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1A) Cooperation with Indonesia Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy

TEXT OF A PROPOSED PROTOCOL AMENDING THE AGREEMENT FOR COOPERATION BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA CONCERNING PEACEFUL USES OF NUCLEAR ENERGY--PM 70 -- (Senate - March 04, 2004)

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   The PRESIDING OFFICER laid before the Senate the following message from the President of the United States, together with an accompanying report; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations:

To the Congress of the United States:

   I am pleased to transmit to the Congress, consistent with sections 123 b. and 123 d. of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2153(b), (d)) (the ``Act''), the text of a proposed Protocol Amending the Agreement for Cooperation Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Indonesia Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, signed at Washington on June 30, 1980. I also transmit my written approval, authorization, and determination concerning the Protocol, and an unclassified Nuclear Proliferation Assessment Statement (NPAS) concerning the Protocol. (Consistent with section 123 of the Act, as amended by title XII of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-277), a classified Annex to the NPAS, prepared by the Secretary of State in consultation with the Director of Central Intelligence, summarizing relevant classified information, will be submitted to the Congress separately.) The joint memorandum submitted to me by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Energy and a letter from the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stating the views of the Commission are also enclosed.

   I am advised that the proposed Protocol has been negotiated consistent with the Act and other applicable law and that it meets all statutory requirements. This Protocol will advance the nonproliferation and other foreign policy interests of the United States.

   The Protocol amends the Agreement for Cooperation Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Indonesia Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy in two respects:

   1. It extends the Agreement, which expired by its terms on December 30, 2001, until December 30, 2031, with effect from the former date; and

   2. It updates certain provisions of the Agreement relating to the physical protection of nuclear material subject to the Agreement.

   As amended by the proposed Protocol, the Agreement will continue to meet all requirements of U.S. law.

   Indonesia is a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and has an agreement with the IAEA for the application of full-scope safeguards to its nuclear program. It was also among the early sponsors of, and is a current party to, the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. The United States and Indonesia have had a long and positive history of cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, with our earliest agreement for this purpose dating back to 1960.

   I have considered the views and recommendations of the interested agencies in reviewing the proposed Protocol and have determined that its performance will promote, and will not constitute an unreasonable risk to, the common defense and security. Accordingly, I have approved the Protocol and authorized its execution and urge that the Congress give it favorable consideration.

   This transmission shall constitute a submittal for purposes of both sections 123 b. and 123 d. of the Atomic Energy Act. My Administration is prepared to begin immediately the consultations with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House International Relations Committee consistent with section 123 b. Upon completion of the 30-day continuous session period provided for in section 123 b., the 60-day continuous session period provided for in section 123 d. shall commence.

   George W. Bush.

   THE WHITE HOUSE, March 4, 2004.

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4A) Iraq Intelligence

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I would like to start by saying I believe our colleagues who scheduled this debate today have done a great service to this body and to the American people. The topic of the United States in the world and specifically the United States in the war on terror is of great importance to the American people. They deserve to have the kind of elevated discussion we are giving this evening.

   This should not be a partisan issue. Rather, it is an issue of our national and personal security. Never in our Nation's history have we been so dependent on credible intelligence for our safety and security as we are today.

   The real test all of us will face as policymakers on behalf of the people of the United States will be how wise we are in identifying the problems we need to address and how willing we are to cast away the anchor of the status quo and initiate real reforms. In both of those efforts, one of our strongest assets will be our American intelligence.

   If we were to ask any person who has a reasonable knowledge of the capabilities of terrorists and the extent of America's vulnerability the question, what is the likelihood the United States of America will suffer another successful terrorist attack on our homeland within the next 5 years, the consensus answer is certainly going to be almost a 100 percent likelihood of a successful attack.

   That is a sad but true fact. It is a sad but true fact which is unnecessary. In part, it is unnecessary because we need to initiate the reforms within our intelligence community. Reforms we have learned from the experience of September 11, and learned again in the war against Iraq and, I suggest, we will learn again in the incidents that have led up to the events in Haiti, the lack of transforming our intelligence community to a set of agencies that can effectively understand, interpret, and then assist policymakers in making decisions that will make us more secure, those reforms have not been made.

   It is also unfortunately true there has been a lack of accountability. We have had major intelligence failures in the last 3 years. Yet, as of today, virtually no one has been held accountable for those. What signal does that send to our agency and our adversaries, that we are willing to tolerate performance that is less than acceptable, or to benefit by performance which is beyond the call of duty, and the former is not sanctioned and the latter is not recognized.

   What I think we are facing this evening is a series of deficits that will prove as significant to the future of the American people as the skyrocketing budget deficit of this administration will be to our economic future. These deficits include a deficit in judgment. The reality is in the spring of 2002, the United States and our coalition partners had the terrorist group which had perpetrated the tragedy of September 11 on the ropes in Afghanistan. But a decision was made in the early spring--a decision which military officials

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close to its implementation describe as an ending of the war on terror in Afghanistan and a substitution of a manhunt in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a redirection of American intelligence and military personnel and resources to commence the war in Iraq.

   This was more than a year before the war actually started. If you will read the front page of this past Sunday's New York Times, it talks about the fact that we are now, 2 years later, beginning to reintensify our efforts in Afghanistan, and we are returning to Afghanistan those very military and intelligence resources that were shifted to Iraq in the beginning of the spring of 2002.

   So the consequence of making a decision that our greater enemy was Saddam Hussein than the enemy which had already shown the capability, the will, and the presence in the United States to effectively strike us on September 11 has

   been to allow our greater enemy to become yet stronger.

   Al-Qaida is a powerful network today. It is a powerful network which is less hierarchical, more entrepreneurial, more diffuse, more difficult to attack--especially as al-Qaida cells form alliances with other radical Islamic groups. We missed the opportunity in the spring of 2002 to have cut off the head of this snake because we exercised unacceptably poor judgment as to which was the greater danger to the people of the United States.

   What is the report card on that decision of judgment? I quote from a statement made by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. George Tenet, on Tuesday of last week. This is what the leader of our American intelligence community said:

   ..... We have made notable strides. But do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that al-Qaida is defeated. It is not. We are still at war. This is a learning organization that remains committed to attacking the United States, its friends and allies.

   Continuing to quote from the director of the CIA:

   Successive blows to al-Qaida's central leadership has transformed the organization into a loose collection of regional networks that operate almost autonomously. These regional components have demonstrated their operational prowess in the past year.

   The sites of their attacks span the entire reach of al-Qaida--Morocco, Kenya, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia.

   And al-Qaida seeks to influence the regional networks with operational training, consultations, and money. .....

   You should not take the fact that these attacks occurred abroad to mean the threat to the United States homeland has waned. As al-Qaida and associated groups undertook these attacks overseas, detainees consistently talked about the importance the group still attaches to striking the main enemy: the United States.

   In conclusion, the Director of Central Intelligence made this chilling observation:

   The steady growth of Osama bin Laden's anti-U.S. sentiment through the wider Sunni extremist movement, and the broad dissemination of al-Qaida's destructive expertise, ensure that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future--with or without al-Qaida in the picture.

   That is the residue of the decision to allow the snake of al-Qaida to regenerate itself because we determined that the greater enemy to the United States--the enemy which had the greater capability to threaten the people of the United States of America--was Saddam Hussein. We have paid and we will pay a significant price for that flawed judgment.

   There is also a deficit in credibility. Once the administration made the decision at least as early as the spring of 2002--and probably earlier--it used incredible information to convince the Congress and the American people to support that invasion.

   To pick one example which has been widely reported, the administration knew, or should have known, that it was using misleading information about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, about yellow cake from Niger, about the existence of tubes which could be used for centrifuges to make nuclear products, and about the connections of Saddam Hussein's regime with the tragedy of 9/11.

   On several occasions, it was a leading figure within the administration, including the Vice President of the United States, who went to the intelligence agencies, asked for further information on the specific charge relative to Saddam Hussein's status as a producer and user of weapons of mass destruction, received from the intelligence agencies a report indicating it was a fabrication, and yet the administration continued to recycle incredible misinformation.

   The administration's fondness for calling Iraq the new front in the war on terror has become a self-fulfilling proposition. There is little, if any, evidence that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaida and that terrorist networks were active in the sections of Iraq that were controlled by Saddam Hussein.

   What now? Now we have created chaos in Iraq, and in spite of the bravery and professionalism of our troops, we have seen a situation in which the terrorist organizations which did not exist in Iraq prior to the war have now become serious threats to the stability of that country and to the lives of American fighting men and women.

   This is how the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, VADM Lowell Jacoby, described the situation in Iraq when he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday of last week:

   Foreign fighters who have entered Iraq since the end of the war have carried out some of the most significant attacks, including suicide bombings. Left unchecked, Iraq has the potential to serve as a training ground for the next generation of terrorists.

   There was minimal to no al-Qaida influence in Iraq before the war. Now, and this is credible, al-Qaida has found a new base of operations in Iraq. There is also a deficit of trust in the American people. This great democracy has had, as one of its fundamental values, that the people of America will serve their role as citizens only if they are fully informed about the operations of their Government. But why does this administration not want to let the people know the truth about our foreign policy and about the decisionmaking that takes place in forming that foreign policy?

   This President lacks a basic respect for the common sense of the American people and relies excessively on secrecy, not to protect the national interests but to avoid political embarrassment.

   I cochaired the House-Senate joint inquiry into the intelligence failures that preceded September 11. Our joint committee produced a lengthy report, some 800 pages, which focused on, among other things, the findings relative to the support which one or more foreign governments had provided to some, if not all, of the 19 terrorists.

