[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16173-16176]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               IRAQ WATCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hensarling). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. 
Inslee) is recognized until midnight.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we come to the floor this evening in the 
continued responsibility of keeping a very close eye on this 
administration's policy in Iraq in the continued series of what we 
style the Iraq watch.
  I will be joined by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) 
this evening, and hopefully the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland.)
  We have been now coming once a week to the floor of the House because 
we believe that the House has a duty not to sweep under the rug the 
accumulation of errors, misjudgments and deceptions that have been 
foisted on the American people by the Bush administration leading to 
the war in Iraq.
  The reason we are here every week is that there is too much tendency 
to forget the sacrifices that are being made by our men and women in 
uniform in Iraq; to treat them as sort of background noise; to sort of 
say, well, the casualties are down to several a week, so we can just 
sort of forget about Iraq. That is wrong.
  We have been here for months blowing the whistle on this 
administration's repeated failures in Iraq, and we will continue to do 
so, because this Nation owes it to our men and women in uniform to 
continue to be vigilant about what this administration is doing and not 
doing in Iraq.

                              {time}  2320

  Perhaps, even more importantly, we owe it to the cause of democracy 
itself not to allow it to go unnoted when a President of the United 
States starts a war based on deception of the American people. We are 
here to say there is perhaps no greater abuse of democracy, no more 
dangerous event in the great American democratic experiment, than for 
an American President to foist falsehoods on the American people to 
start a war, which we believe occurred in this case.
  Now, I would like to start our discussion tonight by quickly setting 
the stage for the history of the Iraq war to date. Unfortunately, this 
administration has made not 1, not 2, but 10 serious mistakes, 
deceptions, errors of judgment, negligence, and carelessness that have 
led to the troubles that our people are facing in Iraq. I would like to 
run through those very quickly before I yield to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).
  There are 10 major errors the Bush administration has made in Iraq. 
Error number 1: This administration told America in no uncertain terms, 
with no doubt, with no vagueness, with no ambiguity whatsoever, that it 
was required to start a war in Iraq because Iraq had weapons of mass 
destruction. The President said, in a culmination of his multiple 
statements, and this must not be forgotten; on August 26, 2002, the 
President said, ``Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein 
now has weapons of mass destruction.'' And there was not only no 
weapons of mass destruction, there was plenty of doubt. This 
President's statement was false, and this was falsehood number 1.
  Error number 2: The President told us on repeated occasions, and his 
administration, that they had clear, convincing and cogent evidence 
that there was a working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al 
Qaeda which led to the attack on September 11. They told us this over 
and over and over again, and now that the evidence has been made clear 
from the multiple reports that have come in on a bipartisan basis, this 
President's statement that Saddam Hussein was associated with the 
attack on this country, this venal, evil attack on this country was 
false, and it led to a war. And there is no greater error, breach of 
democracy than an American President saying that when this was false. 
And it continues to this day. With all of this mountain of evidence 
showing the falsehood of this President's statement, the Vice President 
of the United States has the chutzpa, if one can stretch that word that 
far, to try to continue to foist this on the American people, and it is 
falsehood number 2.
  Number 3: The American people were told repeatedly that we would be 
welcome as liberators in Iraq. We would be welcome with rose petals at 
our feet. We would be welcome with nothing but clear sailing because 
the people would see us as liberators. There is no question in the 
belief that Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant, and there is no question 
he abused thousands of Iraqis. But this President made a massive 
misjudgment by listening to Mr. Chalabi, one of the great sycophants in 
failures of predictions in international history, and the President was 
suckered and the American people were suckered by this misstatement, 
and we have paid dearly with our treasure and our lives and the health 
of our service personnel in Iraq.
  Falsehood number 4: This President ignored the clear, professional 
judgment of people who said we needed to have more boots on the ground 
to prevent anarchy in Iraq, but this President ignored that advice 
because he has wanted to fight this fight on the cheap from day 1, and 
we have suffered as a result. General Shinseki told him that we needed 
several hundred thousand people in Iraq to quell disturbance after the 
Iraq war, and he ignored it, and our people paid dearly for error and 
falsehood number 4.
  Number 5: The President said we did not need the United Nations, we 
could go in there alone, as long as we had the Philippines and a couple 
of other small island nations. Well, the Philippines have now 
withdrawn. This President decided to go it alone in Iraq, and our 
people have suffered dearly. Falsehood number 5.
  Falsehood number 6: The President said that by implication, 
everything would be aboveboard. There would not be any war profiteering 
in Iraq, people would not make millions of dollars worth of profits in 
Iraq. Now we see Halliburton, this company so intimately tied with this 
administration, reaping millions of dollars of taxpayers' money, 
wrongfully. The GAO has reported on it. This is a scandal, and Harry 
Truman rooted out world profiteering in World War II. We need to get to 
the bottom of this war profiteering by Halliburton and the like. 
Falsehood number 6.
  Falsehood number 7, and error number 7: This President and this 
administration led us down one of the most embarrassing breaches of 
American integrity, and that is the horrendous occasions of abuse at 
the Abu Ghraib prison, and it happened because people at the top of 
this administration gave a green light to stretching our well-accepted 
rules of following the Geneva Convention. The memos are now in and 
public information that multiple memos were sent saying that we did not 
have to give the protections of the Geneva Convention to people. This 
is something we do to protect our own troops so that they will be not 
abused if they are captive. This is a long held principle of America. 
But out of hubris, out of outright arrogance, this administration 
ignored those rules and we have suffered in the eyes of the world 
grievously. Make no mistake, 99.9 percent of our troops are doing a 
magnificent job, but this was error number 7.
  Error number 8: This President sent American troops into battle 
without adequate armor. Even today, our troops are driving around thin-
skinned

