Orrin Hatch: “I want to comment that anybody with brains, when they saw that Iraqi team and knew of the Iraqi team--of course, they…”

“I want to comment that anybody with brains, when they saw that Iraqi team and knew of the Iraqi team--of course, they could not say much about it until now--knew the Iraqi team had gone over to Niger, why else would they have spent the time? Niger had hardly any exportable products other than food, except for yellowcake uranium. Why would they waste their time going to Niger? I remember at the time thinking: This smells, this argument that the President has misused 16 words and that the CIA should be held totally responsible because those 16 words were wrong. And now we find they were not necessarily wrong. In fact, they were right. That smacks of this whole matter of partisanship with regard to the current Presidential race. We have our two colleagues on the other side who are now running for President and Vice President who voted for our actions in Iraq. At least one of them spoke out on how serious the actions of the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein were, voted for it, and now they are trying to weasel out because they voted against funding it, saying they wanted to get it done right. Well, that is a nice argument, except that we have well over 100,000 of our young men and women over there, and others as well, who are put at risk if we do not fund the effort once it has started.”