The secret session called by Senate Democrats on Tuesday to investigate the intelligence that led up to the Iraq War was a well-rehearsed political stunt, Senator Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), said during a speech Wednesday in the Reiss Science Building.
“I hope it makes the Democrats look foolish because they were foolish,” he said. “I don’t think it was a very good day in the Senate.”
On Tuesday, Democrats in the Senate invoked Rule XXI, a rarely-used clause requiring a secret meeting of the Senate that artinez said has most recently been used for the Clinton impeachment hearings and the ratification of a chemical weapons treaty.
Martinez said he was presiding over the Senate during the session, which Democrats hoped would explain why intelligence before the Iraq War showing stockpiles of weapons in Iraq was flawed.
“We are really at a critical juncture,” Martinez said of the war. “We must demand accountability and ask questions.”
Martinez said that the training of Iraqi troops is a sign that the United States is a step closer to being able to withdraw American troops and that democracy is spreading.
“Almost 10 million Iraqis went out to vote,” he said. “When they elect their own government, that is going to transform the country.”
In addition to discussing current issues before the Senate, artinez offered his own personal story.
“My path is about as unlikely as it can get,” artinez said. Growing up in a small city in Cuba, Martinez said his family fled the country and the oppressive conditions they encountered there.
Martinez said that his Jesuit education in Cuba during his youth was the “better part of my educational life,” and credited the Catholic Church with his personal success.
In the United States, Martinez worked as a trial lawyer. He served as President Bush’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2001 to 2004, when he became the first Cuban-American elected to the Senate.
Martinez also addressed Bush’s nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and called for an up-or-down vote for the jurist. He said that a Democratic filibuster of the nomination, which has been mentioned, would be unfair.
“In Judge Alito, you have someone of great integrity, a high caliber appointee,” Martinez said.
He added that Judge Alito’s appointment to the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had been unanimously approved by the Senate.
Martinez also called for more positive U.S. involvement in Latin America. “The United states is in a position that we are increasingly not as well thought of as we ought to be,” he said, citing the administration of vocal U.S. critic President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela as a possible reason why.
The Senator, an immigrant himself, said that “naturalized citizens can play a great role in the development of this country,” and suggested a change in U.S. immigration laws. artinez said that he has spoken with Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) about reforming U.S. policies relating to illegal immigration and resident workers.
The speech was organized by the GU College Republicans.
