Gregory Meeks: “Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, nobody is defending the Ayatollah. There is no love lost for a brutal government that…”

“Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, nobody is defending the Ayatollah. There is no love lost for a brutal government that sponsors terror and murders their people. Iran has been doing this for decades. Everybody knows that. So my question is this: Why wasn't Donald Trump in favor of regime change until this weekend? Why did he campaign on swearing he would never send American kids to fight and die in the Middle East? Republicans can't answer because they were against war with Iran until exactly the second Donald Trump decided to go to war. Now, they are all running around sounding like neocon lunatics. America can't take this level of gaslighting. I went to the classified briefing. There was no imminent threat, I guess unless Republicans want to redefine the word 'imminent' to mean stretching back 47 years. This whole thing is just so transparently built on lies. Republicans went from imminent threat to regime change to nukes back to imminent threat in the last 24 hours. I will tell you what this is, Mr. Speaker. This is Iraq 2.0. I still remember the lies about WMDs. I voted against that war, too. At least George Bush had the decency to lie to people's faces. By the way, no congressional vote can legitimize this because there was no imminent threat. There was no U.N. Security Council resolution. This war is illegal, no matter what you want to call it.”