Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, today I introduced a House Resolution extending the condolences of the United States House of Representatives to the family of Dr. David Kelly.

Dr. Kelly died on July 18th in an apparent suicide. The day before, he appeared in front of the House of Commons' Foreign Affairs committee where he was questioned about the role in the controversy between the British Broadcasting Corporation and the government of the United Kingdom over a British intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Dr. Kelly's professional integrity and dedication to finding the truth earned him great respect both at home in Great Britain as well as among his international colleagues. Between 1991 and 1998, Dr. Kelly played an essential role in the efforts of the United Nations Special Commission to dismantle Iraq's banned chemical, biological, and ballistic programs.

His professional integrity and dedication to finding the truth made the world safer for all of us.

[From The Guardian, July 24, 2003]

What David Kelly Knew: the killing of Saddam's sons won't divert

attention for long from the specious reasons given for invading Iraq

(By Richard Norton-Taylor)

Uday and Qusay are killed and the delighted British and

American governments suggest that Iraq will be a safer place.

Yes, Iraqis may well feel safer. And--with the dictator's

brutal sons out of the way for ever--more confident about

continuing the resistance against the American occupiers.

Shortly before their deaths were announced, Richard

Gephardt, Democrat presidential hopeful, delivered a

blistering attack on Bush's foreign policy which was driven,

he said, by ``machismo'' and ``arrogant unilateralism''.

Bush, he continued, had treated US allies ``like so many

flies on America's windshield''. He added: ``Foreign policy

isn't a John Wayne movie.''

The attack on the villa where Saddam's sons were hiding

might be seen as driving home the point. Instead, the

announcement that they had been killed by US troops in a

shoot-out is welcomed by Tony Blair as ``great news''.

Jack Straw was more circumspect. He said the death of what

he called ``extremely unpleasant psychopaths'' would bring

relief for the Iraqi people. But he added: ``I am not

rejoicing. I mourn the death of anybody, but it has to be

said that it is a very great relief for all Iraqis.''

Both the prime minister and the foreign secretary seized

the opportunity to remind us about the brutality of Saddam's

regime. This was something many of us pointed out more than

15 years ago. But then, Straw says, there was a Conservative

government and, anyway, Iraq was at war with Iran. It was as

though they were mightily relieved that attention had been

diverted away from the increasingly damaging controversy over

what weapons of mass destruction, if any, Iraq possessed when

Bush and Blair decided to invade the country, and from the

death of David Kelly in particular.

And it was another welcome opportunity to remind us of the

nature of the Saddam regime. Uday and Qusay, Blair told

journalists yesterday, were responsible for the torture and

killing of thousands of Iraqis. That is not, of course, what

we were told we were going to war for and is not the legal

justification the attorney general gave for it. Never mind;

let's milk the deaths of Saddam's sons as much as possible

and hope the dictator soon shares their fate.

But Dr Kelly's death will continue to haunt the government.

The man described by Blair after his death as a ``fine public

servant'' was dismissed, before it, by those in Whitehall

battling with the BBC as some kind of middle-ranking expert,

pretty marginal in the general scheme of things.

In fact, he was a central figure in the government's

continuing quest for evidence of banned weapons in Iraq. He

had recently been to Iraq to advise the US-led Survey Group

of scientists (including former UN inspectors damned so

recently by Washington as incompetent), which Bush and Blair

so desperately hopes will come up with credible evidence

which could give them a post-hoc justification for war. It is

a tragic irony that Kelly will not be able to continue the

work. A fellow expert on biological and chemical weapons

familiar with Iraq described Kelly yesterday as a ``real

loss--he knew the place so well, the individuals so well,

he's not somebody you could easily replace''.

Kelly was one of the toughest and most effective Unscom

weapons inspectors in Iraq in the 1990s. He was convinced

Saddam Hussein had possessed weapons of mass destruction. As

a senior adviser to both the Ministry of Defence and Foreign

Office on the threat posed by chemical and biological weapons

he had to have access to up-to-date intelligence to do his

job.

So when he told journalists he had misgivings about the

government's now largely discredited September dossier it was

extremely significant. If MPs on the Commons foreign affairs

committee had bothered to listen to the substance of what he

told them instead of scoring points in the battle between the

government and the BBC--of which Kelly was a victim--they too

would have heard important evidence.

