[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6056]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          THE CRISIS WITH IRAQ

  (Mr. KENNEDY of Rhode Island asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KENNEDY of Rhode Island. Mr. Speaker, I voted for the resolution 
authorizing the forcible disarmament of Iraq, and I continue to agree 
with the President of the United States that we should disarm Iraq by 
force, if necessary, in order to protect American lives. But I also 
recognize that if we go to war right now, the war will have little 
legitimacy in the eyes of the world community, and that increases the 
risks. I, therefore, believe that it is in our security interests to 
support Great Britain's latest proposal to establish specific 
unambiguous disarmament benchmarks and a firm deadline. Failure to 
comply with all requirements would trigger military action without 
further debate.
  If Iraq does comply, we would have achieved our aims without the need 
for war, everybody's first choice. If Iraq again fails to meet its 
obligations, our good-faith effort will have helped restore some of the 
U.S.'s lost credibility, thereby strengthening the coalition supporting 
the war as well as improving our ability to prosecute the war on 
terrorism, as well as decreasing the risk and cost of rebuilding Iraq 
after a conflict.
  I urge my colleagues to support this reasonable approach to the 
crisis.

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