David Obey: “in the conduct of foreign affairs, every President deserves the benefit of the doubt. I am standing here today in an…”

“in the conduct of foreign affairs, every President deserves the benefit of the doubt. I am standing here today in an empty Chamber because these special orders are simply the time in the House's schedule when after legislative business is concluded Members can gather or take the time to get something off their chest, and so I am here today to get something off my chest about the coming war with Iraq. As I said, in the conduct of foreign affairs, I think every President deserves the benefit of the doubt, and on a number of occasions, I have worked with Presidents, regardless of party, on foreign policy issues. Sometimes I have honestly differed. Iraq, in my view, is a close call. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein is a pathological thug. We have lived with and contained other sociopaths before. Example, Joseph Stalin, whose 50-year anniversary of his death we just celebrated yesterday. It is hard to believe he has been gone 50 years, but we did not attack the Soviet Union, even though Stalin was probably one of the two greatest sociopaths of all time, the other being Hitler. We have also seen groups like the Khmer Rouge systematically butcher their own people, and certainly, the administration has not, in any way, demonstrated or tried to demonstrate that Saddam had anything to do with the attack of September 11. But it may very well be that we need to remove him at some point, and that point may be soon.”