Iraqi Arms Threat

IRAQI ARMS THREAT -- (House of Representatives - October 06, 2004)

(Ms. DeLAURO asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)

Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, today's Washington Post reports that at the time this administration brought us to war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein posed not the gathering threat that President Bush and Vice President Cheney continue to claim he was, but rather, a diminishing one.

The findings of the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq are but one more example of a President and a Vice President intent on misleading the American people into war and blind to the realities of Iraq today. This comes one day after the startling admission by the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, Paul Bremer, that we did not have enough troops on the ground after the invasion to guard sensitive areas like weapons stockpiles. Today, those very weapons are being used against our troops by militants and by terrorists.

At every step of the way, determining the threat level posed by Saddam, how much the war would cost, how many casualties America would bear, George Bush and Dick Cheney have been consistent, consistently wrong. As we saw last night and last Thursday in the debates, George Bush and Dick Cheney are incapable of fixing Iraq because they refuse to see the mess that they have created there.

They refuse to see the mess that they have created in the U.S. economy.

The American people? They see it every single day.