   The executive branch, after 7 months of examining our report, insisted on censoring the 27 pages of our report that contain the most important findings about that foreign support. It reached this level of absurdity. The Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, responding to media speculation that it was his government mentioned in those 27

   pages, pleaded with the President and his administration that the full report be released. ``How can I defend my kingdom against attacks of treacherous nature unless I can know what is the basis of those attacks?'' It was not just the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Foreign Minister of the Kingdom flew to Washington to plead for the declassification, for the release of this information so that he could also defend the honor of the Kingdom.

   The President refused that request even before the Foreign Minister had reached the White House. Are we supposed to believe there wasn't some coordination of efforts, that there were private assurances of maintaining the status quo despite public pleas for release?

   This President has shown that he does not believe the American people have the right nor the ability to effectively utilize information which will help them to understand who to hold accountable and to participate in reforms necessary for their security.

   These are some of the deficits we have seen as a result of the events before and particularly after September 11, that we have seen in the preparation for the war in Iraq, and which we may well see repeated in the circumstances leading up to the current anarchy that grips Haiti.

   Again, I conclude by saying how pleased I am that Senator Kyl and other colleagues have given us the chance to have this discussion. We, too, have a responsibility to the American people to offer them the best security

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that the Government can provide. There is no cave, there is no spider hole that we will be able to hide in to escape that responsibility should there be another terrorist attack on our homeland and we have not utilized the information of our previous failures to make our Nation more secure.

   Let us look in the mirror. The face we see will share the responsibility for the loss of life and for the deficits I have outlined which are unacceptable in our democratic society.

   Before I conclude, I would like to say that I believe the value of this debate has indicated the value of similar debates on other issues that have wide public concern. I will soon seek unanimous consent that we schedule time for a debate of this nature on the floor of the Senate on a regular basis for the remainder of this session.

   I propose that the next issue to be discussed be our budget deficit, the inheritance of debt that we are going to leave to our people. The suggestion made recently by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board that we make tax cuts permanent while we also cut benefits for Social Security and Medicare could help in framing the choices that we will have in dealing with this budget deficit.

   The American people deserve from this, the greatest deliberative body in the world, to pay attention to their future. They deserve to know that we serve their interests with sound judgment, with credibility, and with respect for those who have given us the opportunity to serve them.

   Thank you, Mr. President.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida yields the floor. Does the Senator suggest the absence of a quorum?

   Mr. GRAHAM of Florida. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Under the previous order, the Senator is recognized for 20 minutes.

   Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues from the other side of the aisle for giving us this opportunity to discuss the matters surrounding the Iraq war, a war in which we are still engaged, a war in which Americans are losing their lives and their limbs on an almost daily basis. I am sure my colleagues have attended funerals, as I have in my own State, of brave men who did not return from that war alive. We all know the human cost that has been involved.

   A number of us were at Walter Reed Hospital 2 weeks ago for an evening with brave men and women who have lost limbs and health, and in some cases will not ever be able to live fully normal lives because of the terrible devastation wreaked on their bodies by the war in Iraq. So what we are talking about tonight is something of enormous importance, something we should have talked about far more often in the past months and year than we have.

   I attempted back in the first months of 2003 to get this body to address some of these critical issues, questions about the information we had been provided even though we had voted previously in October of 2002 on this resolution that the President requested the majority of this body authorize, along with the House, to initiate a war at a time of his determination. But in the weeks preceding that I tried in vain, as did some of my colleagues, to ask the majority leader to bring this matter before the Senate, before the American people again. Unfortunately we were not able to. The decision was made not to create the time and the opportunity to do so.

   Better late than never. This is much later than it should have been. I look forward to this opportunity in the weeks and months ahead because, as I understood from the Senator from Arizona, who was coordinating the time the Republican caucus used before we were given a chance to reply, that whenever the questions were raised, challenges were raised about the use or the misuse of intelligence information by the President of the United States and by his administration, there would be these occasions to discuss those matters again in the future. If that is the case, then I look forward to those opportunities because those questions should be raised. They have been raised before.

   The American people have a right to know the truth, the facts about these matters. Those who have lost sons and daughters over in Iraq, those whose sons and daughters are serving there now, all of us whose lives, whose children, and grandchildren will bear the consequences of these profoundly important decisions that have affected not only the United States and our national security but the stability of the entire world have a right to know the truth.

   Let's have these debates and these considerations as frequently as possible and air these matters fully, particularly since the commissions that have been established--the most recent one, by the President himself singlehandedly--are being precluded from addressing many of these issues like the misuse, as has been alleged, of intelligence information by high intelligence officials. That commission will not be allowed to investigate those matters. It will not have the authority to subpoena documents and information, investigating those matters. We will remain in the dark as those of us on the Senate Armed Services Committee on which I serve will remain in the dark despite our requests repeatedly to have that committee investigate these matters under its jurisdiction. At one point the distinguished chairman of that committee, Senator Warner, a man for whom I have the greatest respect, one of the finest of the men and women with whom I have had the privilege of serving in this body over my 3 years, suggested on a Sunday talk show that would be the appropriate purview of the committee and that should be investigated to its determination of the facts and truth and then, from all accounts, was forcefully dissuaded from that position by higher level officials in the administration who did not want that kind of investigation.

   So if we can't get the facts because we can't get committees of the Senate to look into these matters, if we can't get the facts because the President's own hand-picked commission is going to be prevented by him from investigating and reviewing these matters, then let's use these occasions here on the Senate floor, even if we are going to be, as the

   word was used, ambushed by the Republican caucus on these matters. That was reported last week. This was going to be a big surprise last Thursday. It was reported in one of the Hill newspapers and evidently it was decided to postpone it.

   Today, after we talked, even at our caucus lunch today, the Democratic caucus lunch at 1 o'clock today, based on the information the Democratic leader received from the majority leader, we were going to finish the resolution of the bill before us and then we were going to turn to another piece of legislation. Lo and behold, we found out literally as members of the Republican caucus took the floor this afternoon that this was going to be the subject for debate.

   But so be it. If you want to ambush us on this topic, then do it as frequently as possible so we can present to the American people all the facts, facts they may not receive in any other way.

   Let's go back a minute and review the bidding on this whole matter. Let's go back to January of 2002. Mr. Karl Rove, senior adviser to the President, political strategist, was quoted as telling a Republican political gathering that the winning issue for the Republicans in November of 2002, at the midterm election, would be ``the war.'' By that at the time he meant the war against al-Qaida, against the Taliban in Afghanistan. But evidently in June of 2002, according to published reports based on an interview with the chief of staff of the White House, Andrew Card, published in the New York Times on September 7 of 2002, but referring back to a decision that was, according to Mr. Card, made in June of that year, 3 months earlier, to bring the spotlight onto this supposed immediate, desperate, urgent threat to the national security of the United States and the safety of our people by Saddam Hussein and his regime in Iraq, the question was asked of Mr. Card by the reporter, why, then, was there this delay until then right before and then right after

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Labor Day of 2002, a good 3 months later, to bring this matter to the attention of Congress and to the American people. Mr. Card's answer, and I quote, was, ``Well, from a marketing standpoint you don't bring out your new products in August.''

   About two sentences later he indicated also the President was on vacation in August. So, instead, we were all, I think, startled--this Senator was certainly surprised to hear from the Vice President, Vice President Cheney, at two conventions of former men and women of the armed services in the last week of August of 2002, where he spoke to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and he announced, ``Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.''

   The President himself then elaborated on these claims time and time again. He conjured up the most serious of threats to this country. On September 26 of 2002, at the time when this body was being pressured to rush to a vote about authorizing a war in Iraq, the President, after meeting with Members of Congress on that date, said:

   The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons. .....The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material, could build one within a year.

   He continued on that day to say:

   The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year. To ignore these threats is to encourage them. When they have fully materialized, it may be too late to protect ourselves and our friends and our allies. By then the Iraqi dictator would have the means to terrorize and dominate the region. Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX or someday a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally.

   On October 7, just 4 days before the October 11 vote in the Senate on the war resolution, the President said:

   We know that Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network share a common enemy--the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al-Qaida have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.

   He continued:

   We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bombmaking and poisons and deadly gases. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.

   He also elaborated on claims of Iraq's nuclear weapons program when he said on October 7 of that year:

   The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his ``nuclear mujahideen''--his holy warriors. If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly-enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.

   At that time, 4 days thereafter, the Senate voted historically and, I believe, having voted against that resolution, erroneously to authorize the war with the determination of the President--on a resolution which I believed and still believe is unconstitutional, was premature and, which has ultimately turned out to be the case, unfounded.

   These assertions continued during the fall and then into the new year. Of course, Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations and stated that there were thousands of tons of these strains of botulism, of nerve gas agents, of botox, and other substances that were of such enormous quantities that they would have been easily identified by satellite surveillance or by the United Nations weapons inspectors then in Iraq, though at the time none had been found.

   The Vice President again on March 16, just before the eve of the decision by the President to invade Iraq, leveled a serious new allegation that Hussein already had nuclear weapons. He said, ``We know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons,'' and ``We believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons.''

   Subsequent events, of course, have proven all of those assertions to be almost totally incorrect.

