Political Quotes

“with some reluctance, I come to the floor today to continue the discussions that were begun this morning about the Intelligence Committee's report that comes out today, called phase II. I am somewhat embarrassed to have to highlight the partisan divisions and sloppy work of the Intelligence Committee that was discussed here. Back in July of 2004, the Intelligence Committee completed an exhaustive 2-year study of the inadequacies of the intelligence pre- Iraq war. We looked at it. We had hundreds of interviews, brought people in, and looked at all of the documents. Our staff analyzed all of these items and interviewed people. We came to the conclusion that, despite what some people had said, the intelligence prior to the Iraq war was flawed. It wasn't a question of the administration pressuring analysts or the administration misusing intelligence. Those charges were made and they were very volatile. They were all dismissed because the intelligence was bad. We passed the bill out of committee unanimously. It was a true bipartisan work. It stands as a monument to what effective oversight could and should be. It helped reform the intelligence community, to make it better and improve the tradecraft of the analysts, and to inspire more working together. But today we have regressed significantly. What came out today as the phase II reports were, regrettably, highly partisan.”