Joe Barton: “we all stand in this Chamber once every 2 years in January and hold up our right hands and take an oath to defend the…”

“we all stand in this Chamber once every 2 years in January and hold up our right hands and take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America and defend our great Nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That same Constitution that we swear an oath to defend gives the President of the United States the right to serve as Commander-in-Chief and to also conduct foreign policy. Today, our President has come before the Congress and asked us to support a resolution so that he can conduct foreign policy and that if he needs to serve as Commander-in-Chief, defend our Nation against an enemy who is both foreign and domestic. Because Saddam Hussein, as leader of Iraq, has engaged in terrorism, has sponsored terrorism, has said repeatedly that he wants to do the United States of America harm. Some would have us believe that we should not take Saddam Hussein at his word, that we can continue to use diplomatic means to try to get him to back away from developing biological weapons and chemical weapons and to get him to back away from calling the United States the Great Satan, things of this sort. It has not worked in the 11 years since we were last in the Middle East; there is no reason to expect that it would work today. But that is an option.…”