   Thank God. When United States and British forces invaded Iraq just a few days later, there were no chemical or biological or nuclear weapons used against them. None were found on the battlefield unused or in caches hidden and ready for use or even those weapons materials anywhere in Iraq, as the chief weapons inspector, David Kay, has now indicated in his public statements. He said to our Senate Armed Services Committee that he does not believe they will be found. But the more important fact, the irrefutable fact, is that they did not exist to be used against our Armed Forces. I am grateful for that. But that was the overriding premise--at least I know from a number of my colleagues on this side of the aisle--the overriding factor in their decision to support the resolution in October.

   Under the United Nations charter, under international law, the only justification legally for invading another country, for launching a preemptive attack against another country, starting war against another country, is either an actual attack itself or the imminent danger or threat of an attack against a country.

   It was certainly on that assertion by the administration repeatedly that Members of Congress were persuaded to support the resolution in October. It was that assertion that was made by the President himself and others leading up to and even in the speech the President gave to the Nation the night he authorized that invasion of forces.

   In his State of the Union Address, he made assertions that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. It was not until July 7 of 2003--almost 6 months later, or over 5 months later--that the administration acknowledged for the first time that the President should not have made that statement even though the reports were they knew conclusively as early as March. Some allegations are that they knew even prior to the time, or at the time of that statement, that that was not substantiated, or, in fact in March, a report even said it was false.

   There are other statements that have been made by former CIA intelligence officials, reports made by investigative reporters that refer to information that was available to the administration at the time these various assertions were made that were contrary to facts as they were being reported.

   The linkage to al-Qaida, between Iraq and al-Qaida, is one that I certainly can say from my own direct experience, being involved in probably two dozen top secret briefings in the fall of 2002 and early 2003 with members of the administration, that was something that was repeated, was raised in a most speculative way from other intelligence sources.

   Then it is reported in June of 2003, after all this has been underway, according to the New York Times, two high officials of al-Qaida now in U.S. custody told interrogators, told them before the war in fact, that the organization did not work with Mr. Hussein. Several intelligence officials said no evidence of cooperation had been found in Iraq.

   It caused the CIA Director, George Tenet, to state that:

   ``it was not at all clear there was any coordination or joint activities,'' a CIA source told the Washington Post.

   An article in the Baltimore Sun went on to say:

   Last fall, in a classified assessment of Iraq, the CIA said the only thing that might induce Mr. Hussein to give weapons to terrorists was an American invasion. But month after month, unconstrained by mere facts, the president trumpeted a danger that his own intelligence officials dismissed.

   Yes, there are very serious questions and a most profoundly serious matter reflecting on the veracity of the President of the United States and his officials at the highest levels. The debate should be undertaken here and the American people should have a right to all the facts but they will not get them.

   One of the most disgusting ploys tonight has been to blame President Clinton and Senate Democrats during the 1990s for the supposed curtailment of our Nation's military preparedness and its intelligence operations. Some people are masters at this kind of slander.

   In 2002, there were Republican campaign commercials that put Senator Max Cleland, a Democratic Senator from Georgia, upon the television screen next to pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, claiming that all three of them were enemies of the national security of the United States.

   Senator Cleland was a triple amputee and sat in this chair next to me during my first 2 years of the Senate, the

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most amazing demonstration of human courage I have ever heard. I could scarcely imagine a man who lost three limbs serving in the military in Vietnam, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who had voted for every single dollar of President Bush's requested military increases for military spending, for homeland security, every dollar, being smeared as an enemy of this Nation along with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

   Here they go again, smearing President Clinton and even Senator JOHN KERRY. I heard President Clinton attacked by colleagues across the aisle from the day I joined the Senate Armed Services Committee in January of 2001 for supposed military weaknesses. That continued up until the military that President Clinton commanded for 8 years routed the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan 10 months later. Now he is accused of emasculating the Intelligence Agency, causing

   the failures to prevent September 11, 2001, and the failures to inform us properly about the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

   Unfortunately, we cannot find out who is and who is not responsible for whatever failures occurred. We cannot find out because President Bush has blocked the 9/11 Commission access to the information that bipartisan group of distinguished Americans has been requesting for months from the administration.

   We will not get to the truth about who misused intelligence information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because the President refused to appoint an independent commission, refused to grant them subpoena powers, and refused to authorize them to investigate the use of intelligence information by himself and his administration.

   If the former administration is the one that is so culpable and if the current administration is so blameless, why wouldn't this administration want those two commissions to have access to all relevant information? Why would this administration block the 9/11 information that its cochairman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey, Thomas Kean, has requested for months on behalf of his Commission? Why won't the President allow his own handpicked Commission to assess the misinformation about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that was provided to Congress and to the American people to investigate all the questions about that colossal misrepresentation of the truth as we later discovered it to be?

   Those are critical questions that affect the future safety of our country and our citizens, whatever flaws existed before September 11, whatever errors were made after September 11, whatever mistakes, whatever lack of communication, whatever misre- porting, misunderstanding, misrepresenting, exaggerating, or improper influencing of information, whatever or wherever it occurred,

   which weakened our national security, must know what that was in order to prevent it from ever happening again.

   That imperative should transcend partisan politics. It should transcend Presidential reelections. It should transcend any consideration except for the safety of this country and of the American people.

   If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to strengthen our national security, as I know they do--as we all do, because we are Americans first, and we are partisans after that--then I ask them to join us in insisting that the President unshackle those two commissions. Let them find the truth, the whole truth, whatever it might be, wherever it is, whoever it helps, whoever it hinders, so that we can know what we must do to ensure that the horrors of 9/11 never, ever occur again, and to ensure that the serious misinformation about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which influenced Members of this body to support a resolution to authorize the President to start a war against that country--to make sure that kind of misinformation used to justify a war to the American people never, ever happens again.

   So, yes, let's debate these matters as frequently as possible. Let's get out all of the facts. And then let's let the American people decide.

   Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

4B) Iraq Intelligence

   Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the question of whether or not the intelligence was flawed which was used so forcefully by the administration prior to going to war as the reason for going to war is a question which is going to consume the time of this body and a number of our committees for some time to come. It is a critically important question as to whether or not the intelligence was flawed, not just in terms of the accountability--which is so important if mistakes were made, if exaggerations were undertaken in order to advance the decision to go to war--but also in terms of the future security of this Nation.

   This country went to war, we were told, because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That was the reason that was given over and over again by the administration. Whether or not there were other reasons, and there surely were, for that decision, which could be argued as a basis for the decision, the facts are that the American people were told it was the presence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction which was the basis for attacking that country.

   When a decision is made to go to war based on intelligence, it is a fateful decision. It has ramifications and impacts way beyond the current months and years. If the intelligence is as flawed as this intelligence was, we should find out why.

   Whether people are glad we went to war or are not glad we went to war, whether history will prove we should have waited until we had greater support through the United Nations in order to avoid the kind of aftermath which we have seen, or not--we don't know what history is going to show in that regard--but regardless of the arguments back and forth as to the timing of it, the way in which it was handled, the failure to galvanize the international community so we had a broad array of countries with us, including Muslim nations so we would not be there as a Western occupying power with other Western nations after the military success; whether or not there was adequate planning for the aftermath, and I think it is obvious that there was not adequate planning, but regardless of what position one takes on all of those issues, it is incumbent upon us to find out how in Heaven's name the intelligence could be so far off.

   How could we have 120 top suspect sites for the presence of weapons of mass destruction that were high-level to medium-level sites, where there was confidence that there were weapons of mass destruction either being stored or produced, and we batted zero for 120? How could we be so far off?

   How is it possible that the CIA could tell us, as they did in their assessments, that there were chemical weapons and biological weapons and that a nuclear program was being undertaken again when, in fact, that apparently is not the case? How is it possible that intelligence can be as flawed as is this intelligence?

   Again, regardless of what the arguments are on any side or any issue, I don't think any of us should be in the position of arguing that it is irrelevant to the future security of this Nation whether or not the intelligence upon

   which the decision to go to war was based is important. It is critically important.

   Does North Korea have nuclear weapons or doesn't it have nuclear weapons? Should we put some credibility in the intelligence community's assessment of that? Where is Iran along the continuum of obtaining nuclear weapons? What are their intentions? Should we put confidence in the intelligence community's assessment of that?

   Whether or not we place confidence or make decisions based upon the intelligence community's assessment is critically important. The lives of young men and women, perhaps the life of this Nation, could be dependent upon intelligence which is being assessed by the intelligence community. Life and death decisions are being made by the President of the United States based on decisions and assessments and appraisals of the intelligence community. When it is as wildly off as this intelligence community's assessments apparently were, then it seems to me we better find out for the future health of this country, not just in terms of trying to assess the accountability for past assessments.

   Something happened to the intelligence after 9/11. The pre-2002 intelligence assessments relative to nuclear programs and biological programs and chemical programs were different from the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. Some of this has been set forth in the Carnegie Endowment's recent report. There are so many examples of where the intelligence shifted on these critical issues after 9/11.

   A few examples: On the reconstitution of the nuclear program after 1998, the pre-2002 intelligence assessment was that Iraq had probably not continued their research and development program relative to reconstituting a nuclear program after 1998. Yet in October 2002, the intelligence community said, yes, it has restarted its nuclear program after the United Nations left in 1998. What happened between the pre-2002 intelligence assessment and the post-9/11 assessment?

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   What about enriching uranium for use in nuclear weapons? Prior to 2002, the assessment was that Baghdad may be attempting to acquire materials that could be used to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. But after 9/11, in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, we have, yes, Iraq has imported aluminum tubes and high-strength magnets. The Department of Energy's disagreement with this conclusion was set forth, but the assessment of the intelligence community shifted after 9/11.

