[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 118 (Friday, August 19, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      POTENTIAL INVASION OF HAITI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from California 
[Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to tell my colleague of the great 
State of Hawaii that I did listen to his remarks. They were 
fascinating. He has to be one of the three or four best speakers in 
this Chamber.
  I wish we could debate at length the health plan in the State that I 
refer to quite seriously as paradise on earth. After all, that is the 
way Robert Louis Stevenson referred to those beautiful islands of the 
Hawaii chain, and that is also the way Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, 
referred to them.
  When you live in paradise and rake in all that great tourist money 
from the United States, sometimes you have a financial base that the 
rest of us do not have. As I said on the floor yesterday, and you 
explained it a little bit today, lack of universal coverage is what is 
causing them to be in such high dungeon over in the Senate. I'm going 
to refer to that if I have time at the end of my remarks.
  Mr. Speaker, this is, tonight, about a briefing that I had yesterday 
in which I will not discuss any of the classified details, because it 
was a top secret briefing, but only the fact that I and all of the 
Republican Members at this briefing on Haiti believe there is still a 
large group of people in the administration, who have the President's 
attention, who want to invade this small island with physical force to 
restore a man, Gen. Bertrand Aristide, who, although fairly elected 
with a percentage in the high sixties--not an Adolf Hitler, who was 
elected with 37.4, but someone up in the high sixties--was elected, and 
then deposed in a military coup.
  I believe Aristide is nonetheless not worth one drop of American 
blood to restore him, particularly when no one is considering a covert 
operation to depose him. Or let us call it the President Ronald Reagan 
Contra operation, people who are counter to Aristide, Contra to the 
military junta, Contra to Raoul Cedras, who should be a colonel but has 
made himself a three-star general without the troops to hold that 
exalted command.
  If this Government wants to convince us, and both intelligence 
committees in this great Congress, that a covert operation is in order 
to snatch Cedras and dump him to a horrible life of exile on the Cote 
d'Azure, Riviera coast of France, where Baby Doc, one of the dictator 
predecessors, has gone through $100 million, then make your case for a 
covert operation. But do not put young Marines and young Army people, 
including young women now, on the beaches down there where, if a sniper 
shoots one or two or three or five, or a young officer, or a top 
sergeant is killed in a rescue operation, the President will find 
himself in the position he was in on the morning of May 23, 1994, when 
the father of a great American hero, who had been posthumously awarded 
the Medal of Honor, refused to shake the President's hand.
  I have spoken to that father and to the mother of 1st Sgt. Randall 
Shughart. I have spoken to the parents of Gary Gordon, master sergeant, 
who died alongside Randy Shughart rescuing Michael Durant.
  At least they succeeded in saving the life of that fine young chief 
warrant officer, the pilot of the second H-60 Blackhawk, shot down over 
those dirty alleyways of Mogadishu, an area now totally controlled by 
the people that we were trying to arrest and remove from power, and 
tormenting and bringing starvation back on the good men and women and 
children of the troubled nation of Somalia.

                              {time}  1550

  Gary Gordon's parents and the parents of Randy Shughart, they feel 
their sons' lives were lost in a hopeless cause and that the Commander 
in Chief was so uninvolved in that he tried to tell them he did not 
even know about the operation. It was called Operation Ranger.
  Mr. Shughart told me that when he said to the President after 
refusing to shake his hand, ``Why did you send Aideed the killer of my 
son with a Marine guard on an Army airplane down to Kenya?''
  Again Clinton claimed ignorance. He said, ``I didn't know about that, 
Mr. Shughart.''
  That happened December 2, I believe. That is one of the insults to 
the U.S. military among 15 that I will enumerate later, Mr. Speaker.
  Then Mr. Shughart told me he said to the President, ``My son's 
colleagues in the Delta Force''--the special operations officers and 
sergeants and other men trained so highly to do the job that they were 
not allowed to complete in Somalia--``they tell me they and the 
Rangers''--the best light infantry forces in the world--``that they had 
several opportunities to take out Aideed with lethal force if 
necessary, to kill him.''
  And Mr. Shughart told me that Clinton looked at him and said, ``Well, 
you may not be aware, Mr. Shughart, but our country doesn't have a 
policy of assassinating the leaders of other countries.''
  Mr. Shughart came right back at him and said, ``Leaders of other 
countries? I thought you had called him a warlord and a thug and 
ordered his arrest'' after his forces had butchered 27 Pakistanis and 
disemboweled them, the crowd tearing the wounded and the dead apart as 
they tried to tear our 5 dead men apart at the Durant site, the two 
being our two Medal of Honor heroes and the other three included Ray 
Frank, who was Michael Durant's co- pilot, who had three full combat 
tours in Vietnam, was a month from retirement, had thousands of hours 
as a helicopter pilot; had suffered a terrible helicopter crash in 
Arkansas 2 years ago, was recovering from that, came back to fill out 
his 30 years in the military, flying again in a tough combat situation. 
Ray Frank was murdered by the mobs as were the two-door gunners.
  Most of the people hearing my voice tonight have seen these people, 
Mr. Speaker. They saw their dead and mutilated bodies being dragged by 
ropes and poked and prodded with poles and AK-47's and M-16's as they 
were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Five dead, three Durant 
crewmen--Durant miraculously released after 11 days of captivity--and 
these two Medal of Honor heroes, and Clinton is calling their thug-
murderer/warlord Aideed a leader of another country.
  And I said, ``Mr. Shughart, what did he do when you said back to him 
that this was a thug and a warlord?''
  He said, ``Well, he got very red in the face, tried to stare a hole 
through me, so I stared right back. Then I told him I had nothing else 
to say to him.''
  My point in bringing up that unpleasant moment which no Americans, 
Mr. Speaker, have read about in American papers unless they subscribed 
to the Washington Times in this city or unless they have heard it on 
talk shows across this country, begun by Rush Limbaugh and Gordon Liddy 
and picked up by hundreds of other talk show hosts across this country, 
most Americans still do not know about this story. AP, maybe through no 
fault of their own, New York Times, USA Today, they did all call Mr. 
Shughart but out of respect to Clinton who by a week's delay was then 
over in Normandy for those unending photo opportunities, Mr. Shughart 
said, ``I will not talk about the President while he is out of the 
country'' and nobody followed up on this. So unless you listened to 
radio in America, you would never know this happened.

