Lee Hamilton
Lee Hamilton
bush congress criticism less president remember
I do not remember a president having less criticism from Congress than Bush had in his first term.
congress
He hasn't got much of what he wanted. But on the other hand, Congress hasn't done much of anything this year.
amount business congress hard huge raising spend time work
Congress is not working hard enough at the business of legislating. They do work hard at politicking and spend a huge amount of time raising money.
bills congress error far four glaring
It is a glaring error four years after 9/11. Still exists. Not resolved. There are bills pending in Congress but they're far from enactment,
comments interested marvelous meeting
We had a marvelous meeting with the president, ... The president's comments were very candid, very forthcoming and he was interested in what we had to say.
baker secretary senator
I think Senator Baker and I want to do a very careful, a very thorough, and as the secretary said, very expeditious review, and we will do that,
cannot conduct good simply voter
Without good voter registration data, you simply cannot conduct a good election.
acquiring help iraq late sent several
was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in acquiring poisons and gases.
proved
We're getting better at this. But we still haven't proved we are safe.
action carefully consider might point refusal states united
If after sanctions, if after a refusal to let inspectors in, you still don't have action, it might very well be at that point that the United States would have to consider a pre-emptive strike, ... That's something we haven't done in the past. Or at least we haven't done it very often and it would have to be carefully considered.
act chose
He chose not to do that. He chose to act by himself.
attack certainly incident katrina learned natural remain terrorist vulnerable whether
We certainly learned from Katrina that we remain very vulnerable to an incident of this kind, whether it's a terrorist attack or a natural disaster,
drawing start
You go back to the drawing board, start all over again,
equipment needed order people troops
No one could order the troops in, they couldn't get the equipment in, they couldn't evacuate the people who needed to be evacuated, ... that was glaringly absent.