Kanjorski faces public, explains his Iraq vote | Wilkes-Barre News | timesleader.com – The Times Leader

Kanjorski walked into the fire hall at 7:05 p.m. and immediately took off his suit jacket.“I’m sure it will get hot in here, especially when you start to yell at me,” he joked. “How many of you are mad or angry? I am too. I can not morally justify the pre-emptive invasion of another country unless the U.S. is in imminent danger of being attacked. We got there under false pretenses and we have stayed there.”

Kanjorski took the time to tell the people how he was convinced to support the war effort back in 2002. He said he was called to a meeting at the White House along with several other U.S. representatives and senators.

He said he left the meeting unsure of how he would vote, and he told the White House he was leaning toward voting against the war. “I then was invited to return to the White House the next day,” Kanjorski said.

He said the group was shown photographs of stored weapons of mass destruction. He said he saw photos of UAVs – Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – which are used to transport chemicals and/or hydrogen bombs. He said he was told that the Iraqis had a thousand of these and they were intending to bring them into the U.S. via both coasts, and more than 250 U.S. cities were to be targeted.

“None of the information was true,” Kanjorski said. “But we didn’t know that at that time. I voted to go to war.”

Kanjorski said even if the president decided to end the war now, it would take a year or longer to bring back all of the 178,000 troops. “But we can start that process now,” he said.

Could a case be made for prosecuting Condoleeza Rice, who conducted some of the meetings, and other White House staffers, for lying to Congressmen like Kanjorski in order to get them to vote for going to war with Iraq? Whatever happened to those cute ‘lil UAVs, anyway? The Air Force thought they weren’t a threat before the war, either, and tried to convince journalists of this dissenting view, mentioned in an article at CBSNews from 2003. It also mentions that even Colin Powell tried to use the Iraqi-UAVs-could-attack-US-cities as a bogeyman argument.

I don’t know if Kanjorski will be able to save his seat, or ass, or whatever, but at least he’s willing to stand up and take the heat from his constituents, and I have to give him credit for that. And I wish to hell that we could nail these lying bastards with a little incontrovertable evidence of our own.