Timothy Roemer: “we find ourselves here in the middle of the night voting on an emergency supplemental to help our brave Armed Forces…”

“we find ourselves here in the middle of the night voting on an emergency supplemental to help our brave Armed Forces fight and win a war because we were attacked; and 2,800 people, Americans, were killed in New York and at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. I have offered two amendments this evening on rules to try to get an amendment offered for an independent blue ribbon commission to look at what happened and why. I know we are going to win the war on terrorism, and I am so proud of the troops overseas. I know our intelligence community is going to continue to help us win this war and put people in jail overseas and freeze assets of the terrorists. But I think it is also so important for us to look back, figure out what went wrong, and move forward and fix the problems; not to create a political blame game, not to blame the Clinton administration or the Bush administration, but to fix what went wrong yesterday and make it right for tomorrow, so that we do not have 2,800 people lose their lives again. Eleven days after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt appointed a blue ribbon commission. The Senate is asking for an independent blue ribbon commission in a bipartisan way. Conservative Republican columnists like William Safire say that we need an independent commission. Let us move on it tomorrow. The Weekly Standard, a conservative Republican publication, says that we need one. So does George Will.”