Connecting the Dots

CONNECTING THE DOTS -- (House of Representatives - March 29, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. MEEKS of New York. Mr. Speaker, I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Until recently, the Bush administration has fooled some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time on Social Security, Medicare, tax cuts for the rich, economic recovery, the No Child Left Behind Act, nation-building, the war against terrorism, and, most especially, the war in Iraq. The President has been able to do this because most Americans simply do not believe that the President of the United States would distort and deceive on such basic issues as war and the well-being of children and the elderly.

ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair will remind the gentleman not to make personal references to the President.
Mr. MEEKS of New York. Mr. Speaker, during the 2 days of the hearings of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, it was clear that the time for the fooling of the people may be running out. Of course, there are those Americans inside and outside of Congress who always question the veracity of the President's arguments for going to war. My hope is that the testimony at the hearings, along with a series of widely publicized books and articles published in the last year or so, the latest being Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies," will enable the broader public to connect the dots to the truth. I believe they will see that the dots of deception lead straight to the Oval Office.

This response of administration officials to Mr. Clarke's charge that the President has done a terrible job on the war against terrorism is typical: throw sand into the public's eyes. Bait and switch. In other words, attack a person's motives while refusing to address the substance of the critique. Hide the facts. Concoct data. Delay. Blame everything on Clinton. Do the opposite of what you say. Claim not to remember a conversation or a meeting. Insist on redacting critical portions of critical congressional reports. Accuse critics of being disgruntled employees. All to cover up arrogant, reckless, and disgraceful conduct of foreign and domestic policy.

We should commend those public servants who, in the aftermath of 9/11-PATRIOT Act hysteria, have put loyalty to country above loyalty to the President, risking their careers to shed light on the dark underside of George W. Bush's Presidency. This lengthening list includes the Minneapolis and Phoenix-based FBI agent who revealed that FBI field operatives tried to get higher-ups to pay attention to individuals on the counterterrorism watch list, including several who later crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, were in the United States taking flying lessons; the joint inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees that revealed serious lapses on the part of the senior administration and intelligence officials during the lead-up to 9/11; John Wilson, a former ambassador, who disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium fuel in Niger, Africa. Wilson rejected the tales of the
President and Vice President, Defense Secretary, Secretary of State, and National Security Adviser were telling about Saddam's alleged nuclear weapons program and, as we now know, the White House retaliated by telling a journalist that Wilson's wife was a covert CIA operative.

In a book by Ron Suskind, former Treasury Department Paul O'Neill insists that from the very beginning, the administration and the President were fixated on invading Iraq, Mr. O'Neill, who told the President that a second round of tax cuts would damage the economy, and also reveals that Vice President Cheney contended that Ronald Reagan had proved that deficits do not matter.

David Kay head of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, congressional testimony that no weapons of mass destruction had been found, that no weapons of mass destruction were likely to ever be found, and that frankly, the administration and the intelligence community had it all wrong. And now, Richard Clarke, a senior counterterrorism official in the Reagan, Clinton, and both Bush administrations, who says immediately after 9/11, the President and other senior officials were focused more on finding a pretext for attacking Iraq than on finding Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Clarke quotes Defense Secretary Rumsfeld as saying there were not any good targets to bomb in Afghanistan but plenty in Iraq. Mr. Clarke also contends that invading Iraq was a priority even before the President took office.

If what Clarke, Kay, O'Neill and others have said is true, then it is fair to not only say weapons of mass destruction was a hype but also that every new explanation the administration has given since it declared an end to major operations is part of a cover-up of a war of choice, not necessity.

This is the context in which the public can connect the dots of the administration's attempts to obstruct the joint congressional Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigation of 9/11 and its belated cooperation and then only under the threat of subpoena with the independent commission investigating intelligence.