Hoeffel Pleased Bush Finally Calls For Independent Panel On Iraq Intelligence; Hopes Panel Is Charged With Looking Into How Intelligence Was Used
U.S. Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel today said he was pleased that President Bush had finally decided to establish a bipartisan commission to examine American intelligence operations relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. Hoeffel has been calling for such an investigation for several months, most recently a week ago on the House floor.
(Text of speech attached)
The following is Hoeffel's statement on the news that the President will establish an independent commission:
"I am pleased that the President will apparently appoint an independent commission to investigate the U.S. intelligence operations and conclusions on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. It is clear that major errors were made by our intelligence community, and it is critical that we determine why this happened and fix it.
"However, it is also extremely important that this commission also investigate how the Bush Administration used the intelligence and to what extent the intelligence was manipulated to make the case for our pre-emptive war on Iraq.
"The commission should be appointed as soon as possible. It should include a bipartisan group of our best and brightest and it should be given broad latitude in conducting its investigation. We must find out why we were so wrong, and make the needed corrections. These are not merely political matters, but involve the most serious questions of national security. America's credibility depends upon meeting these challenges."
The following are Hoeffel's comments on the House floor on January 27, 2004:
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Neugebauer). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, last week during the State of the Union address President Bush spoke to us about the Iraqi War and described how the Kay report, the Dr. David Kay report, indicated dozens of instances of what the President called weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.
Now, I am not sure what a weapons of mass destruction-related program activity is, but I do know what it is not. It is not a weapon of mass destruction, because we have not found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And, in fact, David Kay himself has said so. He has resigned his position as the United States Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq, working for the CIA.
He has stated that in his opinion, Iraq does not have stockpiles of chemical weapons of mass destruction or biological weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq does not have nuclear weapons, and any nuclear program was rudimentary in nature, according to Dr. Kay. He feels that these stockpiles do not exist now and did not exist before we went to war with Iraq in March of 2003.
Now, this is a startling conclusion from our Chief Weapons Inspector because it is so different from what the Bush administration told us in the fall of 2002 in the run-up to the congressional vote of whether or not to give congressional authority to the President to use military authority to deal with what was described as the imminent threat to peace, to regional peace and world peace and to the United States, the imminent threat of the use of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Speaker, I voted to give the President that authority based upon the representations of the administration because I wanted to disarm Saddam Hussein of those weapons of mass destruction. Now, we have finally captured Saddam Hussein, and I am glad that we have; I am glad he is out of power. I believe both Iraq and America are better off now that he is in custody. But, Mr. Speaker, we have not found those weapons of mass destruction; and we now have a report from Dr. Kay that those weapons of mass destruction did not exist and they do not exist today.
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s. We know that because he used them in murderous ways against his own citizens, the Kurds in northern Iraq, and he used them to murder tens of thousands of Iranian citizens. But the issue is not what he had in the 1980s. The issue is whether he had such stockpiles in 2002 and 2003. We were told with complete certainty by the President, by the Vice President, I was told with 20 other Members of the House in a briefing in the White House on October 2, 2002, by Condoleeza Rice and George Tenet that there was complete certainty that Iraq possessed these weapons of mass destruction. And based upon those representations, I voted with many of my colleagues to give the President that war authority.
Now, it is now clear that there were half-truths and deceptions from the administration as well as mistakes from the Intelligence Community. And I stand here tonight to call for an independent investigation, an independent review, of both the work product of the Intelligence Community of the United States and the work of the administration policymakers that stated with such clarity that we faced an imminent threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Clearly the American people were misled. Clearly the Congress was misled. I was misled by the Bush administration and by the United States intelligence agencies.
The President and the Vice President continue to want the American people to believe that there was this threat and is this threat of weapons of mass destruction. The President talked about WMD-related program activities last week without clarifying what they were. The Vice President continues to insist that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. These statements are contrary to the report of the Weapons Inspector, Dr. Kay.
I call for an independent investigation and review so that we can get to the bottom and find out the truth.