[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 942-947]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2200
                               IRAQ WATCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Barrett of South Carolina). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, good evening. I am happy to be back here 
with my colleagues to conduct another hour of Iraq Watch. We have been 
meeting one day a week, one evening a week for 1 hour for about 8 
months now, since the invasion of Iraq was conducted and problems 
became apparent; and we have been trying to raise those questions here 
on the floor, asking for answers, and trying to educate the American 
public about the problems and challenges in Iraq. Since our last time 
on the floor, there have been amazing developments that I would like to 
talk about for a few minutes before turning to my colleagues and 
engaging in a discussion with them.
  The big news is that President Bush, at long last, has agreed to 
appoint an independent commission to investigate the question of 
weapons of mass destruction and their presence in Iraq and to try to 
answer the unanswered questions about the weapons of mass destruction.
  Now, on behalf of Iraq Watch, all I can say is, it is about time. We 
have been individually and as a group calling for an independent 
commission to investigate the controversy surrounding weapons of mass 
destruction since the very beginning of the Iraq Watch 8 months ago. I 
know, in particular, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) never miss an opportunity 
to call for such a commission to be appointed; and I have lent my voice 
to that as well. Finally, the President has agreed that such a 
commission is needed.
  Well, let us take a quick review of the situation and find out why 
President Bush now believes it is important for an independent 
commission to investigate the weapons of mass destruction and the 
performance of his administration, because I can tell my colleagues, 
President Bush does not like independent commissions. I do not think he 
did this lightly. I think he realizes that there is a huge question 
here, and it is not a political question; it is a question of national 
security. The issues that we are raising are not designed to raise 
political controversy, but to deal with our national safety. These are 
matters of national security.
  Well, we all remember that President Bush and his administration 
stated in the summer and fall of 2002 with complete certainty that 
Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and those weapons 
of mass destruction posed an imminent threat to America, to world 
peace, and to our national safety. There was not any hedging; there was 
not any doubt in the President's comments. There were not any 
hesitations or uncertainties expressed by any of the policy-makers in 
the Bush administration. They stated as fact that these weapons of mass 
destruction existed. They identified on maps where the weapons of mass 
destruction were located in Iraq. They even indicated how much those 
weapons weighed. They told us, we have 500 pounds over here; we have 
300 pounds over there.
  Now comes a year and a half later, Dr. David Kay, the CIA's chief 
weapons inspector in Iraq. And after working there for 7 or 8 months, 
he has announced, upon his retirement from that job, that the weapons 
of mass destruction do not exist and, in his opinion, did not exist 
during 2002 or at the time we went to war in 2003.
  Now, it is, by the way, undeniable, Mr. Speaker, that Saddam Hussein 
had weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s. We know that. He used 
them in murderous ways against his own civilians, innocent civilians, 
the Kurds in Iraq. He also used them in murderous ways against the 
citizens in Iran, during the Iraq-Iran War. But the question is not 
whether he had them in the 1980s. The question is during the 1990s and 
the period of international sanctions and international inspections, 
did Hussein give up those weapons and did he have them at the time we 
went to war in 2003. David Kay says no. He has concluded they did not 
exist.
  In addition to our general memory of how positive the President was, 
I can share with the House, as I have before, that I attended a 
briefing at the White House on October 2, 2002, 1 week before this 
House voted on the war resolution. That briefing was for a bipartisan 
group of Members, about 20 of us attended. It was one of several 
briefings the White House conducted during that time. The briefing was 
conducted in the Roosevelt Room of the White House by CIA Director 
George Tenet and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Ms. Rice 
and Mr. Tenet told us with complete certainty that weapons of mass 
destruction existed, that they believed Hussein was giving them to 
terrorists, that there was a link between Hussein and al Qaeda and, 
again, they knew where the weapons were. It was just a matter of 
invading and uncovering them and seizing them. One of my colleagues 
specifically asked George Tenet, Mr. Tenet, on a scale of 1 to 10, how 
certain are you that Saddam Hussein has reconstituted his nuclear 
weapons program? And Mr. Tenet answered, without hesitation, 10. He was 
completely certain.
  Well, we now know that information was simply incorrect. In fact, we 
had a glimmer of the amount of exaggerations and deception when in the 
spring of 2003 rank-and-file Members of the House were finally allowed 
to see the classified intelligence reports from the fall of 2002, the 
Defense Intelligence Agency report of September of 2002, that said, in 
part, there was no credible evidence of a chemical stockpile of weapons 
of mass destruction in Iraq, and the national intelligence estimate of 
October of 2002 that was filled with uncertainties. That report said 
that we think, according to the CIA, that Hussein has weapons of mass 
destruction. We believe he may have this. We believe it is possible he 
has that. Then we discovered in the spring of 2003, when we saw these 
reports 6 months after they were made available to the White House that 
the President, when he talked to the public, forgot about all that 
uncertainty and told us, without a hesitation, that these weapons 
existed.
  Well, it seems clear to me, and it has for some time, that we were 
led to war on half truths and deception and that America was misled and 
the Congress was misled by these statements regarding weapons of mass 
destruction.
  Now, Saddam Hussein is in custody. Iraq and this country are better 
off with him in custody. But the fact of the matter is, our challenges 
in Iraq have been made much harder and much riskier because of the 
arrogance, the unilateralism, and the cowboy diplomacy of this 
administration.
  Now, a few final comments about the commission, and I know my 
colleagues are anxious to join in this discussion. The President has 
finally called for an independent commission, something that all of us 
have called for; and we have been joined by the gentleman from Hawaii 
(Mr. Abercrombie), who has called for an independent commission as 
well. There are questions remaining about how to set this up. One, of 
course, is who will be the members, and this will be critically 
important for the President to pick a bipartisan and independent group 
of commission members.
  The timetable for reporting is important. Obviously, this commission

