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How an Outsider Succeeded in Washington

With few exceptions,  every law that was passed in Congress for eight years required Majority Leader Dick Armey’s decision to put it on the floor of the U. S. House of Representatives. Leader Armey describes how Congress works and details important but little-known outcomes like deceptive government practices, legislative aftershock, and government by disguise.
As co-author of the “Contract with America,” Leader Armey describes the real process by which it was written and how he and a handful of others brought in the first Republican majority in the U. S. House of Representatives in forty years.

As an economist and a legislative entrepreneur, Leader Armey tells us how laws are actually made and describes the economic background and rationale of laws he passed which had historically been classified as “impossible to do.”
Get an insider’s look at what it was like to work with four presidents including how one president and vice-president actively and purposefully misled Congressional leadership to get their support for the invasion of Iraq.
Hailed as the “godfather” of the tea party movement, Leader Armey takes the reader through the early days of the tea party’s citizen activism. From his early childhood in Cando, North Dakota through his years in leadership including 9/11, the Iraq War, government shutdowns, political intrigue, and the tea party, Leader Armey candidly discusses his experiences during an important period in American history.

Dick Cheney was the Republican Vice President of the United States. I was the Republican Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives. We had served together in the House. It was altogether appropriate for me to listen to him in the unreserved belief that he would tell me only things he knew to be true. It would have been cynical of me to doubt his honesty on such a grave subject as our national security. I had no prior knowledge of anything but honest candor from him. You may call that naïve, but I call it the necessary and legitimate expectation for anyone privileged to hold the highest responsibilities of high office. Furthermore, Cheney had been Secretary of Defense and informed at all the highest levels of national security and weaponry. I had no reason to doubt his knowledge about any number of things that might seem mysterious or unfamiliar to me. So, yes, I took everything he told me at face value and to this day I do not know how I could have done otherwise.

The Vice President . . . argued that they had missiles that could reach Israel and that he would attack Israel to appease his Muslim allies. He then explained how with modern technology they could miniaturize bombs to fit into an average sized suitcase. That seemed credible to me . . . Nevertheless, I questioned how he could deliver them to our shores. He responded that Saddam Hussein had a working relationship with Al-Qaeda and that his two sons were running training camps for them in Iraq. He argued that they planned on using the entire system of agents and cells to deliver the deadly devises.

On the basis of that brief, I concluded that the threat to the United States was imminent and within Hussein’s direct control and intentions. I look back on that brief now and wonder how I could have fallen for that gag but, I assure you, at the time it seemed scary enough and real enough to cause me to change my position on invading Iraq. What I did not know was that he had lied to me. It was several years later that he admitted to having lied to me, and to others during that time, and he asserted that he would do it again.

H.J. Res. 114 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002
was introduced in the house by Speaker Hastert on October 2.  . . During the House floor debate, I made extemporaneous remarks.

When I read these words on January 20, 2020, I was struck by many things. First was how obviously that floor speech had been framed in my belief that what Vice President Cheney had told me in that September 24 private briefing was the truth. It wasn’t true. The Vice president had purposefully discerned my reasons for reservation and expertly framed a brief to counter them. Over the next several months and years, little by little, piece by piece, the truth came out, as it always does. Furthermore, it has become obvious, at least to me, that Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld collaborated in a systematic pattern of deception and manipulation involving bullying and possibly even coercion not only to me but to many others many of whom were more important than me.  I am sure they deceived Secretary of State Colin Powell and I suspect, they might have, to some extent, deceived even the President himself. I have become aware that the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense intended to find a reason to invade Iraq as early as the inception of the Bush Presidency. I believe they exploited the national sense of emergency pursuant to The September 11 terrorist attacks to that end.
 
 
It is painful to read that floor speech all these years later and to know that it is the single most regrettable speech I ever made in all the years of my public service. It is even more painful to know that it was the precursor to the single most regrettable vote I ever made in the United States House of Representatives. It is still even more painful to realize that had I understood that Cheney was misleading me and made the correct “No” vote, it might have resulted in the bill failing to pass the Senate. Despite the deception to which I had been subjected, I will never forgive myself. I cannot ask forgiveness from the killed and wounded nor from their families. I am left to be thankful that God and my family forgive me.