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U.S. Rep. Adam Smith Calls for Investigation into Pre-Iraq War Intelligence

Date: Nov. 2, 2005
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Defense Foreign Affairs


U.S. Rep. Adam Smith Calls for Investigation into Pre-Iraq War Intelligence
November 2, 2005

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) in an op-ed in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer called for an investigation into the pre-Iraq War intelligence and the information involving the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which was comprised of key White House leaders including Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Karl Rove and Condoleezza Rice.

Smith believes that, "Congress has a clear role to play [in the investigation], because [special prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald's investigation seeks only to punish criminal action and does not deal with the much broader issue of whether the White House deliberately misled the American people. Congress, both in its responsibility to exercise oversight of federal government action and because we received much of the potentially incorrect information being put out by the Administration on Iraq, has the duty of ensuring open and honest communication between the White House and Congress."

Smith has co-sponsored a Congressional resolution of inquiry with U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), "calling for the White House to turn over to Congress all information involving the WHIG … They were tasked to make the case for going to war in Iraq in an effort to convince Congress and the American people to support that policy."

Smith goes onto note, "White House assertions that aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq had to be part of a nuclear weapons program, that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger and that we could not afford to let 'the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud' all appear to have come from the WHIG. We need to know how they got that information - which we now know to be false - and whether they deliberately misrepresented the facts."

Smith concludes that, "the holes that have appeared in the case [the Bush Administration made for going to war in Iraq] have done deep and lasting damage to our standing in the world and have undermined the confidence the American people have in their government. Congress can begin to repair this damage by getting to the bottom of the Administration's actions during the build up to the Iraq war. Anything less does not fulfill our responsibility to the American people."

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/wa09_smith/morenews/20051102pr.html

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