Byron Dorgan: “on Wednesday morning of this week, following a discussion and debate--and we had a fairly robust debate-- about the…”

“on Wednesday morning of this week, following a discussion and debate--and we had a fairly robust debate-- about the issue of Iraq and the war in Iraq, on Wednesday morning of this week, the President's Homeland Security Adviser, Frances Townsend, was on the ABC ``Good Morning America'' program, and she said some things about al-Qaida, about terrorists, that reminded me of a period several years ago, prior to the start of the Iraq war. It reminded me of being in a room where top secret, classified briefings are given to Members of Congress--briefings by the now Secretary of State, briefings by the Vice President, briefings by the head of the CIA. Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Tenet, Vice President Cheney, and others participated in these top secret briefings. They told us things in those top secret briefings leading up to the decision about the authorization to use force against Iraq. They told us things we now know not to have been true. Did they know that when they told us? I don't know. We now know, of course, that their claim that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire yellow cake from Niger for nuclear weapons was bogus. Their claim that he was acquiring aluminum tubes to reconstitute a nuclear threat was not accurate. Their claim that he had mobile chemical weapons labs was not accurate.”