   Whether they attempted to purchase uranium from abroad, the same kind of shift in the intelligence assessment, there were no reports mentioning any attempts to acquire uranium prior to that 2002 assessment, but in 2002, October, suddenly the National Intelligence Assessment says Iraq has been trying to procure uranium ore and yellow cake. Again, disagreement from the Department of State, but that was the assessment of the intelligence community, and on and on. We have this kind of change that occurred in the intelligence assessments.

   What is the explanation for that? What happened? There is no evidence, as the President has mentioned; there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was part of the attack of 9/11, so what happened that caused the intelligence community to shift its assessment of chemical, biological, and nuclear programs after the 9/11 attack on us? That is something which we must find out.

   We must make a determination--hopefully someday there will be an outside commission which will make a comprehensive review of this whole matter--but, in any event, we must do the best we can through the Intelligence Committee.

   I am making an effort, the Armed Services Committee, my staff, to look into these issues, particularly as they relate to the question of how intelligence affected the operations and the planning relative to our military effort in Iraq.

   But we must make that decision. We have an obligation. This is not a partisan issue and it makes no difference to me whether this assessment is finished before the election or after the election. It must be made for the health of this Nation, as to how our intelligence community, No. 1, could be so totally wrong relative to the presence of weapons of mass destruction on Iraqi soil immediately prior to the war; and, No. 2, how and why did the intelligence community shift its assessments so significantly after 9/11 from the assessments that occurred before 9/11?

   There is another aspect of this which relates to the way in which intelligence was used or exaggerated by the policymakers. Here we have another issue--an issue which is going to be looked at by the Intelligence Committee at least as far as the use of the intelligence is concerned up to the point where the war began. There are some recent statements that I think also require explanation.

   I have tried a number of times to find out how the Vice President could have, about a month ago, made a statement relative to the vans that were found in Iraq, that those vans were part of a mobile biological weapons program. For the life of me, I do not understand how the Vice President can make that statement when Dr. Kay who has looked at the van has said that there is a consensus in the intelligence community--and I am now reading from Dr. Kay's answer to my question in the Armed Services Committee--that the consensus opinion is that those two trailers were not intended for the production of biological weapons.

   How is it that the Vice President of the United States at about the same time that statement was made before the Armed Services Committee by the chief weapons inspector--that some trailers which were found in Iraq are unrelated to a biological weapons program--would say the opposite in a very public forum? What is the basis for the Vice President's statement? I tried to find out. In fact, I wrote the Vice President the other day asking him: What is the basis for your statement?

   We should know. The American people should know when the Vice President says something as significant as that, that these particular vans which we have now gotten in our possession are, in fact, biological weapons laboratories. In fact, what the Vice President said on January 22 on NPR was:

   I would deem that--

   Here he is referring to those two vans--

   conclusive evidence that Saddam did in fact have programs for weapons of mass destruction.

   Again, this is so totally opposite from what our chief weapons inspector has decided and said the consensus opinion is--that surely the American public is entitled to an explanation from the Vice President.

   What is the basis for his statement of January 22 on national radio? What is the basis, Mr. Vice President, for your statement? The American public is entitled to know that. This is not some assistant secretary of some agency sitting in the bowels of the Pentagon or the bowels of some other building. This is the Vice President of the United States who is saying on national radio that we believe, in fact, that those semitrailers were part of the biological weapons program, that they were biological weapons vans. There is no explanation forthcoming, just sort of silence from the Office of the Vice President. We are entitled to more than that.

   One possibility which the CIA's Director suggested when I asked him the question was that, well, maybe the Vice President was using old information when he said that. If the Vice President of the United States is making statements of significance based on old information, first, it seems to me he ought to say so and then say, Too bad that happened, I will make sure it doesn't happen again.

   But it is also kind of discouraging, if that is true. There are daily briefings which I assume he is a part of--at least weekly briefings on these critical issues. We have a chief weapons inspector who says those vans, according to the consensus opinion, are not part of and were not part of the production of biological weapons.

   But what all this is part of is kind of what is going to be phase 2 of the Intelligence Committee's investigation which is the use of intelligence by the policymakers. Here the statements of our top leadership go beyond the intelligence in a number of ways. They are much more certain than the intelligence communities' assessments were.

   For instance, the Vice President, on August 2002, said the following:

   There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends and against our allies and against us.

   We have this additional aspect which is now being looked into by the Intelligence Committee and again by my staff on the Armed Services Committee as to how the administration could take the intelligence that was given and then turn those less certain findings into certainties.

   Our friend from Arizona, Senator Kyl, made the point earlier tonight that there is a lot of uncertainty in intelligence, and he surely is right. But wow. It sure doesn't sound that way coming from the administration prior to the war.

   Vice President Cheney told Tim Russert: We know with absolute certainty that Saddam is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.

   Secretary of State Colin Powell--and this will be my last comment--said at the U.N.: There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons.

   The list of these statements where there is no doubt and there is absolute certainty that the administration says exists about these programs goes beyond what the intelligence communities' assessments were. It is those statements of absolute certainty which, it seems to me, require an explanation as to what was the basis of those statements of absolute certainty and there being no doubt, particularly in light of the fact Senator Kyl pointed out that intelligence is, indeed, very uncertain and should be treated that way.

   I yield the floor.

4C) Iraq

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the subject of the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and to address some of the recent criticism regarding whether, given that large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction have not been found, action by the United States was justified. When I have concluded, I know there are some colleagues who will want to address this same question from slightly different perspectives.

   The tragic events of September 11, 2001, demonstrated with great clarity that we can no longer afford to wait for threats to fully emerge before we deal with them. We paid a heavy price that day for our previous half-measures against those who hate us and want to destroy us.

   By definition, intelligence is imprecise, and no matter what reforms we implement in our intelligence community, the fact is, at least to some degree, it will always be uncertain. This is precisely why intelligence information is just part of a larger puzzle, as it was in the case of Iraq, that we used to determine the direction of U.S. policy.

   So given the uncertainty about weapons of mass destruction stockpiles, were our actions in Iraq justified? The answer to that question is most certainly yes. There is no doubt that the United States, the Iraqi people, and the international community are far better off today without Saddam Hussein in power.

   The inability to find weapons of mass destruction stockpiles now does not mean that Iraq did not have access to such weapons, and that under Saddam Hussein Iraq was not a grave and gathering danger. In fact, the overwhelming body of evidence, including most recently that from the Iraq

   Survey Group, indicates that his regime did, indeed, pose a threat, and that its removal will aid in our overall aid against terror.

   Some of our colleagues have charged that the President led the American people to war under false pretenses; that the case for removing Saddam Hussein's regime was supposedly based on an imminent threat posed by that regime because of its arsenals of weapons of mass destruction which now cannot be found. This assertion is categorically false, and today I intend to explain why.

   Let's briefly review how we arrived at the decision to authorize force against Iraq in October of 2002.

   Contrary to what some would have us believe, the Bush administration did not fundamentally change U.S. policy with Iraq from that of the Clinton administration. Upon entering office in January 2001, President Bush inherited from the Clinton administration a policy of regime change. I repeat, the Bush administration pursued the same Iraqi policy as the Clinton administration. That policy was based on the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act which stated:

   It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.

   This policy was unanimously approved by this Senate. This legislation and, thus, the shift in U.S. policy from containment to regime change reflected an acknowledgment that diplomatic solutions for dealing with Saddam's intransigence were being exhausted.

   Even before that shift, however, the Clinton administration was clear about the nature and capabilities of Saddam

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Hussein's regime and, moreover, believed that if left unchecked, the regime would pose a serious threat in the future.

   On February 17, 1998, as he prepared for war against Iraq, President Clinton stated the following:

   Now let's imagine the future. What if [Saddam Hussein] fails to comply and we fail to act or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he will use that arsenal. ..... In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now--a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.

   That quote was from President Clinton's remarks in 1998 as he prepared for war against Iraq. He pointed out that the arsenal which Iraq possessed--``a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction'' were his exact words--will pose a threat because he can provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.

   Note that he talked about weapons of mass destruction which Saddam Hussein possessed.

   I have noted no objections or caveats on these warnings by Democratic Members of the Senate.

   Later that year, not 2 months after President Clinton signed the Iraqi Liberation Act into law, he delivered an address to the Nation explaining his decision to order air strikes against Iraqi military targets. He discussed the potential long-term threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Again, I quote President Clinton:

   The hard fact is that so long as Saddam Hussein remains in power he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world. The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government, a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the right of its people.

   ..... Heavy as they are, the costs of inaction must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors; he will make war on his own people. Mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them.

   Again, I note no dissent from Democratic Senators to these comments of President Clinton.

   Consider the striking similarity between these statements by President Clinton and the statements Bush administration officials made about Iraq during the leadup to Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the first statement I cited from February of 1998, President Clinton discussed the consequences of inaction in the face of continued noncompliance by Saddam Hussein, noting that inaction would lead the dictator to conclude the international community had lost its will.

   Consider the statements of President George W. Bush to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2002:

   The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations. Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. ..... The United Nations [faces] a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?

   I point out the focus of President Clinton's statements was on the totality of our knowledge about Saddam Hussein's history, his defiance of the United Nations, use of chemical weapons, aggression against his neighbors, savage treatment of his own people.

