[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 18]
[Senate]
[Pages 25169-25170]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. DAYTON. A year ago this month, Congress cast a fateful vote. The 
majority decided to give the President blanket authority to declare war 
against Iraq. On several occasions during our deliberations over that 
resolution, I had the good fortune to be on the Senate floor when the 
great Senator from West Virginia, the senior Senator, spoke. Both 
Senators from West Virginia are truly outstanding Senators and men. One 
is extraordinary in his seniority in this body and also the wisdom he 
has acquired through his experience and service and his search for the 
history of this country and the history of other countries throughout 
the world and across the spans of time.
  It was my great opportunity, sitting in that chair where the 
Presiding Officer now sits, to be instructed about this country, 
especially the Constitution which all of us take our oath of office to 
uphold, that extraordinary document which has shown, over the span of 
more than two centuries, a foresight, a vision, an understanding of 
human nature and an appreciation for the potential we bring and the 
pitfalls we must avoid. It has been unprecedented in the history of the 
world and has produced, along with the quality of our citizenry, the 
most successful form of self-governance that has ever been devised or 
practiced on this planet.
  As a result of much of what I learned from Senator Byrd, I voted 
against the resolution which passed the Senate last October. I did that 
because those tutorials convinced me that by acting at that point, 
before the President himself had decided whether to recommend or 
undertake an invasion of Iraq, the commencing of a war against another 
country, for Congress then to pass not a declaration of war, which the 
Constitution prescribes, but rather a resolution authorizing, with its 
usual euphemism, something like ``whatever force necessary in order to 
accomplish the objectives,'' Congress was abdicating to the President 
that constitutional responsibility which it had no right or authority 
to pass on.
  The Constitution says clearly that the Congress shall declare war, 
that Congress and only Congress shall make that final decision whether 
or not to declare war and to commit this country to that course of 
action against another nation, at which point the President is the 
Commander in Chief and undertakes the prosecution of the war. It is 
exactly that balance of power the Constitution wanted to achieve.
  I also said last October that I was not persuaded at that time by the 
intelligence and other information that I received to that point that 
Saddam Hussein's estimated military arsenal constituted an imminent and 
urgent threat to the national security of the United States of America. 
I may not have been privy to every piece of information that a few of 
the more senior colleagues in this body had at the time, particularly 
members of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, but as a 
member myself of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I did have much 
of the information acquired from participating in a score of briefings, 
many of them classified top secret.
  In my best judgment, from all the intelligence that was presented to 
me over a 5-year period of time, the case against Iraq was inconclusive 
and unconvincing. Furthermore, it was presented to us by our top 
intelligence officials as incomplete and inconclusive. Those officials, 
in my judgment and my experience, were very candid about the 
information they were providing us. They were candid about its 
uncertainty. They were candid about its reliability. They were candid 
about the difficulty to obtain reliable, accurate, and timely 
information in a country as closed as Iraq, where the penalty for any 
transgression could be torture and death.
  It was reasonable to assume back then that Saddam Hussein possessed 
biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, or materials with 
which to make them, using the supplies that presumably were not less 
than what were known to exist when the United Nations weapons 
inspectors were evicted in December of 1998. But our intelligence 
officials, in the meetings and briefings which I attended, never 
asserted more than that, nor did they assert a 100-percent certainty 
that those amounts of products still did remain in Iraq, nor did they 
ever state that Iraq was known to be close to developing nuclear 
weapons. They said they didn't know.
  My own experience over the last year is that the discrepancies 
between our intelligence information and what we now know with 20/20 
hindsight are far less, than the differences which on several occasions 
I witnessed between what the intelligence briefers were telling us and 
what the high level administration officials, especially the President 
and the Vice President, were telling us and were telling the American 
people and the people of the world.
  Every time that occurred, administration officials portrayed the 
threat from Iraq's likely weapons of mass destruction as more certain, 
more urgent, and more dangerous than it turned out to be. The most 
glaring gaps, therefore, between fears and fiction and facts occurred 
when the intelligence information exaggerated the threat, and then the 
Bush administration exaggerated that threat.
