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Hinchey Votes No-
This resolution, which is intended to further divide the Congress and the American people, disingenuously lists Saddam Hussein's many offenses as the reasons why the United States attacked Iraq. In fact, as we all remember, the main reasons for war given by the president and his allies were the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction alleged to be present in Iraq and the alleged alliance between Saddam Hussein and the perpetrators of the September 11th attacks. All of the evidence now indicates that both of these dangers were fictional.
One of the war justifications listed by the resolution is Saddam's 1998 use of chemical weapons, which resulted in the deaths of 5,000 Kurds. President Bush and his advisors have frequently used this rationalization once it became clear that the reasons they gave us before the war were without foundation. But these same advisors worked in both the Reagan and first Bush administrations to increase aid, cooperation, trade and intelligence sharing with Iraq after the gassing was known to have taken place.
The Republican resolution also asserts that the United States and the world are safer because of the removal of Saddam's regime. The danger Saddam purportedly posed to the United States was his possession of WMD and his link to al Qaeda. Both have been shown to be phantoms. So how can we have been made safer from a threat that never existed? Indeed, our terrorism alert level was raised by the Department of Homeland Security following Saddam's capture. While the alert status has since returned to its pre-capture status, it is still no lower than it was before the war began. So the Bush Administration itself acknowledges that we are no safer.
This resolution is a piece of political damage control and revisionist history. The president's allies know that the world now sees through his misleading and deceptive methods of winning support for his war. Through this legislative measure they seek to erase the administration's misdeeds from the record. We must not allow them to succeed.
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