Bill Delahunt: “what I find particularly disturbing, and I think that the American people have reached, by a vast majority, the…”

“what I find particularly disturbing, and I think that the American people have reached, by a vast majority, the conclusion that many of us reached during the course of the debate on whether Congress should authorize the executive to attack Iraq militarily, and that is the case was never made, never made in terms of the existence of weapons of mass destruction. Neither was the case ever made in terms of a relationship or linkage between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, particularly as focused on September 11. There was no involvement by the Iraqi regime on September 11, and there never had been a significant relationship between al Qaeda and the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad. But what I find even more disturbing is that reluctance of the administration to let go of this myth. It is as if they so intensely embrace this belief that they are incapable from detaching themselves from that belief and accept reality. What I thought was particularly striking is that after the so-called major combat phase of the Iraq war, as it was announced by the President, and the inability of the existing forces to discover weapons of mass destruction, he created the so-called Survey Group, the Iraq Survey Group headed by a former U.N. inspector who was described as hawkish in his views in terms of whether there should have been or whether the United States was correct in invading Iraq. His name was David Kay.”