[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13408]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     REPUBLICANS ATTEMPT TO DIVERT ATTENTION AWAY FROM WAR IN IRAQ

  (Mr. BUTTERFIELD asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Madam Speaker, these attacks against the gentlewoman 
from California (Leader Pelosi) and Senator Durbin are nothing more 
than an attempt by the congressional Republicans to divert attention 
away from the war in Iraq to comments made by two of our Democratic 
colleagues.
  Republicans know that the war in Iraq is not going well right now. 
They have an administration that is clearly not leveling with the 
American people. Earlier this month, Vice President Cheney told a 
national audience that the insurgency in Iraq was in its last throes. 
Well, we all know that is not the case.
  I think Washington columnist Richard Cohen got it right this morning 
when he wrote that these partisan attacks are the latest in a series of 
attacks by Washington Republicans to silence the opposing views. Cohen 
wrote, ``The contempt the Bush administration has shown for world 
opinion and international law, not to mention American traditions of 
jurisprudence, is costing us plenty. We are not the Soviet Union, and 
we are not Nazi Germany, and Dick Durbin did not intend to say we are. 
His detractors have to know that. Their intention, however, is not to 
answer criticism, but to silence a critic.''
  Democrats will not be silenced.

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