David Obey: “This is not a debate about 9/11. After 9/11, Chairman Young and I pushed through the House a $40 billion appropriation…”

“This is not a debate about 9/11. After 9/11, Chairman Young and I pushed through the House a $40 billion appropriation to respond to the events that led to that sneak attack. Chairman Young and I then led an effort to add billions of dollars to Homeland Security to protect our ports, secure air transportation and equip our local first responders, our firemen, our policemen to deal with a whole range of terrorist threats. We worked to add more than $2 billion in Homeland Security funds, even though the President threatened to veto those additional expenditures. Even the President of the United States has admitted publicly that there is no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with that sneak attack. So let us make that clear. Secondly, let us also make clear that this should not be a debate about whether we should have attacked Iraq. Before the vote on that question, I asked a whole range of questions to try to determine whether the administration had real expectations and a real plan for dealing with the aftermath of the war. I wanted Saddam removed, but I wanted al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden removed even more. In the end, I voted to require the President to come back to Congress for another vote before attacking Iraq if he could not get the agreement of the United Nations so that we could take one last look at the evidence, one last look at the administration's planning for the aftermath before we pulled the trigger.”