[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15148]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           WHO IS IN CONTROL?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Madam Speaker, I would like to say to my friend from 
Georgia, when he is talking about past Vice President Dan Quayle, what 
he needed to do was know how to spell potato.
  Madam Speaker, last week President Bush was asked what distinguishes 
Vice President Dick Cheney from Senator John Edwards, John Kerry's Vice 
Presidential running mate. Mr. Bush's haughty reply was, ``Dick Cheney 
can be President.''
  This implied criticism of Senator Edwards, who happens to sit on the 
prominent Senate Intelligence Committee. And this is quite laughable 
because Senator Edwards actually has more experience than George W. 
Bush did at the time he ran for office in the year 2000.
  The appalling part of this comment is that not only could Dick Cheney 
be President, he has performed the functions of the Presidency. Since 
day one, Dick Cheney has wheeled, dealed and cajoled his way to 
accomplish his dangerous, self-serving, neo-conservative agenda.
  Dick Cheney has chomped at the bit to finish the job he started in 
1991 as Secretary of Defense when the United States first went to war 
with Iraq. In the year 2003 when President Bush needed to make the case 
for going to war with Iraq, it was Dick Cheney who met with the 
intelligence analysts at the CIA to determine whether Iraq possessed 
nuclear weapons.
  Vice President Cheney claims that he did not strong-arm these 
analysts into adopting his view that Iraq was in possession of weapons 
of mass destruction. Despite what I am sure were Cheney's best and most 
benevolent intentions, the Vice President of the United States probably 
registered quite a bit of influence with a bunch of career CIA analysts 
who were likely to give him the evidence he wanted, whether it was true 
or not. And it was Vice President Cheney, not President Bush, the 
Commander in Chief, who gave the unsuccessful order to shoot down the 
hijacked planes on September 11. At a time when America was being 
attacked, it was Vice President Cheney who made the important 
decisions.
  By now this pattern should be quite clear. Vice President Cheney does 
the real work of the administration, making the key decisions in our 
times of greatest need.

                              {time}  2145

  When George Bush says that Dick Cheney can be President, he is right, 
but that says more about President Bush's own failure of leadership 
than it says anything about Vice President Cheney's abilities.
  Madam Speaker, the American people deserve better. They deserve 
better than a man-behind-the-man presidency. Senator John Edwards will 
not be the kind of Vice President who will falsify intelligence for the 
purposes of sending our young men and women to war. As a member of the 
Senate Intelligence Committee, he knows better.
  We need leaders who will not abdicate the Constitution in the name of 
political opportunism, a Presidential team that will pursue smarter 
policies than those of the current administration.
  I have introduced H. Con. Res. 392, the SMART security resolution, 
which provides a much smarter national security platform than the one 
we currently have. SMART stands for Sensible, Multilateral, American 
Response to Terrorism. SMART security means confronting the threat of 
terrorism not by creating more terrorism, as the Bush administration 
has done in Iraq, but by striking at the very heart of the real terror 
networks.
  SMART would cut off financing for terrorist groups and would break up 
of their organizations around the world, engaging the international 
community in this process, the same international community the Bush 
administration so callously disregarded in its march to war.
  SMART security provides a better path for America than the one we are 
currently on. Could Dick Cheney be President? Sure, if you do not mind 
the fact that the real President is asleep at the wheel, but John 
Edwards, who could step in for John Kerry on a moment's notice, will 
not be a shadow President because John Kerry will lead this country on 
a truly smart path.
  The voters will decide in November what they want: an administration 
that unnecessarily sent American troops into a war that has cost the 
lives of thousands, or a Kerry-Edwards administration that will be 
smart about America's national security.

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