Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the subject of the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and to address some of the recent criticism regarding whether, given that large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction have not been…
Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the subject of the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and to address some of the recent criticism regarding whether, given that large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction have not been found, action by the United States was justified. When I have concluded, I know there are some colleagues who will want to address this same question from slightly different perspectives.
The tragic events of September 11, 2001, demonstrated with great clarity that we can no longer afford to wait for threats to fully emerge before we deal with them. We paid a heavy price that day for our previous half-measures against those who hate us and want to destroy us.
By definition, intelligence is imprecise, and no matter what reforms we implement in our intelligence community, the fact is, at least to some degree, it will always be uncertain. This is precisely why intelligence information is just part of a larger puzzle, as it was in the case of Iraq, that we used to determine the direction of U.S. policy.
So given the uncertainty about weapons of mass destruction stockpiles, were our actions in Iraq justified? The answer to that question is most certainly yes. There is no doubt that the United States, the Iraqi people, and the international community are far better off today without Saddam Hussein in power.
The inability to find weapons of mass destruction stockpiles now does not mean that Iraq did not have access to such weapons, and that under Saddam Hussein Iraq was not a grave and gathering danger. In fact, the overwhelming body of evidence, including most recently that from the Iraq Survey Group, indicates that his regime did, indeed, pose a threat, and that its removal will aid in our overall aid against terror.
Some of our colleagues have charged that the President led the American people to war under false pretenses; that the case for removing Saddam Hussein's regime was supposedly based on an imminent threat posed by that regime because of its arsenals of weapons of mass destruction which now cannot be found. This assertion is categorically false, and today I intend to explain why.
Let's briefly review how we arrived at the decision to authorize force against Iraq in October of 2002.
Contrary to what some would have us believe, the Bush administration did not fundamentally change U.S. policy with Iraq from that of the Clinton administration. Upon entering office in January 2001, President Bush inherited from the Clinton administration a policy of regime change. I repeat, the Bush administration pursued the same Iraqi policy as the Clinton administration. That policy was based on the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act which stated:
It should be the policy of the United States to support
efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from
power and to promote the emergence of a democratic government
to replace that regime.
This policy was unanimously approved by this Senate. This legislation and, thus, the shift in U.S. policy from containment to regime change reflected an acknowledgment that diplomatic solutions for dealing with Saddam's intransigence were being exhausted.
Even before that shift, however, the Clinton administration was clear about the nature and capabilities of Saddam
Hussein's regime and, moreover, believed that if left unchecked, the regime would pose a serious threat in the future.
On February 17, 1998, as he prepared for war against Iraq, President Clinton stated the following:
Now let's imagine the future. What if [Saddam Hussein]
fails to comply and we fail to act or we take some ambiguous
third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to
develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and
continue to press for the release of the sanctions and
continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well,
he will conclude that the international community has lost
its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and
do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And
some day, some way, I guarantee you he will use that arsenal.
. . . In the next century, the community of nations may see
more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now--a
rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use
them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or
organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.
That quote was from President Clinton's remarks in 1998 as he prepared for war against Iraq. He pointed out that the arsenal which Iraq possessed--``a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction'' were his exact words--will pose a threat because he can provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.
Note that he talked about weapons of mass destruction which Saddam Hussein possessed.
I have noted no objections or caveats on these warnings by Democratic Members of the Senate.
Later that year, not 2 months after President Clinton signed the Iraqi Liberation Act into law, he delivered an address to the Nation explaining his decision to order air strikes against Iraqi military targets. He discussed the potential long-term threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Again, I quote President Clinton:
The hard fact is that so long as Saddam Hussein remains in
power he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of
his region, the security of the world. The best way to end
that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government,
a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a
government that respects the right of its people.
. . . Heavy as they are, the costs of inaction must be
weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the
world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater
threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his
neighbors; he will make war on his own people. Mark my words,
he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy
them, and he will use them.
Again, I note no dissent from Democratic Senators to these comments of President Clinton.