[[Page 943]]

should be given sufficient time to do its job. I certainly hope, 
though, that there will not be any artificial attempt made to delay the 
report until after the election to protect anybody who may be 
embarrassed by its findings.
  But most importantly of all is the scope of the commission's work. In 
my view, it must do two fundamental things. Certainly, it must review 
the accuracy of the intelligence-gathering and why our intelligence 
agencies were wrong about the possession and existence of weapons of 
mass destruction in Iraq. But secondly, and just as importantly, this 
commission must review the use of that intelligence by the Bush 
administration to delve into why this material was so badly stated; 
why, when the Bush administration was told there were uncertainties 
about the weapons, why did they tell Congress and the American people 
that there was no uncertainty about the existence of those weapons. 
This commission must delve into both the intelligence-gathering and the 
use of that intelligence by the Bush administration.
  Let me at this point turn now to the gentleman from Massachusetts 
(Mr. Delahunt), who has been waiting patiently and who is a senior 
member of the Committee on International Relations and a leader on this 
issue.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the leadership 
he has brought to this issue.
  I think it is important to remind our audience, and we are again 
joined by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), who is an original 
member of this ad hoc group that describe ourselves as the Iraq Watch, 
that it was 8 months ago that we began this effort. I think we are 
entitled to congratulate ourselves tonight. Because back then, we asked 
the congressional leadership and the President to depoliticize the 
issue of intelligence surrounding weapons of mass destruction and the 
allegations about links between al Qaeda and 9-11 on one side, and 
Saddam Hussein on the next. Obviously, our words fell on deaf ears.
  But now we are in an election year, and the President thinks it is a 
good idea that he picks the members of this independent commission and 
that its proceedings be held in secrecy, so that the American people 
will not reach any conclusions prior to November's election.
  Well, if he had heeded our advice and proceeded with an independent 
commission back 8 months ago, I dare say, given the work of David Kay 
and many others, that we would be well along the way; the American 
people would be informed, the administration would be informed, the 
House leadership would be informed, and we could be discussing these 
issues in a way that had no political overtones to it. But, again, it 
is this constant refusal to heed advice, to come in and have, if you 
will, a discussion on how we move forward together.
  Many of us on this side of the aisle voted against the resolution 
because there did not appear to be a credible case, and we were right. 
But now that we are there, let us go back and reexamine history. To 
have a historical record that is accurate is important for generations 
of Americans to come when this administration has enunciated a doctrine 
of preemption, a doctrine of preemption, and has created, in terms of 
the international order, a new norm that if you believe, you do not 
have to prove; but if you suspect, if you think, if you guess, you can 
launch a military strike against someone that you think may be a threat 
to you. I fear not just for America in terms of where we go from this 
point on; but situations that exist currently in the world, whether it 
be in the Middle East, whether it be in south Asia, between Pakistan 
and India, and all over the world, there are potentially volatile 
situations where a country can point to this Bush doctrine of 
preemption and launch a nuclear strike. That will have consequences for 
all humankind and particularly for America, and we will have set the 
norm. That is what disturbs me.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I do think 
it deserves a bit of reiteration that the Iraq Watch has been meeting 
some months now, and that the record is fully available, not only 
through the normal aspect of the Congressional Record, which is 
available to the population of the United States nationwide, but it is 
also available, I know, on the Web site that I have set up, and I 
believe other Members can do the same should they wish. What I am doing 
now for those who are listening and have an interest, it now is on my 
Web site. The Iraq Watch in its entirety appears.