[[Page 16174]]

Humvees that should have armor, and I believe our people have been 
injured with shrapnel grievously.
  Error number 9, and this is one that is going to haunt us for a long 
time: The President started and continued a war with absolutely no plan 
whatsoever in how to pay for it. He has tried to hide the ball over and 
over again on the costs of this war to the American taxpayer, and he is 
still doing it. This year, this budget my colleagues in the majority 
party put out with $25 billion, we know it is going to be $60 billion 
next year. There is no question about this. Why did they hide this 
information from the American people? Do they think the American people 
will be so sleepy they will ignore the fact that another $60 billion 
will go to Iraq instead of schools and health care in America? Do they 
think that will be forgotten? I do not think so. This deficit is now in 
the billions of dollars and it is growing rapidly because the President 
wants our children to pay for the Iraq war rather than us. And this is 
that continued attitude of trying to fight this war on the cheap. This 
President needs to be honest and forthright with the American people 
about the real costs of this war, which are grievous. Error number 9.
  And error number 10: And this one rankles me greatly as a person who 
has read the casualty reports of what hot steel and shrapnel has done 
to our troops, sending our troops into combat without flak jackets, and 
it took us a year-and-a-half to get this administration to get flak 
jackets. Is that too much to ask of an administration for our troops? 
Error number 10.
  Those are a quick summary of the errors that have been made in Iraq. 
Today we heard about some new ones. We found out that, in fact, it was 
Iran that was allowing 10 of the terrorists who injured us so terribly 
on September 11, they were passing through Iran, not Iraq. The 
President never leveled with us and told us that. It turns out it was 
Iran that was trying to buy the Iranian yellow cake, not Iraq. It is 
not a good enough excuse that they are one letter apart. That is not a 
good enough excuse for this President.
  I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Maybe it is the wrong enemy, maybe it is the wrong war.
  But before I explore that, I thought I would just take a few minutes 
to amplify a bit on two of the points that the gentleman made. The cost 
of this war in terms of dollars and cents. I have this memory of the 
Under Secretary of Defense, Mr. Wolfowitz, testifying before a 
congressional committee saying that there would be no cost to the 
American taxpayers because Iraqi oil would obviously be more than 
sufficient to pay for the costs, not just of our military presence, our 
security presence, but the cost of reconstruction.

