Dusty Johnson: “my concern today is not to lay blame for past decisions which now place every American family, every American community…”

“my concern today is not to lay blame for past decisions which now place every American family, every American community in very real jeopardy from these weapons of mass destruction and which now give rise to the clear possibility, if not great likelihood, of war in Iraq with its attendant costs in lives of combatants and innocent civilians alike. Rather, it is my concern that this Senate and this Nation clearly understand how we arrived at this point so that we might learn from our Nation's past tragic mistakes. As Mr. Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post writes: The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait--which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors--is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators.”