                              {time}  2215

  So we have a kind of cyber-archive now of what we are doing with Iraq 
Watch. And it will be interesting, I think, in time to come to go back 
over it and see where we were, where we were going. Not because we are 
standing here on the sidelines, merely commenting as we go along, but 
rather we are trying to stimulate debate, trying to stimulate 
discussion, trying to stimulate the body politic through the means 
available to us here in the House.
  We are the people's house. For those who just may be tuning in now, 
going down the cable channels and seeing C-SPAN, what are they talking 
about tonight, we are talking about our sons and daughters. We are 
talking about the blood and treasure of the United States. We are 
talking about the basic values of this country. We are talking about 
whether we are falling into the trap of a neo-imperialism, a 21st-
century version of imperialism that would be anathema to values of the 
United States, the United States as we have known it and as we have 
wanted it to be.
  And in that context, I would like to read an excerpt from David 
Fromkin's new book called: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the 
Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East.'' Again, for 
those who, and I will repeat it at the end of my excerpt as well, David 
Fromkin's ``A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire 
and the Creation of a Modern Middle East.''
  And I am quoting:
  ``Churchill, when he took office as Colonial Secretary [1921], 
brought with him a broad strategic concept of how to hold down the 
Middle East inexpensively. While he was still Secretary of Air and War 
[1919-20], Churchill had proposed to cut Middle East costs by governing 
Mesopotamia,'' which essentially is modern-day Iraq, ``by means of 
airplanes and armored cars. A few well-protected air bases,'' he wrote 
at the time, ``would enable the Royal Air Force to operate in every 
part of the protectorate and to enforce control now here, now there, 
without the need of maintaining long lines of communication, eating up 
troops and money.
  ``Viewing imperialism as a costly drain on a society that needed to 
invest all of its remaining resources in rebuilding itself, the bulk of 
the British press, public, and Parliament agreed to let the government 
commit itself to a presence in the Arab Middle East only because 
Winston Churchill's ingenious strategy made it seem possible to control 
the region inexpensively.
  ``Thus the belief, widely shared by British officials during and 
after the First World War, that Britain had come to the Middle East to 
stay at least long enough to reshape the region in line with European 
political interests, ideas, and ideals, was based on the fragile 
assumption that Churchill's aircraft-and-armored-car strategy could 
hold local opposition at bay indefinitely. In turn, that assumption was 
another expression of the underestimation of the Middle East that had 
typified British policy all along. It had shown itself when [Foreign 
Secretary Edward] Grey disdained the offer of an Ottoman alliance in 
1911; when [Prime Minister Herbert] Asquith in 1914 regarded Ottoman 
entry in the war as being of no great concern; and when [War Minister 
Horatio] Kitchener, in 1915, sent his armies to their doom against an 
entrenched and forewarned foe at Gallipoli in an attack the British 
Government knew would be suicidal if the defending troops were of 
European quality, Kitchener's fatal assumption being that they were 
not.
  ``In 1922 the British Government had arrived at a political 
compromise with British society, by the terms of which Britain could 
assert her mastery in the

[[Page 944]]