Kelly told the committee there was only a 30 percent chance

that Iraq had chemical or biological weapons. That Iraq could

deploy them within 45 minutes of an order to do so--``ready''

was the word Blair used in the dossier's foreword--was

``highly unlikely'', Kelly told the MPs. Between issuing

orders and firing the weapons was a ``long process'', he

said. He should know.

We are now told that what MI6's agent, an Iraqi brigadier-

general, said when he was reactivated--conveniently, shortly

before the September dossier was published--was that the

Iraqis had a command, control and communications system

(presumably bombed out of existence in the first days of the

war, if not before) that would have enabled Saddam or his

close military associates to contact commanders in the field

within 45 minutes authorising the use of WMD. That does not

mean deploying them, let alone having them ``ready''.

Kelly was a serious and senior source highly respected by

his peers. These did not include the armed forces minister,

Adam Ingram, who--after Kelly took the conscientious decision

to admit to a senior MoD official that he had talked to the

BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan--told the world that ``action

has been taken against him accordingly''. Challenging the BBC

to rule out the scientist as the source, Ingram said:

``Hopefully, that would allow Dr Kelly to carry on with his

career in the MoD.''

With such threats hanging over him, it is scarcely

surprising if he was under stress before he gave evidence to

the committee--even more so after he told the MPs he was not

Gilligan's main source. That, too, was not what the MoD

wanted him to say.

The world, let alone Iraq, would really have been a safer

place had David Kelly been allowed to do his job. Some people

in Downing Street and the MoD have a lot to answer for.

Mr. Speaker, today's votes are not about the merits of liberalizing or opening up foreign markets to American goods and services. Democrats and Republicans both support doing that because over 90 percent of our consumers live outside the United States borders.

I represent a congressional district whose economy relies heavily on exports, but my district is also deeply concerned about the process by which economies liberalize and the effects these liberalizations have on working families and the environment in which they live.

Process is very important. Read James Madison. The rules that the Congress laid out in the fast track bill were not met. Fast track requires the U.S. Trade Representative to consult with several private- sector advisory committees to seek their opinion about trade agreements, but Mr. Zoellick refused to provide these committees with the final text of the agreements before they were required by law to respond. Many on the committees voiced frustration over this.

One committee, the Advisory Committee on Services, had this to say when they submitted their final analysis of the Singapore agreement: ``It should be noted that our members were challenged by the lack of available text during the 30-day period we had to conduct this analysis and write this report.''

Mr. Speaker, after EarthJustice represented several environmental groups in court to seek the release of documents used in the U.S.-Chile negotiations, a district court ruled that the U.S. Trade Representative was wrong to deny Americans these documents. After that ruling, instead of opening up, the Inside U.S. Trade article which I offer for the Record says, ``The Office of the USTR is now formally classifying negotiating texts and related documents as exempt from the Freedom of Information Act requests on national security grounds as a part of an overall effort aimed at tightening the flow of information on trade policy between the executive branch and the private sector.''

The Congress needs more time, not less. We do not need obstruction from the USTR. I believe that our Founding Fathers wanted it to be an open process. For that reason, I suggest that we reject this document and we will go back to the drawing boards. Mr. Zoellick has to follow the law. Let people have the information. Do not hide behind secrecy on national security grounds.

Mr. Speaker, I will enter in the Record at this point an article from Inside U.S. Trade, dated April 25, 2003.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch).

Mr. Speaker, could the Chair kindly tell us the amount of time left for each of us?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Baca).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu).

(Mr. WU asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, as you listen to my colleague from Michigan and me, you will hear us say many of the same things. You kind of wonder, why does one vote ``yes'' and one vote ``no''?

I have been on the Committee on Ways and Means since 1991. I have been involved in all the labor agreements in the last 12 years. Today, we are voting on the first two agreements negotiated by the new Trade Representative. Most of the provisions in the two agreements do not really require Chile, Singapore or the United States to do much more than they have already agreed to do in the World Trade Organization. In fact, the service sector portions of the Singapore agreement simply restate commitments made in the WTO General Agreement on Trade and Services.

