U.S. POLICY TOWARD IRAQ
Hearing Before the
House Armed Services Committee
September 26, 2002
HUNTER: The committee will come to order.
Today, the Committee on Armed Services continues its review of United States policy toward Iraq. This morning's hearing marks the fourth in a number of planned public sessions designed to educate and inform the committee and the American people on the various issues surrounding Iraq's continued violation of numerous United Nations resolutions, its illicit development of weapons of mass destruction, and the threat that Saddam Hussein poses to the United States, the Middle East, and the international community.
The committee has received a classified briefing from the intelligence community in each of the last three weeks, which we also opened to all members of the House in the last several weeks. We also heard from former UNSCOM inspectors about Iraq's illicit weapons programs and Saddam Hussein's persistent efforts to thwart U.N. inspections and we heard from an Iraqi defector who was a leader in Saddam's nuclear weapons program.
He told us how the Iraqis built and sustained their weapons of mass destruction programs through the acquisition of Western technology and how the United States own export control system may have contributed to the problems we are now facing with Iraq, and I thought most interestingly he told about how even as our inspectors were on the ground in '93 a few miles away, they were moving the weapons program with great efficiency. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld appeared before the committee last week to discuss and defend the administration's policy toward Iraq, and yesterday morning the committee met behind closed doors with several retired generals to hear their views on this critical issue with a special focus on military options
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U.S. POLICY TOWARD IRAQJust in case any of your freeper friends are confused about Clark's Iraq war stance.