Middle East, so long as she could do so at little cost. To British 
officials who underestimated the difficulties Britain would encounter 
in governing the region, who indeed had no conception of the magnitude 
of what they had undertaken, that meant Britain was in the Middle East 
to stay. In retrospect, however, it was an early indication that 
Britain was likely to leave,'' unquote, from David Fromkin's ``A Peace 
to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottomon Empire and the Creation of 
the Modern Middle East.''
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, is the 
gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) suggesting that there is some 
similarity between the behavior of the British 90 years ago and their 
colonial ways and the behavior of America in Iraq?
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I am suggesting there is a direct 
parallel. I am suggesting that the history of the Middle East is not 
something that just suddenly occurred in 1990, or 1989 and 1990, with 
Saddam Hussein moving into what is now Kuwait.
  I suggest that there is a history here, a long history here, a 
detailed history here. I suggest that mistakes were made in the past as 
to what could and could not be done in the Middle East, particularly in 
the area known as Mesopotamia; in other words, modern-day Iraq. And 
they are well on the way to making the same mistakes over again for the 
same reasons that they were made before, because we think that we can 
impose a United States' version of a 21st-century imperialism, and that 
all of the cards will fall on the table in place, that everything will 
operate as we wish it to operate and that we can in fact control 
events.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, what I find particularly ironic is the 
debate now, whether the original preference of the United States in 
terms of electing the interim council would be done by caucuses or 
whether there would be a direct election. And it would appear that this 
administration is somewhat confused, but it would appear that there 
they are sticking to this caucus concept and rejecting the direct 
election proposal put forth by a leading Shia cleric by the name of 
Seestani for direct elections. The Iraqis, it would appear, believe 
that they are capable of conducting an election. And we are saying no.
  Well, I believe if there is one American principle, one American 
value that we cherish here in this particular institution and all 
across this land, it is one American, one vote. How about one Iraqi, 
one vote, with appropriate qualifications?
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, is he 
aware that when Ayatollah Seestani sent people into the street or 
encouraged people to go into the street in these demonstrations, that 
the cry was one man one vote?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I was unaware of that. But maybe he had 
done his reading in terms of American history and our fight and our 
struggle to secure one vote for every person regardless of color, 
religion, ethnicity, whatever; something that we as Americans are to be 
proud of in exporting.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, it is of course one man, one vote, 
because our governing council recently ruled that women would no longer 
have the political rights that they had under Saddam Hussein. We are 
going to take a step backward from Saddam Hussein's government who, at 
least on paper, had women as the equal of men when it came to their 
political rights.
  So if the governing council that we appointed has its way, it will 
retreat from that which we have struggled to achieve in the United 
States. You may have ethnic equality, you may have racial equality, but 
you are not going to have gender equality. That is for sure. They 
really mean it when they say one man, one vote.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, is my colleague absolutely certain of 
that? Because I was unaware of that. I find that incredulous.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, oh, yes, I can tell the gentleman right 
now, there are women's groups organizing all over Iraq at the present 
time, demanding that they get their rights back from the group that we 
are supporting which is supposedly bringing them democratic freedom.
  So the plain fact of the matter is that not only is this call out in 
the street for direct elections, but they are, in fact, utilizing the 
concept of a single person and a single vote, hopefully.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, If the gentleman would yield. I have 
enjoyed this conversation, but I would like to take just a moment and 
call our colleagues' attention to something that is perhaps a little 
more homebound and immediate in terms of my concerns.
  I think we went into Iraq based on false information that was coming 
from the administration. But we are there now. But I think the American 
people need to know that when we went to war after the Afghanistan 
conflict, we sent our sons and daughters into harm's way without 
providing them with the most basic protection. And I am talking about 
this interceptor body armor which is comprised of a kevlar vest with 
inserts where they can put ceramic plates in both the front and the 
back.
  And these ceramic inserts are capable, we are told, of stopping an 
AK-47 bullet. And we sent our soldiers into Iraq into a battle, life-
and-death situation, without adequate protection. Now, this is after we 
were told that this vest was credited with saving some 19 lives during 
the Afghanistan conflict. So we knew this protection was effective.
  And General Abizaid, when he was testifying before a Senate 
committee, was asked, why did we do this? And he said, and I am 
quoting, ``I cannot say for the record why we chose to go to war with 
an insufficient supply of these vests.''
  Well, in May I got a letter from a young soldier in Iraq, one of my 
constituents, a West Point graduate, an Eagle Scout, the best kind of 
kid that this country can produce. And he was in Iraq and he wrote me a 
letter. He said, ``Congressman, my men are wondering why they are not 
given this protection. They have been given old Vietnam-era flak 
jackets that are capable of stopping fragments but are incapable of 
stopping these bullets.''
  So I wrote Secretary Rumsfeld a letter. And I asked the Secretary to 
please tell me how many soldiers had lost their lives without this 
protection. I asked him to please tell me when he could assure us that 
all of America's soldiers were protected with these vests. And I asked 
him to promise me that we would not provide these vests, these life-
saving vests to foreign troops until all of our soldiers had been 
equipped.
  The Secretary wrote me back and he said that they cannot answer my 
first question because they do not collect that information from the 
battlefield. So we do not know how many soldiers have been needlessly 
killed simply because they were not adequately protected.
  In answer to my second question, he said that it was their 
expectation that all soldiers would be equipped with this vest by mid-
November.
  A couple of weeks later I get a follow-up letter from General Myers, 
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And General Myers says, in 
answer to my third question, ``Whether or not our troops are going to 
be protected before foreign troops,'' I am paraphrasing, ``our State 
Department has entered into certain agreements with some of our 
coalition partners, and we are providing certain equipment to them; but 
we have been assured that the companies that are producing the 
equipment for the foreign troops do not have a contract with our 
government to provide these materials for our troops, but if they were 
to get such a contract from our government they would honor it first.''
  Well, the question that I have is, if we are trying to get these 
soldiers protected as rapidly as possible, and there is a company that 
is capable of producing these vests, why do they not have a contract 
with our government?
  Well, so General Myers then said it will be mid-November before all 
of our troops are protected. So Secretary Rumsfeld says November and 
then General Myers in his letter says December.