                              {time}  2330

  Well, that clearly was a mistake. In fact, I thought it was 
interesting that the criticism from the other side of the aisle, from 
Republicans, about the costs and the misestimates was probably even 
louder than that that came from this side, from Democrats.
  I have a memory of reading a particular column that was penned by 
Senator Dick Lugar, the prestigious Chair of the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee, where he described the postwar phase. Of course, I 
would suggest we are still at war. When one reads the casualty list, on 
a weekly basis it is clear that American troops are still being killed, 
and a large number of course are wounded. Many of us have visited them 
at Walter Reed and Bethesda Hospital here in Washington, DC, but going 
back to what Senator Lugar said, he said the postwar planning was 
totally inadequate. And, again, where is that oil money?
  And a further observation. If we remember the first Gulf War, the 
cost to the American taxpayers was approximately $4 billion. We have 
already expended somewhere between $150 and $200 billion, and as you 
suggest, many hundreds of billions of dollars more will be added to the 
bill, the bill that will be passed on to the American taxpayers for 
generations.
  In the first Gulf War, there was a real coalition, a genuine 
coalition of the willing. There was participation in terms of the 
military presence. There were more non-American troops in the first 
Gulf War than there were American troops. Other than those forces from 
Great Britain, as you indicated, there are only small detachments of 
security forces from other countries.
  And as was noted in a story last Thursday in the Washington Post, 
four countries have already left, four more are due to leave by 
September, and others are now making known their intention to lying 
down a depart before the political transition is complete next year.
  Norway pulled out its 455 military engineers this month. New Zealand 
intends to pull out its 60 engineers by September, while Thailand plans 
to withdraw its more than 450 troops that same month. The Netherlands 
is likely to pull out next spring after the first of three Iraqi 
elections, while Polish military officials told the Pentagon that 
Poland's large contingent will leave probably in less than a year. And 
as you indicated, the Filipinos withdrew already. The Spanish have 
withdrawn. We are going to end up there alone, Mr. Speaker, and the 
bill will be paid for by the American taxpayers.
  Now, much was stated back five or six months ago about a donors' 
conference in Madrid, Mr. Speaker, where the coalition was brought 
together in an effort to have nations other than the United States 
contribute, contribute financially even if they had no military 
presence there.
  Well, quoting the Los Angeles Times of July 12, ``Little of the $13 
billion promised for rebuilding has been donated, and countries are 
hesitant to waive that, frustrating the new Iraqi government.'' 
Countries have provided only a small fraction of the reconstruction aid 
they promised at a conference nine months ago, Mr. Speaker. Of the $13 
billion in nonAmerican aid pledged, less than $1 billion has been 
turned over to the United Nations and the World Bank, funds set up to 
take in most of the donations.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I will yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. INSLEE. I think it is important to realize what this President's 
unilateralism has done to the American taxpayer by putting it in 
context, vis-a-vis the first Iraq war, because the first President Bush 
did in fact work with the rest of the world community, and as a result, 
the rest of the world paid well over the majority. I think it was close 
to 80, 90 percent of the total cost of the first Iraq war. It was not 
borne by the American taxpayer.
  But the cost of this second President Bush's go-it-alone strategy to 
the American taxpayer is enormous, because as of May the American 
taxpayers had spent $174 billion. Now, to put that in perspective, we 
are going to pass the total inflation-adjusted cost of World War I 
sometime early next year in the cost of Iraq, which was $199 billion. 
And, again, the insidious part about this is that the President, 
because he is unwilling to do what Winston Churchill did, which was to 
call for blood, toil, sweat and tears, this President just wants to put 
this war on the credit card, and every single dollar of the Iraq war is 
going to deficit spending.
  We have a $7 trillion debt. This President Bush's budget is out of 
balance $368 billion a year, and he is adding every single dollar of 
this going straight on our national debt. And it is our children that 
are going to suffer as a result of this. Why? Because the President is 
unwilling to really face the truth in Iraq. He was unwilling to face 
the truth about weapons of mass destruction. He was unwilling to face 
the truth about a purported connection with al Qaeda. He was unwilling 
to face the truth about how many troops we were going to need. He was 
unwilling to face the truth about the armor that we needed. He was 
unwilling to face the truth, you name it, about anything you can think 
of in Iraq. And this is a continuing sore on our fiscal house as well 
as the suffering that we have had.

