[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19239-19240]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             THE ADMINISTRATION'S CASE FOR WAR AGAINST IRAN

  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, for years the administration has been 
rigging its case for war against Iran with posturing, finger-wagging 
and name calling. Those are not my words. One of my hometown daily 
newspapers, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, authored those words as the 
first sentence of an editorial they published this morning entitled: 
``Iran: No, not again.'' I will insert the Seattle PI editorial into 
the Record at this point.

  [From the Seattle Post-Intelligener Editorial Board, July 17, 2007]

                          Iran: No, Not Again

       For years, this administration has been rigging its case 
     for war against Iran, with posturing, finger wagging and 
     name-calling.
       And now, just as Iran has struck an agreement with the 
     International Atomic Energy Agency for inspection of its 
     nuclear plants, and just as the IAEA chief, Mohamed 
     ElBaradei, has said that country is slowing progress on one 
     of those facilities, the United Kingdom's Guardian newspaper 
     reports that Vice President Dick Cheney is pushing for a 
     military ``solution'' in Iran. Naturally, President Bush is 
     backing him, going against Secretary of State Condoleezza 
     Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, both of whom favor 
     diplomacy over military action (heck, it worked with North 
     Korea).
       In May, Cheney paid a visit to the USS John C. Stennis in 
     the Persian Gulf, 150 miles off Iran's coast, for no other 
     reason than to deliver threats. The New York Times reported 
     that while Cheney said nothing new, he ``stitched all of 
     those warnings together, and the symbolism of sending the 
     administration's most famous hawk to deliver the speech so 
     close to Iran's coast was unmistakable.''
       The U.S. rode roughshod over ElBaradei's insistence that 
     Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction (he was right). 
     And look where we are now. More than 3,000 American troops 
     and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead in war that defies 
     reason and sees no end. We fear the same might happen in 
     Iran.

  The fact is, the mainstream newspapers at home and around the world 
are expressing grave concerns over what they fear may be the sequel to 
Iraq, namely, a military strike against Iran.
  One of the sources used by the PI editorial is the Guardian newspaper 
of the United Kingdom which published a story yesterday with this 
headline: ``Cheney Pushes Bush to Act on Iran.''
  The Guardian reports that: ``The balance in the internal White House 
debate over Iran has shifted back in favor of military action before 
President George Bush leaves office in 18 months.''
  Ominously, the story adds: ``Although the Bush administration is in 
deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed 
source in Washington said, `Bush is not going to leave office with Iran 
still in limbo.'''
  Thoughtful newspapers and other worldwide people believe the Vice 
President is pushing for a military strike against Iran. The Vice 
President's presence and speech aboard an aircraft carrier near Iran in 
mid-May sent an unmistakable message, says the New York Times.
  As the Guardian reports, The Vice President is winning the war for 
war inside the administration, and now the American people have to be 
brought along. That means the administration and its surrogates will 
make the data say what they need it to say.
  We're already beginning to see how a new national intelligence 
assessment released just today will be manipulated. The report makes a 
persuasive and fact-driven case for getting our soldiers out of Iraq, 
because the President shifted away from the real war against terrorism 
to pursue his own agenda in Iraq.
  But instead of a sober assessment of what's gone wrong in Iraq, we're 
hearing that terrorists have reconstituted their operations inside 
Iran. And the insinuation for military action is clear.
  Like many, I would like to know what's really going on in Iran and 
what Iranian leaders are thinking and doing. Well, where can we turn 
for an assessment we can trust? We know the Vice President wants to use 
deadly force in Iran. We know that there are credible media reports 
that say the Vice President is winning the war to go to war with Iran. 
So how are we going to get

[[Page 19240]]

accurate and reliable information from this administration or anyone 
associated with it?
  Today, the State Department announced it wants a new meeting directly 
with Iran to talk face-to-face, government-to-government. Ordinarily, I 
would see this as a welcome, even positive, sign that the 
administration has finally begun to see the wisdom in diplomacy.
  Is that the case, or is an announcement that comes on the same day as 
the New Intelligence Estimate a sign that the Vice President is about 
to declare mission accomplished? We don't know the answer, and we don't 
know what happened in Iraq.
  But we do know what happened in Iraq. The PI editorial board reminds 
us how the administration ran over the International Atomic Energy 
Agency, its chief, to make a war in Iraq, quoting the PI. Look where we 
are now, more than 3,000 American troops and tens of thousands of 
Iraqis dead in a war that defies reason and sees no end. We fear the 
same may happen in Iran. So do I.
  Tell the President not to go after Iran.

{time}  2130

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