  When 138,000 or more U.S. troops and a reported 1,400 weapons of mass 
destruction hunters and investigators in the course of 6 months can 
find nothing, virtually none of the primary reasons we went to war in 
that country, that is about as glaring a gap as it gets. But blaming 
the intelligence gatherers missed the real culprits. The information 
users are the ones who should be investigated, not the providers. That 
is the investigation which should be conducted. That is the 
investigation which the White House is doing everything possible to 
prevent.
  The investigation the administration cares about wants the answers, 
at least the answers that they want there to be, concerning the search 
for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. That appeared to be their No. 1 
priority, their No. 2 priority, and perhaps their whole top 10. Several 
of my colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the 
chairman and ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and I 
traveled to Iraq in July and saw firsthand and were briefed about the 
priority operations beginning or underway there. The one that was far 
ahead of the rest in development, in deployment, and in resources 
committed to it was the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
  Again, it has been reported publicly that some 1,400 professional 
intelligence gatherers, processors, and prosecutors have been scouring 
that country, investigating, incarcerating, interrogating. During that 
time, and the time we were there, many of the other important efforts 
were barely underway and were badly behind already--like finding and 
eliminating Saddam Hussein himself; like restoring basic services, 
electricity and running water; like connecting, communicating, and 
cooperating with the Iraqi citizenry. Those delays, and the lack of 
tangible progress made in those areas and others, have been costly.
  The price is paid, tragically, by our own service men and women--
those patriotic, courageous, and extraordinary Americans who won the 
military victory in Iraq just 3 weeks from the first day of the 
invasion to the triumphant takeover of Baghdad, the toppling of Saddam 
Hussein himself, and the statue coming down, symbolically, as the 
regime was overthrown. As other colleagues have noted here tonight, 
that was a great boon to the Iraqi people and to the world.

[[Page 25170]]

  At the same time, American forces and British forces--primarily the 
coalition, being essentially those two nations--took over occupancy of 
most of Hussein's former presidential palaces. When I was there, the 
estimate was there were 120 of them throughout the country--the most 
incredible waste of resources one could imagine contrasted to the 
squalor in which most Iraqis were living their lives.
  At that time also, American forces had accomplished dispersal of 
Saddam Hussein's army, of his political party, top government 
officials, and the henchmen who spread that tyranny, and even Saddam 
Hussein himself. American Armed Forces won. The mission was 
accomplished. Their objectives had been achieved. The job had been 
exceptionally well done. All of that training, all of that traveling 
and preparing, and all their upbringing, bravery, devotion to their 
country, their service, faith, and hard work, all came together 
effectively and successfully and they achieved what they needed to do, 
overwhelmingly.
  That should have been the end, or very close to it. Their victory was 
decisive, their victory was complete, and they should have been going 
home. Most of them should be home today. Most of them were expected to 
be home today. One hundred and thirty-eight thousand American troops 
remain in Iraq today--more duration than what was planned for at this 
stage in the operation. Instead, for the present time and for the 
foreseeable future, 138,000, or close to that number, will have to 
remain in Iraq. Many of them are Minnesotans. Others have had their 
tours of duty extended 6 months.
  Most of my colleagues and I went home to our respective States and 
visited with families and spouses who are getting desperate about the 
absence of their husbands, their wives, their sons, and their daughters 
with extensions of duty, not knowing when the end point will be. Many 
of them still do not have a definite return date.
  It is a terrible way for the military and the administration to be 
mistreating those who are making these heroic sacrifices on behalf of 
their country, and who are doing so at great personal risk. Often 
during the course of their responsibilities, they are exposed to the 
rest of their surroundings, standing at station, and are targets as 
they guard public and private property and other locations and highways 
throughout that country.
