Jerry Nadler: “last year the Bush administration misled and systematically lied to the American people and to this Congress about the…”

“last year the Bush administration misled and systematically lied to the American people and to this Congress about the reasons why it said it was necessary to go into war with Iraq. We know that what they said about weapons of mass destruction, about nuclear weapons, about the biological weapons, we know all this was not true. The only question now is when they knew it was not true. We now learn, Mr. Speaker, that the Bush administration misled this Congress deliberately and knowingly misled this Congress as to the cost of the Medicare bill by over $140 billion. We know that they threatened the actuary with being fired if he gave truthful information to Congress. Mr. Speaker, we depend on truthful information to have democracy. Martha Stewart faces jail time for lying to the government. When are we going to hold this administration accountable for lying to the American people and to this institution so that we cannot do our work properly because we are working on false information? When are we going to appoint an independent counsel to begin to demand honesty so that we can represent the American people properly?”