Ed Royce: “I understand that Saddam Hussein was very effective in maneuvering our inspectors out of Iraq and has not allowed in our…”

“I understand that Saddam Hussein was very effective in maneuvering our inspectors out of Iraq and has not allowed in our inspectors or any other inspectors for 4 years; and I also understand that during that 4-year time frame he has been developing not only chemical and gas weaponry, biological weaponry, but also nuclear weaponry. That is what I know. And I would commend to the gentlewoman to review our transcript of our hearing on this very subject. Reclaiming my time, I would just say there may be some debate among arms controls experts about exactly when Saddam will have nuclear capability, but there is no disagreement that Iraq, if unchecked, will have them soon and a nuclear-armed Iraq would alter forever the balance of power in the Middle East. I think there is very little doubt that Saddam, if he had an atomic bomb and with these stocks of biological and chemical weapons, might not use that for the purpose of power. Because when Jeffrey Goldberg talked about Saddam's past with the medical geneticist Christine Gosden, who has been there on the ground in Kurdistan working with Kurds, some 4 million of which are estimated to have been affected at one point or another by chemical attack, she said one thing. She said, please understand the Kurds were for practice. They were practicing with different types of chemical and biological weapons on the Kurdish population.”