   This is what we had to gauge his intentions by. This broad focus on Saddam's past actions and known capabilities, not any particular piece of intelligence, was also what prompted many Members of this body to authorize force against Iraq in October 2002. Consider some of the statements made in 2002 by my colleagues. First I quote Senator Daschle, majority and minority leader:

   Iraq's actions pose a serious and continued threat to international peace and security. It is a threat we must address. Saddam is a proven aggressor who has time and again turned his wrath on his neighbors and on his own people. Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people .....

   Note: 2002, Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction, no qualifications except he is not the only

   country to do so. No expression of doubts or caveats. As minority leader or majority leader, Senator Daschle has access to all of the intelligence that is available to anybody in this body.

   Now I quote Senator Biden, whose comments I quote not just because he is one of the more thoughtful Members of this body and ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, but also because they happen to be very close to the views I expressed on this issue. I quote Senator Biden in his colorful way of putting it:

   There is a guy named Saddam Hussein who, in the early 1990s broke international law, invaded another country, violating every rule of international law. The world, under the leadership of a President named Bush, united and expelled him from that country. Upon expulsion, he said a condition for your being able to remain in power, Saddam Hussein, is you sue for peace and you agree to the following terms of surrender ..... If the world decides it must use force for his failure to abide by the terms of surrender, then it is not preempting, it is enforcing. It is enforcing, it is finishing a war he reignited, because the only reason the war stopped is he sued for peace.

   That is exactly true. That is precisely what happened.

   Now let me quote another leader in the Senate, Senator Kerry, who said this:

   It would be naive, to the point of grave danger, not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. .....

   So this was the backdrop against which we all had voted to authorize the President to act and upon which he acted. I should not say we all voted to authorize the President because there were a few who did not, but the vast majority of the House of Representatives and the Senate voted to authorize the President to take appropriate action.

   Some now are voicing second thoughts. Since our successful removal of Saddam Hussein from power, it emerges that some of the intelligence regarding the regime's weapons of mass destruction capabilities may have been wrong, because most notably large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons have yet to be found.

   I feel compelled to point out three obvious facts: One, an intelligence failure is not synonomous with a misuse of intelligence. Two, this intelligence issue does not fundamentally change the case against Saddam Hussein. Three, since Iraq itself had provided documentation to the United Nations on its production of chemical and biological agents, the question is not whether but what happened to the stockpiles.

   Let's take the first, the misuse of intelligence. The fact remains the Bush administration relied largely on the same intelligence information used by the Clinton administration during the late 1990s, the same information that was available to Senators and about which they spoke on this floor, some of which I have quoted.

   President Clinton's CIA Director was retained by President Bush. By and large, the intelligence information was also the same as that of the other allied intelligence services, with a primary source being the two U.N. inspection bodies UNSCOM and UNMOVIC, the initials of which are U-N-S-C-O-M and U-N-M-O-V-I-C, which were led by non-Americans, such as Rolf Ekeus and Richard Butler. That Saddam had weapons of mass

   destruction capabilities was widely accepted, even by those who vehemently opposed the war. As French President Jacques Chirac commented during an interview with ``Time'' Magazine in February of 2004:

   There is a problem--The probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq. The international community is right to be disturbed by this situation, and it's right in having decided Iraq should be disarmed.

   I would note, if he does not have any weapons of mass destruction, there is no point in talking about disarming him. The entire world community believed he possessed these weapons, among other things because he himself had said he did.

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   So given the information the international community had at the time, the conclusions about Iraq's capabilities seemed clear. As former head of the Iraqi Survey Group David Kay recently stated in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee:

   ..... All I can say is if you read the total body of intelligence in the last 12 to 15 years that flowed on Iraq, I quite frankly think it would be hard to come to a conclusion other than Iraq was a gathering, serious threat to the world with regard to WMD.

   I might add, that is exactly what President Bush said. That is obviously a big-picture view.

   It seems opponents of the President, in charging the administration misled the American people, preferred to point to specific intelligence. So let's take a closer look at a couple of those examples. First, that the President's reference in his State of the Union Address regarding Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium and, second, that the administration presented intelligence community information on Iraq's WMD capabilities as though it were an undeniable fact rather than qualifying it properly with caveats.

   First, there were the following 16 words in the President's State of the Union Address:

   The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

   Major newspapers, the Democratic National Committee, and some policymakers claim this is one of the top examples of the Bush administration knowingly misleading the American people and presenting false intelligence information. As the DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe stated:

   This may be the first time in recent history that a President knowingly misled the American people during a State of the Union Address. ..... this was not a mistake. It was no oversight and it was no error.

   That is a grave charge. Charges that the administration purposely included false information in the President's speech I deem despicable, an attempt to create a scandal where one does not exist. The President had every reason to believe the information in his speech was true. It had been vetted by the CIA Director and it was consistent with the judgment of the intelligence community in October 2002. The National Intelligence Estimate at that time said Iraq was ``vigorously trying to procure uranium ore'' from several African countries.

   The British government, which the President cited, included a judgment in its dossier similar to that of the intelligence community's majority judgment on this point.

   In retrospect, Director Tenet stated this phrase, though factually correct and approved in the interagency process, should not have been included in the President's speech because it was not central to the intelligence community's judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. In other words, it was just a piece of evidence, not important enough to include in a speech like the State of the Union speech, and certainly not what we relied upon for our conclusion Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. In any event, it does not suggest in any way that the President was at fault for including the information, or that he had any intention of misleading the American people. The President believed the text was sound. It was not in error. If there was an error, it was simply including a piece of information which really wasn't central to making the case, but not misleading the American people.

   Second, the President's critics argue he failed to mention caveats in the intelligence community's assessment of Iraqi capability. This criticism is highly misleading. According to the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, and I have an unclassified copy of it here, the intelligence community had ``high confidence'' in the following statements:

   Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to U.N. Resolutions.

   Iraq possesses proscribed chemical and biological weapons and missiles.

   Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade material.

   So the National Intelligence Estimate, prepared by the entire intelligence community, led by the CIA Director George Tenet, had high confidence, among other things, in the fact that Iraq possessed proscribed biological and chemical weapons and missiles. After the fact we found some of the missiles. We found the programs to make chemical and biological weapons. But we don't find the big stockpile of those weapons. It turns out the intelligence community's high confidence in this statement was either misplaced or we simply haven't found the material yet, or it went somewhere else. We don't know the answers to those questions.

   As to this, the only dissent came from the State Department. But even in its alternate view it said Saddam continues to want nuclear weapons and available evidence suggests Baghdad is pursuing a limited effort to maintain and acquire nuclear weapons capabilities.

   Moreover, it appears the State Department did not have significant objections to the key judgments related to chemical, biological, and missile programs.

   So it is clear, it is fair to say, we had a general opinion of Saddam's capabilities, that that is what the President addressed.

   I want to also make it clear the President and the administration never claimed Iraq posed an imminent threat, as some have said. To the contrary, administration officials said the United States and the international community needed to act before it became imminent. Indeed, President Bush challenged those who wanted to wait until the threat was imminent in his 2003 State of the Union Address, saying the following:

   Some have said that we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

   So said President Bush.

   Administration officials did use words like ``immediate'' and ``urgent'' but more to convey the importance of dealing with the threat they judged to be growing; that they did not imply or state was imminent, in other words, that the attack was about to occur. They did not say that.

   Indeed, that the threat was not yet imminent was well understood on both sides of the aisle. As Senator Daschle, whom I quoted earlier, stated in explaining his support for the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq:

   The threat posed by Saddam Hussein may not be imminent, but it is real, it is growing, and it cannot be ignored.

   I submit he was correct. One can argue, and indeed some of my colleagues have argued, administration officials were at times too certain in the way they said it, too certain in their statements using phrases like ``we know.'' But given all the information we had about Saddam's history of using and producing weapons of mass destruction, his aggressive intentions, and the intelligence community's high confidence in the key areas of assessment, it is difficult to imagine how the administration could have determined Iraq was not a threat that needed to be dealt with immediately.

   So, no, there may have been mistakes in intelligence. We have yet to find that out. But there was not a misleading--an attempt to mislead by the administration.

   The second point is the larger point, that whatever deficiencies there may have been about the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, it doesn't change the basic case against Saddam Hussein. Some of what I have quoted earlier makes that point. While it is troubling our intelligence cannot tell us where these stockpiles are, the larger case remains. The Bush administration, supported by a large coalition, pursued a responsible policy, given all of the pieces of the puzzle it had. As I said, there was Saddam's

   previously known missile capabilities and chemical and biological weapons programs; his desire to acquire a nuclear weapon; his continuing flagrant violation of numerous Security Council resolutions; his history of aggression including, I might add, shooting at American airplanes constantly in the no-fly zone while we were trying to enforce that, if you will recall; and even an attempt to assassinate former President Bush. Add to this the regime's vast human rights

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abuses which really only came to light after we were able to liberate Iraq.

   In other words, absent any statement or specific piece of intelligence, the case against Saddam Hussein was already made by Saddam Hussein himself and this was before, as I said, we found the mass graves of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

   Our colleague Senator Kerry summed it up well at the time. He said this:

   I believe the record of Saddam Hussein's ruthless, reckless breach of international values and standards of behavior is cause enough for the world community to hold him accountable by the use of force, if necessary.

   I want to quote that again:

   I believe the record of Saddam Hussein's ruthless, reckless breach of international values and standards of behavior is cause enough for the world community to hold him accountable by use of force, if necessary.

   There is no suggestion here we had to find weapons of mass destruction, or even necessarily that we had to believe those weapons existed at the time, even though, as I said, we all did, based upon the intelligence at the time, but that this gross violation of human rights was, in and of itself, a sufficient casus belli.

