writes, ``I am appalled that soldiers may have 
been lied to about the reasons they were sent to Iraq. Please support 
an independent, bipartisan investigation to get to the truth of the 
administration's call to arms.''
  Norma Roberts from Lexington, Ohio, writes: ``I was alarmed at recent 
reports that our government led us into war without honest 
justification. President Bush responds by saying that such reports are 
attempts to `rewrite history,' but the point is that the American 
people do not know the real history. If this country is to be a model 
of democracy, the people must be informed.''
  Madam Speaker, it goes on and on. We ask for this investigation. 
Literally hundreds of thousands of Americans have written to their 
Members of Congress asking for an investigation into the Bush 
administration's distortion of evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

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