By Matt Schickling
Wire Staff Writer
On Oct. 10, 2002, former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Hoeffel made what he calls “the biggest mistake” of his political career.
Guided by reports from the Bush administration suggesting that Saddam Hussein maintained weapons of mass destruction, he voted in the House of Representatives to authorize preemptive war on Iraq. His book, The Iraq Lie: How the White House Sold the War, which was published by Progressive Press in July, offers his view that Americans, including most of Congress, were led into war on Iraq based on deceptive intelligence reports put forth by the Bush White House.
“I wanted to set the record straight,” Hoeffel said during a Sept. 3 interview. “The distortions and misleading statements by the Bush administration, I think, are worse than people realize.”
At the time of the vote, he was representing Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District, which covers Northeast Philadelphia and eastern Montgomery County. Hoeffel held this seat, which is currently occupied by Allyson Schwartz, from 1999 to 2005.
A main concern of The Iraq Lie is the juxtaposition of classified information and public knowledge. Hoeffel asserts that the Bush administration distorted a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s weapons program by removing any reservations and uncertainty regarding whether Hussein actually had weapons of mass destruction.
“That information was not seen by most members of Congress. Under the law, only the top administration figures and congressional leadership and intelligence committee members are the only members of Congress that can see those documents,” Hoeffel said.
Hoeffel’s only access to this information came when then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet released an unclassified version, which was claimed to be “substantively similar to, although not nearly as detailed as, the classified NIE.” This unclassified document was, and still is, available to the public.
“I compare that declassified summary with what it was purportedly summarizing,” Hoeffel said. “I believe that if Congress had seen the reports with all the uncertainty in them, we wouldn’t have authorized war.”
After Congress authorized war, Hussein allowed international weapons inspectors into Iraq, he said.
“January, February and March of 2003, before the war started, they were reporting back to the United Nations in public that they weren’t finding anything,” Hoeffel said. “A great president, at that point, would have admitted that we have to hold off on this until we find out what Huessein has got, but Bush wasn’t a great president and he went ahead anyway.”
As the war dragged on, Hoeffel became more aggravated and regretful of his vote. When Bush administrators including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Vice President Dick Cheney began to publish memoirs, Hoeffel became more frustrated. This frustration was a catalyst for his writing The Iraq Lie.
“Their memoirs don’t come clean,” he said. “They’re still trying to con us.”
After leaving public office in 2011, after serving multiple terms as a member of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, Hoeffel found time to do extensive research.
He is the first member of Congress to publish a book on the topic, but others came out in support.
“Congressman Hoeffel offers his readers a candid and unsparing insider’s account of one of the most consequential Congressional votes in modern history — the fateful decision to authorize war with Iraq,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a testimonial on Hoeffel’s website. “This wrenching and detailed assessment of the misleading case for war presented to the American people provides an important new perspective on the rush to invade Iraq.”
Hoeffel has done appearances on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews and Marty Moss-Coane talk show on Radio WHYY to elaborate the message of his book.
On Sept. 14, Abington Free Library will host a book launch party where Hoeffel will speak about his book and be available to sign books from 2 to 4 p.m. The following night, he will discuss The Iraq Lie at Rydal Park in Jenkintown at 7:30.
“The main recommendation of my book is that if we ever face preemptive war again, where any president is calling the country to go to war based on intelligence that something bad is about to happen and we have to act preemptively, that the intelligence findings have to be disclosed,” Hoeffel said. “And not just to all of Congress, but to the public.”
For more information, visit www.progressivepress.com/book-listing/the-iraq-lie-how-white-house-sold-war