   Given the same causes and information, what then accounts for the differences between the actions of the Bush and Clinton administrations? Very simply, the Bush administration made a decision that, post 9/11, it was too dangerous to allow American security to rest in the hands of an international organization that, after 12 years, had failed to enforce its own resolutions demanding Iraqi compliance with the 1991 Gulf war cease-fire. It was too dangerous to allow a regime to stay in place which had demonstrated a clear intent to develop weapons of mass destruction, had ongoing ties to terrorist organizations, and whose leader made it abundantly and routinely clear the United States was his enemy.

   We needed to begin the process of changing the facts on ground in the Middle East.

   In fact, it was, in part, the very uncertainty that made dealing with Saddam Hussein an urgent matter.

   As Senator Kerry explained before his vote in favor of the authorization to use force:

   In the wake of September 11, who among us can say, with any certainty, to anybody, that those weapons might not be used against our troops or against allies in the region? Who can say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction even greater--a nuclear weapon--then reinvade Kuwait, push the Kurds out, attack Israel, any number of scenarios to try to further his ambition to be the pan-Arab leader or simply to confront in the region, once again miscalculate the response, to believe he is stronger than those weapons?

   And while the administration has failed to provide any direct link between Iraq and September 11, can we afford to ignore the possibility that Saddam might accidentally, as well as purposely, allow those weapons to slide off to one group or other in a region where weapons are the currency of trade? How do we leave that to chance?

   While we have not and may not find these weapons stockpiles, the case against Saddam Hussein is not diminished. His was a threat that needed to be dealt with.

   The third and final point, the jury is still out as to what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and when. It is an intelligence failure--a lack of knowledge, not an attempt to mislead people--that we don't know the answer to that question. Presumably, some day we will find out or at least come closer to the resolution of the issue. Perhaps some day we will find some of the weapons, or maybe we will find evidence they were destroyed or removed before the war. There is no way now to know.

   But one fact is certain. What we know is that at one time Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. Saddam Hussein admitted it and the entire world believed it. What is more, that Saddam used those weapons against Iran and against the Iraqi Kurds will remain forever etched in our minds.

   I point to simply one picture among many which we can present to remind us of the fact that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and used them--in this case, against his own people. Who will forget the picture of this Kurdish mother with arms wrapped around baby, both dead, as a result of Saddam Hussein's perfidy--the use of his chemical weapons.

   Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

   Mr. KYL. I am happy to yield for a question.

   Mr. McCONNELL. Is it not correct that was one issue upon which everyone was in agreement prior to the Iraq war, the French, the Germans, the Russians, the British, ourselves, the United Nations, the world in its entirety? The one thing they agreed on prior to the Iraq war was the point the Senator from Arizona was just making.

   Mr. KYL. Mr. President, if we didn't agree on anything else--and there were some issues we agreed on--all of the countries mentioned, all of the intelligence services mentioned by the Senator from Kentucky, in fact agreed on that point.

   Among other things, they agreed because they read the documentation provided to the United Nations by Saddam Hussein in which he admitted he had biological and chemical weapons stockpiles. We knew he had used them. He said he had them. The question now is, What happened to them between sometime in the late 1990s, maybe right up to a week or two before the Iraqi war, and the time we were able to go in after the Iraqi war in search of them since we haven't yet found large stockpiles? We found some things. We certainly found missiles. We have found the programs to reconstitute the chemical weapons program and the biological weapons program. But what we thought we were going to find was a lot of artillery shells filled with chemical munitions and some mortars and things of that sort. We thought they were going to be used against our troops. That we haven't yet found. That is a mystery. You can say it is an intelligence failure, but as the Senator from Kentucky pointed out, nobody disagreed with the proposition that at one time he had those weapons. There is a lot of evidence to that fact.

   Mr. McCONNELL. So if there were any effort to mislead the public, an awful lot of countries were complicit in this effort, were they not?

   Mr. KYL. If there was an effort to mislead, there would

   have been a lot of countries complicit and a lot of Senators complicit. I don't believe for a minute that, in fact, any of us attempted to mislead; that Jacques Chirac attempted to mislead, that the United Nations, or President Bush attempted to mislead. We were all going forth with the same intelligence. We all reached the same conclusion.

   Maybe we don't know yet, but at some point in the last few months or years Saddam Hussein buried, sent to Syria, blew up, or otherwise got rid of those weapons. We just do not know. But about their existence at one time, there can be no doubt.

   Mr. McCONNELL. I thank my friend from Arizona.

   Mr. KYL. I thank the Senator very much. The Senator made the last point I wanted to make in this regard, and then I will conclude my remarks.

   We were briefed every day of the war at 9 o'clock in an area here in which we can receive classified briefings by the general in charge of the operation at the Pentagon and representatives of the CIA, the Defense Department, State Department, and others. Every morning they checked several boxes to remind us of the status of the open relationship.

   Before the operation started, they told us about their belief that Saddam Hussein would lob artillery shells with chemical munitions at our troops. They pointed out that they were going to make efforts to try to prevent this from happening. They called it the ``red line'' around Baghdad. When we got that close, then there would be this threat of chemical weapons fired against our troops--maybe biological.

   So before the war, they began the bombardment on the command and control systems that would send the orders out to the generals in the field. They bombed artillery sites hoping to destroy their artillery weapons. They bombed the warehouses where they thought the munitions might be stored. They dropped millions of leaflets warning that if any officer carried out an order to use these weapons against the allied forces we would hold them accountable as war crime criminals.

   As our troops got closer to that red line, they had to don the equipment

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that would protect them against these munitions. It was not easy to fight under those conditions, but we believed this attack could very well occur.

   We got to the Baghdad Airport. By that briefing, the generals were scratching their heads saying: We are not sure why, but we haven't been attacked with these artillery shells. Yet maybe it is because we destroyed the artillery units that would have fired them. Maybe they just got scared because of our leaflets or they couldn't issue the orders. We are not sure. But for some reason they didn't fire them. For several days, they continued to wonder about that.

   My point is this: At the highest levels, our troops and our leaders at the Department of Defense all believed this was a threat that could well materialize against our troops. They went to great lengths to try to protect against it. This was not a matter of somebody misleading the American people. We believed it, our troops believed it, the generals believed it, and the Defense Department believed it. And, yes, the President believed it. Nobody was trying to mislead anyone. We based a lot of our actions on this belief.

   Let me conclude my remarks by saying this: Much has been made of David Kay's acknowledgment that all of the intelligence agencies apparently were wrong about the weapons

   stockpiles. But listen to what David Kay said as he reflected on the decision to go to war:

   I think at the end of the inspection process we'll paint a picture of Iraq that was far more dangerous than even we thought it was before the war. It was a system collapsing. It was a country that had the capability in weapons of mass destruction areas and in which terrorists, likes ants to honey, were going after it.

   Kay stated on numerous occasions that Saddam Hussein was in clear material breach of Security Council Resolution 1441. The Iraq Survey Group, of which he was head, discovered hundreds of cases of activities that were prohibited under the original United Nations cease-fire resolution and that should have been but were not reported under Resolution 1441.

   The group found a prison laboratory complex which may have been used in human testing of biological agents. It found ``reference strains'' of biological organisms which can be used to produce biological weapons. It found new research on agents applicable to biological weapons, including the Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever. It found continuing research on ricin and aflatoxin. It also found plants and advanced design work on new missiles with ranges well beyond what was permitted.

   Not just the words of Resolution 1441 but the entire credibility of the U.N. was at stake. The years of Iraqi violations had to come to an end. Now that awful and bloody regime has come to an end.

   In the final analysis, whatever the inaccuracies of specific pieces of intelligence, that Saddam Hussein continued to harbor intentions for the development and use of WMD remains true. The observations of David Kay, once again, showed this. He reported earlier this year that Iraq ``was in the early stages of renovating the nuclear program, building new buildings.''

   This is the regime that, as I said, David Kay called ``far more dangerous than even we thought. To wait any longer to remove it would have been a gamble not worth taking.''

   I yield to the Senator from Kentucky.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Murkowski). The Senator from Kentucky.

   Mr. McCONNELL. I thank the Senator from Arizona and appreciate so much his contribution to this important discussion about the war in Iraq and how we got into it and what people understood at the time.

   It has occurred to me there is a criminal analogy that summarizes the debate we seem to be having. So let's pose a hypothetical question to all of our fellow Senators. Say the FBI has received a credible tip that a domestic terrorist group is planning to bomb the Capitol. This group is responsible for previous deadly terrorist attacks, we know that, but has been able so far to avoid capture. When the FBI breaks down the door to the group's rural compound, they find all sorts of prohibited weapons--machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, and grenade launchers. They also find detailed plans to gun down lawmakers, diagrams of the Capitol, and information on how to construct a large bomb capable of destroying the Capitol Building. But they do not find the bomb itself or any grenades or the grenade launchers. They found all of the other things, but they did not find the bombs themselves or the grenade launchers.

   Should the FBI apologize to the terrorists and offer to replace their door, even though they just caused the apprehension of the terrorists? Since they had yet to construct the bomb, should the terrorists go free? Should we fret that we acted before the bomb was ready, even though the terrorists' intent to attack the Capitol was absolutely clear?

   The answer is obviously and definitely no; we should not wait until terrorists roam our streets before responding. We should not wait until the planes have been hijacked or until the bombs have been assembled. We should not have waited until Hussein's army once again stood ready at the border. We should not have waited until the threat he posed to the United States and its allies was imminent. We should not have waited for the French to say it was OK to act to defend the free world.

