House International Relations Committee - Budget Request for International Affairs
Federal News Service February 11, 2004 Wednesday
HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOUSE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: BUDGET REQUEST FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE HENRY HYDE (R-IL)
LOCATION: 2172 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
WITNESSES: SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
REP. HYDE: Mr. Menendez.
REP. ROBERT MENENDEZ (D-NJ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, thank you for coming before us today. I have two sets of issues to raise with you. First, as the ranking Democrat on the Western Hemisphere (Subcommittee), I am outraged that the Latin American budget has been slashed.
I hear the president say that Latin America is a priority, but when we look at the facts, it's different. In this budget, Latin American development programs are cut by nearly 11 percent, as compared to 2004, in active levels. Child survival and health programs are cut by almost 12 percent.
Latin America is the only region in the world, the only region, to be cut in both total economic and development aid and total narcotic and military aid.
And if one tries to make the argument that the MCA will take care of Latin America, I think we need to get our facts straight, because even if we include all of the five countries eligible based on income levels, for which, of course, there is no guarantee, a maximum of 7.2 percent of Latin America's poor would benefit from the MCA. So, so much for us being un amigo.
And then I'd like to turn to Iraq. It's clear now to me and to many Americans that we went into this war under false premises. And Mr. Secretary, I respect loyalty to the president. I even respect more your loyalty to the American people when you have made comments that sometimes were honest and out of what may be seen as the mainstream, when in that Washington Post article you honestly said that you're not sure you would have recommended going to war if you knew that Saddam did not have stockpiles of banned weapons.
And it's also clear to many of us that the question of Saddam's actual stockpiles that have not been found were not expanding but they were contracting. And that was not the case made to the American people if one looks at, for example, the report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq," and looked at the key to their findings, where they say, "With respect to nuclear and chemical weapons, the threat was largely known."
And it says, "Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled and there was no convincing evidence of its reconstitution"; that regarding chemical weapons, UNSCOM discovered that Iraq's nerve agents had lost most of their lethality as early as 1991 and that all of the subsequent operations-Desert Storm, Desert Fox and U.N. inspections and sanctions-effectively destroyed Iraq's large-scale chemical weapon production capabilities; when they say that it is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed, hidden or sent out of the country the hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons, dozens of Scud missiles and facilities engaged in the ongoing production of chemical and biological weapons that officials claimed were present, without the U.S. detecting some sign of this activity before, during or after the major combat period of war; that prior to 2002, the intelligence community appears to have overestimated the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq; that the dramatic shift between prior intelligence assessments and the October 2002 national intelligence estimate, together with the creation of an independent intelligence entity of the Pentagon and other steps, suggest that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policymakers' views sometime in 2002; that there was and is no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam's government and al Qaeda; that there was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda and much evidence to counter it; and to their conclusion that administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction and ballistic- missile programs beyond the intelligence failures noted above, and they say that by treating nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as a single weapon-of-mass-destruction threat; that the conflation of these three distinct threats were very different than the danger they posed, distorted the cost-benefit analysis of the war, that insisting without evidence yet treating as a given truth that Saddam Hussein would give whatever weapons of mass destruction he possessed to terrorists; that routinely dropping caveats, probabilities and expressions of uncertainty present in intelligence assessments from public statements and by misrepresenting inspectors' findings in ways that turned threats from minor to dire.
That is the nature of what we find ourselves in. And so I simply close by saying I don't understand how we, to this day, can have a process where we have no exit strategy, where we are nation-building, which I have heard my colleagues oppose, where we're ready to have-we want to have an election that the majority of the Iraqi population says-in a way in which the majority of the Iraqi population says that they are not supportive of, and we have made this timetable without seeing if it, in fact, will work.
And lastly, our status-of-forces agreement-how is it that we're going to keep our troops there? Under what set of circumstances? We don't have negotiations with the Iraqis on this issue. When will they be resumed, and with whom? And what will be the purpose of those troops that will stay there? When will they be home? When will they be-where will be their mission? Will they be there to deter an invasion from outside forces? Will they be there at the service of a new Iraqi government?
REP. HYDE: The gentleman's time --
REP. MENENDEZ: How long will they stay in power after the transfer?
REP. HYDE: The gentleman's time --
REP. MENENDEZ: Those are all questions we'd like to hear answers to.
REP. HYDE: The gentleman's time has long since expired.
REP. MENENDEZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.