I have deep concerns about these two agreements because they are indicative of the Bush administration's poor approach to trade policy. The primary mission of the United States Trade Representative is to open up foreign markets to create economic growth and raise living standards. The agreements brought here today by the President and the ones that he is currently pursuing with Morocco and Bahrain, for example, will do little to provide economic gains for the United States. In fact, the entire economy of Singapore and Chile combined does not even equal Japan's service sector.

Furthermore, considering that the size of Russia's economy is equal to 15 countries with which we are now negotiating free trade agreements, the limited resources at USTR would be perhaps better put in focusing on Russia's accession to WTO, not a free trade agreement with Namibia.

The criterion that the Bush administration employs to determine which

countries to pursue trade agreements with is dubious at best. It is apparent that our Trade Representative is basing his decisions almost exclusively on geopolitical rather than economic criteria. I believe that Secretary Powell's agency is the appropriate one to conduct our foreign policy, not the Trade Representative.

America's best exports are the democratic values that we hold dear. While capitalism and open markets may boost trade flows, democratic values must always be a centerpiece of U.S. trade. I supported the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement because it incorporated labor and environmental issues. This was a profound development, because it symbolized the acknowledgment that we need to approach international trade in a more holistic manner. While the Chile and Singapore agreements incorporate labor and environment, they treat these issues as inferior to commercial interests, as illustrated by the inadequate dispute settlement process. This is a step backward from where we were with the Jordan agreement.

Singapore, for instance, is a hub for illegal timber, illegal wildlife and restricted pollutants like chlorofluorocarbons. The Environmental Investigation Agency reports that Singapore is, quote, ``a major center of illegal trade in endangered wildlife including poached elephant ivory, tiger bone, parrots and other species.'' The same agency reports that Singapore is central to the regional Asian black market trade in chlorofluorocarbons, even though international trade in CFCs is strictly limited by the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances.

The USTR had an opportunity to change Singapore's course of illegal environmental trafficking with this agreement. Unfortunately, they decided to turn a blind eye to these illegal and harmful environmental practices on behalf of free and unbridled trade. It is now up to Congress to stand up for the environment and say ``no.''

I mentioned in earlier remarks how disappointed I was over the clandestine, undemocratic process that the Trade Representative has gone about, negotiating these agreements. Mr. Zoellick simply does not seem to trust those whom he claims to represent.

I am voting ``no,'' and I encourage my fellow Democrats and Republicans, vote ``no'' on these agreements because I do not agree with the process or the spirit in which these agreements were negotiated. And I am voting ``no'' because of the trade policies that these agreements symbolize.

Although I expect these agreements will pass, the Bush administration had better take to heart the concerns of the Congress, of industry and of civil society as it continues to pursue this trade liberalization. They will not always have easy little ones like Chile and Singapore, and I do not think in the administration they yet understand the depth of concern that this Congress has about the environment and about labor. They continue to think if we just put some fuzzy words in there that kind of feel soft and warm, that maybe that will get it by. There is coming a time when that will not.

They have seen the evidences already, and they are going to find it in the Doha Round. People are saying, how can the United States talk about liberalizing farm commodities and then pass out of the Congress $160 billion in trade subsidies to farmers? Where is the fairness? How are you going to keep doing that to the world? I think the Trade Representative had better listen.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a privileged motion.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to reconsider.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a privileged motion.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, the White House is beginning to sound more and more line Animal House, in that you have a bunch of adolescents over there and they keep running forward saying, I did it, I did it.

First it was Mr. Tenet and now we have Mr. Hadley. When are we going to get the truth? When are we going to have an investigation, not in secret, done by the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, but out in the open. They did it in the British Parliament. They were not afraid of democracy there. But here we have to have everything secret. We need an investigation about who did it.

Where was Condoleezza Rice? This guy Hadley worked for her. Does she make the decisions or does he? I have not heard her stand up and say, well, if I had only put my hand up and said no, it would not have happened.

But what is even more devious about this is if you complain they attack. A Senator, a member of the other body, was attacked because he pointed out that somebody in the White House had the nerve, the nerve to uncover a CIA operative. That is a Federal crime.

