[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 18860-18866]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               IRAQ WATCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Harris). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. 
Hoeffel) is recognized for half the time remaining before midnight as 
the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Madam Speaker, for 6 or 7 weeks a number of us have been 
coming to the floor to talk about our role in Iraq. We are calling 
ourselves the Iraq Watch, and we are back tonight. We are back with 
some of the challenges regarding Iraq fresh in the news. And I am 
joined by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) coming as 
well as part of our four Iraq Watchers, the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. 
Abercrombie) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel). I believe 
there will be others joining us as well this evening.
  We are dedicated to the propositions of asking questions, seeking 
answers about what is happening in Iraq, trying to suggest policy 
changes that would improve the situation and certainly reporting back 
information to the American people.
  Two of us voted in favor of the military authority sought by the 
President last fall, myself included. Two of us did not. All of us, of 
course, were told, as were the American people and Members of Congress, 
we were told with great certainty that Saddam Hussein had weapons of 
mass destruction and was trying mightily to develop more. And there is 
no question that in the past Hussein had such weapons. He used them in 
murderous ways against his own civilians and against innocent Iranian 
civilians in the past. None of that is in any doubt.
  But it is becoming more and more clear as time goes by that last fall 
there were those in the White House and in senior levels of the 
administration and the President himself who, in my opinion, 
exaggerated the threat of the weapons of mass destruction in order to 
win support in Congress and in the country for the invasion of Iraq.
  It is now known that our intelligence agencies were reporting to the 
White House and to the Pentagon with significant uncertainty and with 
serious doubts about certain aspects of the weapons of mass destruction 
program in Iraq; notably, the September, 2002, Defense Intelligence 
Agency report and the October, 2002, National Intelligence Estimate, 
both of which have been discussed in the news. I have reviewed

[[Page 18861]]

parts of both of those which are classified documents in the custody of 
the intelligence agency.
  It is interesting to note that the administration itself declassified 
some of the National Intelligence Estimate last week to try to prove 
their point that there was a legitimate threat from Iraq, and most 
analysts have concluded that that release of that information actually 
pointed out once again how many doubts and how much lack of certainty 
was being expressed by our intelligence professionals, but that 
information being used by the White House and the Pentagon civilian 
leadership with no uncertainty, with nothing but certainty in terms of 
trying to sell their case.