   Some seem to suggest that even though we know Saddam Hussein continued to develop ballistic missiles prohibited by the U.N., our military effort was illegitimate because we have not yet found WMD warheads or the missiles. I can confidently state that Saddam's ballistic missiles were not for the Iraqi space program.

   On another note, I am fairly confident that the Iraqi people do not believe for a minute that their liberation is any less legitimate because we have yet to find stockpiles of WMD. I raise this simple analogy because the fundamental questions about our policy in Iraq are fairly basic. The crux of the matter is that Saddam Hussein posed a growing threat to the United States, to our allies, and to his own people. There is no doubt that Iraqis and Americans alike are better off now that Saddam Hussein is in prison and his evil sons have met their end.

   Now it occurs to me, we have also lost sight of the moral dimension that accompanied our liberation of Iraq. I represent in my State Fort Campbell, KY, the home of the 101st Airborne. I followed their efforts in that country very closely. This is the unit whose brave soldiers brought to justice Usay and Quday Hussein. The 101st Airborne got them. My colleagues are surely not unaware of how vile these two murderers were and how deserving they were of the tow missiles that ended their brutish lives.

   In case we have forgotten that, let me recount a little

   bit of their evil legacy. According to many reports, Usay Hussein routinely ordered his bodyguards to snatch young women off the streets so that he could rape them. He also ordered political prisoners to be dropped into tubs of acid to punish them. Usay was also in charge of Iraq's olympic committee where he oversaw the training of that country's professional athletes. Usay's training regimen included torturing and jailing athletes for poor performance. Usay would sometimes force Iraq's track stars to crawl along a strip of newly poured asphalt, and once required soccer kickers to kick a concrete ball until their feet were broken after they failed to reach the 1994 World Cup finals. This was Usay Hussein.

   Although it is difficult to think of an individual more brutal and evil than Usay Hussein, his brother, Quday, who was known by many Iraqis as ``the snake'' for his blood thirsty manner, surely comes close. Quday was responsible for the massacre of tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims in the wake of the first gulf war. Maybe some of our colleagues have forgotten about the marsh Arabs who live in southern Iraq. These Iraqis used to live in the Iraqi wetlands that covered nearly 3,200 square miles. They had lived in these marshes for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years until Quday ordered them drained in a massive ethnic cleansing operation. Quday was also responsible for horrible cleansings of Hussein's prisons.

   When Hussein's prisons became overcrowded, the regime did not build more jails or let prisoners go. Instead, Quday ordered mass executions in order to reduce overcrowding. A London-based

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human rights group reports that these unlucky prisoners were sometimes put feet first into massive shredders at Quday's request.

   We do not hear much about these awful crimes anymore, so maybe some of our colleagues have forgotten, if they ever knew, about the extent of the Hussein family's brutality. I highlight their brutality in order to ask a serious question about the reality of the international system in the absence of American action. Does anybody seriously believe that had the 101st Airborne not banged down their door, Usay and Quday would have been brought to justice? Of course they would not have. Without the 101st Airborne going after them, they would not have been brought to justice. Absent U.S. leadership, I cannot imagine a situation in which the U.N. would have been able to arrange for the apprehension and trial of the Hussein family.

   Had the United States not acted in Iraq, who could say with any confidence that Usay and Quday would not this very day be raping young Iraqi girls and torturing Iraqi dissidents. Of course they would still be doing that. That is what they did.

   Had the United States not acted in Iraq, could anyone say with any confidence that Saddam would not be plotting our doom, that his sons would not be torturing the Iraqi people, and that his regime would not be preparing to rebuild the WMD infrastructure we all have agreed Hussein once had?

   In conclusion, Madam President, it is more than enough to justify the war in Iraq and the liberation of the Iraqi people.

   I yield the floor.

   Mr. KYL. Madam President, I know the majority leader wishes to speak next; and then I know the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee is here as well. I now yield to Majority Leader Frist.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

   Mr. FRIST. Madam President, I just want to share with my colleagues some recent experiences I had in meeting with Kurdish physicians not too long ago in my office, not too far from here, because it relates so dramatically to the debate and to the unfolding of many of the questions that seem to be raised today.

   I should really begin by saying in my home State of Tennessee there are a number of Kurdish residents who live, who reside particularly in the area of Nashville where I am from. I have had the opportunity to meet with them and to listen to their concerns and have had the opportunity to support a project called the Health Partnerships With Northern Iraq, which is a project that is sponsored by the Meridian International Center here in the District, with the support of the State Department. It is a fantastic program, it is a great program, the purpose of which is to train Kurdish doctors in northern Iraq to do primary care; that is, basic care. It is probably 90 percent of health care in terms of responding to individual needs of families and individuals.

   What is interesting is these doctors, for a period of time, spent a few weeks, and then months, of their training in this country in primary care, and part of that time was spent in Tennessee at East Tennessee State University.

   Last January, I met with this group of Kurdish doctors in my office, just down the hall. They came to me as a physician, as a doctor, and also as majority leader, but they came to me with very specific concerns. They shared with me that they knew the war to topple Saddam Hussein was near, and they were concerned--these are Iraqi physicians--that they would be attacked with chemical and biological weapons. Their concern, as I will share with my colleagues shortly, was based on practical experience, experiences they have firsthand knowledge of, in terms of being with people who had suffered from attacks.

   But at the time when they were in my office, they came to me because they said: We are simply unprepared to be practicing primary care in our homeland in northern Iraq. They were in a region of about 6 million individuals, which had 240 primary care centers, but they had very few supplies. They had only the very most rudimentary needs in terms of treatment. They had no personal protective equipment in terms of biological contaminants or chemical weapons. They had no ability to contain or even treat victims of a chemical or biological attack. They had little time for the intensive training they knew they would need in order to respond to such a biological or chemical attack. Yet they came to my office very specifically asking for help.

   Dr. Ali Sindi, the delegation leader, asked for basic supplies. He asked for medical supplies and some help with acquiring medical supplies, coming to the majority leader, but also coming to a physician. He asked for hydrogen peroxide. He asked for bleach. Hydrogen peroxide and bleach, as most people know today, are used to decontaminate affected areas from biological or chemical weapons. He asked for gas masks. He asked for chemical suits. He asked for antibiotics in the event there was a biological attack.

   He noted--and, again, it was a group of Kurdish physicians--he told me the Kurdish water systems are generally open to the air and, a lot of times, sitting on the rooftops of the villages there. So he, concerned about chemical and biological attacks, said: And in addition, what I need is some kind of protection for these rooftop water systems.

   Their fear--these doctors' fear, the doctors from Iraq--was not based on intelligence briefings. Their fear was based on experience. Their fear was based on reality. Their fear was based on what they had seen, and their fear was based on what they had actually treated; that is, chemical weapons, weapons of mass destruction.

   As the Senator from Arizona knows, the Kurds had been attacked by chemical weapons before, most notably in the city of Halabja. There, thousands of innocent Kurds were killed with weapons of mass destruction, these chemical weapons. These doctors from that region had come to see me. They had treated victims of that particular attack. They know from that direct experience what chemical weapons, weapons of mass destruction, can do. These doctors believed, obviously, the Kurds were going to be attacked with chemical weapons once again. They asked from me and from our Government, through me, for that help to be prepared.

   At this juncture, I ask the Senator from Arizona, in light of these doctors' past, direct experience with weapons of mass destruction--these chemical weapons--does the Senator agree the Kurds were acting reasonably when they, with this direct experience, believed Saddam Hussein possessed and intended to use weapons of mass destruction; namely, the chemical weapons they had seen and had experience with being used before?

   Mr. KYL. Madam President, I would answer the question this way: It is easy for us, in this sort of antiseptic environment of the Senate, to talk about these matters. But I was moved by the story of these Kurdish doctors, who saw it with their own eyes. I cannot imagine how they would not believe, and why we should not think it reasonable they would believe, Saddam Hussein would do this again, that he had every intention to, every capability of doing it again.

   When I look at this picture, I think of the words of Secretary Powell when he visited Halabja and saw what occurred there and basically vowed the United States would never, ever again allow something like that to happen if he could do anything about it. It made me proud. It made me recommitted to the proposition that when we know something like that is going on, or we believe it to be the case, like these Kurdish doctors did, we have a duty to do something about it.

   I absolutely agree with the Senator.

   Mr. FRIST. I thank the Senator from Arizona.

   Again, these physicians who came to see me from Iraq had seen with their own eyes these chemical weapons having been used before. They had come--and this is just last January--to me to say: We need help to protect ourselves and our communities from the use of these biological and chemical weapons.

   Is the Senator aware many of the critics of the war to topple Saddam Hussein seem to suggest there was never cause to be concerned with Saddam Hussein? In fact, if you listen closely to the critics, they go so far as to imply there was never a threat at all.

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   Is the Senator from Arizona familiar with the details of one of the most horrendous examples of Saddam's brutality, the 1988 massacre of Kurdish civilians in the village of Halabja? Indeed, at the time, 50,000 Kurds lived in the village of Halabja, a city that is very close to the Iranian border. They had already suffered immeasurably from the 8 years of conventional war between Iraq and Iran. But for Saddam Hussein, that was not enough.

