PRESS RELEASE March 24, 2004

STATEMENT OF CONGRESSMAN GREGORY W. MEEKS

"Connecting the Dots"

(WASHINGTON, DC)

Immediate Release

The Dots of Deception Lead to the Oval Office

Washington, DC--March 24, 2004--Congressman Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY) a member of the International Relations Committee released the following statement today,"It was Abraham Lincoln who said, 'You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.' Until recently, the Bush Administration has fooled some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time on Social Security, Medicare, tax cuts, economic recovery, the No Child Left Behind Act, nation building, the war against terrorism, and most especially, the war in Iraq. The President has been able to do this because most Americans simply do not believe that the President of the United States would distort and deceive on such basic issues as war or the well-being of children and the elderly.

But, as two days of public hearings of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States gets under way, time for fooling the people may be running out. Of course, there are those Americans inside and outside of Congress who always questioned the veracity of the President's arguments for going to war. My hope is that the testimony at the hearings yesterday and today along with a series of widely publicized books and articles published in the last year or so the latest, Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies will enable the broader public to connect the dots to the truth. I believe they will see that the dots of deception lead straight to the Oval Office.

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

"We should commend those public servants who in the aftermath of 9/11-Patriot Act hysteria have put loyalty to country above loyalty to the President, risking their careers to shed light on the dark underside of George W. Bush's presidency. This lengthening list includes:

! The Minneapolis-based FBI agent who revealed that FBI field operatives tried to get higher ups to pay attention to individuals on the counter-terrorism watch list who (including several who later crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon) were in the United States taking flying lessons.

! The joint inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees that revealed serious lapses on the part of senior Administration and intelligence officials during the lead up to 9/11.

! John Wilson, a former ambassador, who disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium fuel in Niger, Africa. Wilson rejected the tales President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice were telling about Saddam's alleged nuclear weapons program. (As we now know, the White House retaliated by telling a journalist that Wilson's wife was a covert CIA operative.)

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

! David Kay, head of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, congressional testimony that no weapons of mass destruction had been found, that no weapons of mass destruction were likely to ever be found, and that frankly, the Administration and the intelligence community had it "all wrong."

! And now, Richard Clarke, a senior counter-terrorism official in the Reagan, Clinton, and both Bush administrations, who says immediately after 9/11 the President and other senior officials were focused more on finding a pretext for attacking Iraq than on finding Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Clarke quotes Defense Secretary Rumsfeld as saying, "There weren't any good targets to bomb in Afghanistan but plenty in Iraq." Mr. Clarke also contends that invading Iraq was a priority even before the President took office.

If what Clarke, Kay, O'Neill, and others have said is true, then it's fair to not only say "weapons of mass destruction" was hype, but also that every new explanation the Administration has given since it declared "an end to major operations" is part of a cover-up of a war of choice, not necessity. This is the context in which the public can connect the dots to the Administration's attempts to obstruct the joint congressional intelligence committee investigation of 9/11 and its belated cooperation and then only under the threat of subpoena with the independent commission investigating intelligence.

"The Bush presidency is a long ways down the road to putting the Nixon presidency to shame when it comes to contempt for truth and the integrity of the democratic process. Interviewed over the weekend, Richard Clarke said, "The tragedy here is that Americans went to their death in Iraq thinking that they were avenging September 11. I think for a commander in chief and a vice president to allow that to happen is unconscionable." That may not be as unconscionable as giving this President and this Administration a second term.

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