                              {time}  2215

  So let me just make a couple of quick points before yielding time to 
the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).
  Because of the recent disclosures regarding the intelligence 
gathering by our professionals and the use that that intelligence was 
used for by the administration, I am joining others in calling for the 
creation of an independent commission, something the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) has talked about for weeks here on the 
floor, an independent commission, a nonpartisan or bipartisan 
commission, that would be above politics, to investigate both the 
accuracy of the gathering of intelligence regarding weapons of mass 
destruction in Iraq and the uses of that intelligence by the 
administration.
  We clearly won an important military victory in Iraq due to the brave 
and courageous fighting of our young men and young women in uniform, 
but I do not think that our military mission is complete until we have 
a full accounting of the weapons of mass destruction, both regarding 
their location and the custody of those weapons so that if they still 
exist we know they are in safe hands, and also a full accounting 
regarding the intelligence associated with those weapons of mass 
destruction.
  Having won the military victory, we surely will not win the peace 
unless we seek and receive more international help in Iraq for the 
post-conflict phase of the challenges there, so I am giving my support 
to those that are calling for a United Nations Security Council 
resolution. We are seeking approval from this administration and urging 
President Bush to go to the United Nations Security Council to seek an 
over-arching resolution that would sanction NATO peacekeeping and 
United Nations reconstruction and humanitarian aid so that we can 
provide proper security in Iraq, which is obviously a huge problem, as 
now 38 American soldiers have been assassinated in attacks and ambushes 
since the President declared victory on May 1, 38 Americans in uniform 
assassinated by guerilla tactics in Iraq. Clearly we have not secured 
that country, and we will not be able to deal with the reconstruction 
and humanitarian challenges, first, without security, and, secondly, 
without more international help.
  Let me stop at this point before I get too carried away, because 
there is so much to talk about and so much has happened since the time 
we were on the floor a week ago; so much has come out in the press and 
in public discussion.
  Let me at this point yield to my good friend, the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), a senior member of the House Committee on 
International Relations.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I 
would just reinforce his words regarding the need for an independent 
commission, because, unfortunately, there are or have been accusations 
about political sniping occurring, when it is the purpose of many of us 
simply to pose questions that not just our constituents, but many 
Americans have, regarding the use of intelligence, whether in fact it 
was selective, the quality of the intelligence. But I think it is very 
important tonight to stress to the viewers that this is simply too 
important to be a partisan issue.
  The reality is that many prominent, well-respected Republicans share 
our concern. This past weekend, Senator Lugar of Indiana, who chairs 
the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, Senator Chuck Hagel from 
Nebraska, as well as the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations 
Committee, Senator Joe Biden, all expressed their concern about the 
need for the White House, for the President, to start telling the 
American people the reality of how long the American presence will be 
required in Iraq.
  The three Senators indicated that they had reached a consensus that 
some 5 years was a reasonable period of time. I hope they are right. 
But I fear that it will even be longer, given the experience that we 
have had in the Balkans, given the experience we have had in the Korean 
Peninsula, and given the estimates that we have heard from others. But 
this is not a Democratic issue, a large D Democratic issue; it is not a 
Republican issue. It is an issue that affects each and every American, 
because it is about American credibility.
  In some respects, it is more than simply our policy vis-a-vis Iraq, 
because the credibility and the competence of the President of the 
United States, no matter what party is in the White House, is essential 
to peace in this world. I do not think, as some pundits say on TV, that 
in a serious issue such as this there should not exist a ``no spin 
zone.'' It is simply too important.
  When I first suggested an independent commission, I pointed out the 
fine work that was conducted under the cochairmanship of the former 
Senator from New Hampshire, a Republican, Senator Warren Rudman, and 
the former Senator from Colorado, Gary Hart, and there were many well-
respected, highly experienced Americans who were part of that 
commission, and they had an excellent staff.
  Tragically, the quality of their work could not be disputed, because 
they filed a report back in February of 2001 that described in 
frighteningly prescient terms what would occur if America did not take 
seriously the threat of terrorism. They, for all intents and purposes, 
predicted the tragedy that occurred some 9 months later on September 
11, 2001.
  I feel confident that the kind of people that served on that 
commission would be willing, if asked by the President, to come to 
answer all of the questions that are currently being posed; and they 
could do it in a way that was transparent, that was open to the 
American people to hear, to see, and to reach their own decisions.
  I notice we are joined by our colleague, the gentleman from Illinois 
(Mr. Emanuel). He looks like he wants to have something to say.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, as all of our colleagues here have noticed, 
this is our sixth week down here discussing what is going on in Iraq, 
what is happening to our troops, what has happened to the occupation, 
what has happened to the reconstruction.
  A lot has been focused on the President's credibility. I have 
repeated before from this podium, as we have done this Iraq Watch, that 
although it is the President's credibility, it is very much America's 
credibility that is on the line, and that this inquiry would be so 
important as we face what is now becoming a consensus in the 
intelligence and security arena, an ever-present threat in North Korea.
  Former Secretary of Defense Perry, a well-respected Secretary of 
Defense, on North Korea, our policy there, I think his words were 
clear. He fears war by end of the year. Unless we clear up the notion 
of America's credibility locked into and tied to the President's 
credibility, we will not be able to muster the international support 
for the choices we will make as we deal with that nuclear threat.
  Just recently Iran, another member of the ``axis of evil,'' has 
prepared a missile with capability to hit American troops. There, too, 
we will need international cooperation and consensus.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Could I interrupt on that point, because it does follow 
an item that I read today in the New York Times. The President, while 
meeting with the Italian Prime Minister, accused both Syria and Iran of 
continuing to harbor and assist terrorists; and he warned those two 
nations that

[[Page 18862]]

