John Tierney: “the fundamental issue before us on this resolution is whether or not this institution, the Congress, is going to…”

“the fundamental issue before us on this resolution is whether or not this institution, the Congress, is going to absolutely carry out its oversight responsibilities and demand that the executive branch provide to us materials we need to make reasonable determinations as to whether or not there is an extent of corruption in Iraq with respect to what is going on there, but also whether or not our State Department and other agencies are doing all they should do to build up the capacity of the Iraqi Government to be able to combat corruption. In December 2006, and again in July of 2007, the United States Embassy in Iraq produced two reports that weighed on those issues, corruption in the Iraqi Government, and would have shown us some capacity of whether or not the United States was doing enough about it. They were marked ``sensitive but unclassified.'' And they were widely distributed within the United States Government and they were even posted on the Internet. In September, the Oversight Committee requested copies of those two documents. But rather than provide them in their unclassified form, the State Department decided to retroactively classify them, in essence, keeping them from public view or from public debate.”