Neil Abercrombie: “I will be happy to do so. What we have discovered, we said if we can only get to those Iraqi scientists, they have the…”

“I will be happy to do so. What we have discovered, we said if we can only get to those Iraqi scientists, they have the answer, which was just what was going to happen with the U.N. inspectors. What did we find out when we got to those scientists? The scientists told us that they were destroying the weapons of mass destruction and that the program activity was destroying the weapons of mass destruction. That is what the activity was, and these scientists were doing it, and they had papers to show it. If we could just get to the papers of those Iraqi scientists, that would tell us what happened. Yes, they destroyed the weapons of mass destruction. What Saddam Hussein was doing, a ruthless lying dictator, was ruthlessly lying about what he was doing. He wanted to give the illusion that there were these weapons, because he wanted to give the illusion that he was some great and powerful dictator, and we were buying it. That is the problem here is that we are actually relying on the veracity of a lying, ruthless dictator. Maybe part of the reason for that is we have been relying on his goodwill all along anyway. If I have to hear one more time about weapons that were used on his own people, I would like to ask the President, was that before or after the Secretary of Defense in another capacity was congratulating him for it and getting his picture taken with him and shaking his hands?”