Political Quotes

“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 House on the war authority on Iraq. I talked to Mr. Chalabi for 10 or 15 minutes. He had an aide with him, and my chief of staff was with me. They left, and I turned to my aide and I said, That is the kind of man that my grandfather would have called a four-flusher. I do not think I have used that term since my grandfather died in the 1980s. I am not quite sure what it means. I think it must come from poker where a player has four cards for a flush, does not have the fifth, and you are all hot air and cannot be trusted and you are just a spin doctor. That is exactly the impression that I got from Ahmed Chalabi that day, that he was spinning. He was spinning me, he was spinning the Congress, he was not a man of substance and not someone we should trust. The sad fact is, as my colleagues have said here tonight, the administration trusted him. Paul Wolfowitz trusted him, Doug Faith, Donald Rumsfeld trusted him, and because those individuals trusted him, our President trusted him; and he is not worthy of our trust. As a matter of fact, I think we need to talk about all of this talk about resignations in the Department of Defense. I do not think we should allow those civilian authorities in the DOD the luxury of resigning.…”