[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 139 (Thursday, September 29, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 29, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
              UNITED STATES TROOPS IN HARM'S WAY IN HAITI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, we will just continue the colloquy started 
by the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton].
  One of the memos that I put in before, and the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] has put in, here is a meeting between Daniel 
Caputo, who by the way answers to Boutros-Ghali as one of our American 
professional U.N. people up there, and he has a job, or, no, with Mr. 
Andre Ouellet, Foreign Affairs Minister of Canada, so he is meeting 
with big people up there.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. If the gentleman will yield, as I understand 
it, Mr. Caputo has resigned his position at the United Nations because 
of this affair.
  Mr. DORNAN. Yes; yes. I do not know he got around the confidentiality 
of these memos unless he was the one who declared them confidential, 
but the one with the French representatives up there is very 
definitive. The French say they do not want an invasion or occupation 
of their former French colony, two centuries ago, 1804, but it is the 
only French-speaking nation in all of this hemisphere except two little 
Canadian islands in the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and then the two 
colonies, Guadalupe and Martinique that answer directly with 
independent departments, the French call them, to Paris.
  But listen to this again:

       The Americans will not be able to stand for much longer 
     press criticism until August at the latest the criticism of 
     their foreign policy on the domestic front. They want to do 
     something. They are going to try and intervene militarily. 
     Mr. Caputo predicts a disaster. The United States will make 
     the U.N. bear the responsibility to manage the occupation. 
     With Aristide as President, doing 2 or 3 years, there will be 
     a hell. It will not be so much the armed intervention itself 
     that we have to avoid. What we do not want to do is inherit a 
     ``baby'' for the Americans are fixing to leave quickly. They 
     would not intervene if they had to remain.

  Clinton himself said on the news the other night we are going to be 
out fast. I am not going to give out names or even hint with States or 
titles, but a senior, senior high-ranking Democrat chairman, and I am 
not going to say subcommittee or committee, in the corner of the House 
in my presence, with two other Democrats that I respect were all there 
together, that he thinks we are in an absolute disaster, that Americans 
will be killed, and he says, ``My party,'' the Democrat Party, ``will 
take a bath in the elections on November 8 like we cannot believe.'' He 
looks right at me, and he does not care. I am not giving out any names. 
That is a fact. What a horrible thought to contemplate.

  I am praying for a miracle that Plato is wrong that only the dead 
have seen the end of war. I am praying that with Aristide saying no 
amnesty on today's ticker tape, and I have got it right here, Raoul 
Cedras predicting a civil war in and around our young men and women, a 
civil war. I am praying for a miracle that God will not harm, allow to 
be harmed, or killed, one American soldier. It is going to have to be a 
miracle.
  Fifteen thousand-sixteen thousand people from Cap-Haitien out on 
those two long peninsulas, on Gonave Island, and not have some American 
hit by a grenade or some loose fire from some wild firefight? This is a 
ghastly situation. I called it yesterday the La Brea tar pits. This 
mammoth superpower is like a woolly mammoth caught in the tar in a 
firefight. It is unbelievable.
  Mr. WELDON. If the gentleman will yield, there are two points I 
wanted to make. I apologize for being late.
  The first is we have been getting nothing but misinformation on the 
situation in Haiti, which really offends me.

                              {time}  2010

  This mammoth superpower is like a wooly mammoth caught in the tar pit 
within a fire fight. It is unbelievable.
  I yield to my colleague.
  Mr. WELDON. There are two points I want to make. And I apologize for 
being late.
  The first is that we have had nothing but misinformation on the 
situation in Haiti, which really offends me. As a member of the 
Committee on Armed Services, we have been asking for a closed briefing. 
Yesterday we finally got it. Strobe Talbott never showed up despite the 
fact he was listed as a witness. Many of us think it was because he 
thought we were going to caution him on the Caputo memos.
  Mr. DORNAN. We sat there for 2 hours with an empty seat in front of 
the sign marked Strobe Talbott.
  Mr. WELDON. Representing the Secretary of State.
  The most damaging statement by Dante Caputo--and you have heard some 
of them. I have put these in the Record twice, once in July and once in 
September. Now, is when he is talking, and this is on May 23rd of this 
year, talking about another alternative to armed intervention. Dante 
Caputo replies, and I quote:

       The U.S. acted as a brake to a diplomatic solution, 
     creating a situation where military intervention became 
     nearly inevitable.

  So here we are telling the American people we really want to have a 
diplomatic solution, when the United Nations special envoy to Haiti is 
telling Boutros-Ghali that the United States is putting a brake on 
diplomatic solutions. They wanted to go to military solutions. Then he 
predicts the actual timeframe when it will take place.
  Now, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, what offends me is 
we would lose American lives in a military situation.

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