[[Page 945]]

And then, lo and behold, right before we left here for Christmas, the 
Pentagon had a briefing and some of my staff were there and they said, 
Well, it is going to be January. Think of that. Months after this war 
started, we had many months leading up to the war, adequate time to 
prepare, to develop the equipment our troops needed, and it was not 
done.

                              {time}  2230

  So 10, 12, 13 months after the war started they are finally telling 
us, and I do not know if I can brief them, quite frankly, they are 
finally telling us that they have, in fact, gotten a sufficient supply 
of these vests to our troops.
  Then the vehicles that are being driven, the Humvees and other 
military vehicles that are being driven in Iraq, we are here in the 
safety of this Chamber, and we are protected by the Capitol Police; and 
as we stand here, there are American soldiers in Iraq in hellish 
circumstances, and they are driving vehicles that are not armor plated.
  I received an e-mail from a soldier in Iraq this week, and he told me 
of being out on patrol and of one of his colleagues being shot by a 
sniper. The bullet went through both sides of his face and lodged in 
his shoulder.
  We have got soldiers over there, the least we can do, the least we 
can do is to give them the best protection possible. And I am outraged, 
I am stunned that after all the billions of dollars we have allocated 
for this war that the leadership of this administration, our Secretary 
of Defense, our Pentagon officials, have failed to adequately protect 
our soldiers.
  I have gone to funerals of soldiers who have come back from Iraq, a 
20-year-old, I remember going to his funeral, a young man who was 
abandoned by his parents as a child, reared by his grandmother, a 20-
year-old who had purchased the engagement ring for his fiance before he 
left for Iraq. He simply wanted to be able to afford an education. So 
he joins our military hoping that that will be a route to get an 
education; and he comes back as a 20-year-old, and we bury him on a 
hill overlooking the Ohio River. Ironically, he had drowned in the 
Tigress River as he had jumped into that water to try to save his 
sergeant who had fallen in and he sunk, and it was 12 or 14 days before 
they found his body.
  It disturbs me, it disturbs me that decisions were made to send our 
troops into war, and we did not provide them with the protection they 
need and deserve. Somebody needs to answer how that happened, why it 
happened; and more importantly, they need to ensure us that it will 
never, never, never happen again.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, to corroborate the gentleman's point, and 
I think it is important for my colleagues and for the people that may 
be watching this conversation among us tonight, that the gentleman is 
not speaking alone. That much of what he said was corroborated by the 
United States Army in a 504-page internal Army history of this war 
written by the Army's Combined Armed Senate at Fort Leavenworth in 
Kansas. Much of what you said is part of that particular study. That 
study was reported on today in the New York Times.
  Let me just quote from part of that report in the New York Times: 
``The first official Army history of the Iraq war reveals that American 
forces were plagued by a morass of supply shortages, logistical 
problems which senior Army officials played down at the time were much 
worse than have been previously reported. Tank engines on warehouse 
shelves in Kuwait with no truck drivers to take them north; broken down 
trucks were scavenged for usable parts; artillery units cannibalized 
parts from captured Iraqi guns to keep their Howitzers operating; Army 
medics foraged medical supplies from combat hospitals.''
  This comes from an Army report, not from a politician, whether that 
politician be a Republican or a Democrat, speaking at a press 
conference. This is the United States Army. The study goes on to note 
that the strategy employed by the political leadership, Secretary 
Rumsfeld is answerable for this, in his Deputy Under Secretary 
Wolfowitz, and Assistant Secretary Fife and the entire crowd. The study 
notes that ``the strategy of starting the war before all support troops 
were in place taxed the post-war resources of local commanders who in 
many cases were shifting back and forth between combat operations and 
the task of civil services. Local commanders were torn between their 
fights and providing resources, soldiers' time and logistics, to meet 
civilian needs,'' the report concluded, ``partially due to the scarce 
resources. As a result of the running start, there was not simply 
enough to do both missions.''
  Talk about a disaster that has resulted in untold sacrifice of 
American soldiers, has set us back in terms of the reconstruction of 
Iraq. All for what? Because we do know now, we do know now that 
despite, despite what the White House did say, the threat from Iraq was 
not imminent. Remember those words?
  The White House spokesman Scott McClellan in July of this year, 
``Iraq was the most dangerous threat of our time.'' His predecessor in 
May of 2003 in response to a question whether the threat from Iraq was 
imminent, his answer, ``Absolutely.'' Again, McClellan, the 
spokesperson for President Bush in February of last year said, ``This 
is about imminent threat.'' The Vice President himself on January of 
last year, ``Iraq poses terrible threats to the civilized world.''
  President Bush, himself, in November of 2002, ``The world is also 
uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose 
dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill 
thousands.''
  But now, what does the White House spokesperson say? ``Some in the 
media have chosen to use the word `imminent.' Those were not words we 
used.''
  Give me a break, Mr. McClellan. You lose credibility by saying that. 
Be honest, be honest. You were wrong. Admit it and restore confidence 
in America and in the White House, not just for the benefit of the 
American people, but for the benefit of American prestige in our role 
in this world to enhance democracy in every corner of the planet.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, it is very difficult for Mr. McClellan 
or anyone else to do that when the President himself in the space of 
the last week or so has indicated at least twice that he did not know 
the facts, that he was anxious to find out what the facts were, that he 
too, presumably meaning ``in addition'' would like to find out what was 
going on or what had happened.
  Now, this is the President of the United States. Hundreds of people 
are dead, thousands of people have been grievously wounded.
  Speaking of the prestige that the gentleman referred to, that has 
been literally destroyed the world over. We now have the Secretary, the 
spectacle, the spectacle of the Secretary of the State now wondering 
whether or not he would have made the same recommendations had he had 
other information, at the same time when many of us here were saying, 
let us take a deep breath, let us be sure we know what we are doing. 
The inspections are working; the inspections were underway.
  We were not getting the information back that the administration 
wanted to hear. That is the difficulty. My memory is not in such 
difficult straits that I cannot recall what happened during those 
times. I realize we are now at a point that would understand only too 
well where inconvenient thought is shoved down the memory hole. We 
simply put it out of sight and pretend it did not happen. The plain 
fact of the matter is that there were cries all across this country, an 
outcry all across the country saying that the inspection process has 
not yet completed its task. We need to do that at a minimum before we 
go to war.
  It is one thing for people to talk about supporting the troops. It is 
one thing to talk about whether the definition of imminent is the same 
for everybody across the spectrum, but you cannot say that a political 
policy which has failed to do the minimum necessary before there is a 
commitment to war is something that needs to be defended in the name of 
defending the troops.

