James M. Jeffords: “reluctantly, I am voting for this supplemental appropriations bill to provide funding for homeland defense and our…”

“reluctantly, I am voting for this supplemental appropriations bill to provide funding for homeland defense and our military campaign in Iraq. Like it or not, the war is on and we owe it to our men and women in uniform to provide them with the resources necessary to bring the war to a rapid and successful conclusion. We have known for more than a decade that Saddam has chemical and biological weapons, but there has been little concern that these weapons pose a direct threat to the United States. Since coming to office, this administration has raised the specter that Iraq also has been developing nuclear weapons capable of causing great harm to the United States. It has focused a great deal of America's intelligence assets on the question of Saddam's capabilities, yet the administration has not presented any evidence of an active nuclear program. In fact, one of the key pieces of evidence provided to the United Nations by the administration turned out to be a forged document. Moreover, International Atomic Energy Agency experts rejected the administration's assertion that the aluminum tubing in Iraq's possession was evidence of a nuclear program. Two months of intrusive inspections by U.N. inspectors turned up no additional evidence of new Iraqi possession or production of weapons of mass destruction. In the end, the administration has failed to demonstrate that possession of such weapons by Iraq would pose an imminent threat to the United States.”