Consider the striking similarity between these statements by President Clinton and the statements Bush administration officials made about Iraq during the leadup to Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the first statement I cited from February of 1998, President Clinton discussed the consequences of inaction in the face of continued noncompliance by Saddam Hussein, noting that inaction would lead the dictator to conclude the international community had lost its will.
Consider the statements of President George W. Bush to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2002:
The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the
authority of the United Nations. Iraq has answered a decade
of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. . . . The United
Nations [faces] a difficult and defining moment. Are Security
Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside
without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the
purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?
I point out the focus of President Clinton's statements was on the totality of our knowledge about Saddam Hussein's history, his defiance of the United Nations, use of chemical weapons, aggression against his neighbors, savage treatment of his own people.
This is what we had to gauge his intentions by. This broad focus on Saddam's past actions and known capabilities, not any particular piece of intelligence, was also what prompted many Members of this body to authorize force against Iraq in October 2002. Consider some of the statements made in 2002 by my colleagues. First I quote Senator Daschle, majority and minority leader:
Iraq's actions pose a serious and continued threat to
international peace and security. It is a threat we must
address. Saddam is a proven aggressor who has time and again
turned his wrath on his neighbors and on his own people. Iraq
is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of
mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who
has used them against his own people . . .
Note: 2002, Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction, no qualifications except he is not the only country to do so. No expression of doubts or caveats. As minority leader or majority leader, Senator Daschle has access to all of the intelligence that is available to anybody in this body.
Now I quote Senator Biden, whose comments I quote not just because he is one of the more thoughtful Members of this body and ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, but also because they happen to be very close to the views I expressed on this issue. I quote Senator Biden in his colorful way of putting it:
There is a guy named Saddam Hussein who, in the early 1990s
broke international law, invaded another country, violating
every rule of international law. The world, under the
leadership of a President named Bush, united and expelled him
from that country. Upon expulsion, he said a condition for
your being able to remain in power, Saddam Hussein, is you
sue for peace and you agree to the following terms of
surrender . . . If the world decides it must use force for
his failure to abide by the terms of surrender, then it is
not preempting, it is enforcing. It is enforcing, it is
finishing a war he reignited, because the only reason the war
stopped is he sued for peace.
That is exactly true. That is precisely what happened.
Now let me quote another leader in the Senate, Senator Kerry, who said this:
It would be naive, to the point of grave danger, not to
believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will
provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous
confrontation with the civilized world. . . .
So this was the backdrop against which we all had voted to authorize the President to act and upon which he acted. I should not say we all voted to authorize the President because there were a few who did not, but the vast majority of the House of Representatives and the Senate voted to authorize the President to take appropriate action.
Some now are voicing second thoughts. Since our successful removal of Saddam Hussein from power, it emerges that some of the intelligence regarding the regime's weapons of mass destruction capabilities may have been wrong, because most notably large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons have yet to be found.
I feel compelled to point out three obvious facts: One, an intelligence failure is not synonomous with a misuse of intelligence. Two, this intelligence issue does not fundamentally change the case against Saddam Hussein. Three, since Iraq itself had provided documentation to the United Nations on its production of chemical and biological agents, the question is not whether but what happened to the stockpiles.
Let's take the first, the misuse of intelligence. The fact remains the Bush administration relied largely on the same intelligence information used by the Clinton administration during the late 1990s, the same information that was available to Senators and about which they spoke on this floor, some of which I have quoted.
President Clinton's CIA Director was retained by President Bush. By and large, the intelligence information was also the same as that of the other allied intelligence services, with a primary source being the two U.N. inspection bodies UNSCOM and UNMOVIC, the initials of which are U-N-S-C-O-M and U-N-M-O-V-I-C, which were led by non-Americans, such as Rolf Ekeus and Richard Butler. That Saddam had weapons of mass destruction capabilities was widely accepted, even by those who vehemently opposed the war. As French President Jacques Chirac commented during an interview with ``Time'' Magazine in February of 2004:
There is a problem--The probable possession of weapons of
mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq. The
international community is right to be disturbed by this
situation, and it's right in having decided Iraq should be
disarmed.