Now, if we do not have an investigation and find out who it is in the White House that thinks they can just get on the horn and talk to a newspaper reporter and say, hey, did you know so and so was working for the CIA? That person should be fired immediately and probably charged. But we know they were sent out there to do it by the folks upstairs.

When we will have another, oh, gee, I did not know, I should not have done it?

When do we get the investigation, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the American Political Science Association on the 50th anniversary of its Congressional Fellowship Program.

Since its inception, the program has brought more than 1800 talented political scientists, journalists, sociologists, domestic and foreign policy government specialists, Robert Wood Johnson health policy fellows, Native American Hatfield fellows, and international scholars to Capitol Hill for a hands-on understanding of the U.S. Congress at work.

In my office, I have had the privilege to work with several Congressional Fellows. In 1991-92, Martynas A. Ycas brought with him valuable insights into the inner workings of the Social Security Administration. The following year, my office benefited from the exceptional experience Congressional Fellow Rosemary Ramsey had previously earned during her research on HIV/AIDS at the Centers for Disease Control of the Department of Health. In 1997, Kirsten Gerstner from Germany was the first international fellow I was able to host. Her work proved to be indispensable for the success of the Congressional Task Force on International HIV/AIDS, of which I am Chairman.

Since January of this year, Mariana George-Nascimento from Chile and Lars Berger from Germany have been working on my staff. During the many foreign policy challenges Congress is currently facing, such as the free trade agreements with Singapore and Chile and the war in Iraq, they provided me with a unique Latin American and European perspective. I am very thankful to the Fulbright Commission and the German Marshall Fund of the United States for providing me with such a rare opportunity by generously supporting their fellowships. These days, international exchanges of this nature are of even greater importance than ever before.

I know that in addition to their experience on the hill, all the fellows appreciated the additional education opportunities offered by the Wilson Seminar Series, the state-federal legislative comparative program organized by the University of Maryland-Baltimore County's Policy Institute at the State House in Annapolis, and the longstanding Canadian Parliamentary Exchange.

I congratulate the American Political Science Association and Jeff Biggs, the Director of the Congressional Fellowship Program, on their extraordinary achievements and strongly encourage my colleagues to take advantage of their work in the same way I have done.

Mr. Speaker, I was stunned this morning to pick up the newspaper and read in an article in Newsday dated July 22 that a columnist blew a CIA agent's cover. That is the headline of this article. Now, Robert Novak, who is the columnist who did this, said they came to me, they thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it. That is a criminal offense. To give the name of an American member of the CIA to uncover them is a criminal offense. Somebody in the administration thought it was important to let that news out. So they went to Mr. Novak, he is one of the Republican Party's pets in the press, and they knew it would go right into the press.

But when will the investigation start in this House by the Republicans of the Republican administration people who broke the law? Who in the White House had the gall to think they were above the law and they could go down and take a reporter and say let me give you the name of one of our undercover agents who has been operating abroad? Members may ask themselves why would they do that? Were they threatening her or did they want other people to understand, do not talk anything bad about this administration? This administration is trying to make the American people afraid to speak up and dissent. They did this because she happened to be the wife of somebody that the administration sent to Niger to find out the truth of the forgeries that the President spoke about here in this very place. When he came back and gave his report, his report was ignored and they insisted upon putting it into the speech.

Mr. Speaker, the question you have to ask is, who is writing the laws that cover the White House and the administration? Or are they operating on their own? They could do anything and the stonewall on the Republican side of the House of Representatives will never bring it up. I guarantee Members there will not be any attempt to have an investigation by the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; of course, we trust them, yes.

Today, Mr. Bremer is going to sneak into this room and they are going to lock the doors and he is going to tell us a lot of things. Imagine what would happen if I or the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) or even the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns) were to stand in this well and say the name of an undercover CIA agent. They would be in the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct in 15 minutes. They would be hanging by their thumbs; but not Mr. Novak and not those people in the White House. They get a free pass. They do not operate under the same laws you and I do. This is becoming a pretty strange place where the White House, whose job it is to enforce the laws of the United States, that is what the executive branch is about, right in the bowels of the White House, we have somebody who feels no compunction whatsoever to go out in the street and hand this information out. I am waiting for the investigation.

