Jim Saxton: “This seems to me to be just what Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, was talking about when he said that the question…”

“This seems to me to be just what Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, was talking about when he said that the question really is when, on the one hand, the Iraqi Government says there are no biological or chemical or nuclear weapons, why then on the other hand will they not show us evidence to prove that? And the answer seems to me, in light of the Blix report, quite simple: these weapons really exist, and therefore they cannot prove that they do not. So I think that the answer to the question that my constituents and people that I talked to in other parts of the country over the break, the answer to the question is quite evident. The answer is that these weapons do exist, just as we have maintained for years, and in particular in the last month. So both Secretary Powell and Hans Blix in different words came to the same conclusion. Hans Blix says on this subject, 'In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these weapons exist.' We have assumed, based on evidence that was gathered by the Committee on Armed Services during the fall of this year, that they continue to exist.”