[[Page 946]]

  Mr. McClellan or the President, neither Mr. McClellan speaking for 
the President nor Mr. Bush can get off that easy, nor can they claim 
that this is a situation that needs now to be explored in the aftermath 
of this tragedy.
  I submit that we are now in a situation that needs further 
explanation. My understanding now is that we have announced that we are 
going to be leaving on the 30th of June of this year. We are now in 
February. March, April, June. We are talking about in 100 days we are 
ostensibly going to turn over authority to somebody or something in 
Iraq. Is there anybody here who can tell me who is going to have 
authority, what institutional framework or structure is going to 
exercise that authority? I cannot find out who it is.
  Is it going to be United Nations inspectors? No, they have been told 
they were inadequate. Is it going to be United Nations observers or 
administrators in some form? They left. I understand that the United 
States now in some fashion is in discussions with them as to whether 
they will come back in. To do what? With whom?
  It is very interesting, one need only go to this issue of the New 
York Times Magazine for February 1, this past Sunday, and this article 
on what the Shiites really want. A quote from a U.S. official, ``We can 
fight the Suunis, but we cannot fight the Shiites, not if they organize 
against us. There are too many of them.''
  Is that what we have been reduced to? Is that what the policies are 
involved here? If you want to talk about imminent danger, how about the 
imminent danger of people demanding direct elections so that they can 
conduct their own affairs.
  This is the situation that we find ourselves in today. This is the 
situation that we have to confront. This is a situation that will not 
allow us to continue to merely stand on the side and observe the 
President trying to get the facts. He should have had the facts before 
he committed us into war. And he should get the facts now on what it 
takes in order for us to be able to exert such influence as we can in a 
positive way now that we have entered into this imperialist dream of 
imposing our authority on Iraq in the wake of Saddam Hussein's capture.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I welcome the questions of the gentleman, 
but I hope he is not turning to me to give him some answers because I 
cannot begin to answer these very legitimate questions he has raised 
about what comes next, what does the Bush administration think will 
happen at the end of June when we turn over civil authority at this 
point to a completely unknown local or international or some form of 
alternative government or group. These questions are important, and we 
are nowhere close to having an answer.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Does the gentleman know what the CIA says?
  Mr. HOEFFEL. I am afraid to ask.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Back about a week ago in the Miami Herald this is what 
the CIA said in response to a question posed by the gentleman from 
Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie).

