"Truthfulness" of US president on the line over absent Iraqi WMDs: Byrd
Fri Jun 6,10:10 AM ET Add Politics - AFP to My Yahoo!
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Senator Robert Byrd -- one of the most outspoken critics of US policy in Iraq (news - web sites) -- welcomed calls for a congressional probe into US troops' not having found weapons of mass destruction there, and called into question President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s "truthfulness" on the matter.
"What amazes me is that the president himself is not clamoring for an investigation," Byrd said from the floor of the Senate.
"It is his truthfulness that is being questioned. It is his integrity that is on the line," the West Virginia Democrat said.
"Yet he has raised no question, expressed no curiosity, about the strange turn of events in Iraq -- expressed no anger at the possibility that he might have been misled."
"How is it that the president who was so adamant about the dangers of WMD, has expressed no concern about the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?" Byrd said.
Byrd, 85, the longest serving member of the senate -- has served in congress' upper chamber 1959, and served in the US House of Representatives for several years before that.
He is not known for being particularly liberal, having belonged once to the anti-integrationist Ku Klux Klan, nor as a pacifist, having been a staunch supporter of the US war in Vietnam.
Yet the conservative southern Democrat has become an unlikely hero of anti-war and anti-occupation forces who have e-mailed copies of his florid tirades decrying the US-led war and its postwar management of Iraq around the globe.
In one of his most controversial rants, Byrd slammed Bush for donning a military flight jacket while greeting victorious US troops on an aircraft carrier immediately after the completion of the war.
"I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors," Byrd said.
"But I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech," he said.
In Thursday's speech he said he was worried that weapons of mass destruction might indeed have been in Iraq's possession recently, but may now be in the hands of terrorists or another nations hostile to US interests.
"The belligerent stance of the United States may have convinced Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) to sell of disperse his weapons to dark forces outside of Iraq," he said.
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