Chairman Roberts Issues Statement on Phase II of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's Review of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq

Senator Pat Roberts, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:

“The Democrats have said that today’s antics were all about whether the public statements of U.S. officials before the war concerning Iraq were substantiated by the intelligence. This is not the case"

"“Today’s stunt is because the special counsel in the Plame investigation has not delivered their desired result. We now see the lengths Democrats will resort to in order to obtain relevancy. "

"At the May 17 meeting, I made a number of attempts to begin evaluating nearly 500 statements made by Administration officials and Members of Congress, over 300 of which were provided by the Democrats. My friends across the aisle wouldn’t even let me get past the first statement. When they learned that I didn’t intend to identify the speakers in an effort to remove partisan bias, they wanted to talk about everything but public statements."

“You can reach your own conclusions on why the Committee’s Democrats didn’t want to proceed. I hope they weren’t trying to manipulate or misuse the information to reach a predetermined conclusion. As of today, the Vice Chairman’s position is that the members will not do this work. I believe this is not something that should be delegated to staff."

"Unfortunately, rather than working in a bipartisan manner to vote out a report on this issue, they obstructed our work back on May 17, 2005, and now, in an act of profound irony, they are engaging in a petty public stunt to attack me for not completing our work on Phase II. Truly amazing, especially since just yesterday we informed Democratic staff that I wanted to conclude our work. If my Democrat friends spent more time working on Phase II and less time grandstanding, we may actually get this done.”

--LynZee
Related:

Pat Roberts Responds To Harry Reid's Closed Senate Session Stunt

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