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the issue that faces this Congress will be brought to a point when Mr. Blair comes and explains to us what it was that he told our President that led the President to think that he should come in here in the State of the Union message and say things which are of questionable value.

We are continuing to have people die in Iraq. Last night another soldier died, and many were injured. These people signed up to protect the United States, not to make things better for Iraq or anything else. They signed up to protect their country, and they are dying.

There should be an investigation of what the reasons are that we were there. Did the threat rise to the level of a national security threat? Or was there a gathering of evidence? Certainly the uranium issue is bogus on the face of it, and it never should have been used by anyone in a defense of why we went to Iraq.

We have lost 200 people, and 1,000 have been injured. It seems like small numbers when you know about Vietnam, but that is where we are today, and we need an answer from the President.

Mr. Speaker, last night I could not sleep. Maybe it was the heat, or maybe I was just trying to make some sense of the situation we are in before Mr. Blair arrives in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Blair is in a lot of trouble at home, and Mr. Bush is in a little bit of trouble here.

There are many, many reasons to question our actions in Iraq, but, for some reason, there is a huge focus right now on the Niger uranium claim. So far, nothing the administration said about Saddam's gallons of nerve gas or smallpox or Anthrax or missiles or any other dangers we were supposed to be facing from Iraq have been found to be true. But until the last rock in Iraq has been turned over, the administration can say it is continuing to try hard to confirm the justifications for war it offered just a few months ago.

The uranium claim is different. I think that we are focusing on this claim because it was clear and concrete and seemingly supported by evidence and details. The President told us, ``The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

In retrospect, the administration figures have claimed that the President did not claim that Hussein was trying to buy uranium but only noted the British claim. Leaving aside how truly pathetic that kind of desperate parsing is, the statement was still false. The British government has learned no such thing. The ``information'' the British relied on came from one source, or perhaps two.

First, there were some crudely forged papers. ABC News has reported that the papers were created by an underpaid African diplomat who was stationed in Rome and sold to the Italian Secret Service which, in good NATO-ally fashion, passed the information on. We may know more about that soon, because the Italian judicial system opened an investigation into the matter earlier today.

The other source is perhaps the French. In early April The Washington Post noted that Western intelligence officials were fingering France as the country that circulated the fake papers.

Let us step back a moment from this who-did-what-to-whom and look at the actual claim. Was there anything believable about it? If the documents had been really top-notch forgeries instead

of laughable fakes, would the claim that Saddam Hussein was making a secret effort to acquire hundreds of tons of uranium oxide from Niger have been something to stake a life-and-death decision on?

Niger is a small country in West Africa, about the size of Rio de Janeiro in population. They have been mining uranium since 1970. There are two mines that produce uranium.

Both mines are run by an international consortium that includes Japanese, German, Spanish and French interests. Both mines are closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. There is nothing, nothing that could lead an objective observer to believe that Iraqi agents would slip into Niger, make a deal, and slip out again without somebody in the tiny expatriate community noticing and mentioning to Dr. El Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In fact, a distinguished retired American diplomat, Joe Wilson, spent more than a week in Niger sniffing around for any hint that the story might be true and found absolutely nothing.

It is simply not believable that this tiny, highly regulated industry in this tiny, sparsely populated country could have or would have violated IAE rules and broken U.N. sanctions to sell uranium oxide to Hussein. There are plenty of legitimate customers.

So why did the administration decide to believe it? Because of the overwhelming evidence? Hardly.

Last week Secretary of State Powell gave the following ringing defense to the President's claim: ``There was sufficient evidence floating around at the time that such a statement was not totally outrageous.''

Well, there you have it. It was obvious to anyone who looked into it carefully that Niger had neither the means nor the motive to sell uranium to Iraq. It was obvious. It was reported. And it was known. And yet the Secretary of State said, people of his stature thought it was not totally outrageous.

Mr. Speaker, actually it was totally outrageous. The President and the Congress are sworn to protect the United States of America. This is our most solemn duty. The question, and it is the only question that matters, is this: Did the threat posed by Saddam Hussein rise to the level of an imminent threat to national security or even to a grave and gathering danger? So far nothing leads to that conclusion.