  The reason I bring it up: What is going to happen if we have a hero 
somewhere on the beaches or in the alleys of Port-au-Prince in Haiti 
and a young American man or woman is killed and another American gets a 
high decoration trying to save that person, and as it says in scripture 
which I said on this House floor before I knew the names of Shughart 
and Gordon begging the Defense Department to award the Medal of Honors 
to these two to me, then unknown heroes, I said this is the very 
essence of John 15:13 in scripture:
  ``Greater love than this has no man that he give up his life for his 
friends.''
  Shughart and Gordon begged three times over the radio to the Ranger 
command headquarters, the Delta headquarters at Mogadishu airport:
  ``Let us go down and see if we can save Durant and his crew. We see 
them moving in the chopper. They can't get out of the chopper. They 
probably have back injuries.''
  All four were alive and all four were trapped in their harnesses by 
severe back injuries from the hardness of the crash. Three times these 
two men begged to be given the chance to offer up their lives to try 
and save somebody else, and it is beautiful that they did at least save 
Michael Durant. They took all four out of the crashed Blackhawk, but 
the two that were on the side closest to the wall where it crashed 
survived. The other two we hope were shot to death before they were 
dragged through the streets, and Durant was taken alive with another 
crew member. When that other crew member died, only God and his 
killers, and torturers know, because two were taken alive and only one 
came back.
  Maybe Gary Gordon and Shughart were alive on the other side of the 
airplane, down to fighting with pistols--they had exhausted all their 
ammunition--gave the last final clip to Michael Durant, leaning against 
the wall, too injured in his back to move. Gary Gordon's last words to 
any American that we know of was, ``Good luck, pal.'' He went around to 
the front of the helicopter and moments later Warrant Officer Durant 
heard him groan when he was shot, as he had heard Shughart groan when 
he was shot before that.
  What is going to happen if we get this relived in Haiti? Why should 
any American man or woman be put in harm's way over Aristide? This very 
month, Aristide has attacked all of the Catholic bishops and all of the 
priests in Haiti because they came up with a resolution against the 
U.N. suggesting that we had the right to invade Haiti. The Catholic 
bishops are saying down there, ``There's another way to go down here.'' 
And I am saying, as not a holy man of the cloth but as someone with a 
military experience, ``What about the covert option?'' before we put 
heroic line Marines or 82d Airborne paratroopers into a situation 
where--and of course Haiti does not have the wherewithal to put up a 
fight with their obsolete and decaying equipment. But they can run a 
guerrilla operation for a few days.
  Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte lost 50,270 young Frenchmen--they did 
not put women in combat in those days--in trying to conquer Haiti, and 
he lost. He created a black Napoleon that he said was the most skillful 
general in the world. He let him use his name. My history escapes me. I 
used to know that general's name. It may be Toussaint L'Ouverture. 
Fifty thousand dead. That is more than Napoleon lost at Waterloo.
  When I bring that up to Clinton people, they say, ``Well, Haiti has 
been denuded of all its forests. There will be no guerrilla warfare in 
the forests.'' First of all, all the forests are not gone. I have been 
down to Haiti twice and been out in the countryside. Number 2, when I 
flew over Mogadishu a few days after we had lost 19 of our very highest 
trained Rangers and special operations sergeants and enlisted men, I 
did not see many trees throughout the city of Mogadishu. That was open, 
a typical African sub-Saharan open city, where urban warfare took place 
behind all those walls and up and down those little alleys.
  We will take some casualties. The Clinton advisers that are telling 
him to invade admit that. And most of these people have never been in 
combat and several of them are in the category of our President: They 
let other young high school graduates go and serve in their place as 
they avoided military service.
  Mr. Speaker, we have got a tough situation now, with a person who, as 
I said on this floor, before he was elected did not have the moral 
authority to order young men and women into combat. And I think Somalia 
made my case. Oh, Clinton unleashed about 33 Tomahawk missiles on the 
intelligence buildings of dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but that is 
not putting men in harm's way. They did not have the wherewithal to 
come out and to get at our cruisers, our Aegis cruisers and other ships 
that were launching the Tomahawk missiles. That was rather antiseptic. 
At that we killed one of the leading artists in Iraq, an innocent women 
artist, I believe, and her children, because one of the Tomahawks went 
off course. Maybe it was struck by Iranian defensive fire, maybe the 
computer system in that Tomahawk went out. But that was not putting men 
and women in harm's way as happened in Somalia.

                              {time}  1600

  Mr. Speaker, anonymous Clinton high-ranking officials told the 
Washington Post, the story appeared April 3, that we can partly blame 
Bosnia on President Bush, that that problem was left to us. We can 
blame Haiti on President Bush, that problem was left to us. But we 
cannot blame Somalia. Bush's humanitarian effort ended in Somalia on 
May 5. You remember the insulting scene of using marines as props, 
ordered to come to the White House in their work clothes, fatigues, the 
first time ever in all my tracking of military people hanging around at 
the White House. They always come in formal gear at night, or mess 
dress uniform minimum for daytime wear, or Class A, or if given 
permission, presentable shirt and tie. Never have I seen people come to 
the White House in their camis, that is their desert, chocolate chip 
camouflage so that the President can set the mike way down on the 
ellipse, the south lawn, and line up all of the men and women marines, 
veterans from Somalia, and march down the White House lawn to the 
microphone with the President in his new blue suit at the lead. 
Unbelievable scene. I still gag when I see it. That was May 5 saying 
that the operation on May 4, 1994, was over, the flag had been turned 
over to the United Nations.
  These anonymous high-ranking Clinton people in the April 3 Post 
article said this one is totally our fault, and it tells how President 
Clinton in his second trip to Martha's Vineyard of his life--his first 
was in 1969 at a big organization of all of the pro-Hanoi honchos to 
work for a Communist victory over South Vietnam, that was his first 
trip in 1969. The media would not tell about that trip though because 
when he went back on vacation in 1993, it was then he said it was the 
second trip back to Martha's Vineyard. But on Martha's Vineyard, the 
Post says, Clinton left the golf game and went to a telephone at the 
golf club, called to the Pentagon and said, ``Send in that Delta Force, 
or whatever you call it in Mogadishu and arrest this guy, Aideed, for 
killing the Pakistanis.'' This operation was all Bill Clinton's, and 
since Haiti seems to me an inevitability of American young service 
people dying, not to help the starving people or to get rid of a thug, 
as in Somalia, but offering up their lives for this fraud, radical, 
Pope-hating, fallen away Catholic priest. I have heard the recordings 
of him bragging that necklacing, burning people to death with tires 
filled with gasoline so that it burns their face first, and they writhe 
around in front of the crowd. He said that is a good way to treat his 
enemies, and that the smell of burning flesh was a beautiful smell to 
me, Aristide, him. We are going to let American men and women die for 
that?

  So I think it is time, since Clinton has 809 days to go in office for 
a man that does not have the moral authority to endanger lives for the 
first time since September 1992, when the Nation ignored the letter of 
Col. Eugene Holmes, commander of the ROTC at the University of 
Arkansas, when he was deceived by Bill Clinton. I have spoken to 
Colonel Holmes within the week. I had been led to believe over the last 
2 years that he was in failing health. He is not in failing health, 
although his health must be guarded because, after all, he spent 3\1/2\ 
years in brutal Japanese captivity, tortured, watching 20, 30, 40, 50 
men, his friends, die in front of him after suffering through months of 
a combat on the Peninsula of Bataan. As he told me, the hardest thing 
he can ever remember in his life is watching his friends die in front 
of him. He said it feels like your arms are being cut off, that you 
yourself are dying partially as you watch each one of your friends die.
  Then he told me a Vietnam-era story about one of his honor graduates 
at the same ROTC program that Clinton had avoided. About a young man 
named Tim, who graduated at the top of his class, He said ``Tim, you're 
one of our graduates who is married with children. You have beautiful 
little children. Tim, you can do anything you want.'' I remember having 
argued like this with my father who had won three wound chevrons in 
World War I, which we now call Purple Hearts, when I told him that I 
wanted to fly jet fighters. He said no, you go into transports. I have 
seen enough blood shed in our family, he said. I had two brothers, and 
we all went into the Air Force and volunteered for whatever dangerous 
assignment there was. I said, ``Dad, you cannot ask your son to make 
choices different from your own.''
  But Colonel Holmes told Tim as an honored graduate he can go to the 
Signal Corps. These are the exact words, ``the Signal Corps, the 
Chemical Corps, Intelligence, you can do anything you want.'' And he 
said, I want to get the exact words now, he said, ``Colonel, Airborne, 
Infantry, Special Operations, All the Way, sir.'' All the Way is an 
Airborne expression, 82d Airborne. And he said, ``Tim, I'm asking you 
again, I'm asking you to think of your wife.'' Holmes had been at the 
wedding. ``Your children. I have seen these beautiful little babies. 
I'm asking you, Tim, don't think of yourself. Think of all of the jobs, 
other jobs in the military where you can serve honorably.'' And Holmes 
said, ``He looked at me and his response was; `Airborne, Infantry, 
Special Operations, All the Way, sir.''' And he said, ``and Tim got 
what he wanted,'' and he sent him to Vietnam. And Holmes said, ``A few 
months later, it seemed like 2 weeks, I was at his wake. And his mother 
came up to me,'' to Colonel Holmes, ``and said, `You were Tim's role 
model. He admired you so much, Colonel.''' And Holmes said, ``Her eyes 
filled with tears.'' She said, ``We're proud of Tim.'' And Holmes said, 
``I didn't know what to say because inside I was dying.'' And he said, 
``and these are the kind of men I saw die on Bataan, die in the 
Japanese prison camps, and the kind that I commissioned.'' I had not 
known he had been at the University, I think of San Francisco, which is 
a Jesuit school, or maybe he said it was the city college where he had 
been head of the ROTC there. He said he commissioned all of these young 
men in San Francisco, and then at Little Rock. So he said, ``when I was 
deceived by Clinton it gave me extra pain.''

