[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 24395]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       QUESTIONS NEEDING ANSWERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, today is All Saints Day. It is a rather 
remarkable day. In the 18 years, 17 years I have been in the Congress, 
I have never seen the other body go into secret session to try and find 
out the truth of anything. The fact that they had a session over there 
where they closed the doors to try and get at the truth tells you how 
bad this situation is.
  This morning's New York Times has an article, an editorial by 
Nicholas Kristof. Now, he is a neocon, certainly from the right, no 
question about it; but he says, his title is, ``What Did Cheney Know 
and When Did He Know It?'' He asks several questions which, I think, 
although many people do not have the opportunity to read the New York 
Times, they ought to know about it.
  ``Did you ask Scooter Libby to undertake his inquiries about 
Ambassador Joseph Wilson? Why did you independently ask the CIA for 
information about the Wilsons? Did you know that Mrs. Wilson was a 
covert officer? Did you advise Mr. Libby to leak information about Mrs. 
Wilson's work in the CIA to journalists? When Mr. Libby made his 
statements in the inquiry, allegedly committing perjury, were you aware 
of what he was saying?'' Finally, and I think this is the question that 
really needs to be dealt with: ``Was Mr. Libby fearful of disclosing 
something about your behavior in the summer of 2003?''
  This goes on to suggest that if he did so, ``was it a misguided 
attempt to try and protect you? The alleged lies shielded you,'' 
meaning Mr. Cheney, ``by indicating that the information you gave him 
about Mrs. Wilson instead came from reporters and not from him.''
  Now, this is a question that the American people deserve an answer 
to.
  Several years ago we sat in this body and listened to a State of the 
Union address, and the Vice President of the United States sat right up 
here on the dais, behind the President of the United States, knowing 
that what the President was saying was not factual. He knew that. How 
can the President of the United States explain to the American people 
how he sent people out to find out all this information, found it out, 
and still was allowed to come before the American people and the 
Congress and the diplomatic corps and the Supreme Court and the whole 
administration and tell them something that was not true.
  Now, what this event does, and they may try and brush this off as a 
minor technicality, or it is just perjury; well, we impeached or tried 
to impeach President Clinton over just perjury, and that was about a 
sex act. No one died. Two thousand people have died, our people, untold 
numbers of Iraqis have died, and 10,000 of our people have come home 
badly, badly wounded. It has cost us $240 billion, money that we did 
not use to fix the levees in New Orleans or other places in this 
country where there are problems today.

                              {time}  2000

  The question that comes up again and again: Is there no limit in this 
administration to what will be said or done to promote this war and to 
protect it? Will they say anything? Is there any limit on what they 
will bring here as evidence?
  The fact is that we hear there is a terror alert. If you look at 
those terror alerts, they always follow some disaster someplace to get 
people's mind off it. What has happened this week since the President 
was made aware of the fact that we had an indictment of the Chief of 
Staff to the Vice President of the United States? That man works in the 
White House or in the Executive Office Building right next to it.
  What do we have? Well, we certainly have a lot of things here. We 
today had a big expose about a flu epidemic. Now, did that just happen 
yesterday? That has been going on for a long time. The President said 
he had a flu shot. That flu shot had nothing to do with the avian bird 
flu from Asia. That is this year's strain of virus. We get them every 
year. Everybody gets a flu shot every year. They have nothing to do 
with this pandemic we are talking about. Yet the President makes a big 
expose in the White House. And the fact is that this kind of thing to 
divert people's attention will continually be done to keep them from 
focusing on the disaster of this morally bankrupt war we are in in the 
Middle East.
  It is time for us to call an end to this. The President has no plan 
to get out of it. We have no plans. There are no benchmarks for 
anything. They are going to stay there, and they intend to stay there. 
As long as there is chaos, they will be able to justify staying there, 
and that is what they want. They have wanted chaos.
  Why did they disband the army? Why did they disband civil service? 
Why did they not prepare? Because they were intending to have things be 
in turmoil. Because in turmoil they can keep justifying their existence 
in Iraq. They should come home. The Vice President, as Mr. Christoff 
said, should either tell us what was going on or resign.

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