There can be little argument about whether the people of Iraq are better off today than they were under Hussein. They are. But the 200 young Americans who have died and continue to die, one died last night, did not pledge their lives to make the people of Iraq better off. They pledged to protect the United States of America from real threats to our security. They died believing that they did. So far, I do not know why they died. We should find out.

Mr. Speaker, Thursday will be a very historic day. Prime Minister Tony Blair of England will be scheduled to appear in this room before a joint session to make a speech and perhaps receive the Congressional Gold Medal. I understand it is not ready yet so he probably will not get it just now.

It was also in this very same room that President Bush said in his State of the Union speech that ``the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'' It turns out that information Mr. Bush had was already understood to be bogus. Our CIA had already told the British that. Yet the President included that fact in his State of the Union message. Apparently, the British indicated they had other information in addition to the crude forgeries indicating that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger.

This has put President Bush in an awkward position. As people in the administration seek to blame one another and now the British and now the French and now the Italians, why and how did this happen?

Mr. Speaker, we have an historic opportunity. In Parliament, the Prime Minister faces MPs and responds directly to their questions. If we had the British system, we could go to Mr. Bush directly to solve this conundrum instead of relying on Ari Fleischer. Perhaps Mr. Blair will be kind enough to allow us the privilege that British MPs enjoy and we can ask him what happened. I really want to know. Don't my colleagues?

When we debated the award for Mr. Blair for the Congressional Gold Medal, I objected. I said it was either too early or too late. Either it should have been done when we did not know what was going on, or now that we have got some real questions, it is too late to give it to him. We have got to solve the question of what happened.

I feel even more strongly now that we ought not to proceed in the absence of answers to our questions. It appears that Mr. Blair may have misled our President or at least our President's speechwriters about whether good information existed indicating that Iraq was in the process of buying the components of nuclear weapons.

This is not a small thing. Perhaps Mr. Blair was responsible for the administration's discredited claim that one of the September 11 hijackers met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. Perhaps Mr. Blair was the source of the administration's discredited claim that Iraq was buying special aluminum tubes for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. These and many more statements made by Mr. Powell, Mr. Rumsfeld, Dr. Rice, Mr. Fleischer and even the President have been found to be incorrect.

We have not been told why our officials made so many misstatements about Iraq prior to going to war. If our leaders were led astray by the Prime Minister, we surely should not honor them with the Congressional Gold Medal. Of course, we certainly ought not to subcontract our decisions on war and peace to a foreign country's intelligence apparatus. How much we may like Mr. Blair means nothing. We ought to trust our own people.

So maybe the problem is with ourselves. For example, why do we spend $30 billion on intelligence and yet no one is capable of fact-checking a State of the Union speech? Why have we sacrificed the lives of more than 200 young Americans? We have been told they would protect our country from immediate danger posed by Saddam's barrels of nerve gas and biological toxins and nuclear weapons and al Qaeda and all the rest, but the information was weak, bad and apparently manipulated.

I think the people of Iraq are better off than they were before the United States took out the Saddam Hussein regime, but I am not sure that these Americans who died there were supposed to die to improve the lives of Iraqis. I think they were ready to die to protect their own country, the United States of America, from weapons of mass destruction that threaten our shores and our people.

I am sure that the young people from Britain who have died were similarly protecting their own country.

Perhaps Mr. Blair will answer our questions when he comes to the Chamber on Thursday. Perhaps as Head of State Mr. Blair will take personal responsibility for the errors that pervaded the intelligence he repeatedly cited and not let people who work for him take the blame. Perhaps Mr. Blair will set an example for our own President to follow. That would be worth a Congressional Gold Medal.

Mr. Speaker, on May 1, the Commander in Chief of the United States military forces declared the war was over. Since that day, 65 people have died. The last three who died were Craig Boling, Elkhart, Indiana; Barry Sanford, Aurora, Colorado; Robert McKinley, Kokomo, Indiana.

Huge questions have arisen about whether we were misled about this war. In Great Britain, the Prime Minister, Mr. Blair, faced 2 hours of questioning by the British Parliament. It is time for this Congress to have a bipartisan select committee to look into the reasons why we are in Iraq and why people continue to die there.

