Next year I am going to be watching. I am going to be tuning in. I know my colleagues will be fighting the good fight as they have been for the last year and a half. I wanted to comment upon your views, that what is virtually a purely…

What enrages me is that the American politicians who whip themselves up into a foaming rage over the notion that someday, somehow, someway American troops might be under foreign generals' command in a U.N. peacekeeping force or something…

It has always been clear that we need to internationalize the challenge in Iraq, and we need to 'Iraqatize' the challenge in Iraq. We need international support from what is happening. I do not believe this President can do it. But from…

I agree with the gentleman. Clearly we share the President's goals of creating a stable Iraq that can choose its own government. But the policies that he has chosen and the rigidity in which he has implemented those policies and the…

The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is absolutely right about this. And one of the important reasons that we are talking about the mistakes that were made is to make sure that it does not happen again. We do not want history to repeat…

This may be a breakthrough tonight. We have, through the 15 months that we have been handling the Iraq Watch duties on the floor, talked about how we would love to be joined by our Republican colleagues in a good-faith discussion about…

I wanted to respond to a couple things the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) said. I think he said that we were suggesting George Bush has been asleep at the switch in Iraq. That is not at all what we have been suggesting here. President…

This is not a challenge. It is an invitation. In any event, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for talking about the whole question of whether or not the connection exists between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, a connection that the…

But, Mr. Speaker, I must tell my colleague that not everybody was being conned. The CIA saw through Chalabi, the State Department saw through Chalabi, and yet the civilian leadership of the Pentagon did not.

We are at risk of losing in Iraq if we do not get security in that country. We all share the President's goals of creating a stable and peaceful Iraq with a representative self-government, hopefully a flourishing democracy. We all share…

it is not just that mistakes were made by American policymakers, and it is not just that Chalabi gave us bad information. The other part of the equation is that the ideologues in the civilian leadership, in the Pentagon and in the White…

I admire the fervor that my colleague from Washington has for pointing out the truth about the failings of Chalabi; but the point he just made is a lot more important, frankly, than the fun we are having piling on a guy like Chalabi, who…

Do not forget that the President sat Mr. Chalabi right behind Mrs. Bush in this year's State of the Union address, right up there in that balcony 4 rac{1}{2} months ago. There he sat in all his double-chinned glory, Ahmad Chalabi, directly…

just over a year ago at one of our first Iraq Watches, I recounted a visit that Mr. Chalabi paid to my office, as I think he did to most members of the Committee on International Relations in October 2002, just before the vote here in the…

If we just focus on the prison scandal for a minute and see the failures of leadership there... we cannot stay the course in Iraq. We have to change the course in Iraq.

we should have no more talk about resignations. We should not talk about Donald Rumsfeld resigning his office. We should not let him resign his office. He ought to be fired. He ought to be fired, and George Tenet ought to be fired. I do…

I am glad to be back on the House floor with my colleagues, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) and the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie), and I think others will join us, for another installment of Iraq Watch. We have…

I do not have a clue. Ahmed Chalabi and three others listed in the article are paying up to a combined $100,000 a month.

Before we get too carried away with Chalabi, let me just make the point that is in the Roll Call article. There were three others doing this. One of them is the favorite of the CIA to be the new Iraqi leader and a third the favorite of the…

we have talked quite a bit tonight about Ahmed Chalabi, and rightly so; but he is not apparently the only favorite of the American government involved in positioning themselves for leadership in Iraq. In today's Roll Call, one of the Hill…

I identified Mr. Chalabi in the words that my grandfather would have used as a four flusher. I have to explain what a four flusher is. A four flusher is a man whose word you cannot accept, and if it was good enough for my grandfather, it…

The favorite of the State Department is Adnan Pachachi, who is another member of the current interim government in Iraq as Chalabi is. And, according to Roll Call, the favorite of the CIA is Ayad Allawi, also a member of the Iraqi…

Yes. All the firms are identified, the monthly retainers. It is an interesting article. It is a million-dollar industry.

there is something else troubling about this. The gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) is correct and he is right to be personally offended by the lack of disclosure. And it is also clear from this article that a lot of money is being…