I would note, if he does not have any weapons of mass destruction, there is no point in talking about disarming him. The entire world community believed he possessed these weapons, among other things because he himself had said he did.
So given the information the international community had at the time, the conclusions about Iraq's capabilities seemed clear. As former head of the Iraqi Survey Group David Kay recently stated in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee:
. . . All I can say is if you read the total body of
intelligence in the last 12 to 15 years that flowed on Iraq,
I quite frankly think it would be hard to come to a
conclusion other than Iraq was a gathering, serious threat to
the world with regard to WMD.
I might add, that is exactly what President Bush said. That is obviously a big-picture view.
It seems opponents of the President, in charging the administration misled the American people, preferred to point to specific intelligence. So let's take a closer look at a couple of those examples. First, that the President's reference in his State of the Union Address regarding Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium and, second, that the administration presented intelligence community information on Iraq's WMD capabilities as though it were an undeniable fact rather than qualifying it properly with caveats.
First, there were the following 16 words in the President's State of the Union Address:
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from
Africa.
Major newspapers, the Democratic National Committee, and some policymakers claim this is one of the top examples of the Bush administration knowingly misleading the American people and presenting false intelligence information. As the DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe stated:
This may be the first time in recent history that a
President knowingly misled the American people during a State
of the Union Address. . . . this was not a mistake. It was no
oversight and it was no error.
That is a grave charge. Charges that the administration purposely included false information in the President's speech I deem despicable, an attempt to create a scandal where one does not exist. The President had every reason to believe the information in his speech was true. It had been vetted by the CIA Director and it was consistent with the judgment of the intelligence community in October 2002. The National Intelligence Estimate at that time said Iraq was ``vigorously trying to procure uranium ore'' from several African countries.
The British government, which the President cited, included a judgment in its dossier similar to that of the intelligence community's majority judgment on this point.
In retrospect, Director Tenet stated this phrase, though factually correct and approved in the interagency process, should not have been included in the President's speech because it was not central to the intelligence community's judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. In other words, it was just a piece of evidence, not important enough to include in a speech like the State of the Union speech, and certainly not what we relied upon for our conclusion Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. In any event, it does not suggest in any way that the President was at fault for including the information, or that he had any intention of misleading the American people. The President believed the text was sound. It was not in error. If there was an error, it was simply including a piece of information which really wasn't central to making the case, but not misleading the American people.
Second, the President's critics argue he failed to mention caveats in the intelligence community's assessment of Iraqi capability. This criticism is highly misleading. According to the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, and I have an unclassified copy of it here, the intelligence community had ``high confidence'' in the following statements:
Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding, its
chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary
to U.N. Resolutions.
Iraq possesses proscribed chemical and biological weapons
and missiles.
Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once
it acquires sufficient weapons-grade material.
So the National Intelligence Estimate, prepared by the entire intelligence community, led by the CIA Director George Tenet, had high confidence, among other things, in the fact that Iraq possessed proscribed biological and chemical weapons and missiles. After the fact we found some of the missiles. We found the programs to make chemical and biological weapons. But we don't find the big stockpile of those weapons. It turns out the intelligence community's high confidence in this statement was either misplaced or we simply haven't found the material yet, or it went somewhere else. We don't know the answers to those questions.
As to this, the only dissent came from the State Department. But even in its alternate view it said Saddam continues to want nuclear weapons and available evidence suggests Baghdad is pursuing a limited effort to maintain and acquire nuclear weapons capabilities.
Moreover, it appears the State Department did not have significant objections to the key judgments related to chemical, biological, and missile programs.
So it is clear, it is fair to say, we had a general opinion of Saddam's capabilities, that that is what the President addressed.
