[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23994-23995]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Miller of Michigan). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WATERS. Madam Speaker, I came to the floor this evening to join 
my colleagues and hoping to educate the American public about what is 
going on with our government and what is happening with the request for 
$87 billion to continue the war in Iraq.
  I think it should be very, very clear and I would like to set the 
record straight for myself. I will not support $87 billion to continue 
this war under any circumstances. I am very clear about that. As a 
matter of fact, I have been concerned. When it first came to light that 
the President was requesting $87 billion, I heard some of my colleagues 
in the other House say, we are going to ask him some tough questions; 
we are going to ask them all kinds of questions about what they did 
with the money that we appropriated before. But they all conclude by 
saying, but we are going to have to give him the $87 billion.
  I have not and will not reach such a conclusion, a, because the 
President and his representatives, whether it is Condoleezza Rice or 
Colin Powell or Wolfowitz or any of the rest of them, Dick Cheney 
included, they will come to this Congress and they will tell us 
whatever they think they need to tell us in order to get what they 
want. They have not been truthful in any shape, form, or fashion; and 
they continue to defend this preemptive strike and to mislead us about 
what they are doing.
  Madam Speaker, I do not want anybody to say that because I do not 
support the $87 billion that I am unpatriotic. That old accusation has 
worn out.

[[Page 23995]]

It has worn thin. The President and his representatives have threatened 
everybody with we are going to call you unpatriotic if you do not do or 
say what we want you to do or say. Well, I am not threatened or 
intimidated by that. I am not going to support $87 billion, and I am 
more patriotic than they are.
  As a matter of fact, as I stand here tonight, there is a traitor in 
the White House, a traitor who has outed a CIA operative, placed a 
woman's life on the line because they chose to be vindictive and to get 
back at her husband because he, in fact, helped to reveal the fact that 
he was the one that had been dispatched to Niger to find out whether or 
not Saddam Hussein had tried to get uranium to further his efforts to 
build nuclear warfare; and because he told the truth, the ambassador 
told the truth, he simply said I told the CIA that, in fact, there was 
no evidence to show that there had been an attempt by Saddam Hussein to 
get uranium from Niger, but the President put it in his speech to this 
House and said in so many words and led the American people to believe 
that it was another reason why it was important for him to have this 
preemptive strike. Well, there is a traitor in the White House. They 
are unpatriotic, and I do not want to hear them utter the word one more 
time about who is patriotic and who is not.
  As a matter of fact, as we look at how we have been misled, we need 
to remind the American public over and over again that we support our 
soldiers. We are upset that they have not had the equipment to keep 
them safe and secure and all that we thought they had. Each day we are 
finding out more and more about that which they have not had and ways 
that they have been suffering.
  We have been misled by Donald Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld comes up to 
this House and gives us so-called classified briefings. We do not learn 
any more from him than we learn on CNN; and Members have been too 
intimidated to ask him the tough questions, to push him up against the 
wall and tell him when they think that he has been misleading us, but 
just take a look in the ways that we have been misled.

                              {time}  1930

  First of all, we must say over and over again, remember, they said 
they were going to do this preemptive strike because Saddam Hussein was 
harboring weapons of mass destruction. They have found none. There are 
none. I do not think they will ever find them.
  But, of course, Mr. Wolfowitz said, we just told them that. He had 
the arrogance and the audacity to say, well, we thought that would be 
the best way to get support for the war. So they misled us, told us a 
lie, basically, that there were weapons of mass destruction.
  And then they told us that they had drones. And these drones that 
were normally used for surveillance were equipped to deploy biological 
and chemical warfare. Another lie. The uranium lie.
  I will close by saying we have been misled; we have been lied to. The 
American public should not feel mispatriotic. Do not support this war. 
Tell your Congresspeople not to spend $87 billion on this war.

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