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CORRUPTION UPDATES 50 May 1, 2007: Senator Richard Durban's remarks on the Senate floor, April 25, 2007 The CORRUPTION UPDATES posts corruption news stories from California, the Nation and the World, and gives you the straight story. |
First Reported by Democracy Now, May 1, 2007
Dick Durban, Senate Intel Committee: " I Knew the Public Was Being Mislead into the Iraq War”
S5026 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—SENATE April 25, 2007
Mr. DURBIN.
So now we are in this debate about
how this war is going to end. It is well overdue that we have this debate.
When we went into this war, we were told by the President that there were reasons for doing it. I think most Americans recall it.
I recall the litany very well.
First, the administration told us that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which could be used—chemical and biological weapons—in a terrorist mode to kill innocent people in the Middle East and around the world.
Second, we were told they were developing nuclear weapons in Iraq, nuclear weapons that could destabilize the Middle East and even attack America. The leaders in this administration were giving speeches about mushroom clouds from these nuclear weapons. Then we were told that Saddam Hussein had some connection to the al-Qaida terrorists who caused the 9/11 tragedy in America. Then we were told that this madman,
this dictator, was so ruthless that he even killed and gassed his own innocent civilians, his own people in Kurdish regions. The Senate came to debate this, listening
to the speeches by President
Bush, Vice President CHENEY, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice, and the debate engaged. At the time of this debate, I was a member of the Senate ntelligence
Committee. I would read the headlines in the paper in the morning and watch the television newscasts and shake my head because, you see, just a few hundred feet away from here in a closed room, carefully guarded, the Intelligence
Committee was meeting on a
daily basis for top-secret briefings about the information we were receiving, and the information we had in the
Intelligence Committee was not the same information being given to the American people.
I couldn’t believe it.
Members of this administration were in active, heated debate over whether aluminum tubes really meant that the Iraqis were developing nuclear weapons.
Some in the administration were
saying, of course, not, it is not the
same kind of aluminum tube; at the
same time, members of the administration were telling the American people to be fearful of mushroom-shaped clouds.
I was angry about it. Frankly, I
couldn’t do much about it because, in the Intelligence Committee, we are sworn to secrecy. We can’t walk outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this Congress. We can’t do that. We couldn’t make those statements. So in my frustration, I sat on the floor of the Senate and listened to this heated debate
about invading Iraq thinking the
American people are being misled, they are not being told the truth. That is why I joined 22 of my colleagues in voting no. I didn’t believe at the time that the American people knew the real
facts. So what happened? We invaded, turned loose hundreds, if not thousands of people scouring Iraq for these weapons of mass destruction and never found one of them. We looked for nuclear
weapons. There was no evidence
whatsoever. We went into our intelligence files and said: OK, Saddam Hussein
and al-Qaida—let’s get this linkage
put together once and for all.
There was no evidence at all of a linkage. The American people were deceived into this war. That doesn’t take a thing away from the men and women in uniform who answered the call. They stand and fight. They don’t make the policy. The policy is made in Washington.
And they have shown xtraordinary
courage. Now, in this supplemental appropriations bill for Iraq, we want to engage the White House and the American people in an active discussion about where
this war is going. I don’t want to wake up every single day and read a headline about 5 more Americans, 9 more Americans,
10 more Americans losing their
lives in the middle of a civil war. We are saying to the President: It is time for you to accept the reality of the situation, and the reality is, as good as our military is—and it is the best in the world—it cannot win a civil war in Iraq. This war dates back 14 centuries. Two sects of the Islamic religion in pitched battle for 1,400 years about who is the legitimate heir of the great
Prophet Muhammad, and our soldiers are in the middle of this fight? Is that what we bargained for? Had the President come to us and said: We want to send in 150,000 American soldiers to
risk their lives in the hopes that these two warring religious sects will reach an agreement in Iraq, he wouldn’t have had two votes in favor of that. But that is where we are today. to accept the realities of this war. Sadly, this administration is the architect of the worst foreign policy decision in recent memory. The President has led the best military in the world into a desperate civil war. He has spent
American treasure at a record rate,
driving us deeply into debt, and, unfortunately, there is no end in sight. This failed policy in Iraq may not change until this President has left the White House, but that doesn’t mean congressional action and congressional debate are any less important. If President
Bush is not listening, then we
trust that the Iraqis will listen. They
should know this Congress will continue to work to make one thing very clear: American troops are coming home. The Iraqis have to stand up for their own country.
(Durban goes on to list the failures of the Iraqi Government, of which their failure to pass law privitizing Iraqi's most valuable national asset; Oil)
The approval of a law to regulate their oil industry and share revenues— a very hot political topic, and while
the Council of Ministers in Iraq has approved a draft, it has yet to be approved by their Parliament.
On April 25th, 2007, in a speech on the floor of the US Senate, Dick Durban revealed that during the run-up to the Iraqi war in 2003 he was aware that Bush's justifications for attacking Iraq were lies.
The Abstract of Mr. Durban's speech, below, was copied from the Congressional Record of April 25, 2007.
Durban's statements on the floor of the Senate were meant as a condemnation of the Bush administration, but only offered lame excuse for his dishonorable silence as Bush lied us into an illegal war.
If Durban was an honorable person who respected his oath to protect the Constitution, he would have simply said, "Bush and the Administration are lying based on testamony in Committee."
This may have caused sufficient stirr to incite enough of a real debate among the public and corporate press to reject the lies that led us to war. It also would have balanced his oath to Country with his oath to Committee.
But we will never know, because Durban has no balls.