                              {time}  2245

  They said in the Miami Herald, in a commentary on the President's 
State of the Union address, which would lead one to believe that things 
were fine and that peace and order and democracy were just around the 
corner, well, the CIA offices in Iraq, in the field, are warning that 
the country may be on a path to civil war. And they are very, very 
concerned and very, very disturbed.
  Again, it is all about just be honest. The American people can deal 
with the truth. We can have a debate that is respectful. We can address 
problems and we can move forward together, but if you do not tell us 
the truth, that is when we are in trouble.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) on that point. That is an excellent point, 
and part of the problem we are having is that the President and the 
Vice President continue to spin the issue of weapons of mass 
destruction. The Vice President in the last couple of weeks still talks 
about those trailers being the place where weapons of mass destruction 
were being manufactured. David Kay laughs about that and says, no, they 
were not.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Everybody laughs about it.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. They were perhaps making rocket fuel. More likely, 
making helium for weather balloons, but they were not making weapons of 
mass destruction. But the Vice President continues to suggest that that 
was happening.
  The President himself in the State of the Union address that the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) just referenced, in the 
face of the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in my view, 
continued to try to confuse the situation and fool the American people 
by talking about the fact that Mr. Kay himself, who was in the process 
of saying there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the 
President quoted Mr. Kay as talking about weapons of mass destruction-
related program activities. And I do not have a clue what is a weapons 
of mass destruction-related program activity.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Neither does any other American have a clue. You talk 
about gibberish.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. If the gentleman would yield, I think I can provide 
you with an answer of what a weapons of mass destruction-related 
program activity was.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. At last, an answer.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I will be happy to do so. What we have discovered, 
we said if we can only get to those Iraqi scientists, they have the 
answer, which was just what was going to happen with the U.N. 
inspectors. What did we find out when we got to those scientists? The 
scientists told us that they were destroying the weapons of mass 
destruction and that the program activity was destroying the weapons of 
mass destruction. That is what the activity was, and these scientists 
were doing it, and they had papers to show it. If we could just get to 
the papers of those Iraqi scientists, that would tell us what happened. 
Yes, they destroyed the weapons of mass destruction.
  What Saddam Hussein was doing, a ruthless lying dictator, was 
ruthlessly lying about what he was doing. He wanted to give the 
illusion that there were these weapons, because he wanted to give the 
illusion that he was some great and powerful dictator, and we were 
buying it. That is the problem here is that we are actually relying on 
the veracity of a lying, ruthless dictator.
  Maybe part of the reason for that is we have been relying on his 
goodwill all along anyway. If I have to hear one more time about 
weapons that were used on his own people, I would like to ask the 
President, was that before or after the Secretary of Defense in another 
capacity was congratulating him for it and getting his picture taken 
with him and shaking his hands? Was that before or after this country 
was giving approval to Saddam Hussein to use those weapons and making 
certain that he knew that that was not going to interfere with our 
support, tacit or otherwise, for his war against Iran?
  So, yes, there were program activities all right, program activities 
that we needed to know about in detail so that we could present an 
accurate and truthful picture to the American people.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. If I can, we certainly know the gentleman is absolutely 
correct. If we want to talk about weapons of mass destruction program-
related activities, let us go back to that point in time when the 
current Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was the National Security 
Adviser and when the current Vice President, Mr. Cheney, was the 
Secretary of Defense.
  What I find particularly fascinating is, as Dr. Condoleezza Rice just 
said, if I can find the quote, she said just recently, he used weapons 
of mass destruction, just as the gentleman indicates. The truth was 
that we were transferring to him the computers and the ingredients 
necessary to advance his nuclear weapons program. That happened.
  We, the United States Government, during the 1980s under Reagan and 
President George Herbert Walker Bush,

[[Page 947]]

