From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Bob Garfield.

This week, after the president vetoed a war funding bill that set a timetable for Iraq troop withdrawal,

congressional Democrats were forced to remount their offensive. Senator Hillary Clinton,

who voted for the use of force in Iraq in 2002,

this week proposed a measure that would revoke congressional war authorization. Meanwhile, majority whip Dick Durbin, who voted against the use of force,

said on the Senate floor last week that in the lead up to the war, the administration was telling the Senate Intelligence Committee one thing

and the rest of the world, something else.

He joins us now. Senator, welcome to on the media.

Thanks.

The issue in question was Saddam's aluminum tubes

and whether they were meant for centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel.

If, as you say, the administration briefed the

Senate Intelligence Committee that it was uncertain about those tubes, but then hid that uncertainty

in public statements to the American people and to the world, then the president and the

vice president and the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, are liars, and their

lies led us to war. Have I overstated this? You may have overstated it, but not by much.

I remember the debate on the aluminum tubes. I would sit there and listen. This has all been

declassified. Now I can talk about it. I would sit there and listen to the Department of Energy

in full-throated debate with the Department of Defense over whether these aluminum tubes were going to be used for nuclear weapons. And the Department of Energy would say, no, it's the wrong kind of aluminum tube. We think it's just as likely it's going for something else. Department of Defense, no, we think it's nuclear. You'd walk

out of the room and you think, well, there's a real difference of opinion here. You'd walk into the

corridor and hear announcements from the White House, be prepared, mushroom-shaped clouds, nuclear disaster.

And I'm thinking to myself, if they are so uncertain in the confines of this room, how can they say to

...