[[Page 16175]]

  Mr. Speaker, I will yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Delahunt).
  Mr. DELAHUNT. As was indicated, it is only going to get worse, 
because I would suggest that what we are going to find is as time moves 
on, there will be fewer and fewer even pledges that will be made, let 
alone honored. We now know they are not being honored, at least if you 
accept the report from the Los Angeles Times.
  It is easy to go out and say, yeah, America, you come up with $19 
billion to build roads in Iraq, to provide universal health care 
coverage, to rehab schools and to build affordable housing. If you do 
that, American taxpayer, we will promise that we will pledge or we will 
pledge at least half of what you do, and now we find out that less than 
$1 billion has actually been transferred to the appropriate agencies. 
In fact, half of that $1 billion comes from a single nation, Japan.
  But I would like to get on to something else for just a minute. The 
President is prone to be saying, particularly at campaign rallies, that 
America is safer than ever. It is safer than it was three years ago. In 
fact, he extends it to the entire world. He is saying that the world is 
safer than it was three years ago. And yet, ironically, yesterday, Mr. 
Speaker, I think it was on Fox News, one of the magazine editions, 
there was an interview with the current, the so-called interim director 
of the Central Intelligence Agency, John McLaughlin.

                              {time}  2340

  And he said that while several al Qaeda plots against the United 
States, against our homeland have been foiled, the truth remains that 
the threat is as high as it ever was.
  Now, there is an inconsistency here. All we have to do is count 14 to 
15 days and there will be a new terror alert. How often do we turn on 
one of the cable news networks or turn on our TV and we see the 
Attorney General or we see Secretary Ridge talking about an elevated 
threat? In fact, Secretary Ridge was in my hometown of Boston, 
Massachusetts just recently talking about the threat. And here we have 
the new Director of the CIA contradicting the President of the United 
States who, and maybe he was simply indulging in campaign rhetoric, 
saying that we are much safer now and the world is safer. And yet here, 
``U.S. Spy Chief: Al Qaeda Threat Strong As Ever.''
  Is this what we call winning the war on terror, Mr. Speaker. Is this 
making the world safer? I do not know that answer. I do not think the 
President really does either.
  Mr. INSLEE. The fact of the matter is, and the sad fact is that this 
administration has taken its eye off the ball of the people who killed 
almost 3,000 Americans on September 11, al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.
  When is the last time you actually heard the President of the United 
States say the name Osama bin Laden? It is like he is the great 
forgotten person in this terrible tragedy that we suffered. I remember 
him and I think that our focus ought to remain on him.
  Let me give an anecdote why it is not. We found out the other day in 
the Committee on Financial Services, the secret of stopping terrorists, 
you cut off their money. You cut off their money, you kill the beast, 
in part.
  We found out that this administration has more people, more agents of 
the Treasury Department, this is the agency that is supposed to be in 
charge of lopping off the conduit of funds to al Qaeda, this 
administration has more agents chasing American tourists going to Cuba 
than it does chasing off money that goes to al Qaeda.
  That is just one sort of sad indication that this administration has 
not focused on where the real threat has been which is al Qaeda which 
is still out there and which is still a meaningful threat.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Let me give another example in terms of seriousness. 
The administration's position, vis-a-vis tracking down the terrorists. 
There was a Committee on Ways and Means hearing where a representative 
of the IRS was posed a question and in response to the question 
indicated that the IRS's request for an additional 80 investigators who 
would be assigned to tracking terrorist financing throughout the world 
was rejected by the White House through the Office of Management and 
Budget. Is this how you fight the war against terror?
  Mr. INSLEE. I bet they have got 80 bean counters that the American 
taxpayer are funding who work for Halliburton. This administration has 
no problem dishing out the dough for Halliburton and we cannot get 80 