  One of the wives of these heroes said to me within the last few days 
that she had just seen the film, ``Lion King,'' with her grandchildren, 
and she said, ``I think of this administration when I think of ``Lion 
King.'' And I said, ``Well, ma'am, let me tell you something. Maybe 
we're two of a kind, because I took five of my nine grandkids, and I 
thought of this administration when I saw ``Lion King.'' And she said, 
``Well, you give me goose pimples saying that, because I thought I was 
the only one in the world.''
  Now here is Colonel Holmes' letter and anybody who is listening, or 
if they would like to call a friend, Mr. Speaker, to reminisce over the 
last 20 years on all of the insults we have seen to the military and to 
recall if you ever heard this letter or have seen it in print. To my 
knowledge, if you get the Washington Times you are the only people who 
will recall any memory. Then look forward to a possible invasion of 
Haiti for American troops, thousands of them--25,000 supposedly 
committed to Bosnia where the evil snipers are back killing men, women, 
and children in the streets of Sarajevo, the very city where World War 
I began June 28 of 1914.

  Colonel Holmes puts at the top of his letter the date, September 7, 
1992. Now remember, the election was November 3, Mr. Speaker. We had 2 
months to make this letter a part of the national discussion of our 
Presidency before we dumped an honorable Commander in Chief named 
George Bush who flew 58 combat missions in the South Pacific, 10 of 
them after he had been shot down the second time and lost Johnny 
Delaney, his youngest crewmember, and lost a friend who was 4 years 
older and had graduated from Yale, where Bush was to go and graduate in 
only 2\1/2\ years. But he was 4 years older than Bush, a family friend. 
And when he came to young lieutenant j.g., friend, and said, ``George, 
you're lucky, you're a combat pilot. I'm a deck officer. I've never 
been in combat. Give me one mission,'' Lt. Ed White. It turned out to 
be his first mission, his last mission, his only mission. How do you 
think George Bush felt about giving the one and only mission to a 
family friend that he died on ambush, was picked up by what they call a 
lifeguard submarine, assigned duty to go around and pick up our pilots 
floating around at sea. I bailed out once at sea in peacetime, and 
believe me, more die than ever get saved when you bail out in high sea, 
the Pacific Ocean. And he spent 30 days on that sub as they picked up 
the other pilots they found out there, and the Japanese depth-charged, 
and he went back to Hawaii. In Hawaii they said, ``You are on your way 
home.'' And Bush said, ``No, no. Send me back to my carrier. I want to 
finish my combat tour with my group on the carrier, San Jacinto.''

                              {time}  1610

  He went back and went for missions 48 to 58. I mention that in detail 
because we are going to go through Bush's 50th anniversary of that 
September 2 shootdown when he lost White and Petty Officer Delaney, 
Delaney who always flew with a rosary around his neck. That is 
September 2, the 50th anniversary.
  I would beg people who rejected President Bush for Bill Clinton. I 
want you to think about replacing that Commander in Chief with this 
flawed Commander in Chief, on September 2, that 50th anniversary. So 
there it is. The election is November 3. Holmes gives his Nation this 
letter September 7. I beg my fellow countrymen through you, Mr. 
Speaker, to listen to this.
  In military style he types:

       Memorandum for Record. Subject: Bill Clinton and the 
     University of Arkansas ROTC Program.
       There have been many unanswered questions as to the 
     circumstances surrounding Bill Clinton's involvement with the 
     ROTC Department at the University of Arkansas. Prior to this 
     time I have not felt the necessity for discussing the 
     details. The reason I have not done so before is that my poor 
     physical health, a consequence of participation in the Bataan 
     death march and subsequent 3\1/2\ years' internment in 
     Japanese POW camps, has precluded me from getting into what I 
     felt was unnecessary involvement.
       However, present polls show that is the imminent danger to 
     our country of a draft dodger becoming the Commander in Chief 
     of the Armed Forces of the United States. While it is true 
     Mr. Clinton has stated that there were many others who 
     avoided serving their country during the Vietnam war, they 
     are not aspiring to be President of the United States.
       The tremendous implications of the possibility of his 
     becoming Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces compels 
     me now to comment on the facts surrounding Mr. Clinton's 
     evasion of the draft. This account would not have been 
     imperative had Bill Clinton been completely honest with the 
     American public concerning this matter, but as Mr. Clinton 
     replied during a news conference this evening, September 5, 
     1992,

and my aside is that obviously it took him 2 days to compose the rest 
of the letter:

     after being asked another particular about his dodging the 
     draft, Clinton said, ``Almost everyone concerned with 
     these incidents are dead. I have no more comments to 
     make.''
       Since I may be the only person living who can give a 
     firsthand account of what actually transpired, I am obliged, 
     by my love of country and my sense of duty, to divulge what 
     actually happened and make it a matter of record.

  Mr. Speaker, as I read these words, I want people to hear in their 
heads, ``Invade Haiti, invade Haiti,'' and think, ``God almighty forbid 
it.''

       Bill Clinton came to see me at my home in 1969 to discuss 
     his desire to enroll in the ROTC program at the University of 
     Arkansas. We engaged in an extensive 2-hour interview. At no 
     time during this long conversation about his desire to join 
     our program did he inform me of his involvement, 
     participation, and actual organizing of protests against U.S. 
     involvement in Southeast Asia.
       He was shrewd enough to realize that had I been aware of 
     his activities he would not have been accepted into the ROTC 
     program as a potential officer in the U.S. Army.

  At this point, Mr. Speaker, I must go back to my own remarks during 
September of 1992, and state a fact that causes most Americans to look 
at me with blank faces, those unfamiliar with the military, and believe 
I am putting a harsh spin on something. I am not. I am going to state 
it factually again.
  Unless elected to the House or the Senate, or to the Presidency of 
the United States, Bill Clinton could never have been commissioned an 
officer in any of our military branches or the Coast Guard, which 
leaves the Transportation Department and goes under the Defense 
Department in time of war. He could never have served in the FBI, CIA, 
National Security Agency, or all of the other security agencies of this 
country, because he organized demonstrations against his country, 
thereby giving aid and comfort to an enemy engaged in hot combat with 
the United States, killing 47,000-plus of our men in combat and another 
10,000 in accidents because of the heightened tempo.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman is reminded that reference of 
personal offense are not allowed on the floor.
  Mr. DORNAN. I am stating a fact. He could not have been commissioned 
in our services. It is not an insult. It is a statement of fact. You 
cannot be commissioned when you have demonstrated against your country 
in a foreign nation.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair will not engage in a dispute. The 
Chair is perfectly aware of what was said after the remarks about being 
able to be commissioned as an officer, and the Chair reminds all 
Members that they are not to engage in remarks offensive to the person 
of the President.
  Mr. DORNAN. I will not go back to it. But I reiterate I was stating 
an historical fact. It is a fact of record. Anybody who has done that, 
try and get a commission. I will go back to Holmes' letter:
  ``The next day,'' this is in July 1969:

       I began to receive phone calls regarding Bill Clinton's 
     draft status. I was informed by the Arkansas draft board that 
     it was of interest to Senator Fulbright's office that Bill 
     Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar student, should be admitted to the 
     ROTC program at Arkansas University. I received several such 
     calls. The general message conveyed by the draft board to me 
     was that Senator Fulbright's office was putting pressure on 
     them, the draft board members, and that they needed my help. 
     I then made the necessary arrangements to enroll Clinton into 
     the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas.

