Jon S. Corzine: “It seems to me it is absolutely essential we understand how the President of the United States can put those 16…”

“It seems to me it is absolutely essential we understand how the President of the United States can put those 16 words--which were in absolute conflict with the information that generally was available in the Intelligence Committee, if I read that properly--into the State of the Union Message of 2003 with regard to aluminum tubes and with regard to uranium and then later the whole discussion, particularly Secretary Powell's presentation to the U.N. of the use of aluminum tubes. This was also in very strong contradiction to much of the information that is now available. We could go on, with unmanned aerial vehicles and a whole series of other issues. So somehow or another there were disputes about the response that one should make with regard to collection and analysis of data. And that gets at the fundamental question of how did we use or misuse the intelligence that was presented. To not come up with an answer that is credible to the American people, credible to policymakers in this body, and credible to our allies and the world community is a failure of leadership on our part. It becomes absolutely essential that any independent commission needs to deal with the use, not just the collection and analysis.”