Friday, November 04, 2005

BLITZER: Because on the basis of that intelligence that the president was provided and that you were provided as a member of the U.S. Senate, you voted to authorize the use of force to go to war. Do you feel you were duped?

(Senator Dianne) FEINSTEIN: Yes. And had I known then what I know now, I never would have cast that vote, not in 1,000 years. I read, re-read the intelligence, read the classified versions, tried to get briefings, read open source, listened to the speeches, did everything I could to inform myself, and when I cast that vote, I was convinced that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to this nation, with respect to biological weapons, with respect to an unmanned aerial vehicle that was capable of being launched with chemical or biological weapons aboard.

None of that turned out to be true. And that's what bothers many of us, because we now believe that the impetus for the American use of force essentially was regime change, pure and simple. Not the cause that was sold to us, which was weapons of mass destruction, and their immediate threat our country.

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