they would ``face consequences.'' I do not know what that means, but I 
am definitely concerned when I hear that language.
  By the way, I think it should be noted, because I know our friend 
from Chicago has made the point again and again about the cost of the 
war and the need for international assistance, he did not discuss, 
according to the Times piece, Italian troops coming to Iraq to assist 
and replace American troops. I would have hoped that he would have done 
that.
  But while we are talking about Syria, in the words of the President, 
I do not know if you are aware, but recently an Under Secretary of 
State by the name of John Bolton was to testify before the House 
Committee on International Relations, which the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) and I serve on.
  There was a report in the Miami Herald, and let me read certain 
excerpts from that report, because we are talking about credibility, 
the credibility of the President of the United States and the 
credibility of the administration.
  Mr. EMANUEL. That is the testimony that was withdrawn, if I am not 
mistaken?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. It was withdrawn because of the CIA insistence that it 
was exaggerated testimony. This gentleman, who is a leading neo-
conservative, or a leading hawk, within the administration, also said 
back in May of 2002 that Cuba had a bio-weapons program that was being 
developed. At that point in time, neither Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary 
Powell, nor General Gary Speer, in charge of the Southern Command, 
would support that statement. They talked about capabilities.
  But just for one moment, if my friends will indulge me, because I 
think this is important, because we are talking about Syria, because 
the President of the United States said today they will face 
consequences, I hope he is getting sound intelligence.
  But this is what the Miami Herald said last Tuesday. I am just going 
to read some excerpts: ``In a new dispute over interpreting 
intelligence data, the CIA and other agencies objected vigorously to a 
Bush administration assessment of the threat of Syria's weapons of mass 
destruction that was to be presented Tuesday on Capitol Hill. After the 
objections, the planned testimony by Under Secretary of State John 
Bolton, a leading administration hawk, was delayed until September. The 
CIA and other intelligence agencies said the assessment was 
exaggerated. Bolton's planned remarks caused a revolt among 
intelligence experts, who said they thought they inflated the progress 
Syria had made in its weapons programs, said a U.S. official who is not 
from the CIA but was involved in the dispute. The CIA's objections and 
comments alone ran to 40 pages.''
  Mr. EMANUEL. One of the things that the bipartisan commission would 
look at, in my view, the reason the President said it was important 
that we had to go to war now, we could not wait another 2 weeks for 
maybe a possible U.N. resolution to get other countries and persuade 
them, was the imminent capability, I think he said in one speech, that 
Saddam Hussein and Iraq had the capability in 45 minutes of deploying a 
weapon of mass destruction.

                              {time}  2230

  The two criteria, this was done in a New Republic article that I 
thought was excellent, two essential pieces of the State of the Union 
backing up the nuclear threat of Iraq that the President delivered 
here: One was the infamous 16 words about the Niger memo which clearly 
proved there was no attempt, well, it proved that that documentation to 
that ``approach to Niger'' was inaccurate.
  Second was the famous tube acquisition. In both cases the CIA said 
both, A, the tubes were not for nuclear capability because they were 
both coated with chemicals; and second, the acquisition of Niger for 
uranium or the yellow cake material, this memo was inaccurate, that 
this event did not occur.
  In fact, today on the NBC Nightly News they showed three separate 
stories about the forgery and how anybody at any point could have 
easily, just by checking on Google, realized it was not correct because 
the name at the bottom by the government official of Niger was not 
accurate. The dates were not accurate. Just looking at it, anybody, not 
even with intelligence background, could have seen that.
  So the two pieces of essential evidence supporting the fact that Iraq 
was on the threshold of nuclear capability did not meet the standard of 
both our intelligence community and, in fact, one can say it does not 
meet even a laughing standard out there in the international community. 
Hopefully, this will require an investigation of whatever body was 
formulated of eminent Americans would get to what happened, how did the 
President put it in his speech, who put it in his speech, who convinced 
and weighed in on the intelligence community?
  I have worked on a few State of the Unions in my time, and I can see 
this back and forth, and I can see exactly if the White House wants 
something, and time and again you pressure an agency, time and again 
you have somebody pushing back, the ultimate compromise that squeezes 
out of the pressure is, we will say the British said it. So the CIA and 
the intelligence community who is resisting does not need to own this.
  It was desire and a need for a political purpose to have that in the 
speech, to give the speech some immediacy, some urgency to the moment. 
That may have happened, may not have happened, but until we have an 
independent investigation or inquiry or whatever body looks at this, we 
will always have questions about America's credibility that will then, 
I think, hamper, not limit, whether Syria is or is not. Syria, we know 
they are harboring terrorists; whether they are developing weapons of 
mass destruction we do not know.
  We need in the international community, it is clear, given we have 21 
units stationed around the world of which I think 16 or 18 are in Iraq, 
America's military capability, not that they could not muster and 
respond to another situation, they could, but we are clearly spread 
very thin; and to convince the world community of the importance of 
what we see in Iraq, of what we see in North Korea, that North Korea 
being very relevant today, we cannot afford to have a credibility gap 
about the President's word, we cannot, as Americans, regardless of your 
political background.
  So I say I would hope that this body of eminent Americans would look 
at the two points that substantiate the claim that Iraq was on the 
threshold, not on the threshold, had the ability, that is what the 
speech and the words say, in 45 minutes could launch a weapon of mass 
destruction. The nuclear pieces of that clearly did not pass the basic 
smell test.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. You know what the real crime of this is, the really bad 
impact of this credibility gap that we are talking about that has been 
developed because of the exaggeration of the threat of weapons of mass 
destruction is in an age of terror, which we are certainly in, you can 
argue very persuasively that there will be times when a nation must act 
preemptively if faced with an imminent threat to protect itself.
  We are not dealing, as we all know, with a traditional enemy where 
you see the ships amassing in the harbor or the armies amassing on the 
border; that if you are faced with an imminent threat from a terror 
source you may have to act preemptively, but you must have intelligence 
that you can rely upon.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Let me ask a question. According to this new doctrine 
articulated by President Bush, what are the new criteria for a 
preemptive strike? I have asked that question of experts. I have asked 
that question of administration representatives. I have asked those 
questions of people on the street. I do not know what those criteria 
are.
  Are they clear and present danger? What is the amount of evidence 
that is enough to launch a military strike against a nation? Do we have 
evidence that Saddam Hussein was prepared to attack the United States 
either through Iraqi military forces or through the use of terrorist 
organizations?

