Sam Gejdenson: “I rise to oppose this funding. What is clear here, Mr. Speaker, is that the only thing select about this committee is…”

“I rise to oppose this funding. What is clear here, Mr. Speaker, is that the only thing select about this committee is the selective memory it takes to bring us to this point. In Iran-Contra, Mr. Speaker, we were talking about criminality. In the 4 years prior to President Clinton's presidency we had mass executions of policy that did nothing to stop murder in Yugoslavia, and yes, while Iranians were shipping weapons to the Muslims in Yugoslavia. We are going to spend $1 million, but if some of our colleagues on the other side had spent $1 for the Christian Science Monitor, or a quarter for the Washington Post or the Washington Times, they would have known about this a long time ago. October 28, 1992, President Bush is the President of the United States. Iran in particular has positioned itself at the forefront of this fight to defend Yugoslavia's Islamic minority. Arms shipments from Iran in 1992. What changed? A lot of things have changed. President Bush has gone, President Clinton has come in, and he has succeeded to stop the fighting, to stop the killing, to stop the liquidations of villages. What did he do to achieve this? No, he did not violate unilaterally the U.N. embargo that existed. He did not report to the Congress that he did not take an action. That action would have been to stop, somehow, the Iranians from shipping arms there.”