   On March 16, 1988, the Iraqi regime launched an artillery attack against Halabja, driving the residents of the city there underground. They went to these underground shelters and to the basements for protection from this overhead attack. But that is when the real, true terror began. Iraqi helicopters then came in with planes, and they came back once again, but this time with chemical weapons. The chemical weapons were all carefully documented--nerve gas, VX, mustard gas--all weapons of mass destruction, which were aimed at these buildings, these cellars, all of a sudden turning these cellars in which the Kurds were hiding into gas chambers. They fled, of course, gathering their families, exposed, running for their lives.

   Graphic evidence showed the results of Saddam's use of weapons of mass destruction. The Senator from Arizona just showed that picture with the question: No weapons of mass destruction?

   It reminds me so dramatically of what one survivor relayed at the scene:

   People were dying all around. When a child could not go on, the parents, becoming hysterical with fear, abandoned him. Many children were left on the ground by the side of the road. Old people as well. They were running. Then they would stop breathing and die.

   Experts agree over 5,000 innocent citizens died as a result of the chemical weapons attack. These were weapons of mass destruction used on Halabja. Again, those physicians in my office told me these stories. Other survivors had scarring of the lungs, something called fibrosis of the lung, where the lung becomes nothing but a fibrous scar. Others were blinded permanently. The consequences of this cruelty continue to this day, and indeed these physicians continue to treat the residual effects of people in that Kurdish community. Chemicals contaminated the food and water supply. The chemicals caused cancer. The chemicals caused those respiratory diseases like fibrosis. They caused infertility and high levels of severe abnormalities in Halabja's children.

   Christine Gosden, a British professor of medical genetics, traveled to northern Iraq in 1998 to study the effects on the Kurdish population of the poison gas unleashed on them. She founded the Halabja Medical Institute and discovered the consequences of the chemical weapons attack were even more damaging than she expected. She wrote in the Washington Post:

   What I found was far worse than anything I had suspected--devastating problems occurring 10 years after the attack. These chemicals seriously affected people's eyes and respiratory and neurological systems. Many became blind. Skin disorders, which involve severe scarring are frequent, and many progress to skin cancer. An increasing number of children are dying each year of leukemias and lymphomas.

   The Halabja Medical Institute, in its research on the attacks, discovered something even more vicious. Its conclusions noted:

   While these weapons had many terrible direct effects, such as immediate death, or skin and eye burns, Iraqi government documents indicate they were used deliberately for known long-term effects, including cancers, birth defects, neurological problems, and infertility. Inexpensive in terms of death per unit cost, there is evidence that these weapons were used in different combinations by Baath forces attempting to discern their effectiveness as weapons of terror and war.

   Yes, Saddam's regime conducted experiments using chemical weapons on innocent Kurdish civilians. These are Kurdish civilians in his own country. Experimenting. The Kurdish physicians told me--it is to vivid in my mind--that in buildings like hotels with different wings, single floors, people would be herded and placed into these rooms; one wing would be to test VX gas on humans, killing them, and another wing would be mustard gas, and there would be another gas in a third wing, to see which was more effective.

   Iraqi soldiers even went so far as to return to the town after that attack in Halabja to study how efficient, how effective those chemicals weapons were, using the number of people who died as a measure of success.

   I want to ask the Senator from Arizona another question. Does the Senator from Arizona have any doubt in his mind that Saddam would continue to develop and use such weapons at the first possible opportunity?

   Mr. KYL. Madam President, I will answer in a couple of different ways. First of all, I served on the Intelligence Committee for 8 years, and I was convinced, based upon the intelligence estimates provided to us over that period of time, these weapons were possessed, they had been used, and they would likely be used again if he had the opportunity to do so, and that there were weapons programs ongoing within the country of Iraq. So I don't have any doubt, as the Senator has so eloquently pointed out here, that the Kurds, who he referred to and spoke with, were absolutely right that these kinds of attacks would occur again.

   I wondered whether I was alone in this and, of course, in looking, I found that I was not. Let me note two or three things colleagues have said. Then I will turn to Senator Hatch. But I note that in 1998, long before President Bush came to town, President Clinton had come to the same conclusion, based upon the intelligence that had been provided to him by the intelligence agencies. A couple things struck me and then I will move on. He said:

   Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: he has used them, not once but repeatedly.

   That is the point the leader made.

   Unleashing chemical weapons against Iranian troops ..... against civilians, firing Scud missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Iran ..... even against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq.

   I also found it interesting that in December of 1998, in an Oval Office address, President Clinton said this, and I take just one sentence:

   I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.

   That was the President of the United States responding to the intelligence he was given. I know some colleagues have said the current administration hasn't qualified the intelligence enough. They have not said we think or we judge. They said we are pretty sure. Here is President Clinton staying, ``I have no doubt today.'' That is not caveated or qualified.

   Then several members of his cabinet--I looked at what they had to say. Madeleine Albright, the distinguished Secretary of State, said:

   I think the record will show that Saddam Hussein has produced weapons of mass destruction, which he's clearly not collecting for his own personal pleasure, but in order to use. Therefore, he is qualitatively and quantitatively different from every brutal dictator that has appeared recently.

   That is her judgment.

   Secretary of Defense William Cohen talked about Secretary Albright, indicating Saddam Hussein has ``developed an arsenal of deadly chemical and biological weapons. He has used these weapons repeatedly against his own people as well as Iran.''

   We are talking about an arsenal of weapons here. Here is the former Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration talking about that. He went on to say in this particular interview, which occurred at Ohio State University:

   I have a picture which I believe CNN can show on its cameras, but here's a picture taken of an Iraqi mother and child killed by Iraqi nerve gas. This is what I would call Madonna and child Saddam Hussein-style.

   That is the picture Secretary Cohen at that time displayed on the screen. He said:

   Now, the United Nations believes that he still has very large quantities of VX.

   VX is the nerve agent which is so deadly. As Dr. Frist knows, a single drop can kill you within a couple of minutes.

   Here is Secretary Cohen and Secretary Albright referring to the United Nations believing that he still has a large quantity of this product, the point being that everybody thought he had it.

   The United Nations thought he had it, Secretary Cohen thought he had it, Secretary Albright thought he had it, and President Clinton thought he had it.

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   I found it interesting that Senator Leahy, the distinguished ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, said in 1988--and he is right on target:

   If Saddam Hussein had nothing to hide, why would he have gone to great lengths to prevent U.N. inspectors from doing their job?

   That is a question we all asked.

   There is no doubt that since 1991, Saddam Hussein has squandered his country's resources to maintain his capacity to produce and stockpile chemical and biological weapons.

   The point is, a lot of our colleagues had no doubt and they said they had no doubt.

   Senator Kerry--I will make this the last quotation--in 1998 said:

   We do know that he had them--

   Referring to WMD--

   in his inventory, and the means of delivering them. We do know that his chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons development programs were proceeding with his active support.

   The bottom line is the distinguished majority leader is absolutely correct. But not only do we have reason, not only did those Kurdish physicians have reason to believe he had these horrible weapons and would use them again, so did the leaders of our country, including the leaders of the United Nations all throughout this period of time of 1996, 1998, right on up forward.

   Unless the distinguished majority leader has anything else, I yield at this point to the distinguished chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.

   Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I ask my colleagues on the floor just to think this through. I have been watching this debate about the threat of Iraq, frankly, since the early 1990s. I have been privileged to serve in this body since 1977, which means I have been here long enough to see the evolving trends in terrorism, from the Iranian revolution to the perversion of the Islamic faith and advent of fundamentalism. I also have been here through all the stages of relations with Iraq since the rise of Saddam Hussein.

   I recall the debate prior to the first gulf war. While certainly not absolutely partisan, that debate in 1990 was the last time we had a very partisan debate on foreign policy. Through the 1990s, while I had many disputes with the Clinton administration over various aspects of foreign policy, I seemed to recall that partisanship on the question of Iraq had diminished. In fact, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 was passed in this body unanimously and in the House overwhelmingly and was signed into law by President Clinton.

   I think my colleagues would have to agree with this. I would like to ask my colleagues if they agree with the following assessment: Since the fall of 2002, the debate over Iraq policy has become more and more partisan and more and more bitter. While the authorization to use force was passed by a large majority--I believe it was 77 to 23--and with the support of many of my Democratic colleagues, including some not present today, the debate since then has been troubling to me.

   You would think that Congress could maintain our proper role of oversight without descending into partisan attacks. You would think that with our military in the midst of a historic mission and over 500 American families grieving because their loved ones paid the ultimate sacrifice, that legitimate criticism could be expressed without partisan rancor or misleading rhetoric. You would think so.

   One of the most troubling aspects of the criticism of our President and his policy was the suggestion, deceivingly made, that the threat of Saddam Hussein was not imminent. I believe these criticisms beginning last year deliberately tried to confuse the American public. The threat was not imminent, the critics said, implying the response to go to war was not required.

   Yet I have reviewed most of the President's rhetoric, and I have concluded that he made numerous honest statements that declared that after the historic attacks of September 11, we would not be defining our response by outdated measures of imminence. I went back and read a key quote from the President's State of the Union Address in 2003 in which he declared to us, the American people, and to the world:

   Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions politely, putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.

   That is what he said, and it was right then, and it is right today. So will my colleagues recall this extremely clear statement? Do they think his words were casually

   stated? Give me a break.

   I have given a lot of thought to the concept of imminence since September 11, and as we debated our response to Iraq, I recognized that the definition of ``imminence'' is necessary to support a doctrine of preemption. I wonder what our various Senators' views about this are since the definition of ``imminence'' is different in the 21st century than it was in the 19th or the 20th centuries.

   During the debate over authorization of the use of force last year, I made the followi