[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 18837-18838]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            EXPRESSING OUTRAGE AT REPUBLICAN DOUBLE STANDARD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, the Nation is talking about Dan Rather, 
CBS, and the false National Guard memos. Republicans are saying that he 
misled the Nation, that it is a scandal that threatens our body 
politic. Congressional Republicans are talking about an ethics 
investigation. And yesterday on a radio show, Bill Bennett said the Dan 
Rather incident went beyond bias. He said, ``This is corruption.''
  Let me tell the Members something. Dan Rather is going to get a 
whopping, and he deserves it. CBS has a black eye, and they earned it. 
There is no excuse for what happened. However, all this outrage from 
the self-righteous right wing of this country has taken hypocrisy to a 
new low.
  Let me ask my colleagues where was the moral outrage and where is the 
moral outrage when the President of the United States here in the State 
of the Union at this podium used falsified evidence to allege in his 
State of the Union that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellow cake 
uranium from Nigeria?

                              {time}  2015

  Where is their moral outrage when Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney 
repeatedly link Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, all the while knowing that 
no evidence supports the claim?
  Where is their moral outrage when our President said we would find 
tens of thousands of pounds of chemical and biological weapons when we 
invaded Iraq, even though he knew there was no absolute proof?
  Where is the their moral outrage when we are told that Iraq purchased 
aluminum tubes in order to refine uranium, even though weapons experts 
said otherwise?
  Where is their moral outrage when Paul Wolfowitz told the Congress 
that Iraqi oil money would pay for reconstruction, all the while 
knowing that the burden would be placed on the American taxpayers?
  And where is their moral outrage when we discovered that the chief 
architects of the Iraqi war, Vice President Cheney, Deputy Secretary of 
Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and Donald 
Rumsfeld, paid Mr. Ahmed Chalabi $49 million in U.S. taxpayer money for 
faulty intelligence claiming that Iraq had mobile weapons labs and that 
we would be greeted as liberators? If this is how Iraqis greet 
liberators, they have a funny way of saying ``welcome.''
  Mr. Speaker, the outrage of the self-righteous right over the 
falsified National Guard documents is nothing more than opportunistic 
partisan politics at its worst.
  Did Dan Rather do wrong? Undoubtedly, and he is going to get what he 
deserves, as will CBS. Dan Rather deserves criticism and he should be 
held accountable.
  But I fail to understand why Dan Rather's credibility has raised such 
a moral outrage, but the same critics cannot find that the President's 
credibility equals that of Dan Rather's. What civics class did they go 
to, where they learned that Dan Rather's credibility weighs more 
important to the fabric of this country than the President of the 
United States?
  As far as I am concerned, both individuals have a piece of the 
public's trust; both individuals have to be accountable for what they 
say. Dan Rather said he was wrong and he will be held accountable. We 
have yet to hear that same explanation from the President of the United 
States.
  I say this in all seriousness: I do not think the President of the 
United States takes it lightly. Dan Rather's poor judgment and false 
statements did not lead to where the country is today in Iraq and the 
cost we have paid both in lives and in our treasure. Time and

[[Page 18838]]

again, this administration has used false statements and false 
documents to justify their actions, and America has paid dearly.
  Mr. Speaker, my challenge to my friends on the right wing is, I will 
join you any time you want to condemn Dan Rather. If you want to have 
an hour debate here on the floor, I will be down there. But I offer you 
the invitation to come and join me any time you want to have an hour 
debate about the President's false statements and what he used to 
justify a war, knowing all the while that was not true.
  Dan Rather will pay for this, as will CBS. But the President of the 
United States also has credibility, all of our credibility, and when it 
is misused, we all pay dearly for it.
  So I ask the people on the right who usually talk about moral 
consistency to stop being so inconsistent in their moral relativism, 
where they see Dan Rather's credibility and his character as more 
important than that of the President of the United States. Understand 
that the President, our President, speaks for all of us, and his 
credibility is our credibility, and when we use it in front of the 
world and we are questioned from here forward because we no longer have 
told the truth and people do not believe us, we all pay a price that we 
are seeing every day in the news.

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