Congressman Waxman Speaks in Thousand Oaks about Oversight and the War

Congressman Henry A. Waxman visited Thousand Oaks Sunday morning to speak about the Iraq war and his efforts as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to monitor the Bush administration’s handling of activities related to the war.

 

Waxman bemoaned the administration’s prevarication about the reasons for entry into the war.

 

“We were told we had to fight in Iraq to stop Saddam Hussein to get weapons of mass destruction. We were told we had to fight there to stop terrorism. We were told we had to fight there because we were going to have a model of democracy that’s going to change the whole Middle East. Then lately we’ve been told we were going to have a surge, and the purpose of the surge is to give the Iraqi government a chance to make a stable country. We’ll settle for a stable country.”

 

Waxman said that Iraq was “decimated” and that “as soon as we leave, they’re going to blow altogether, unless there are areas where the Sunnis are gone or the Shiites are gone and so there’s no one to fight anymore.”

“I thought the best answer to why we’re fighting in Iraq was in a New York Times cartoon today where President Bush was asked, ‘Why are we fighting in Iraq?’ and he said, ‘So we can kick this over to the next administration and we can blame them for Iraq.’ But how many people are we going to kill and lose in the meantime?”

 

Waxman emphasized the role of the Congress in providing oversight of the executive branch, and chastised the formerly Republican-controlled Congress for failing to perform this task.

 

“They [Republicans in Congress] wouldn’t hold a hearing on the misuse of intelligence by this administration to trick us into going into war. They wouldn’t even look at the issues of the waste of money in the reconstruction, so called, of Iraq. They wouldn’t do anything that might embarrass President Bush, which meant they chose to be good Republicans first, and to be leaders of an independent branch of government second.”

 

“They have refused to answer questions of the press, of those of us in Congress who have asked them questions. They’ve tried to operate without transparency, without openness, and of course without accountability. Their attitude is that the government belongs to them, not to the American people. That’s what happens when you get so powerful and you think it all belongs to you.”

 

Waxman criticized “fraud, waste, and abuse” in the conduct of the war, and emphasized the role of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in investigating these issues.

 

“Our first hearing was on the shipment of $12 billion in cash to Iraq. In hundred-dollar bills, put together in brick form, put onto pallets, forklifted onto airplanes, and flown into a war zone. And then our man in charge, Ambassador Bremer, handed out $8.8 billion that he can’t account for. We asked him, where did that money go? Well, he said, well, I gave it to the Iraq ministries so they could pay their payroll. And we found out that some ministries said they had thousands of employees when they had maybe a hundred. So money was passed out without any accounting for it. Did it end up in the pockets of those that received it? Of course. Did it end up in Swiss bank accounts? I wouldn’t be surprised. Did it end up funding the insurgents? Probably. So we ended up funding both sides in Iraq.”

 

The crowd listened in respectful silence to Waxman’s speech, but grew animated during the more than half-hour question-and-answer session. It was clear that the group of mostly Democrats was largely anti-war and highly critical of the Bush administration. The dominant theme was one of concern that Democrats aggressively pursue investigations into the misdeeds of the president and his cabinet.

 

Local Democratic party luminaries attended the event, notably Jim Dantona, who is running against Tony Strickland for the seat for California Senate’s 19th district that is likely to be vacated when State Senator Tom McClintock‘s term expires, and Ferial Masry, who is running for the 37th district assembly seat currently held by Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, wife of Tony Strickland.

 

Waxman appeared at the invitation of the Democratic Club of the Conejo Valley. The eventwas held at the Conejo Recreation and Parks Community Room.

 

Be sure to check this website later in the week to read the full transcript of Waxman’s speech.

 

A Better Way to Win the War

While we debate, with the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, what to do about the Iraq war, we may be tempted to forget that Iraq had nothing to do with the events of six years ago today.

 

 

The timing of the testimony of the general and the ambassador is no coincidence, as Barack Obama pointed out today on Capitol Hill. “I think we should not have had this discussion on 9/11 or 9/10 or 9/12,” said Obama. “It perpetuates this notion that the original attacks had something to do with going into Iraq.” The timing of these hearings is cynical, but not a surprise when dealing with the Bush administration, for which no blow is too low.

 

 

The president was mistaken to go to war against Iraq and worse yet, bungled our nation’s response to the atrocities of September 11. But we can make things right again. We should follow the advice of Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz in his essay, “After September 11: Thoughts on What Can Be Done,” posted one week after the attacks. Ferencz advocated bringing Osama Bin Laden and his co-conspirators to trial in an ad hoc international criminal tribunal like those used for the ex-Yugoslavia and for Rwanda.

 

 

Following this course of action, if we can catch Bin Laden or convince him to hand himself over – he might fancy himself a martyr and relish the stage – would be to redeem September 11 in our memories. Instead of being a day solely of sadness, a sadness we will always have, we will remember it as an event finally brought some closure by the conviction of at least a few of the perpetrators in a fair court of law on charges of crimes against humanity. The entire world will at that point have to recognize that the events of September 11 were a crime, not a political statement, and that Americans sought justice and were vindicated.

 

 

I iterate this argument more completely, I hope, in my recent post to The Gage Page.

 

 

I hope there are others out there who are tired of these wars and want to return, or perhaps finally work our way to, a rule of law, to a dignified position as an enlightened, responsible member of the family of nations. Doing so will prove to be a better way to win the war.