  ``I was not `saving' him from serving his country,'' and ``saving'' 
is in quotes, ``as he erroneously thanked me for in his letter from 
England dated December 3, 1969. I was making it possible for a Rhodes 
Scholar to serve in the military as an officer.''
  Of course, Clinton never stood for his exams later that year or in 
1970 and came home without an degree. He picked up an honorary one 
recently after all of those D-day, 50th anniversary photo ops.
  Here is the text of Bill Clinton's letter, which I will put in the 
Record tonight. There is that lines, ``I decided to accept the draft 
for one reason, to maintain my political viability within the system.'' 
He says, ``I tried to make something out of the second year at Rhodes 
Scholarship.'' There is no evidence he ever went back to class again.
  And he says, ``How is it that so many people have come to find 
themselves still loving their country but loathing the military?'' That 
is really what this is about, what all of these 15 insults I am going 
to put in the Record later are about, is loathing the military.
  Back to Colonel Holmes' letter, and I am going to go back one line:

       Making it possible for a Rhodes Scholar to serve in the 
     military as an officer. In retrospect, I see Mr. Clinton had 
     no intention of following through with his agreement to join 
     the Army ROTC program at the University of Arkansas or even 
     to attend the University of Arkansas law school.
       I had explained to him the necessity of enrolling at the 
     University of Arkansas as a student in order to be eligible 
     to take the reserve officers' training program at the 
     university. He never enrolled at the University of Arkansas, 
     but, instead, after going back to Oxford, enrolled at Yale 
     after attending Oxford.
       I believe that he purposely deceived me, using the 
     possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the 
     draft board to delay his induction.

  Clinton had already gotten his induction notice; he was drafted, past 
tense, ``ed,'' drafted, with a showup date of July 28, 1969.

  He got that draft induction showup date crushed, suppressed, 
reversed, politically obliterated. I have never heard of that in my 
life. This was a well-connected 23-year-old in the State of Arkansas. 
Back to Colonel Holmes' letter:

       The December 3 letter written to me by Mr. Clinton and 
     subsequently taken from the files by Lieutenant Colonel Clint 
     Jones, my executive officer, was placed into the ROTC files 
     so that a record would be available in case the applicant 
     should ever again petition to enter the ROTC program.

  I add at this point, Mr. Speaker, any military program, NCO program. 
The information in that letter alone would have restricted Bill Clinton 
from ever qualifying to be an officer in the U.S. military, or NCO:

       Even more significant was his lack of veracity in purposely 
     defrauding the military by deceiving me both in concealing 
     his antimilitary activities overseas and his counterfeit 
     intentions for later military service. These actions cause me 
     to question both Clinton's patriotism and his integrity.
       When I consider the caliber, the bravery, the patriotism of 
     the fine young soldiers whose deaths I have witnessed and 
     others whose funerals I have attended, when I reflect on not 
     only the willingness but the eagerness that so many have 
     displayed in their earnest desire to defend and serve their 
     country, it is untenable and incomprehensible to me that a 
     man who was not merely unwillingly to serve his country but 
     actually protested against its military should ever be in the 
     position of Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces.
       I write this declaration not only for the living and future 
     generations but for those who fought and died for our 
     country. If space and time permitted me, I would include the 
     names of ones I knew and fought with, and along with them I 
     would mention by brother, Bob, who was killed during World 
     War II and is buried in Cambridge, England. He was killed at 
     the age of 23, the age Bill Clinton was when he was over in 
     England protesting the war.

                              {time}  1620

  Another aside, Mr. Speaker: I went to that Cambridge cemetery. I 
meant to look up Bob Holmes' grave. But I was with Sonny Montgomery's 
group going over there to memorial ceremonies. We were on a tough 
schedule and could not break away. I did later at the D-day Coeurvill 
Cemetery. And I wanted to particularly go to Bob Holmes's grave, 
particularly when Clinton showed up and made a speech at that very 
cemetery as though nothing had ever in his life precluded him visiting 
all of these memorial sites of true heroes, their average age being 
younger than his age when he was chanting in Grovesnor Square England 
in front of the United States Embassy. I will return someday and 
pay homage to Colonel Holmes' brother. Colonel Holmes told me it was 
his middle brother. This was his kid brother. So I see him dying slowly 
on an airplane finding its way back through the Luftwaffe to England 
where many times we sat at home as children viewing the film of these 
young men, either broken, bleeding, clinging to life or their dead 
bodies being taken off the airplane. And all the others that were 
missing in the countryside of France and Germany, up in the North Sea, 
or downed in the English Channel, their remains never to be returned. 
There is a huge missing-in-action wall at that cemetery. Prominent 
names are pointed out, like Joe Kennedy, the oldest brother of the 
Kennedy family, and Glenn Miller, the great musical bandleader, who 
brought so much uplift to our men and who was himself an actual officer 
in the 8th Air Force Command there in England.

  Colonel Holmes finishes:

       I have agonized over whether or not to submit this 
     statement to the American people. But I realize that even 
     though I served my country by being in the military for over 
     32 years and having gone through the ordeal of months of 
     combat under the worst of conditions on Bataan, followed by 
     years of imprisonment by the Japanese, it is not enough. I am 
     writing these comments to let everyone know that I love my 
     country more than I do my own personal security and well-
     being.

  He expected the news media to descend on him and, with a liberal 
twist, ruin his life.

       I will go to my grave loving these United States, the 
     United States of America, and the liberty for which so many 
     have fought and died. Because of my poor physical condition, 
     this will be my final statement.