I want to also make it clear the President and the administration never claimed Iraq posed an imminent threat, as some have said. To the contrary, administration officials said the United States and the international community needed to act before it became imminent. Indeed, President Bush challenged those who wanted to wait until the threat was imminent in his 2003 State of the Union Address, saying the following:
Some have said that we must not act until the threat is
imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced
their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they
strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly
emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would
come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam
Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.
So said President Bush.
Administration officials did use words like ``immediate'' and ``urgent'' but more to convey the importance of dealing with the threat they judged to be growing; that they did not imply or state was imminent, in other words, that the attack was about to occur. They did not say that.
Indeed, that the threat was not yet imminent was well understood on both sides of the aisle. As Senator Daschle, whom I quoted earlier, stated in explaining his support for the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq:
The threat posed by Saddam Hussein may not be imminent, but
it is real, it is growing, and it cannot be ignored.
I submit he was correct. One can argue, and indeed some of my colleagues have argued, administration officials were at times too certain in the way they said it, too certain in their statements using phrases like ``we know.'' But given all the information we had about Saddam's history of using and producing weapons of mass destruction, his aggressive intentions, and the intelligence community's high confidence in the key areas of assessment, it is difficult to imagine how the administration could have determined Iraq was not a threat that needed to be dealt with immediately.
So, no, there may have been mistakes in intelligence. We have yet to find that out. But there was not a misleading--an attempt to mislead by the administration.
The second point is the larger point, that whatever deficiencies there may have been about the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, it doesn't change the basic case against Saddam Hussein. Some of what I have quoted earlier makes that point. While it is troubling our intelligence cannot tell us where these stockpiles are, the larger case remains. The Bush administration, supported by a large coalition, pursued a responsible policy, given all of the pieces of the puzzle it had. As I said, there was Saddam's previously known missile capabilities and chemical and biological weapons programs; his desire to acquire a nuclear weapon; his continuing flagrant violation of numerous Security Council resolutions; his history of aggression including, I might add, shooting at American airplanes constantly in the no-fly zone while we were trying to enforce that, if you will recall; and even an attempt to assassinate former President Bush. Add to this the regime's vast human rights
abuses which really only came to light after we were able to liberate Iraq.
In other words, absent any statement or specific piece of intelligence, the case against Saddam Hussein was already made by Saddam Hussein himself and this was before, as I said, we found the mass graves of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
Our colleague Senator Kerry summed it up well at the time. He said this:
I believe the record of Saddam Hussein's ruthless, reckless
breach of international values and standards of behavior is
cause enough for the world community to hold him accountable
by the use of force, if necessary.
I want to quote that again:
I believe the record of Saddam Hussein's ruthless, reckless
breach of international values and standards of behavior is
cause enough for the world community to hold him accountable
by use of force, if necessary.
There is no suggestion here we had to find weapons of mass destruction, or even necessarily that we had to believe those weapons existed at the time, even though, as I said, we all did, based upon the intelligence at the time, but that this gross violation of human rights was, in and of itself, a sufficient casus belli.
Given the same causes and information, what then accounts for the differences between the actions of the Bush and Clinton administrations? Very simply, the Bush administration made a decision that, post 9/11, it was too dangerous to allow American security to rest in the hands of an international organization that, after 12 years, had failed to enforce its own resolutions demanding Iraqi compliance with the 1991 Gulf war cease-fire. It was too dangerous to allow a regime to stay in place which had demonstrated a clear intent to develop weapons of mass destruction, had ongoing ties to terrorist organizations, and whose leader made it abundantly and routinely clear the United States was his enemy.
We needed to begin the process of changing the facts on ground in the Middle East.
In fact, it was, in part, the very uncertainty that made dealing with Saddam Hussein an urgent matter.
As Senator Kerry explained before his vote in favor of the authorization to use force:
In the wake of September 11, who among us can say, with any
certainty, to anybody, that those weapons might not be used
against our troops or against allies in the region? Who can
say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a
weapon of mass destruction even greater--a nuclear weapon--
then reinvade Kuwait, push the Kurds out, attack Israel, any
number of scenarios to try to further his ambition to be the
pan-Arab leader or simply to confront in the region, once
again miscalculate the response, to believe he is stronger
than those weapons?
