Jay Rockefeller Quotes (53 Quotes)


    The American people deserve to know not just whether this administration committed crimes, but whether this administration told the truth - the full truth, the straight story,

    Any line of questioning that has brought us too close to the White House has been thwarted, ... We have been undermined, avoided, put off and vilified by the other side.

    And that is a classic example of a lack of accountability to the American people, ... Late Edition.

    I've always though the Beckley V-A-M-C had the authority to assist with transportation, but we need to have that question answered right away. Then, we'll work with the Beckley V-A to restore their transportation through whatever means possible.

    Everything is about accountability to the American people, accountability of the executive branch ... and accountability of the oversight of the Congress,


    Pat Roberts and I both feel very strongly that when we get to Iran, that we can't make the same mistakes. We have to ask the questions, the hard questions before, not afterwards, and get the right intelligence.

    the chain of command that Duncan Hunter's worried about.

    This committee is basically under control of the White House. It's an unprecedented bout of political pressure from the White House.

    I think not taking Iran seriously is an enormous mistake. I've always felt that it was much more of a problem than Iraq was.

    Despite the efforts to focus on Saddam's desires and intentions, the bottom line is Iraq did not have either weapon stockpiles or active production capabilities at the time of the war,


    I am deeply concerned that the FAA is losing a number of its most senior safety inspectors and does not have the ability to replace them,

    There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.

    And really there was no sense of urgency. That was vastly frustrating to a 30-year professional who had been doing counterterrorism for four different presidents. ... He wanted to get things done and was frustrated by the Bush administration.

    I would call upon my colleagues at the proper time to support this aviation legislation, not to say that it is perfect, not to say that some of this legislation that has risen out of this crisis is perfect, and we will have a chance to revisit and this is only the first of a wave of accountability,

    When (beneficiaries) call the 1-800 number, they can wait for a week, a month. They can wait until the Iraq war is over. Nobody answers the phone.

    If they misled about the war and if they misused intelligence, then the American people need to know that the Congress will do everything in its power to make sure that it never happens again,

    These very serious charges go to the heart of whether administration officials misused intelligence by disclosing an undercover CIA agent. They also heighten concerns that the administration engaged in a pattern of misusing intelligence to make the case for going to war with Iraq.

    It may be that they're tired of talking about the Brooklyn Bridge (terror plot), and they're trying to find a different edifice of some sort.

    I've been in touch with his family, and I've already written (Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld) to request that they immediately refund his money and review this horrendous policy. I'm shocked that he has been treated this way by our military.

    We have a moral obligation to tackle television violence and provide parents with the tools to make their children safer,

    when the most senior officials in the Bush administration had already forcefully and repeatedly stated their conclusions publicly.

    We were told by the president that we had no alternative but to go into Iraq because of the threat that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed, but to date, these weapons have not been found.

    If we had prescribed in Congress each of the relationships between the agencies, I think that would have been an enormous mistake and would have rendered this person more useless. This person can exercise power, and I think that's good.

    I just question whether what you did in Utah sort of says, 'Well, we can do this in all of America,' ... I would suggest to you that in Appalachia and other areas they can't, and I would urgently hope that you would think about this matter now that you have the entire country's population very much at your mercy or at your help.

    Until I receive additional information about the thoroughness of the investigation, I cannot make a judgment on the accuracy of the conclusions,

    I mean, al Qaeda, after all, has been pretty well splintered in its, the head of the monster is off, but the body is surviving in many other forms.

    Once again, it appears to me that the White House has dictated that the Republican-controlled Congress not conduct oversight of an important national security matter, ... They have made it clear that anyone who suggests that oversight is needed should be labeled as unpatriotic.

    One year after the United States led the invasion of Iraq, the country remains extremely dangerous not only to our troops, but also to the stability of the world.

    The president's economic plan doesn't do enough to create new jobs and that has to be a national priority. While there are some signs the economy is improving, it is not translating into jobs.

    If the Senate oversight committees are either unwilling or unable to tackle the tough but necessary questions associated with detention, interrogation or rendition of prisoners, then we should step aside -- regrettably, if we have to -- and let the work be done by others unfettered by other considerations,

    One of my problems, so to speak, is that, in America, we tend to thing in relatively short-term. In the Middle East and Asia and other parts of the world, they think in terms of centuries or 500 years or 1,000 years.

    While we transferred sovereignty today, we need to be honest with the American people that this struggle is far from over, ... Security in Iraq is worse now than it was right after the fall of Baghdad and may deteriorate further. The Iraqi security forces cannot handle the challenge alone, reconstruction has barely started, and massive unemployment has left many frustrated and even desperate.

    They are a dangerous country, ... They're much more sophisticated than Iraq.

    The Commission did a careful review of the role of the courts in serving children in foster care, and it issued a series of recommendations. We are grateful for this report and relied on many of their recommendations in crafting this legislation. As always, we hope to forge bipartisan consensus on ways to move this bill forward.

    I won't believe it until I see it. I don't think it's in their interest to give us those documents, because I think it's going to show some things that are very troublesome to the American people.

    In other words, he's an entirely unreliable individual upon whom the White House was placing substantial intelligence trust,

    Any time the intelligence committee pursued a line of inquiry that brought us close to the role of the White House in all of this in the use of intelligence prior to the war, our efforts have been thwarted time and time again, ... The very independence of the United States Congress as a separate and coequal branch of the government has been called into question.

    Allowing the U.N. into Iraq will demonstrate to the Iraqis that the international community as a whole is committed to bringing stability and safety to their country.

    Grassley is a very good chairman, very fair, and he tries his very best to be bipartisan, ... But the Senate Finance Committee is made up of a lot of 'true believers' that people should exercise personal responsibility, that the governors will do the right thing... For them, it's about balancing the budget. For me, it's about taking care of a huge chunk of West Virginia... I was a governor, and this makes me very nervous.

    I really expected that when this hearing came, the new director of national intelligence would be here to talk about threats,

    It is more than apparent to me that the White House has applied heavy pressure in recent days, in recent weeks, to prevent the committee from doing its job.

    For the past three years, the Senate intelligence committee has avoided carrying out its oversight of our nation's intelligence programs whenever the White House becomes uncomfortable with the questions being asked. The very independence of this committee is called into question.

    We have to bring stability to Iraq, otherwise we will be faced with a future dilemma of sending our loved ones into harms way to stop a civil war or the rise of a new tyrant born from the instability that we created.

    I don't think so, and that's partly the problem of not checking cargo, and it's partly the problem of biological weapons, which nobody has figured out really what to do about yet,

    How far should the United States go in forcing Mohammed to give up vital information We do not sanction torture, but there are psychological and other means that can accomplish most of what we want, ... Getting that information will save American lives. We have no business not getting that information.

    There's always the question whether or not he was running a secret intelligence operation that bypassed the entire intelligence community. And the law says you've got to inform the intelligence community of anything that you're doing,

    a man of character, conviction and kindness ... was a classic American intellectual -- a man with a brilliant and probing mind, yet entirely approachable and pragmatic.

    I am saddened to learn of Bob's passing. Bob was an outstanding journalist and an acute political observer.

    I think the fact that all of the lines aren't crossed and every decision isn't made about what powers the director of national intelligence has is an advantage for the director because a vacuum invites power. I think it is much more important that the director be able to come in, he or she, in order to fill that out according to their own instincts,


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