[[Page 18863]]


  Mr. EMANUEL. One of things that has surprised me, I come from the 
view there is no doubt if you look at the past of Saddam Hussein's 
actions. He has used chemical weapons on his own citizens. He has used 
them in the war on Iraq. He has engaged in a series of attempts to 
repress a regime.
  Why would the administration conjure up a threat? Why would you in 
the State of the Union, in which you are on the threshold of war, 
decide to go with evidence that was not good enough for the Secretary 
of State to use a week later, that in October it was taken out of your 
speech by the various intelligence agencies?
  To me, this is still one of the great mysteries. What was it that 
decided we were going to go on the flimsy evidence of this Niger memo 
that anybody within 1 minute of sitting down, as clearly on tonight's 
story on NBC News, they realized if you just looked at it and they 
looked at people that looked at it independent of our intelligence 
community.
  MR. DELAHUNT. I would like to ask the question, if I could, to the 
gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie), can you or can the gentleman 
from Washington (Mr. Inslee) articulate clearly and definitively for us 
and for the Americans, for us, those of us who were watching it, what 
are the standards, what are the criteria under the Bush doctrine of 
preemption?
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Naturally, you turn to me when you ask for that.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. That will show you to come late for Iraq Watch.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I was letting you get warmed up.
  Mr. EMANUEL. This was his senior high school thesis.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. The question that you pose and was answered 
rhetorically with another series of questions, really observations by 
the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), I think bear answering. I 
think there is an answer and it is an unfortunate answer. It has 
nothing to do with plots and conspiracies, but it has everything to do 
with a philosophy and an attitude and an ideology which has been 
expressed again and again by some of the people that have been 
mentioned here earlier this evening.
  If you take a look at the spectrum of essays and books and articles 
written by those who were now in charge of policy in the 
administration, you will see Mr. Krystol's book on the mission in Iraq, 
our mission in Iraq, those by Mr. Perle, Mr. Boot, and some of the 
think tanks here in Washington, these nonprofit, untaxable think tanks 
that operate thanks to the tax loopholes that we have which allow them 
to operate and comment and infest themselves in halls of government. 
There are more than one set of interest groups in this town, let me 
state, and some of them are in charge of this policy.
  So the answer, I am sorry to say, in my judgment is that this has 
been a clearly articulated policy of people now associated with the 
administrations who were determined to start a war in Iraq, to include 
Syria and Iran, because of the policies that they feel this country 
should be not only espousing but pursuing in terms of world domination, 
beginning in the Middle East.
  So it is clear, even with the publishing of the documentation now 
over the weekend, that the bombing that took place for perhaps a year 
or more before the actual launching of the attack on Baghdad was 
following a pattern of trying to knock out selected targets in Iraq 
before the formal hostilities in terms of an attack actually started.
  So I think I am forced to conclude, and this is why I think the idea 
of having an independent investigation committee is so important, I am 
forced to conclude that there was a pattern already being articulated 
publicly and in writing to set this Nation on a course of imperial 
attack beginning with Iraq.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. We wanted to hear from the gentleman from Washington 
(Mr. Inslee), but it looks like the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Emanuel) has 60 seconds here.
