Russ Feingold: “I think it is possibly the leading issue in the country right now. Mr. President, I rise to comment on U.S. policy in…”

“I think it is possibly the leading issue in the country right now. Mr. President, I rise to comment on U.S. policy in Iraq. We have heard much about the President's reference in the State of the Union Address to intelligence suggesting that Saddam Hussein had recently attempted to secure uranium from Niger. Now we know our own intelligence agencies did not believe that information to be credible. It was employed in a reckless effort to sell the American public on a predetermined policy course. I do applaud President Bush for taking responsibility for his words, but for weeks this administration reacted with a combination of denial and spin, and by choosing to make the Central Intelligence Agency, and then much later the Deputy National Security Advisor, the scapegoats for this incident. I wish to state for the record that in all of the briefings leading up to the decision to go to war in Iraq, I found the CIA to be among the most straightforward and the most professional of those making presentations to help Members of Congress understand the facts. The facts in the briefing room never matched the public rhetoric of the administration's hard sell.”