And while the administration has failed to provide any
direct link between Iraq and September 11, can we afford to
ignore the possibility that Saddam might accidentally, as
well as purposely, allow those weapons to slide off to one
group or other in a region where weapons are the currency of
trade? How do we leave that to chance?
While we have not and may not find these weapons stockpiles, the case against Saddam Hussein is not diminished. His was a threat that needed to be dealt with.
The third and final point, the jury is still out as to what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and when. It is an intelligence failure--a lack of knowledge, not an attempt to mislead people--that we don't know the answer to that question. Presumably, some day we will find out or at least come closer to the resolution of the issue. Perhaps some day we will find some of the weapons, or maybe we will find evidence they were destroyed or removed before the war. There is no way now to know.
But one fact is certain. What we know is that at one time Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. Saddam Hussein admitted it and the entire world believed it. What is more, that Saddam used those weapons against Iran and against the Iraqi Kurds will remain forever etched in our minds.
I point to simply one picture among many which we can present to remind us of the fact that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and used them--in this case, against his own people. Who will forget the picture of this Kurdish mother with arms wrapped around baby, both dead, as a result of Saddam Hussein's perfidy--the use of his chemical weapons.
I am happy to yield for a question.
Mr. President, if we didn't agree on anything else--and there were some issues we agreed on--all of the countries mentioned, all of the intelligence services mentioned by the Senator from Kentucky, in fact agreed on that point.
Among other things, they agreed because they read the documentation provided to the United Nations by Saddam Hussein in which he admitted he had biological and chemical weapons stockpiles. We knew he had used them. He said he had them. The question now is, What happened to them between sometime in the late 1990s, maybe right up to a week or two before the Iraqi war, and the time we were able to go in after the Iraqi war in search of them since we haven't yet found large stockpiles? We found some things. We certainly found missiles. We have found the programs to reconstitute the chemical weapons program and the biological weapons program. But what we thought we were going to find was a lot of artillery shells filled with chemical munitions and some mortars and things of that sort. We thought they were going to be used against our troops. That we haven't yet found. That is a mystery. You can say it is an intelligence failure, but as the Senator from Kentucky pointed out, nobody disagreed with the proposition that at one time he had those weapons. There is a lot of evidence to that fact.
If there was an effort to mislead, there would have been a lot of countries complicit and a lot of Senators complicit. I don't believe for a minute that, in fact, any of us attempted to mislead; that Jacques Chirac attempted to mislead, that the United Nations, or President Bush attempted to mislead. We were all going forth with the same intelligence. We all reached the same conclusion.
Maybe we don't know yet, but at some point in the last few months or years Saddam Hussein buried, sent to Syria, blew up, or otherwise got rid of those weapons. We just do not know. But about their existence at one time, there can be no doubt.
I thank the Senator very much. The Senator made the last point I wanted to make in this regard, and then I will conclude my remarks.
We were briefed every day of the war at 9 o'clock in an area here in which we can receive classified briefings by the general in charge of the operation at the Pentagon and representatives of the CIA, the Defense Department, State Department, and others. Every morning they checked several boxes to remind us of the status of the open relationship.
Before the operation started, they told us about their belief that Saddam Hussein would lob artillery shells with chemical munitions at our troops. They pointed out that they were going to make efforts to try to prevent this from happening. They called it the ``red line'' around Baghdad. When we got that close, then there would be this threat of chemical weapons fired against our troops--maybe biological.
So before the war, they began the bombardment on the command and control systems that would send the orders out to the generals in the field. They bombed artillery sites hoping to destroy their artillery weapons. They bombed the warehouses where they thought the munitions might be stored. They dropped millions of leaflets warning that if any officer carried out an order to use these weapons against the allied forces we would hold them accountable as war crime criminals.