  Since the takeover of the country militarily by U.S. forces, they 
have had to become more stationary. The point which should have been 
the end, or close to it, but which is really barely the beginning, 
American soldiers every single day are being attacked, wounded, maimed, 
and murdered. It has occurred while they are waiting for the rest of 
these other operations to get started and start getting the necessary 
results. Every day that those other operations aren't accomplishing 
what they must, aren't getting the resources they need, aren't being 
given the priorities they should be given, for every one of those 
additional days American troops must remain in Iraq, American troops 
are likely to die in Iraq.
  It is our responsibility to get the rest of that job done--to get 
their government elected and in charge of the country, restore domestic 
law and order, train the Iraqi police force so they can maintain that, 
get the society functioning--once again, a lot of which has been 
accomplished. And much has been accomplished. It is important to 
acknowledge that. Hospitals have reopened. They now need to be supplied 
with the tools and be rehabilitated. An economy that is producing 
again--producing jobs, producing wealth, producing resources--can bring 
Iraq back into the civilized world.
  A genuine international sharing must be achieved. The ongoing costs 
of responsibilities and risks are still going to be required during 
this transition until Iraq can take care of itself.
  For those things to occur with other nations of the world, the United 
States must offer to provide a genuine sharing of control of postwar 
Iraq. It means the Bush administration doesn't make all of the 
decisions. It means their corporate cronies don't get all of the 
contracts and the profits. It means their colleagues in the majority 
caucus in the Senate should not get the only military transport escort 
to tour that country to assess the situation and to support our troops.
  In fact, I would respectfully urge the President and the Vice 
President especially to use the passage of this important supplemental 
today by both the House and the Senate to mark the beginning of a new 
chapter in undertaking to restore our conduct before the world, the 
dignity, the civility, and integrity which our great Nation deserves 
and upon which it has built its reputation and its leadership position 
in the world.
  I urge especially the Vice President to stop attacking the United 
Nations which was founded over half a century ago by American leaders 
of both political parties. It has been nurtured, guided, supported, and 
strengthened during that time as the best hope of the human race, to 
keep all nations of the world striving together for the peaceful 
resolution of our differences and the prevention of the next world war, 
which most believe will be the last world war. Through that diplomatic 
effort, working through the differences and the difficulties and all 
the barriers and obstacles that remain among the human race, it has 
succeeded in preventing that kind of holocaust for the last half 
century. It has prevented the scourge. It has been successful in 
discouraging other nations from launching preemptive military strikes 
against other countries and provoking additional conflict and 
conflagration that always threaten and risk escalation and 
annihilation.
  Other nations of the world have been harangued and denounced for not 
agreeing with the decisions that were made by this Nation's Government. 
I urge a new spirit of genuine cooperation, partnership, recognition of 
their legal and moral autonomy as they also decide whether to commit 
their own resources, their own citizens, the lives of their young men 
and women to the undertakings which we believe are important but we 
have no right to compel other nations to adopt.
  Whether we felt one way or the other, viewed the situation one way or 
the other a year ago, the facts are, clearly, today we are committed to 
a country with 138,000 of our men and women who are risking their lives 
and demonstrating courage and patriotism to sustain that operation. We 
owe it to them. We owe it to the world and to ourselves and to future 
generations to now complete this undertaking in the ways that bring out 
the best of America, that showcase the best of America for the world. 
That is where our ultimate national security is going to derive, from 
continued military preeminence, absolutely. That in and of itself is 
not enough, as we learned on September 11. We need allies, friends, 
eyes, ears, intelligence all over the world. We need to establish in 
the eyes of nations that now misunderstand us and our way of life; we 
need to showcase as we have been doing the last 2 years in Afghanistan 
and as we must do now over the next 2 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
what it is about our way of life, our economy, our technological know-
how, our compassion, our generosity, what it is about all Americans 
that makes us a people who have so much to offer the rest of our fellow 
citizens throughout this planet.
  I urge the President and the Vice President and the administration to 
demonstrate the best qualities of America. If they do so, I believe 
what comes out of this undertaking will be one that we will all be able 
to live with, better off than we were for many decades to come. 
Conversely, a failure to do so will have catastrophic consequences for 
decades to come.

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