Political Quotes

“my committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, pleaded with the administration, month after month, beginning well over a year ago, to share with us plans for reconstruction. We got obfuscation upon obfuscation, a rosy scenario about oil revenues and being greeted as liberators, with most of our troops coming home by Christmas. When we really pressed--a certain word has worked its way into the lexicon of this administration--we were told the answer was ``unknowable.'' I have never heard that word used as many times anywhere, let alone by the administration. In fact, the problems and prescriptions of postwar Iraq were absolutely knowable. From the many hearings Senator Lugar and I convened over this year as well as the Armed Services Committee, and the work of our leading think tanks and policy experts from within the administration itself, thanks to the State Department Future of Iraq Project, whose detailed postwar plans were apparently ignored by the Department of Defense, much of this was knowable. We are paying a very high price for those mistakes now. I share the widespread dismay at the miscalculations of this administration. I share the shock of many that the reason the administration says it took us to war, weapons of mass destruction, no longer is of any apparent interest to the most senior administration officials.”