As our troops got closer to that red line, they had to don the equipment
that would protect them against these munitions. It was not easy to fight under those conditions, but we believed this attack could very well occur.
We got to the Baghdad Airport. By that briefing, the generals were scratching their heads saying: We are not sure why, but we haven't been attacked with these artillery shells. Yet maybe it is because we destroyed the artillery units that would have fired them. Maybe they just got scared because of our leaflets or they couldn't issue the orders. We are not sure. But for some reason they didn't fire them. For several days, they continued to wonder about that.
My point is this: At the highest levels, our troops and our leaders at the Department of Defense all believed this was a threat that could well materialize against our troops. They went to great lengths to try to protect against it. This was not a matter of somebody misleading the American people. We believed it, our troops believed it, the generals believed it, and the Defense Department believed it. And, yes, the President believed it. Nobody was trying to mislead anyone. We based a lot of our actions on this belief.
Let me conclude my remarks by saying this: Much has been made of David Kay's acknowledgment that all of the intelligence agencies apparently were wrong about the weapons stockpiles. But listen to what David Kay said as he reflected on the decision to go to war:
I think at the end of the inspection process we'll paint a
picture of Iraq that was far more dangerous than even we
thought it was before the war. It was a system collapsing. It
was a country that had the capability in weapons of mass
destruction areas and in which terrorists, likes ants to
honey, were going after it.
Kay stated on numerous occasions that Saddam Hussein was in clear material breach of Security Council Resolution 1441. The Iraq Survey Group, of which he was head, discovered hundreds of cases of activities that were prohibited under the original United Nations cease-fire resolution and that should have been but were not reported under Resolution 1441.
The group found a prison laboratory complex which may have been used in human testing of biological agents. It found ``reference strains'' of biological organisms which can be used to produce biological weapons. It found new research on agents applicable to biological weapons, including the Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever. It found continuing research on ricin and aflatoxin. It also found plants and advanced design work on new missiles with ranges well beyond what was permitted.
Not just the words of Resolution 1441 but the entire credibility of the U.N. was at stake. The years of Iraqi violations had to come to an end. Now that awful and bloody regime has come to an end.
In the final analysis, whatever the inaccuracies of specific pieces of intelligence, that Saddam Hussein continued to harbor intentions for the development and use of WMD remains true. The observations of David Kay, once again, showed this. He reported earlier this year that Iraq ``was in the early stages of renovating the nuclear program, building new buildings.'' This is the regime that, as I said, David Kay called ``far more dangerous than even we thought. To wait any longer to remove it would have been a gamble not worth taking.''
I yield to the Senator from Kentucky.
Madam President, I know the majority leader wishes to speak next; and then I know the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee is here as well. I now yield to Majority Leader Frist.
Madam President, I would answer the question this way: It is easy for us, in this sort of antiseptic environment of the Senate, to talk about these matters. But I was moved by the story of these Kurdish doctors, who saw it with their own eyes. I cannot imagine how they would not believe, and why we should not think it reasonable they would believe, Saddam Hussein would do this again, that he had every intention to, every capability of doing it again.
When I look at this picture, I think of the words of Secretary Powell when he visited Halabja and saw what occurred there and basically vowed the United States would never, ever again allow something like that to happen if he could do anything about it. It made me proud. It made me recommitted to the proposition that when we know something like that is going on, or we believe it to be the case, like these Kurdish doctors did, we have a duty to do something about it.
I absolutely agree with the Senator.
Madam President, I will answer in a couple of different ways. First of all, I served on the Intelligence Committee for 8 years, and I was convinced, based upon the intelligence estimates provided to us over that period of time, these weapons were possessed, they had been used, and they would likely be used again if he had the opportunity to do so, and that there were weapons programs ongoing within the country of Iraq. So I don't have any doubt, as the Senator has so eloquently pointed out here, that the Kurds, who he referred to and spoke with, were absolutely right that these kinds of attacks would occur again.
