Bill Delahunt: “I do not know if you saw ``Meet the Press'' this last Sunday, but again the Vice President refuted the need that was…”

“I do not know if you saw ``Meet the Press'' this last Sunday, but again the Vice President refuted the need that was expressed by the Army Chief of Staff, General Shinseki, that several hundred thousand troops were necessary to bring stability. We have what would appear to be a position that is intransigent, that is in denial, if you will. If I can for just one moment bring something up that I found particularly ironic, Secretary of State Colin Powell this past week visited Halabja, which is where some 5,000 Kurdish Iraqis lost their lives because of the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein. The Secretary asserted that in this little farming town nestled in Iraq's barren northern mountains, this was ample evidence that former President Saddam Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction and justified, and justified the U.S. decision to go to war. That occurred in 1988 and it was despicable. And what should have occurred was the international community should have responded at that point in time, convened a war crimes tribunal, affected the arrest of Saddam Hussein and brought him to justice for that.”