[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 20772]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           LOST PUBLIC TRUST

  (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the Office of the President of the United 
States transcends politics. Even when the person occupying the office 
violates the public trust, as President Nixon did, the American people 
lost faith in the politician but not the office. It was an extreme 
display of patriotism and optimism. America is on the verge of doing 
that again.
  When an administration that claims, as this one did, that it had hard 
incontrovertible evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the American 
people believed it because it came from the Office of the President. 
Now the President's security adviser admits there were serious doubts 
that Saddam had the aluminum tubes needed for weapons of mass 
destruction, the very basis for going to war; but the administration 
ignored the evidence and manufactured the sound bites that took America 
to war.
  In so doing, the administration violated the trust the American 
people place in the Office of the President. The American people will 
take the first step in restoring integrity to the Office of the 
President when they elect John Kerry as the next President on November 
2. It cannot come too soon.

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