In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Thanks to MoveOn.org.
Rep. Brown of Ohio:
Mr. Speaker, I will not consume the entire 50 minutes.
Many Members of Congress are receiving hundreds of letters each and aggregately tens of thousands of letters questioning this Congress' refusal to get to the bottom of the misinformation campaign on Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of citizens have signed an on-line petition which states that Congress should support an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration's distortion of evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
Unfortunately, the leadership in this House, the Republican leadership in this body, has refused to allow serious debate on this misinformation campaign, has refused to appoint an independent commission, has refused even to hold congressional hearings on what did the President tell the American people, were the reasons that he stated to the American people justifiable, were they truthful, and/or were they misleading to the American public and as reasons given for the attack on Iraq.
As I think about it, I look at American history and I think of another time when Members of Congress were not given the opportunity to debate a major national issue that affected national security, that affected the way of life of so many Americans, that affected issues of justice. Think back to more than 150 years ago when John Quincy Adams, a former president who came back to this body after he was President, and in those days, in the 1830s and 1840s, this Congress, with a very conservative leadership, actually passed a rule to prohibit the discussion or the debate of the issue of slavery in the House of Representatives. So in the halls of Congress, slavery, one of the great shames of this country, slavery was not even allowed to be discussed on the floor because of the ruling of the legislative leadership in those days.
Today, Members of Congress have been precluded in any kind of legislative vehicle, any kind of investigation from debating this issue of the administration's distortion of evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps the President did nothing wrong, perhaps he did, but we have not really been able to debate that here.
So what John Quincy Adams did in the 1830s and 1840s was collect letters from his constituents, he called them petitions, and he read those petitions, those letters on the House floor. In other words, he let the people of the United States speak for themselves, using his voice. He was the megaphone to allow them to speak.
Many Members of Congress the last two nights, and we will continue in the nights ahead, are doing the same thing. They are taking many of these letters that we have received, people who have signed a petition saying Congress should support an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration's distortion of evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, and simply read those letters and allowed people to speak directly. It really is a night, as it was last night and the night before, for the people to take over the People's House, and Members of Congress, who are elected by 630,000 people, as all of us are, simply the mouthpiece for these constituents.
- rob 12:09 PM - [PermaLink] -
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