I wondered whether I was alone in this and, of course, in looking, I found that I was not. Let me note two or three things colleagues have said. Then I will turn to Senator Hatch. But I note that in 1998, long before President Bush came to town, President Clinton had come to the same conclusion, based upon the intelligence that had been provided to him by the intelligence agencies. A couple things struck me and then I will move on. He said:
Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and
ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference:
he has used them, not once but repeatedly.
That is the point the leader made.
Unleashing chemical weapons against Iranian troops . . .
against civilians, firing Scud missiles at the citizens of
Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Iran . . . even against
his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq.
I also found it interesting that in December of 1998, in an Oval Office address, President Clinton said this, and I take just one sentence:
I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein
will use these terrible weapons again.
That was the President of the United States responding to the intelligence he was given. I know some colleagues have said the current administration hasn't qualified the intelligence enough. They have not said we think or we judge. They said we are pretty sure. Here is President Clinton staying, ``I have no doubt today.'' That is not caveated or qualified.
Then several members of his cabinet--I looked at what they had to say. Madeleine Albright, the distinguished Secretary of State, said:
I think the record will show that Saddam Hussein has
produced weapons of mass destruction, which he's clearly not
collecting for his own personal pleasure, but in order to
use. Therefore, he is qualitatively and quantitatively
different from every brutal dictator that has appeared
recently.
That is her judgment.
Secretary of Defense William Cohen talked about Secretary Albright, indicating Saddam Hussein has ``developed an arsenal of deadly chemical and biological weapons. He has used these weapons repeatedly against his own people as well as Iran.''
We are talking about an arsenal of weapons here. Here is the former Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration talking about that. He went on to say in this particular interview, which occurred at Ohio State University:
I have a picture which I believe CNN can show on its
cameras, but here's a picture taken of an Iraqi mother and
child killed by Iraqi nerve gas. This is what I would call
Madonna and child Saddam Hussein-style.
That is the picture Secretary Cohen at that time displayed on the screen. He said:
Now, the United Nations believes that he still has very
large quantities of VX.
VX is the nerve agent which is so deadly. As Dr. Frist knows, a single drop can kill you within a couple of minutes.
Here is Secretary Cohen and Secretary Albright referring to the United Nations believing that he still has a large quantity of this product, the point being that everybody thought he had it.
The United Nations thought he had it, Secretary Cohen thought he had it, Secretary Albright thought he had it, and President Clinton thought he had it.
I found it interesting that Senator Leahy, the distinguished ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, said in 1988--and he is right on target:
If Saddam Hussein had nothing to hide, why would he have
gone to great lengths to prevent U.N. inspectors from doing
their job?
That is a question we all asked.
There is no doubt that since 1991, Saddam Hussein has
squandered his country's resources to maintain his capacity
to produce and stockpile chemical and biological weapons.
The point is, a lot of our colleagues had no doubt and they said they had no doubt.
Senator Kerry--I will make this the last quotation--in 1998 said:
We do know that he had them--
Referring to WMD--
in his inventory, and the means of delivering them. We do
know that his chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons
development programs were proceeding with his active support.
The bottom line is the distinguished majority leader is absolutely correct. But not only do we have reason, not only did those Kurdish physicians have reason to believe he had these horrible weapons and would use them again, so did the leaders of our country, including the leaders of the United Nations all throughout this period of time of 1996, 1998, right on up forward.
Unless the distinguished majority leader has anything else, I yield at this point to the distinguished chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr. President, I yield to the other Senator from Utah, Mr. Bennett.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah for an incredibly fine speech. I appreciate the remarks he gave tonight very much, and I am sure the President does, as well.
At this time, I yield to the Senator from Georgia.
Mr. President, I very much appreciate those remarks coming from a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence.
I now will yield to the Senator from Alabama.
Mr. President, let me summarize what I think has been established during the last couple of hours. The reason we took to the floor is because there has been a lot of criticism of the President of the United States and the administration for its actions in finally deciding that enough was enough with Saddam Hussein, that his continual violation of the U.N. resolutions had to be enforced by someone, and that before there was an imminent threat posed by his dangerous regime, it was important for the United States and a coalition of other countries to take action to remove him.
