[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15177]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               WE ARE NOT SAFER BECAUSE OF WAR WITH IRAQ

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the world and Iraq are better off without 
that murderous despot Saddam Hussein in power. But the unanimous report 
of the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee refutes the Bush 
administration's principal premise of the war that Saddam Hussein had 
weapons of mass destruction. They concluded he did not, that he 
presented a danger. They said the sanctions were working and his 
military was degraded and rapidly disintegrating. No links to 9/11; yet 
the President said seven times in 32 minutes the American people were 
safer because of the war in Iraq.
  He can say it, but it does not make it so. Osama bin Laden is still 
out there plotting and planning. We are on heightened alert. They say 
he is going to attack anytime soon, but he has given a bye for the last 
2 years by the Bush administration because of their obsession with Iraq 
instead of those who attacked us on 9/11.
  We are not safer because of the war in Iraq. We are in fact more at 
risk because Saddam Hussein was not the real threat. It was Osama bin 
Laden, who has had the chance to regroup, strengthen his forces, and 
plan new attacks because the Bush administration has not been 
adequately pursuing it.

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