  Mr. EMANUEL. I wanted to make two closing comments on my side on this 
point.
  One, I think we have a serious problem with North Korea. There is no 
doubt North Korea is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, and 
unless America's word and its credibility can be trusted, our ability 
to muster the international community's outrage and capability to 
handle this will be questioned. Unfortunately, the President's State of 
the Union has called the question of our credibility and our ability to 
muster in the international community when it says this was an 
immediate threat.
  I think the American people, unfortunately, because of this now, are 
exhausted in dealing with the international crisis which we will have 
to do.
  Secondly, what I want to report and talk about in this group is 
dealing with the cost. We are paying $1 billion a week for the 
occupation of Iraq. There was a story two nights ago, four nights ago 
on the nightly news of how our troops are now organizing soccer teams 
in Iraq and sports in Iraq for the young.
  We have cut programs here dealing with Title IX which is under attack 
in this country.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I can tell my friend that there are sports programs 
that are being cut in my district back home in south shore Cape Cod.
  Mr. EMANUEL. I would like to say to all of my colleagues that there 
is not a Member in this body who does not have playgrounds in their 
district that are badly in need of repair. We are literally for sports 
teams.
  Now, I am for the reconstruction of Iraq. I have no problem. I just 
find it interesting that our military, who are never going to be 
involved in a mamsy-pamsy activity of nation building are out 
organizing soccer leagues and soccer clubs in Iraq, and yet playgrounds 
in America go dilapidated. Swings do not get fixed. Youth clubs are not 
organized in the United States. Title IX is under attack here in 
America. And we are paying a billion dollars a week in Iraq.
  I have said this before on the floor. We have a plan for 20,000 units 
of housing in Iraq. The President's budget has only 5,000 units of 
affordable housing here in the United States planned. We have 13 
million Iraqis; we are thinking about providing universal health care 
to half the population. We have 45 million Americans without health 
insurance who work full time in this country.
  I have no problem, Americans have been since World War II and prior 
to that, one of the most generous people in the world, yet, if you 
offer them a smaller vision here at home for themselves and their 
children, their generosity will come into question.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I think we all agree with the gentleman, but at the 
same time you are not factoring in the $250 million a week that we are 
paying to occupy Afghanistan and provide security and stability here. 
So would you please aggregate the sum from now on?
  Mr. EMANUEL. The aggregate sum would be $4.2 million a month.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. This is not for reconstruction efforts.
  Mr. EMANUEL. This is just for occupation efforts and our troops 
overseas. And that totals well over $50 billion a year for our foreign 
efforts. I want to say this, members of our body, Democrats, have a 
Rebuild America account for investment in highways, bridges, 
investments in sewers and water treatment. All that would lead to 
greater economic development. It costs $50 billion.
  Now, I have adequately indicated to the sponsors of that legislation 
that when we come up to authorizing the supplemental for Iraq and 
Afghanistan, that we should attach the Rebuild America to the Iraqi 
reconstruction project. If we are going to pay $50 billion for Iraq 
over a year, I have got $50 billion I think we can find investments 
here in the United States. And there is not a Member in this body whose 
district does not need economic investment in the areas of a new road, 
new mass transit, new water treatment facilities.
  Again, the occupation of Iraq is essential now that we are there. But 
we cannot deinvest and deconstruct America in the word of 
reconstructing Iraq.