The criticism has come both from potential Democratic nominees for President, Members of this body, news organizations, and others outside the body, but we sought to try to put into perspective some of these criticisms and to point out that at the end of the day, there should be no question that President Bush did the right thing.
The three key points were, first, that an intelligence failure is not the same thing as intelligence misuse or misleading, and if there was a failure because the intelligence agencies were wrong about the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that they thought existed and which we have not been able to find, it is not the same thing as saying that the President misled anyone or that anyone else with access to intelligence misled anyone.
The second point was that whatever the state of intelligence, the case for removing Saddam Hussein is still very strong, a point which several of our colleagues have made repeatedly on both sides of the aisle, as well as President Clinton and other members of his administration prior to the Bush administration.
And, third, that the question regarding the weapons of mass destruction, the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons is not a matter of whether they existed but what happened to them; that everyone who had access to the intelligence was convinced they existed.
In fact, we know they existed at least one time because they were used against the Kurds and against the Iranians. Saddam Hussein himself, in submitting documents to the United Nations, admitted they existed. This was, I believe, either 1996 or 1998 and then again in the year 2002. So we had his admission that they existed. As Senator Bennett said a while ago, nobody knows whether they were destroyed, shipped someplace else, or whether we destroyed them, but eventually we will find out the answers to those questions.
The fact we cannot find those weapons of mass destruction stockpiles--primarily artillery shells with chemical munitions--does not detract at all from the case against Saddam Hussein or make the case that somehow or another the American people were somehow misled by the President.
In closing, I will quote from the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. What the current ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee had to say is: As the attacks of September 11 demonstrated, the immense destructiveness of modern technology means we can no longer afford to wait around for a smoking gun. I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe after September 11 that question is increasingly outdated. It is in the nature of these weapons and the way they are targeted against civilian populations that documented capability and demonstrated intent may be the only warning we get. To insist on further evidence would put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? We cannot.
The ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee is the junior Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Rockefeller. These were his comments on October 10, 2002. Yet today we find some saying the President contended there was an imminent threat, when he did not, and that we should not have acted unless, in fact, there was an imminent threat.
I think Senator Rockefeller was correct, and I know he has access to all of the intelligence because, of course, he is the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.
Now I will read from the chairman of the Intelligence Committee: I have seen enough evidence. I do not know if I have seen all the evidence, but I have seen enough to be satisfied that there has been a continuing effort by Saddam Hussein, since the end of the gulf war, particularly since 1998, to reestablish and enhance Iraq's capacity of weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, and nuclear.
That was the immediate past chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the senior Senator from Florida, Mr. Graham. He, too, had access to all of the intelligence.
My point in quoting my two colleagues is that in the Senate, those of us on the Intelligence Committee had access to the same intelligence the President did, at least similar intelligence to what other countries in the world had, and all of us, including the United States, believed these things. We had the same intelligence that was given to the President.
We were not misleading anyone. The President obviously was not misleading anyone. The fact that it turns out some of the intelligence turned out not to be totally correct is not the same thing as saying somebody misused the intelligence. I hope my colleagues on the other side do not cross that line of accusing the President of intentionally misleading the American people because to do so, in effect, would be also to accuse our own colleagues of that very same thing. I do not believe, based upon what I know of my colleagues, that that could be said of any one of them. So I hope we can get over this notion that just because not all the intelligence was correct, therefore, it must mean somebody was misleading someone else. I think we have established that is not true and that it would be very wrong to try to pursue that line of attack against President Bush simply because we happen to be in an election year.
We will have more to say on this subject in the future, but I want my colleagues to understand that if there are charges made against the President or against this administration relating to the use of intelligence with respect to the war in Iraq, those charges will be rebutted. I appreciate very much the attention of my colleagues to this matter this evening.