  I will tell Colonel Holmes when I meet him that I think he should 
have taken those interviews with the media. I called the AP tonight and 
they said they did try to reach him and he said he was unavailable. I 
think he should have fought this battle through to its conclusion and 
should have made the American people listen to this. After all, Ted 
Koppel read the entire Clinton letter, putting the best spin possible 
on it, on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, February 12, 1992. So, months 
later, in September, I think Koppel could have been pressed by my 
colleagues, Congressman Duncan Hunter, Navy ace, Congressman ``Duke'' 
Cunningham, 7-year POW and badly tortured hero, Congressman Sam 
Johnson, Air Force colonel in Hanoi imprisonment. We could have 
appealed to Ted Koppel, and he could have put on Colonel Holmes and 
Colonel Holmes could have read this letter. But Colonel Holmes made his 
statement and assumed naively, assumed this would be on the front pages 
across the country. It was not. He signs it ``Eugene J. Holmes, 
Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired.'' He has it notarized, State of Arkansas, 
County of Washington, by Barbara J. Powers, Notary Public. She says her 
commission expired that December 1993. He has every page of this letter 
notarized.
  Mr. Speaker, I would ask our wonderful official recorders of debate 
to use a different type style, out of respect to Colonel Holmes' 
letter, so that when my asides appear they are not ascribed to Colonel 
Holmes, that the text of his letter appear in different context.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Abercrombie). Without objection, the 
gentleman may insert any extraneous material.
  Mr. DORNAN. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
                                                September 7, 1992.
     Memorandum for Record.
     Subject: Bill Clinton and the University of Arkansas ROTC 
         Program.
       There have been many unanswered questions as to the 
     circumstances surrounding Bill Clinton's involvement with the 
     ROTC department at the University of Arkansas. Prior to this 
     time I have not felt the necessity for discussing the 
     details. The reason I have not done so before is that my poor 
     physical health (a consequence of participation in the Bataan 
     Death March and the subsequent 3\1/2\ years internment in 
     Japanese POW camps) has precluded me from getting into what I 
     felt was unnecessary involvement. However, present polls show 
     that there is the imminent danger to our country of a draft 
     dodger becoming the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of 
     the United States. While it is true, as Mr. Clinton has 
     stated, that there were many others who avoided serving their 
     country in the Vietnam war, they are not aspiring to be the 
     President of the United States.
       The tremendous implications of the possibility of his 
     becoming Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces 
     compels me now to comment on the facts concerning Mr. 
     Clinton's evasion of the draft.
       This account would not have been imperative had Bill 
     Clinton been completely honest with the American public 
     concerning this matter. But as Mr. Clinton replied during a 
     news conference this evening (September 5, 1992) after being 
     asked another particular about his dodging the draft, 
     ``Almost everyone concerned with these incidents are dead. I 
     have no more comments to make''. Since I may be the only 
     person living who can give a first hand account of what 
     actually transpired, I am obligated by my love for my country 
     and my sense of duty to divulge what actually happened and 
     make it a matter of record.
       Bill Clinton came to see me at my home in 1969 to discuss 
     his desire to enroll in the ROTC program at the University of 
     Arkansas. We engaged in an extensive, approximately two (2) 
     hour interview. At no time during this long conversation 
     about his desire to join the program did he inform me of his 
     involvement, participation and actually organizing protests 
     against the United States involvement in South East Asia. He 
     was shrewd enough to realize that had I been aware of his 
     activities, he would not have been accepted into the ROTC 
     program as a potential officer in the United States Army.
       The next day I began to receive phone calls regarding Bill 
     Clinton's draft status. I was informed by the draft board 
     that it was of interest to Senator Fullbright's office that 
     Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, should be admitted to the 
     ROTC program. I received several such calls. The general 
     message conveyed by the draft board to me was that Senator 
     Fullbright's office was putting pressure on them and that 
     they needed my help. I than made the necessary arrangements 
     to enroll Mr. Clinton into the ROTC program at the University 
     of Arkansas.
       I was not ``saving'' him from serving his country, as he 
     erroneously thanked me for in his letter from England (dated 
     December 3, 1969). I was making it possible for a Rhodes 
     Scholar to serve in the military as an officer.
       In retrospect I see that Mr. Clinton had no intention of 
     following through with his agreement to join the Army ROTC 
     program at the University of Arkansas or to attend the 
     University of Arkansas Law School. I had explained to him the 
     necessity of enrolling at the University of Arkansas as a 
     student in order to be eligible to take the ROTC program 
     at the University. He never enrolled at the University of 
     Arkansas, but instead enrolled at Yale after going back to 
     Oxford. I believe that he purposely deceived me, using the 
     possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the 
     draft board to delay his induction and get a new draft 
     classification.
       The December 3rd letter written to me by Mr. Clinton, and 
     subsequently taken from the files by Lt. Col. Clint Jones, my 
     executive officer, was placed into the ROTC files so that a 
     record would be available in case the applicant should again 
     petition to enter into the ROTC program. The information in 
     that letter alone would have restricted Bill Clinton from 
     ever qualifying to be an officer in the United States 
     Military. Even more significant was his lack of veracity in 
     purposefully defrauding the military by deceiving me, both in 
     concealing his anti-military activities overseas and his 
     counterfeit intentions for later military service. These 
     actions cause me to question both Clinton's patriotism and 
     his integrity.
       When I consider the calabre, the bravery, and the 
     patriotism of the fine young soldiers whose deaths I have 
     witnessed, and others whose funerals I have attended. . . . 
     When I reflect on not only the willingness but eagerness that 
     so many of them displayed in their earnest desire to defend 
     and serve their country, it is untenable and incomprehensible 
     to me that a man who was not merely unwilling to serve his 
     country, but actually protested against its military, should 
     ever be in the position of Commander-in-Chief of our Armed 
     Forces.
       I write this declaration not only for the living and future 
     generations, but for those who fought and died for our 
     country. If space and time permitted I would include the 
     names of the ones I knew and fought with, and along with them 
     I would mention my brother Bob, who was killed during World 
     War II and is buried in Cambridge, England (at the age of 23, 
     about the age Bill Clinton was when he was over in England 
     protesting the war).
       I have agonized over whether or not to submit this 
     statement to the American people. But, I realize that even 
     though I served my country by being in the military for over 
     32 years, and having gone through the ordeal of months of 
     combat under the worst of conditions on Bataan followed by 
     years of imprisonment by the Japanese, it is not enough. I'm 
     writing these comments to let everyone know that I love my 
     country more than I do my own personal security and well-
     being. I will go to my grave loving these United States of 
     America and the liberty for which so many men have fought and 
     died.
       Because of my poor physical condition this will be my final 
     statement. I will make no further comments to any of the 
     media regarding this issue.
                                                 Eugene J. Holmes,
                                             Colonel, U.S.A., Ret.
       State of Arkansas, County of Washington.
       Notary Public--Barbara J. Powers. My commission expires 12/
     1/93.
  Mr. Speaker, I asked my staff to rush over here and they handed to me 
in the Cloakroom just before I came out here, to get my remarks from 
September 30, 1992, when I took the letter of a young Rhode Island 2d 
Regiment soldier killed out near where I live when the House is in 
session, at Manassas, in the Battle of Bull Run, Manassas. His name was 
Sullivan Ballou. The letter was written to his wife and his two young 
sons before he died in that battle.
  I wrote an article entitled ``The Tales of Two Men,'' and I compared 
Clinton's December 3, 1969, letter to Colonel Holmes to Sullivan 
Ballou's letter to his wife, Sarah.
  I do not think I have ever known an American worthy of the name 
American who watched the beautiful Ken Burns Civil War series, who 
heard the text of Sullivan Ballou's letter, who did not get a huge lump 
in their throat or actually have tears running down their face, where 
he described to his wife what an honor it was to serve his country and 
how he owed it to the men in the Revolutionary War, which is an easy 
period before to remember, it is Lincoln's opening of the Gettysburg 
Address, ``Four score and seven years ago.'' Where the first Bull Run 
was 61, so subtract 2--85 years before, he talked about the beginning 
of that Revolutionary War and how he owed it.
  Later on that night--I may put in Sullivan Ballou's letter if we go 
into Haiti and lose people, I will put it in again, the tale of two 
men. But here are my words about why all of this has been coming out 
about civil cases that we are not supposed to discuss on the House 
floor, where you have to hire one of the top fix-it-up lawyers in this 
town, my friend Bill Bennett's older brother, Bob.
  Here is what I said: ``All of this is going to come out.'' I was 
talking about the March stories on Whitewater that were suppressed and 
all the stories about all these draft dodgers, the demonstrations, and 
still to this day, the unexplained trip to Moscow. It was not pure 
tourism, to stay in the National Hotel with George McGovern. There was 
a meeting, a gathering there. It was not just tourism. There were 10 
inches of snow cover, 27 degrees below zero, going alone to Moscow and 
Prague was not just your average tourism. That was not the European 
grand tour of Rome and Paris and Athens if you had the money, that 
European students had been taking--for over two centuries--Rhodes 
scholars have been taking for over a century.
  Here is what I said, quoting myself now: ``And it will come out, the 
horror of all of it is that this will come out after he is President, 
if he picks up the radioactivity of the position leader of the free 
world.'' Now here is what makes it painful to the military. When I was 
at Utah Beach and we waited over an hour for President Clinton and then 
found out that maybe it was President Mitterrand that we were waiting 
for. When it was announced that Clinton would be an hour late, the 
crowd booed. There was kind of an ugly mood. People were mumbling about 
Clinton time. And maybe he was innocent, maybe it was President 
Mitterrand. But that day there was a man next to me who lost his 
elbow--one arm did not have an elbow--in the Battle of the Bulge, he 
was with the 101st Airborne. He had fought through the Normandy 
campaign, got his severe wounds and was taken prisoner. So they put a 
cast on him, and that cast did not come off until he was in New Jersey 
6 months later. That is how poor his medical treatment was, because 
Germany was collapsing.
  That gentleman turned to me and he said he thought it was a sacrilege 
for Clinton to show up at Utah Beach. I said to him, ``Well, frankly it 
would be worse if he did not show up, would it not?'' He said, ``Why is 
he showing up and reading his written speeches? Why doesn't he just 
introduce veterans?'' When somebody, one of my Democratic friends, and 
I mean a friend, challenged me and said, ``What would you do if you 
were Clinton, Dornan?'' I said, ``I would introduce Joe Dawson, the 
hero company commander on Omaha Beach, the first officer to take his 
men off the beach.''

