Madam President, I hold the
Senate seat of the late Wayne Morse. Senator Morse lost his job
in 1968, and many have attributed this loss to his outspoken opposition
to the Vietnam War. Yet Wayne Morse's election loss makes his words
from that era no less true today.
In a 1966 debate on the role of the
United States Senate with respect to the great issues of war and
peace, Senator Wayne Morse said:
"This is what the U.S. Senate is for.
It is what the Founding Fathers created the Senate to do -- take
the long-range view of actions prompted in national councils that
may be warped by some strong passion or momentary interest."
It is the long-term interest of our
country, Madam President, that Wayne Morse so presciently focused
on in 1966 and that leads me to outline the following conclusion
that I have made with respect to the Iraq resolution.
Madam President, Saddam Hussein is the
bad actor here and the United States of America is the good actor.
I believe the authorization of a unilateral, preemptive military
attack based on the information now available will cause much of
the world, unfortunately, to lose sight of this reality. This perception,
in a region wracked by poverty and already marked by a deep mistrust
in American foreign policy, could foster decades, possibly even
centuries of undeserved hatred of our great Nation that will threaten
our children and our grandchildren.
Protecting our children and grandchildren
after a unilateral, preemptive attack on Iraq will require a staggering
financial commitment from our national government. Given the pressing
financial needs here at home for public safety, for education, for
health, where are the funds going to come from after our nation
wins such an engagement with Iraq?
Protecting our children and grandchildren
after a unilateral, preemptive attack on Iraq will require an American
policy of energy independence, especially independence from Middle
East oil. We are a long way from there, and on some issues, such
as saving energy and the crucial transportation sector, it seems
that now we are now going backward.
Protecting our children and grandchildren
after a unilateral, preemptive attack on Iraq will require a plan
for rebuilding confidence among many of the countries that stood
with us during the Gulf War conflict, but do not stand with us today.
Many of those countries do not believe that diplomatic and other
steps have been fully exhausted. If our government can't convince
them of that, it is certainly going to be tough to restore faith
after a unilateral, preemptive attack.
For many weeks now, I have waited and
listened patiently, I believe, for the Administration to make its
case for this resolution before the Senate Intelligence Committee,
on which I serve. I believed then, as I believe now, that neither
partisan politics, nor the pressures of an anxious public, should
be factored into a decision of this magnitude.
Instead, I see my duty as an elected
representative of the great state of Oregon to listen, to inquire
dispassionately, and make the decision I believe to be in the best
interests of Oregon and this great country, and leave the judgment
to history and the voters as to whether I made that judgment in
the right way.
In approaching the decision about whether
to vote to authorize this military option, I laid out some criteria
on which to base my decision.
My criteria were: If our security agencies
were to provide me with compelling evidence of a significant threat
to our domestic security if Hussein's Iraq is not defeated militarily,
I would be willing to grant authority for the use of force. But
I was unwilling to give my approval for a first-strike, unilateral
attack until and unless there was
assurance under the resolution that, before such an attack, the
Administration has exhausted all other reasonable means to accomplish
our goals.
Second, I was convinced that it is essential
to have a workable plan to contain the situation if Iraq attacks
Israel and Israel enters the conflict.
And third, I am concerned that such
an attack will not make our nation less safe by setting us back
in our war on terrorism.
While the President has made a compelling
case -- I believe a sincere one -- regarding the danger posed by
Iraq under the rule of Saddam Hussein, his argument -- and I say
this respectfully -- does not meet the criteria I have laid out.
First, I am not convinced that Saddam
Hussein currently poses a clear and present threat to the domestic
security of our nation. While my service on the Senate Intelligence
Committee has left me convinced of Iraq's support of terrorism,
and suspicious of its ties to al Qaeda, I have seen no evidence,
acts, or involvement in the planning or execution of the vicious
attacks of 9/11. While Iraq has aided terrorism for many years,
there are any number of regimes who have aided terrorism, including
some with far more direct links to Osama bin Laden's network of
terror.
In this regard, I note the first conclusion
in the Central Intelligence Agency's declassified letter to Chairman
Bob Graham of Florida, dated October 7 of this year, which states
that at present Iraq does not appear to be planning or sponsoring
terrorism aimed at the United States.
Yet, had the Administration met this
threshold test, in my view, it has still not met the rest of what
I consider to be prudent criteria. While the President has stated
his desire to seek alternative means to accomplish his goals before
beginning a military strike, to grant the President the authority
to conduct a first-strike war before first witnessing the exhaustion
of those efforts is to abdicate the obligations of this body in
its most sacred role. The Founding Fathers surely envisioned a more
challenging inquiry when granting the Congress the responsibility
of authorizing armed conflict.
On my second point, while I am not privy
to the Administration's war plans, I am of the belief that the Administration
is not satisfactorily preparing for a potential enlargement of the
conflict with Israel or other allies. I am concerned this issue
has not been adequately addressed.
I do believe that the Administration
needs to outline in further detail how they would address issues
with respect to the enlargement of the conflict, and I want to make
clear I do not believe that point has been addressed clearly and
fully to date. The possibility this conflict would be enlarged with
an attack on Iraq to one that involves Israel is one I think needs
to be laid out and laid out clearly.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly
for my purposes, I reached the conclusion that pursuit of a first-strike
war, absent any credible sign that Saddam Hussein is preparing to
wage war against our Nation or other nations, will leave this Nation
less secure than before. I believe we have to look at greater length
at these key questions, and I do not believe that has been done
to date.
Saddam Hussein is an extremely dangerous
and extremely despicable man. Time and again, he has demonstrated
that to his enemies as well as his own people. He lives in a part
of the world where there is no shortage of dangerous and despicable
men who pose a threat to the security of the United States. In my
service on the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have not seen satisfactory
evidence he is any more despicable than the threat presented by
Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, for example.
By any calculus, the President's request
today to engage this country in a unilateral, preemptive attack
on Iraq is premature, and it is why I must oppose this resolution
at this time.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
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