Political Quotes

“I want to pick up where the Senator from Arizona left off. What has changed that would lead us to have another debate on a resolution authorizing force? Since the last time we debated this issue here on the Senate floor, I do not know if the Senator from Arizona has any thoughts as to what sort of things have changed. The only thing I can think of which has changed is we have had weapons inspectors in the country and those weapons inspectors have been deceived. We did not have weapons inspectors in the country at the time we were debating this resolution in September of last year. The only thing I can think of is the Senator from Massachusetts and others who wanted to debate this issue wanted to make the point that, Well, weapons inspectors haven't found anything, and maybe that has changed. Remember, they weren't in the country in the first place. We didn't find anything in the first place when the U.N. took as a given that he had these weapons of mass destruction. It was simply a matter of what he was going to declare and what he had done with them. He still hasn't. From my perspective, I haven't seen any change. We knew he had these weapons. The President detailed them the other night. He hasn't disclosed what he has done with these weapons, which is pretty status quo. When we were debating in September, we had had weapons inspectors who had been given the opportunity to determine where these weapons were, and Saddam Hussein had not cooperated.”