                              {time}  1630

  I would have introduced him, and told his story, and let Dawson give 
the commemorative speech on the 50th anniversary, not make a hero with 
the Distinguished Service Cross, this Joe Dawson, Captain hero, 
introduce Clinton for those words about we are the children of your 
sacrifice. Well, most of the children are these heroes, answered the 
call in Korea, and Vietnam, and Somalia, and will answer the call to 
Haiti, wherever he chooses to send them. They will answer that certain 
trumpet because these are the sons and daughters of the families.
  And here is a picture of Clinton in U.S. News and World Report on the 
beach with three heroes. These are the very three heroes where, 
described using Maureen Dowd's words; all I know, she is not a 
conservative writer, works for the New York Times, said the 
prepubescent yuppie staffers of Clinton grabbed the sleeves of these 
three heroes and pulled them out of the picture so Clinton could walk 
down the beach reflectively to a little cairn of stones that his staff 
had built. And then he took those stones and made them into a cross, 
and, as Maureen Dowd writes, one of the staff said, ``Fantastic, 
awesome, Dude,'' or something like that.
  I want to tell you about these three people the Clinton staffers 
pulled out of the picture. Here is John Robert Slaughter, known as Bob. 
He is all the way through the great Stephen Ambrose book, ``D-Day,'' as 
one of the narrative young enlisted men telling about this desperate 
fight on Omaha Beach.
  Here is Medal of Honor winner, Walter Ehlers, sergeant; I will come 
back to him.
  And here is Joe Dawson. Let me tell you Captain Dawson's story. 
Dawson, a retired Army colonel, served in Vietnam, too, and Korea of 
course. He was in the front of his landing barge, and he could hear the 
bullets hitting the front, and then they stopped. When the barge door 
opened, he and one of his platoon leader lieutenants and his radio man 
stepped off the barge in the water up to their neck. The minute they 
hit the water the firing started, and the Germans had their field of 
fire down perfectly. They had had months to practice it. The fire 
entered the landing craft behind the lieutenant, the radio man, and 
killed all 30 men on board that first landing craft. There were just 
three survivors from that first craft to hit the beach at Omaha.
  Dawson fought his way to the beach. I think his lieutenant was 
killed. He went around. That was A Company, 116th Regiment, of a 
National Guard unit, the Old Blue and Gray, the 29th of Virginia and 
Maryland, hitting the beach next to the regulars in the Big Red One in 
the First Division that had seen such combat and won such glory in 
World War I.
  They hit the beach. He assembles other units all day long and finally 
says, ``We must get off this beach or we die,'' and he was the first 
captain to fight across. When I stood up there in those bluffs with my 
wife, Sallie, and looked down at Omaha, it was my fifth visit, but I 
had never seen this perspective or how far it was from the waterline or 
even the beach wall through these dunes under intensive fire from the 
very ground that is now American soil in perpetuity forever that the 
French have given us, 796-some acres, the Colleville sur Mer cemetery. 
That was the firing field for the Germans to slaughter our kids on that 
beach.
  And Joe Dawson was asked to introduce Clinton instead of the other 
way around. And he was pulled on his sleeve to get out of the picture 
to make way for those photo ops that were ``awesome, Dude.''
  And here is Walter Ehlers. Last night I went to my Medal of Honor 
book at home and looked up Walter Ehlers when I noticed these gentlemen 
are unidentified in this picture. It took me all week to find out who 
they were, but I saw the powder blue ribbon on Ehlers. I did not know 
what his rank was. He has three rows of ribbons. He has won it all, 
including the Medal of Honor, and here is the story of Walter D. 
Ehlers, Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, 18th Infantry, First Infantry 
Division, 18th Regiment. Place and date of Medal of Honor: near 
Goville, France, 9 to 10 of June of 1944, 4 days after surviving the 
beaches of D-Day. Here is his story:
  Entered the service at Manhattan, KS, born in Junction City, KS. He 
got his citation right while his unit was fighting in the Battle of the 
Bulge, 2 days after the Bulge had started, and he is probably still in 
combat. He gets his Medal of Honor 19 December of 1944.
  Citation:

