The Vice President repeatedly tried to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11.

I'll follow up later. And please answer my letter on that.

No, we don't. And we should discuss this further.

Yeah, but we're not doing anything.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like a detailed report, and perhaps a briefing, of where that is.

Are you aware--are you, Mr. Secretary--aware of reports that Iraqi women detainees in U.S. custody were assaulted or raped?

You've said, and all have said, that we want the Iraqis to be able to take over----

Now, does the Pentagon--Mr. Secretary, does the Pentagon plan to maintain any permanent military bases or combat troops in Iraq?

Aren't we adding more billions to the deficit? More than the White House wants the American people to know about?

My point was that this--the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on these wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not in our budgets when we talk about the size of the budget.

You said it's beyond your pay grade. Well, unless you exclude the Commander in Chief, there's nothing beyond your pay grade in the Department of Defense; you're the Secretary of Defense, you're the one who's supposed to make that decision.

We gave unprecedented powers to the administration. I've never known any administration, Republican or Democrat, when the Congress has just said, 'Here, here's a blank check.'

Islamic extremists are using the Iraqi conflict to fuel Islamic resentment against the West and recruit new terrorists to attack Americans.

If we don't have a policy, doesn't that just strengthen the hands of the Iranian hardliners?

The Justice Department in the first Bush term was the least accountable Justice Department in my lifetime. Meaningful oversight and accountability were thwarted for years. We will be looking to see if Judge Gonzales intends to change that.

I think he was just having a bad day, and I was kind of shocked to hear that kind of language on the floor.

The administration has made it a practice to deny oversight cooperation to Congress. The stonewalling in the prison abuse scandal has been building to a crisis point.

Today, Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, is calling for congressional hearings on the controversy.

I'm sorry that some of our closest allies and friends... were alienated because they disagreed with our strategy of preemptive war.

the vast majority of our American men and women follow orders, do it very professionally, and make every single Member of the United States Senate proud.

I'm sorry that truth-tellers in the administration, like General Shinseki and Lawrence Lindsey, were hounded out of their job.

I'm sorry that someone in the administration 'gave currency to a fraud,' to quote George Will, by putting, in the President's State of the Union speech, that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

I'm sorry that those that tried to find the truth about allegations of prison abuse in Iraq... were ignored.

I'm sorry that this administration repeatedly, insistently, and unrelentingly justified preemptive war by insisting that Saddam Hussein not only had weapons of mass destruction, but he was hell bent on using them against us and our allies.