[[Page 18864]]


  Mr. HOEFFEL. We are also aware of the gentleman's American parity act 
which we are all cosponsors of.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Which would require that we invest the United States 
equal to the goals we are setting in Iraq, whether it is in the area of 
health care, education, in the area of road reconstruction.
  In America, our highway fund will be cut by over $6 billion, yet in 
Iraq we are building over 3,000 miles of road which would connect New 
York to California.

                              {time}  2245

  Mr. DELAHUNT. I dare say that if we expended the amounts of resources 
that we will be expending in Iraq for security and for reconstruction 
that we could have a prescription drug benefit plan, not just for 
seniors in this country, but for just about every American. My friend 
from Washington is here.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOEFFEL. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I am glad to join my colleagues because I 
feel this message needs to be repeated, that Congress is going to get 
to the bottom of this intelligence fiasco, and the best way to do that 
is through a bipartisan public commission to really find out what 
happened with the American people not getting the straight scoop about 
Iraq before this war started.
  I have heard certain people in the administration think that this is 
just going to kind of go away; it is going to kind of drift off and 
Americans will watch reality TV and forget this. I think the 
administration is very wrong on this; and we need them to embrace this 
idea of a bipartisan, led by a Republican, perhaps Warren Rudman, some 
esteemed Republican figure, to lead this bipartisan commission.
  I have got four points why this is so important, and the first two 
come back to the gentleman from Massachusetts' (Mr. Delahunt) question, 
which is what should be the standard for starting the preemptive war. I 
would suggest two, at least two.
  Number one, that the administration will not start a war unless the 
truth will convince the American people it is the proper thing to do, 
not the fudged intelligence, not the exaggerated intelligence, not the 
selective intelligence, but the whole intelligence. What clearly 
happened here is that this administration did not have confidence 
enough in their argument about freeing Iraqis, which might be a 
legitimate reason for a war, there are people who believe that, but 
they did not have confidence in that so they had to exaggerate 
intelligence and use selective intelligence and not tell us the whole 
thing. That is the first fundamental standard we have to meet before a 
preemptive war.
  The second fundamental standard we ought to insist on on a bipartisan 
basis is that we do the intelligence first and then we make the 
decision whether or not to go to war. We do not make the decision to go 
to war and then ask everybody to give the intelligence that fits that 
preconceived notion. The neutral evaluation of the scenario that 
occurred here is that some folks in this administration made an early 
decision to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and yes, there may be some 
legitimate reasons to do that; and some Americans believe even with no 
security threat to the United States, but we cannot start a preemp war 
on that basis, and that is what this bipartisan commission ought to 
say.
  I will just say two other points.
  I think some folks are so hung up on this uranium yellow cake they do 
not realize this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is the smallest 
tip of the iceberg of this selective intelligence failure.
  I heard today a gentleman point out four things that I do not recall 
the President telling us. The two highest al Qaeda operatives, officers 
if you will, in our custody in Guantanamo before the war started, told 
us that they had no relationship with Saddam Hussein. I do not recall 
the President standing in the State of the Union and telling us that 
the two highest al Qaeda operatives said they had nothing to do with 
Saddam Hussein. Maybe I missed that, but I do not recall that.
  I do not recall him telling us that a retired national security 
fellow named Beers has said that looking at the intelligence he could 
not find any evidence of an ongoing relationship between al Qaeda and 
Saddam Hussein.
  I do not recall him telling us that the Central Intelligence Agency 
told The Washington Post that, although there might have been some 
communication, there was no outstanding relationship between these 
entities. I do not recall any of these facts.
  What I recall is the administration trying to paint a picture, an 
implicit assumption of Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind 
September 11, and all this intelligence was excluded from public 
information and that was just wrong. This President said, and it is 
almost a quote, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has some of the 
most lethal weapons systems devised by man. It is almost a direct 
quote.
  When we peel back these intelligence reports, we know there are lots 
of doubts about these issues.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. My colleague is aware under the administration of his 
father, back in the late 1980s and almost to the inception of the 1990 
war, invasion by Iraq against Kuwait, that that administration was 
actually transferring dual technologies to Iraq and that it was under 
the Reagan-Bush administration that Saddam Hussein was taken off the 
terrorist list; that in 1986 it was the Reagan-Bush administration that 
installed an embassy in Baghdad; and that during the course of that 
war, during the course of that war, it was the Defense Intelligence 
Agency that was providing the Iraqi Army with intelligence; and that it 
was that administration that provided billions of dollars of 
agricultural credits to Iraq; and it was that administration that when 
this Congress, the Congress, a Democratic Congress back in 1989 and 
1990 passed legislation which would have imposed sanctions on the 
Saddam Hussein regime for using chemical weapons against their own 
people, blocked the passage of those sanctions. Is my colleague aware 
of that?
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I am certainly aware of it.
  I tell my colleague what perhaps I was not aware of, and I was 
stunned when I heard our Secretary of Defense say this the other day. I 
was stunned. He said that we went to war not based on new intelligence, 
but by a new impression we had after September 11. We all had the new 
mindset after September 11. It is clear about that, but the impression 
this administration gave to the American people, consciously I believe, 
is that there is a new round of intelligence that necessitated this 
preemptive attack. Our Secretary of Defense came and told us there was 
no new intelligence that did not exist through the whole decade of the 
1990s to justify the preemptive war. I was stunned when I heard that, 
when we heard the administration for 4 months tell us that there was 
all this imminent threat that was going to occur.
  I will mention another thing, perhaps unsolicited advice to this 
administration. They are on the cusp of making some bad decisions. I do 
not like to use the word ``cover-up'' because it is too weighted with 
emotion; but they are not helping figure out what happened here, and 
there is great danger. I will give my colleagues an example.
  Ambassador Wilson, the ambassador who blew the whistle on the uranium 
yellow cake, the forgery that ended up in the State of the Union 
speech, I just heard on NBC News tonight, his wife, her sort-of 
security clearance was jeopardized at the CIA because somebody sort of 
outed her, if you will, about her CIA contact which essentially could 
devastate her career. That kind of shenanigans is not going to be 
helpful to this administration. That is why we need a clear, publicly 
oriented, bipartisan review, above the table, nobody playing games with 
this. This is what America needs.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Madam Speaker, I would like to add one thing. In all 
this, we forgot that it only, I think, was like 8 weeks ago Deputy 
Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz announced that the reason they made an 
argument about