       ``For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of 
     his life above and beyond the call of duty on 9-10 June 1944, 
     near Goville, France. Staff Sergeant Ehlers, always acting as 
     the spearhead of the attack, repeatedly led his men against 
     heavily defended enemy strong points exposing himself to 
     deadly hostile fire.
  I want those following the electronic proceedings of this House, Mr. 
Speaker, to be reminded that Medal of Honor winners posthumously, Gary 
Gordon and Randy Shughart, could not get within 150 yards of Michael 
Durant's down sight of his Blackhawk helicopter. They did not rope 
down. They were brought down on the ground. That helicopter took 
intense fire, eventually had to be ashcanned, class 86, it was 
destroyed. It took so much heavy fire and tore the leg off of one of 
the men. They had to run through a gauntlet of 150 yards of fire; 
Gordon, and Shughart, and Walter Ehlers cut out of the same bolt of 
cloth.
  It says that under hostile fire whenever the situation required 
heroic leadership, courageous leadership, Ehlers was there, without 
waiting for an order. That is what is so special about noncommissioned 
officers in our Navy, and Army, and Air Force, and Marine Corps.
  Ehlers, far ahead of his men, led his squad against the strongly 
defended enemy strong point, personally killing four of them, enemy 
patrol who attacked them en route. Then, crawling forward under 
withering machine gun fire, he pounced upon the gun crew and put it out 
of action, turning his attention to two mortars protecting the cross-
fire of two machine guns. Sergeant Ehlers led his men through a hail of 
bullets to kill or put the--to flight the enemy up in mortar section, 
killing personally three men. After mopping up the mortar positions, he 
again advanced on a machine gun, his progress effectively covered by 
his squad. When he was almost on top of the gun, he leapt to his feet, 
and, although greatly outnumbered, he knocked out the positions single 
handed.
  The next day, after having advanced deep into enemy territory, the 
platoon of which Sergeant Ehlers was a member found itself in an 
untenable position as the enemy brought increased mortar, machine gun 
and small arms fire to bear, and it was ordered to withdraw. Sergeant 
Ehlers, after his squad had covered the withdrawal of the remainder of 
the platoon, stood up, and by continuous fire at a semicircle of enemy 
placements diverted the bulk of the heavy, hostile fire on himself, 
thereby permitting the members of his own squad to withdraw. At this 
point, though now wounded himself, he carried his wounded automatic 
rifle man; that is a Browning automatic rifle, BAR, carried all the way 
from Utah Beach all the way across into Germany by the Republican 
leader Bob Michel. BAR men were picked for their expertise in 
marksmanship, their size and strength so they could carry this much 
heavier gun with a little bipod on the front that the average--very 
heavy by today's terms M-1 grand rifle. So, he picks up his Bob Michel-
type BAR man, carries him to safety, and then returned fearlessly over 
the shell-swept field to relieve the automatic fire, automatic rifle 
which he was unable to carry previously. He went back to get his 
precious semiautomatic, Browning automatic rifle.
  After having his wound treated, he refused to be evacuated and 
returned to lead his squad further. The intrepid leadership, 
indomitable courage and fearless aggressiveness displayed by Staff 
Sergeant Ehlers in the face of overwhelming enemy forces serve as an 
inspiration to others, an inspiration to Clinton's young staffers who 
pulled on his sleeve to get him out of this picture so that the news 
media that night would not show this picture, but the picture of 
Clinton playing with the stones and the very small commemorative 
forces, ships at sea.
  This is why I list this as one of my 15 reasons why Clinton, or his 
administration, have insulted the military and why morale is so far 
down, and why the defense bill, though not quite the hot debate of days 
passed, why we heard the word hollowing out the military over and over 
again and why I voted against the Senate-House conference report on 
military because of its savage cuts.

                              {time}  1640

  Clinton doubled his sworn promise in the campaign that he would go 
$60 billion beyond George Bush's savage cuts, because after all the 
cold war was over, the Berlin Wall came down on the birthday of Jesus 
Christ, December 25, we saw that ugly hammer and sickle come down, and 
the old Russian czar's powder blue and red flag go up.
  But we had to cut something. He said he would cut $60 billion beyond 
Bush. Now it is $120 billion, we are in free fall, and the count gets 
even deeper.
  Here are the 15 insults. At some point in early April 1993, a three-
star general, now the four-star commander in chief of Southern Command 
in Panama, then the recent two-star commander of the 24th infantry 
mechanized, the point of Schwarzkopf's spear during that Hail Mary left 
hook around Kuwait and into Iraq, ending that land war in 4 days, Barry 
McCaffrey was in the White House, in uniform, with all of his ribbons. 
If he had been in his short-sleeved shirt you would have seen his arm 
torn up from Vietnam combat, several purple hearts. At least one 
officer and son in combat in Somalia as lieutenants in different units 
than their dad. One of the sons I think was under him. The daughter was 
in a military police unit.
  He says ``good morning'' to a young staffer, a female, not that 
gender means anything. She leans over in his face, and says, ``We don't 
talk to people over here who wear their uniforms.'' Nobody was ever 
fired for that despicable insult. As far as we know, nobody was even 
disciplined. Then it began.
  A few days later, May 5, there was an asinine photo opportunity on 
the south lawn of the White House saying Operation Restore Hope was 
over, which was Bush's humanitarian effort that Clinton merely 
supported once he came into office. That was May 5. On October 3, just 
5 months later, we saw what happened. Nineteen Americans were killed in 
Somalia in the worst firefight since Vietnam
  Insult three: Removing the AC-130 Hercules, they call them Spectre 
gunships, two days before the Rangers were sent, because Halperin, who 
the Senate would not confirm for reasons like this, convinced Les Aspin 
that it would look too offensive. I guess he means small o and military 
offense, to have the gunships, that fly at 5,000 feet above rifle fire 
and small arms rocket propelled grenades, and clear the area when a 
helicopter goes down and the men are about to be murdered and cut up, 
cut to ribbons, and at least one taken alive. That was a denial.
  Then I put in with it, though it could be a separate insult, the 
denial of armor asked for by the two commanding generals over there for 
a rescue operation contingency if something went wrong in Operation 
Ranger.
  The formal date of that denial of land armor was July 13. The 
gunships were pulled out shortly after that.
  The gunships, by the way, were the first things put back in after the 
firefight, and nobody in the world press and not Aideed or any of his 
warlords or killers in the streets complained, oh my God, the Americans 
have brought back the Spectre gunships with the 105 recoiler howitzer. 
Nobody complained. Nobody even knew they should never have been pulled 
out.
  Number four: Clinton's offensive speech at Fort McNair announcing new 
homosexual policy, that Sam Nunn and Ike Skelton of this Chamber 
reversed. Clinton used general officers, admirals and generals, as 
background, extras, they call them in Hollywood, on Broadway they are 
called supernumeraries or spear carriers.
  Number five: Use of members of the Army, spit-and-polish old guard at 
Fort Myer, to deliver documents to Members of Congress. I put down 
October 22, 1993, because that is when one of them showed up in my 
office. I said you are not being used as a messenger boy or a courier, 
are you, Sergeant?
  Number six: U.S. military air transportation for Somali warlord 
Aideed, after the killing of 19 U.S. troops. That took place December 
2. I discussed that at length tonight.
  Number seven: Press conference in Colorado, featuring Hillary Clinton 
and U.S. military troops all around her while she discusses health care 
on March 14, 1994.
  Number eight: May 23, the insults to Herb Shugart. I didn't know 
about Operation Ranger. I didn't know about us flying Aideed on an Army 
airplane with a Marine escort. They wouldn't insult the remaining Army 
guys by making them escort him, but he was on a Army airplane. That is 
insulting, to tell that to the father of a dead hero at the posthumous 
awarding of the Medal of Honor in the East Ballroom of the White House.
  Number nine: Use of Marine Corps presidential helicopters for White 
House staff on a golf trip to Maryland. Well, that fellow Watkins is 
long gone. That was May 24, the very day after the insults to the 
father of the Medal of Honor winner.
  Number ten: The President's staged reflective prayer at Sicily/Anzio 
Cemetery on June 3. Picking up a flag that his staff picked up out of 
the ground and laid down next to a cross. Clinton comes along and 
pretends he finds it on the ground and sticks it back in the ground. 
Only as you saw only several television shows, as he is pretending to 
pray, you see his eyes look up and check at the camera, and they freeze 
the frame on him.
  Mr. Speaker, I will include the list of 15 insults against the 
military in the Record, as well as the text of Bill Clinton's letter to 
ROTC Colonel Holmes.

