WASHINGTON, DC-  Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) today criticized President Bush for departing from the occasion of honoring our veterans and our troops to engage in a self-serving, defensive and inappropriate attempt to rewrite history.  The President said in Pennsylvania today that foreign intelligence services and Democrats and Republicans alike were convinced at the time that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. ``It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began.  More than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to remove Saddam Hussein from power.''

In response, Rep. Markey noted that “the President himself seems to be rewriting history.  The war began in March 2003, not October 2002.  By that time, much of the President’s case for Saddam rebuilding his nuclear weapons program had simply evaporated.  The U.N. had 250 inspectors performing anytime anywhere inspections at every suspicious site, supported by helicopters and U2s and drones.  Prior to October 2002, actionable intelligence could not be verified.  After the UN inspectors returned, it could be and it was.  What did they find?

“As Mohamed ElBaradei reported to the U.N. on February 14, 2003, ‘We have, to date, found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq.’

“On March 7, ElBaradei debunked the aluminum tubes, called the documentary evidence of uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger ‘not authentic,’ and provided this update: ‘After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.’”

“History will show that the President, not his critics, chose to ignore the findings of the international inspection regime in Iraq and chose to go to war without the evidence he needed to sway world opinion to his side,” Markey concluded. 

For further information, please visit http://www.house.gov/markey.