inspectors to track down Osama bin Laden. How is that for a sad 
commentary on taking your eye off the ball.
  Now, I want to suggest how this has happened a little bit, how this 
emphasis has been misplaced. And it has because of this President's 
administration's focus on Iraq and their efforts to hoodwink the 
American people into believing that the real culprit or at least one of 
the culprits behind September 11 was Saddam Hussein. I want to spend 
just a moment talking about that because I think one of the single most 
serious affronts and dangers in a democratic system is for elected 
officials, particularly in the powerful position of the President, to 
tell things to the American people which are false that end up starting 
a war.
  We found out that last September a poll of American people said that 
65 percent of American people believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 
the attacks on us on September 11, and Saddam Hussein has a list longer 
than my arm of his depredations against the Iraqi people. But 65 
percent of the Americans had been convinced by someone that Iraq was 
behind the attack on September 11.
  Now, who was that someone? Where did the American people get that 
idea which has turned out to be false and it is pretty clear where they 
got it. They got it from the President of the United States who was 
standing right there and tried to convince, and he did by and large, 
convince the American people of something that is false. The President 
did not let this slip on one iota. We all make mistakes and misspeak on 
occasion. This was a concerted, organized and consistent effort to fool 
the American people into believing that the culprit was Saddam Hussein 
behind September 11.
  Look at some of his quotes. May 1, 2003, the President says, ``The 
liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. 
We have removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist 
funding.'' Vice President Cheney, September 14, 2003, says, ``If we are 
successful in Iraq, then we will have struck a major blow right at the 
heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists 
who had us under assault for the many years but most especially on 
September 11.''
  What do we find the truth is? Our intelligence people knew at that 
time but was shielded from the American people? The bipartisan 
committee under the chairmanship of a Republican Governor Keen 
concluded there was ``no credible evidence of a link between al Qaeda 
and the attacks against the United States.'' No credible evidence. Not 
some credible evidence but not much. Not just a scintilla of credible 
evidence. Not a couple of ounces.
  They said no credible evidence, but this President stood right there 
and started a war based on a falsehood, and he knew he was doing this 
to the American people and he is responsible for this. He is personally 
accountable for this and the American people need to hold him 
accountable for this depredation and affront to democracy as soon as 
they can.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Is not it ironic that on Sunday there appears a story 
in the New York Times about that report that will be forthcoming later 
this week, and the gentleman alluded to it earlier, when he mentioned 
Iran. And by the way, the acting director of the CIA confirmed the fact 
yesterday on the Fox News Program, yesterday morning that, yes, there 
was information that a number of the 9-11 hijackers had safe passage 
through Iran, Iran, not Iraq but Iran. I guess we made a mistake as far 
as what country to invade.
  But seriously, let me just read several excerpts from the Sunday 
editions of the New York Times. ``The final report of the commission 
investigating

[[Page 16176]]

the September 11 attacks will offer new evidence of cooperative ties 
between Iran and al Qaeda including information drawn from intelligence 
reports suggesting that Iran provided several of the hijackers with 
safe passage in the year before the attacks, government official said. 
The evidence raised enough questions about why the Bush administration 
focused on the possibility of Iraqi ties to be Osama bin Laden's terror 
network after 9-11 when there may have been far more extensive evidence 
of the Iranian connection. The panel had recently obtained intelligence 
showing that Iran had ordered guards at its border stations not to stop 
the passports of al Qaeda members from Saudi Arabia who were moving 
through Iran after training at terrorists camps in Afghanistan.''