[[Page 18865]]

weapons of mass destruction was that way they could get consensus 
within the bureaucracy. They told us that it was somewhat imminent or 
the new intelligence is or the look of new intelligence.
  This was a string to thread the beads together, but it was not 
exactly something new. It was not something exactly imminent. In fact, 
it was quite clear, based now if you can kind of peel back some of the 
pieces and disparate information you get from the newspapers, other 
magazines, journalists, that there were a lot of questions about the 
relevance of some of the information they were using to justify the war 
or the need for the immediacy and the urgency which gets to the 
question.
  In an era of terrorism, there is a logic to preemption, which really 
is a dressed up code for self-defense; but if that urgency is not 
there, if the facts he used to establish that urgency are not there, 
then the justification for preemption, known in normal parlance as 
self-defense, is then stripped away. Then we have a threat, and the 
question is do we have war or do we have containment? Isolated military 
strikes? That is then a legitimate question to postulate, but the 
information necessary to have that was withheld from the public debate 
and from this hall.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Madam Speaker, I have mentioned it down here before. 
I said that we are going to bring the hammer of truth down on the anvil 
of inquiry, and this is resonating across the country; and we have 
mentioned here before that in this Iraq Watch that we are doing, we 
have to do it after hours, during Special Orders, because we are not 
having the opportunity to do this during regular legislative business. 
The press galleries, I will say again, are empty here this evening. We 
cannot have anybody from these big networks that are trying to make 
sure that they do not cross the Federal Communications Commission. They 
all want to be able to consolidate even more, own even more of what 
message gets out there. The press is not covering the outrage that is 
taking place across this country with respect to the points that the 
gentleman from Illinois is raising.
  If my colleagues will go to moveon.org, we will find that there are 
over 300,000 people right now across this country who have indicated 
that they want an independent commission to look into all the 
questions, all the inquiry that is being raised in these sessions that 
we are having in this Iraq Watch, 300,000 people and growing. That does 
not get the coverage. It is the kind of grassroots movement, the net-
roots if you will, that is taking place all across this country, that 
says we are not going to take it, our democracy is not going to be 
taken away from us by some self-appointed elitists who have an imperial 
attitude about what the United States is going to be or not be and that 
we are going to be informed about it later and that the sons and 
daughters of those elitists will never have to pay the price in blood 
and treasure that it takes to impose that imperial vision on the world.
  I will tell my colleagues that all across this country men and women 
are realizing they do not have to take it. They can do something about 
it. They are letting us know about it. Our colleagues have been reading 
on the floor of this House in some of the shorter special sessions 
message letters. They are reading communications that are coming in 
from the moveon.org petition drive from all over the country, in every 
State, in every nook and corner of this country, people who do not want 
to be lied to.
  You can fool people. There is no doubt you can fool people, but you 
cannot keep it up and you cannot get away with it forever. People do 
not mind facing up to hard truths. Like Ronald Reagan said, facts are 
stubborn things. People do not mind facing up to it. They do not want 
to be lied to, they do not want to be finessed, they do not want to be 
fooled, and they do not want to be played with; and we need to bring 
this truth forward, and that is why we better have this commission or 
let me tell my colleagues, this administration and the elitists that 
support it are going to pay a fearful price.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Madam Speaker, I want to tell my colleague something 
that might surprise him. You have heard of Pat Buchanan?
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I certainly have.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Very conservative Republican.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. No question of it.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. A commentator I am sure that many of those that are 
viewing are aware of. This is what he had to say in an op-ed piece that 
was printed today.
  In ruthless candor, these are his words, President Bush does not have 
the surplus of resources, military, strategic, financial, political, to 
hold the empire. As some of us predicted a decade ago, the compulsive 
interventionism of the Bushites might lead to imperial overstretch. 
Something has to give. It is going to be the empire. From here on it 
begins to recede. Either President Bush starts discarding imperial 
responsibilities we cannot carry and bringing the troops home or his 
successor will.
  That is not me. That is Patrick Buchanan.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. What I think we need, before I get back to the gentleman 
from Washington (Mr. Inslee), who has only had one bite at the apple 
night and is going to get another one, we have got to have straight 
talk about what is happening now and a clear reality and acknowledgment 
of what is happening now. Let me give one example.
  We have a new U.S. commander in Iraq, General John Abizaid, I hope I 
said his name right, who has acknowledged that we are facing a 
guerrilla opposition, which I think is an obvious reality that we all 
know. What he has described as ``a classical guerrilla-type campaign'' 
is being waged against our armed services in stark contrast to what the 
Secretary of Defense has refused to acknowledge. Donald Rumsfeld has 
refused to acknowledge that we have got an organized resistance or a 
guerrilla resistance; and as Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer 
in her commentary said, ``You can't fight a war unless you recognize 
the enemy.''
  Even on the military side of this conflict, until this new commander 
has told us the truth, General Abizaid, the civilian leadership of the 
Department of Defense has not faced the reality. What has happened, as 
we all know, is since the military victory was announced on May 1 by 
the President on the ship off San Diego, the American forces have been 
subjected to repeated ambushes and attacks.