                        Clinton and the Military

       1. Senior military officer insulted by junior White House 
     Staff (GEN McCaffrey) without disciplinary action. April 
     1993.
       2. White House press conference on front lawn featuring 
     U.S. Marine units from Somalia. May 5, 1993.
       3. Removal of AC-130 Spectre Gunships and then a September 
     1993 denial of Armor to ``Operation Ranger''. July 14, 1993.
       4. Clinton's speech at Ft. McNair announcing new homosexual 
     policy using General Officers as background ``extras''. July 
     19, 1993.
       5. Use of members of the Army's ``Old Guard'' to deliver 
     documents to members of Congress. October 22, 1993.
       6. U.S. military air transportation for Somali warlord 
     Aidid after killing of 19 U.S. troops. December 2, 1993.
       7. Press conference in Colorado featuring Hillary Clinton 
     and U.S. military troops. March 14, 1994.
       8. Insults to Herb Shughart. May 23, 1994.
       9. Use of Presidential helicopters for White House staff 
     golf trip to Maryland. May 24, 1994.
       10. Clinton's ``staged'' reflective prayer at Sicily/Anzio 
     military cemetery in Italy. June 3, 1994.
       11. Pilfering of towels aboard a Navy aircraft carrier 
     during D-Day ceremonies. June 5, 1994.
       12. Clinton's ``staged'' reflective prayer on Normandy 
     beaches for photo opportunity, pulling aside Joe Dawson, John 
     Robert Slaughter, Walter Ehlers, etc. June 6, 1994.
       13. Release of phony story about Hillary Clinton attempting 
     to join Marine Corps in 1975 when she was 29 years old. June 
     17, 1994.
       14. Use of military officers (Captains and Lieutenants) at 
     a partisan White House event as ``waiters''. June 21, 1994.
       15. Sending ``condolences'' to North Korea on the death of 
     Kim Il Sung. July 9, 1994.
                                  ____


             Text of Bill Clinton's Letter to ROTC Colonel

       The text of the letter Bill Clinton wrote to Col. Eugene 
     Holmes, director of the ROTC program at the University of 
     Arkansas, on Dec. 3, 1969:
       I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to 
     let you hear from me at least once a month, and from now on 
     you will, but I have had to have some time to think about 
     this first letter. Almost daily since my return to England I 
     have thought about writing, about what I want to and ought to 
     say.
       First, I want to thank you, not just for saving me from the 
     draft, but for being so kind and decent to me last summer, 
     when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing which made 
     the bond we struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was 
     my high regard for you personally. In retrospect, it seems 
     that the admiration might not have been mutual had you known 
     a little more about me, about my political beliefs and 
     activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for 
     the draft than for ROTC.
       Let me try to explain. As you know, I worked for two years 
     in a very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations 
     Committee. I did it for the experience and the salary but 
     also for the opportunity, however small, of working every day 
     against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling 
     I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam. I 
     did not take the matter lightly but studied it carefully, and 
     there was a time when not many people had.
       I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One 
     of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a 
     close friend of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I 
     went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of 
     the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans 
     here for demonstrations Oct. 15 and Nov. 16.
       Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did 
     not begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law 
     seminar at Georgetown I wrote a paper on the legal arguments 
     for and against allowing, within the Selective Service 
     System, the classification of selective conscientious 
     objection for those opposed to participation in a particular 
     war, not simply to ``participation in war in any form.''
       From my work I came to believe that the draft system itself 
     is illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited, 
     parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its 
     citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a 
     war which even possibly may be wrong, a war which, in any 
     case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of 
     the nation.
       The draft was justified in World War II because the life of 
     the people collectively was at stake. Individuals had to 
     fight, if the nation was to survive, for the lives of their 
     countrymen and their way of life. Vietnam is no such case. 
     Nor was Korea an example where, in my opinion, certain 
     military action was justified but the draft was not, for the 
     reasons stated above.
       Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in 
     great sympathy with those who are not willing to fight, kill 
     and maybe die for their country (i.e. the particular policy 
     of a particular government) right or wrong. Two of my friends 
     at Oxford are conscientious objectors. I wrote a letter of 
     recommendation for one of them to his Mississippi draft 
     board, a letter which I am more proud of than anything else I 
     wrote at Oxford last year. One of my roommates is a draft 
     resister who is possibly under indictment and may never be 
     able to go home again. He is one of the bravest, best men I 
     know. His country needs men like him more than they know. 
     That he is considered a criminal is an obscenity.
       The decision not to be a resister and the related 
     subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I 
     decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one 
     reason: to maintain my political viability within the system. 
     For years I have worked to prepare myself for a political 
     life characterized by both practical political ability and 
     concern for rapid social progress. It is a life I still feel 
     compelled to try to lead. I do not think our system of 
     government is by definition corrupt, however dangerous and 
     inadequate it has been in recent years. (The society may be 
     corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that is true, 
     we are all finished anyway.)
       When the draft came, despite political convictions, I was 
     having a hard time facing the prospect of fighting a war I 
     had been fighting against, and that is why I contacted you. 
     ROTC was the one way left in which I could possibly, but not 
     positively, avoid both Vietnam and resistance. Going on with 
     my education, even coming back to England, played no part in 
     my decision to join ROTC. I am back here, and would have been 
     at Arkansas Law School because there is nothing else I can 
     do. In fact, I would like to have been able to take a year 
     out perhaps to teach in a small college or work on some 
     community action project and in the process to decide whether 
     to attend law school or graduate school and how to begin 
     putting what I have learned to use.
       But the particulars of my personal life are not nearly as 
     important to me as the principles involved. After I signed 
     the ROTC letter of intent, I began to wonder whether the 
     compromise I had made with myself was not more objectionable 
     than the draft would have been, because I had no interest in 
     the ROTC program in itself and all I seemed to have done was 
     to protect myself from physical harm. Also, I began to think 
     I had deceived you, not by lies--there were none--but by 
     failing to tell you all the things I'm writing now. I doubt 
     that I had the mental coherence to articulate them then.
       At that time, after we had made our agreement and you had 
     sent my 1-D deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss 
     of my self-regard and self-confidence really set in. I hardly 
     slept for weeks and kept going by eating compulsively and 
     reading until exhaustion brought sleep. Finally, on Sept. 12 
     I stayed up all night writing a letter to the chairman of my 
     draft board, saying basically what is in the preceding 
     paragraph, thanking him for trying to help in a case where he 
     really couldn't, and stating that I couldn't do the ROTC 
     after all and would he please draft me as soon as possible.
       I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it on me every 
     day until I got on the plane to return to England. I didn't 
     mail the letter because I didn't see, in the end, how my 
     going in the Army and maybe going to Vietnam would achieve 
     anything except a feeling that I had punished myself and 
     gotten what I deserved. So I came back to England to try to 
     make something of this second year of my Rhodes scholarship.
       And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have 
     been good to me and have a right to know what I think and 
     feel. I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one 
     story will help you to understand more clearly how so many 
     fine people have come to find themselves still loving their 
     country but loathing the military, to which you and other 
     good men have devoted years, lifetimes, of the best service 
     you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is 
     service and what is disservice, or if it is clear, the 
     conclusion is likely to be illegal.
       Forgive the length of this letter. There was much to say. 
     There is still a lot to be said, but it can wait. Please say 
     hello to Col. Jones for me.
           Sincerely,
                                                     Bill Clinton.

  The letter from Major Ballou follows:

                                       Camp Clark, Washington,

                                                    July 14, 1861.
       My Very Dear Sarah: The indications are very strong that we 
     shall move in a few days--perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not 
     be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines 
     that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.
       I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the 
     cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or 
     falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans 
     on the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe 
     to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings 
     of the Revolution. I am willing--perfectly willing--to lay 
     down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this 
     Government, and to pay that debt.
       Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me 
     with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; 
     and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind 
     and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the 
     battlefield.
       The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you 
     come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and 
     you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me 
     to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, 
     when God willing, we might still have lived and loved 
     together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood 
     around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon 
     Divine Providence, but something whispers to me--perhaps it 
     is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return 
     to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never 
     forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes 
     me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name. Forgive my 
     many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How 
     thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly 
     would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your 
     happiness. . . .
       But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and 
     the unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near 
     you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights . . . 
     always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your 
     cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your 
     throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah, do 
     not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we 
     shall meet again.
     S. Ballou.

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