were removing him from the terrorist list, installing an embassy in 
Baghdad, providing intelligence to Saddam Hussein in the war against 
Iran. And when it came to that horrific incident in Chalabi where he 
used chemical weapons against the Kurds who had aligned themselves with 
the Iranians, there was a condemnation, let us call it lip service. And 
yet, when this institution, this House and the United States Senate in 
1989 and 1990 attempted to impose sanctions on the Saddam Hussein 
regime, you know what the position of the administration was then, led 
by the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Adviser? They 
killed the bill. They killed the bill.
  Now, if hypocrisy was a virtue--
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. We would be up to our eyeballs in it.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Thank you.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Let me respond or add on to the comments of the 
gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) about the Iraqi scientist, 
because Dr. Kay has also reported on what he believes may explain part 
of the incredible inaccuracy of our intelligence work regarding the 
weapons of mass destruction. He believes that some of those Iraqi 
scientists that you referred to were actually conning Hussein; that 
they were telling Hussein that they had had these programs; they needed 
more money; they were on the verge of developing the weapons that this 
murderous dictator was interested in developing. Hussein apparently 
believed that con, and kept giving them money for their research and 
for their development, and some of that money was skimmed off the top 
through base corruption by these scientists and all the rest.
  What is amazing is the suggestion from Dr. Kay that our intelligence 
agencies fell for the con, too. We were conned by the con. We picked up 
the communications of the Iraqi scientists to Hussein, and we believed 
those communications, and so that is why we felt that the weapons of 
mass destruction were well developed and in existence when, in fact, 
they were not.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, having 
been a probation officer at one time in my checkered career, I can tell 
my colleagues a little bit about con men and how they operate. I will 
tell you how a con succeeds. A con succeeds not because of the special 
insight of the one perpetrating the con. The person who does that, the 
con man, is not depending even on his own skill. He is depending on the 
desire of the other person to have the conclusion that they want to 
have come out. It is preordained they want the con. You cannot succeed 
with a con unless the other person is playing into it with you. They 
think they are getting something for nothing, or they think that 
something they want very much to be real is actually going to happen. 
You are going to win; you are going to succeed; you are going to be 
able to work the angle; you are going to be able to get something that 
somebody else does not have.
  All you have to do is look at the record of the desire of the 
advisers to Mr. Bush and their determination to reenter the Middle East 
along the same lines as I read from the Churchill imperial era, and to 
come back into with their version in the 21st century, they want those 
weapons to be there. They wanted to take any scrap of information that 
came in and turn it into proof positive that what they wanted to do and 
the policies they wanted to follow of going in there and having a war 
with Iraq was something that was substantiated by the information that 
they were getting. It did not matter that it may have gone the other 
way. It did not matter it was ambiguous, tenuous, or that it was 
fragments.
  What mattered was, is something was being said about it, and they 
were bound and determined to turn that into information which could be 
construed as being supportive of having to go to war. No matter what 
happened, they were going go to war.
  I find it very, very instructive that the Secretary of the Treasury's 
book that has just come out has been denounced along with him. He 
apparently has turned into an apostate, too, in the process simply by 
saying that these impressions and his honest impression as related in 
his book was that from the moment he entered service to the Bush 
administration, that they were determined to go to war; that no matter 
what happened they were going to go to war.
  So as we take a look at this and see what happened in the past, that, 
it seems to me, is prelude to the future. And so I suggest for our 
upcoming Iraq Watches that we take up the question, then, of what is 
going to happen on June 30; who are we going to be dealing with; what 
are the circumstances under which authority is to be turned over in 
Iraq by the United States; is this going to be yet another election 
ploy? Because the Bush administration is trying to use support for 
troops being synonymous with support for the war for election year 
purposes now, and I am very anxious to find out whether this transfer 
of authority is also going to be used for election purposes or are we 
going to actually be able to do something that will advance democracy 
in Iraq. I think we need to concentrate on that.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I think it is interesting the gentleman 
talked about the former Secretary of the Treasury, and I think we all 
respect his candor and honesty, and I think for many of us it certainly 
is not surprising. I think probably, and I do not know whether our 
audience is aware of this, but one starts to see a subtle change in the 
position of some members of the administration.
  For example, Secretary Powell was reported yesterday in the 
Washington Post, he said he does not know now whether he would have 
recommended an invasion of Iraq if he had been told it had no 
stockpiles of banned weapons, even as he offered a broad defense of the 
Bush administration's decision to go to war.
  What we are going to start to see now is a shift in the language. We 
are going to go from clearly there were weapons of mass destruction, 
this is where they are, these are the quantities, and that is going to 
go to the weapons of mass destruction program-related activities. Now 
we are going to see attempts by senior administration officials to 
rewrite history. But I think what is most important from this point on 
is for those that are in denial, because they have I think almost a 
psychological hold in terms of their belief, we should ask them to 
accept reality. Let us move on, let us work together in a bipartisan, 
bicameral basis and to go forward, understand where we failed in terms 
of this policy, and see that at least the Iraqi people have an 
opportunity for a democratic future, and as quickly as possible reduce 
the exposure of American military personnel and the absolutely heavy 
burden that the American taxpayers are bearing, with no help from 
anybody else in the world.

                              {time}  2300

  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. And none likely to come.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. And none to come. Remember that conference in Madrid? 
That was all about loans. Our allies are loaning, expecting the money 
back; but American taxpayers, we give it away. We give it away in this 
body. That is what we do. We just shove it out the door. Well, that is 
indeed unfortunate.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for joining in Iraq 
Watch this week. We will be back next week. We are going to look at the 
commission and what happens June 30th, and we look forward to talking 
next week.

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