                              {time}  2300

  Some 35 Americans have been assassinated since that day. And 10 have 
occurred since the President said the other day ``Bring it on.'' Since 
the President said, ``We have enough force to protect our forces in 
Iraq, so ``bring it on,'' ten more Americans have been assassinated.
  Last week, Minnesota Public Radio quoted Mary Kewatt, the aunt of a 
soldier killed in Iraq, who said ``President Bush made a comment a week 
ago, and he said `bring it on.' Well, they brought it on, and now my 
nephew is dead.'' The lack of straight talk and too much arrogance and 
too much bragging is bringing on this credibility gap.
  And so I do not have a credibility gap, Madam Speaker, I am going to 
honor my commitment to hear from the gentleman from Washington (Mr. 
Inslee) one more time.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, one thing that I think is important to say 
about this commission that we are urging is that it is not a commission 
to debate the Iraq war or the reasons for the war or the propriety of 
the war. I represent constituents who have divided opinion about that 
today. Some of my constituents believe that a removal of Saddam Hussein 
was justified even if he had toothpicks and that is all he had. Some of 
my constituents believe that was a legitimate exercise of military 
force by the United States.
  Now, I do not agree with that, but some of my constituents feel like 
that sincerely. But those same constituents tell me that they did not 
appreciate

[[Page 18866]]

being kept in the dark about the reams of intelligence which suggested 
that the President concluded that there was no doubt about Iraq's 
having these weapons, when, in fact, there was massive doubt; that he 
had no doubt there was a connection with al-Qaeda, when, in fact, there 
was massive doubt; that he made the decision after he had the 
intelligence; when, in fact, he made the decision before he had the 
intelligence. Those same people who believed the war may have been 
justified do not appreciate that because they recognize this is a 
threat to democracy.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Madam Speaker, I want to ask a question, because I 
think that was an excellent point. But there is such a thing, as the 
gentleman knows, but maybe the viewers do not, as a National 
Intelligence Estimate, and that is all of the information on a 
particular crisis that is drawn from all of the agencies that possess 
intelligence in the United States Government. That was done, and it was 
concluded in October of 2002.
  Now, the President's State of the Union address was on January 28 of 
2003, some 3 or 4 months later. Within that National Intelligence 
Estimate it has been reported, and we have no reason to disbelieve it, 
that there was significant expressions of doubt; that particularly the 
Department of State insisted on a footnote which said we have serious 
reservations about the credibility of this, and they were referring 
specifically to the securing of uranium from that west African country 
of Niger.
  So let me ask this question of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Emanuel), who served in the previous White House. Did President Clinton 
read the National Intelligence Estimates when he was faced with crises?
  Mr. EMANUEL. Well, Madam Speaker, first of all, the National 
Intelligence Estimate is based on the National Security Intelligence 
Entities, the Defense Intelligence Entities, the CIA, and I think, if I 
am not mistaken, FBI contributes to that. So there are four separate 
entities that get funneled through to the National Security Council 
that then present that document.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Did President Clinton read it?
  Mr. EMANUEL. There is no doubt he read those that were presented, and 
especially on the doorstep of war.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Then tell me how this President can have any doubt.
  Mr. EMANUEL. In fact, I think it was mentioned, and I want to say one 
thing to our colleague from Washington, that not only did the President 
not read it, or it has been reported he did not read it, but I think it 
has also been reported, though I want to have enough doubt, a question 
mark about what I am going to say, that, in fact, the National Security 
Adviser said she did not read the whole report. I think that is also in 
that same story.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I find that unbelievable.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Well, one would think on the doorstep of war one would 
read that. But I want to stress one thing about what our colleague from 
Washington mentioned. He said the President was certain about his 
opinion about the imminent danger of Iraq and Saddam Hussein, but the 
people around him in the agencies and departments had their questions. 
Yet the President was certain.
  Again, I want to underscore this is not to relitigate why we went to 
war, this is to litigate how we got to war. Not the Iraqi war. We are 
not going to relitigate that. We are in, and so we have to support our 
men and women. It is how that happened so this mistake does not happen 
again.

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