                              {time}  2350

  My memory is this Iran, according to the President, was a member of 
the axis of evil club, but as you pointed out, there is no 
collaborative relationship according to the commission between Iraq and 
Iran. But why did we end up attacking Iraq rather than Iran?
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I will answer that question. The reason we 
attacked Iraq is that the day after September 11, maybe it was 2 days 
after, it has been reported that the Secretary of Defense goes in to 
the President and says now is our chance, now is our chance to go after 
Iraq. This was like 48 hours after September 11. There was no evidence 
whatsoever that Iraq was associated with September 11, but this 
President and his political advisers knew one thing. They knew if they 
could fool the American people into believing that Saddam Hussein was 
behind September 11, the neo-cons could con the American people into 
supporting a war in Iraq, and to some degree, their maliciousness was 
successful to the detriment of our proud men and women in service who 
are there tonight in the heat of Iraq, 130 degrees, suffering, dying in 
the sands of Iraq because an American President's administration was 
not forthright with the American people and consciously, willfully gave 
false information to our fellow countrymen.
  This is not just a little happenstance. We have a memo from a 
political operative of the President about how to talk about this. This 
was a cold-blooded, calculated act, and you talk about having your 
missed priority and what country you would be involved in.
  I have been asked by one of my constituents if I have seen the movie 
``Fahrenheit 9/11.'' He said, Jay, is it true, did the President allow 
the family members of Osama bin Laden, who are Saudi Arabian, to fly 
out of the country when all the other planes were grounded in the 
country? Did this administration let his friends from Saudi Arabia fly 
out of the country without a full and thorough investigation of their 
relationship? Did that really happen?
  The sad fact is, yes, it did, and we have discovered that, in fact, 
did occur in our Committee on Financial Services hearing, and I pressed 
for an answer of who made that decision. I never got that answer, who 
made that decision, and 3 days later, the President is on the south 
portico of the White House smoking cigars with Prince Bandahar, the 
ambassador of Saudi Arabia, where two-thirds of the terrorists came 
from that attacked this country, and we let their families fly out 
without even a decent interrogation of them. Talk about having a mixed-
up relationship about who our enemies are and who our friends are.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Does it come as a surprise to you that at least 
according to Bob Woodward in his most recent book, a book that was 
praised by the White House, in fact, there are excerpts of it I 
understand on the President's campaign Web site, but in that particular 
book, it was noted by the author that Prince Bandahar was informed of 
the attack on Iraq prior to the Secretary of State Colin Powell.
  Let me go back just for a moment, because I know we are wrapping up, 
to another observation by Mr. Woodward, and this I would suggest is 
where ideology colors reality and affects the truth, the objective 
truth.
  The passion of some in this administration, and I put beside you 
there a Newsweek cover with a picture of the Vice President Dick 
Cheney, emblazoned that says how Dick Cheney sold the war. It was clear 
that this individual was obsessed with Iraq, for whatever reason. I am 
not questioning his motives.
  But in the book by Mr. Woodward, it is noted on page 175, for those 
who might have it, that the Secretary of State ``detected a kind of 
fever in Cheney. He was not the steady, unemotional rock that he had 
witnessed a dozen years earlier during the run-up to the Gulf War. The 
Vice President was hell-bent for action against Saddam Hussein.'' It is 
very dangerous when ideology colors the objective truth and reality. In 
the end, it gets us in a mess, and this is where we are now.
  Mr. INSLEE. Well, I am going to close with a couple of comments.
  We are here to discuss a basic principle of American democracy, and 
that is, accountability, that people in public service need to be held 
accountable, both for their successes and their failures.
  There is a group that we should recognize for valor and effectiveness 
and honor in our government and our government personnel, and that is 
our Army, navy, air corps, Coast Guard, marines, who are serving in 
Iraq. Those folks deserve to be held accountable by being praised for 
their tremendous service to this country in difficult circumstances 
tonight, and they are still continuing to suffer the pangs of war 
tonight, and we have come here to make sure that their sacrifice is not 
forgotten and that we treat them with as great an honor as we can and 
that we restore our Veterans Administration health care system so that 
when they come home they are not exposed to the cuts in the veterans 
health care system that this administration has proposed.
  This group of public servants, we cannot forget their contribution. 
It should never be forgotten, but there is another group of public 
servants whose massive failures and deceit should not be forgotten 
either, and that is the Bush administration who has made at least 10 
major failure, falsehoods, negligence and carelessness, to the great 
cost of the American public, and those public servants should not be 
forgotten in their failure either and should be held accountable, and 
we will continue to have this discussion until they are.
  Would the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) like to close? 
Do you have any closing comments?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. No, I concur with those sentiments.

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