We must not let them be forgotten, as they were in my era of the Vietnam

War. There is a wall with 50,000-some people on it. Their names were never read on the floor. They ought to be read here and not forgotten.

Mr. Speaker, last fall I stood out in front of the Cannon Building and said I believed that we might indeed be misled by our leaders in the stampede to go to war against Iraq. When I was in Iraq a few weeks later, I was interviewed by ``ABC This Week'' and asked if I stood by that statement. I said I did. I got death threats for saying that.

Well, folks, it is time to face the facts. The American people were misled and Members of Congress were misled. But who misled us? Apparently we were misled by the White House speechwriters. I do not know.

I do not question that the motive was to do what they sincerely believed would be the best thing for our country. I do not question that they believed and still believe going to war against Iraq was the right thing to do.

But for those who would not have supported this war save for the official dossiers and intelligence and information they relied on, my friends, you were misled.

Those who believed that whatever the President said would have been carefully confirmed and who never doubted that what the President said in the State of the Union Address would have been gone over with a fine-tooth comb, my friends, you were misled.

So far, 212 young Americans have died in Iraq. Someone will die tonight and tomorrow and the day after. And now what? Now the administration does not even claim that weapons of mass destruction will be found. Instead, we are told that evidence of a program that would have eventually created weapons will be found.

This afternoon, today, according to Reuters, Mr. Rumsfeld, the Secretary of War, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that there was nothing new going on in Iraq. He said there was ``no dramatic new evidence,'' just old evidence seen in a new light.

Is that the impression you had? I ask, because that is not what I heard. I heard urgency. I heard new revelation after new revelation. I heard that we were in imminent danger.

The fact that nothing that we expected, nothing like storehouses of terrifying weapons has been found, certainly backs up Mr. Rumsfeld's contention.

What we found are mass graves in Iraq, body upon body, people killed for no reason by the government of Saddam Hussein. So this is where the administration is turning to justify its actions in Iraq.

The United States has never, never invaded a foreign country simply to get rid of an evil dictator. That is not what our young people signed up to give their lives for. That is not what our taxpayers have given their money for. That is not what America does. At least until now.

Well, our troops in Iraq, these fine young people went into the service to protect America, not to bring democracy to someone else's country, not to stop human rights abuses or get rid of dictators, because if that was the basis of our military policy, there are a lot of governments out there that we would be ready to overthrow.

Not to get rid of a bad guy because we are tired of messing around with containment. They enlisted to protect our country. What did our country need protection from? From biological and chemical weapons that could be launched within 45 minutes? Apparently not. From a nuclear arms program that was not just an aspiration of a madman, but was so far along that it was importing uranium from Niger? Apparently not. The President denied

that today. From gallons of nerve gas and rooms full of test tubes and trailers full of equipment so sophisticated that biological and chemical weapons could be pumped out on Saddam's command? Apparently not that, either.

We had a policy with regard to Iraq. It was a frustrating policy, but it was working. It is the same policy President Reagan used on the Soviet Union: containment. We had an embargo in place that the rest of the world supported. We had U.N. inspectors in place that the rest of the world supported. They did not have as long to look for weapons as our people have now had, but they were looking, and while they were in Iraq, Saddam was not going to be able to fulfill any of his evil dreams.

Containment worked from the end of the Gulf War until the day we invaded. If you believe that the United States should go to war to get rid of dictators who would most likely want to have weapons of mass destruction if they were not watched closely, I will give you a list. If you believe the United States should go to war to get rid of dictators who have people tortured, I will give you another list. If you believe that the United States should go to war bringing democracy to someone else's country is a mission worth the lives of our young soldiers, I will give you a list.

But if you share the belief of John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, that our country is blessed, in part, because ``she does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy,'' I say to my colleagues, we were all misled, and it is time for us to have a bipartisan committee, select committee, to look at this issue and find out who was it that misled us?

I read in the paper today that Mr. Blair gave us some bad information, and our President took it, swallowed it hook, line and sinker, and now says, I did not know; it was Blair that gave me this bad information. Mr. Blair answered questions for 2\1/2\ hours before the Parliament of the United Kingdom. We ought to have that kind of thing going on here.