[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 93 (Thursday, June 8, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H5747-H5751]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         THE BATTLE OF OKINAWA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 
30 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I am so, pleased is not a strong enough 
word, I am so ecstatic today over this rescue in Bosnia that I am glad 
I have got a Marine Corps sergeant sitting in the Speaker's chair 
today. Let me see that 1,000-yard stare, because as a former Air Force 
fighter pilot, peacetime to be sure, let me thank you for the whole 
Marine Corps in that superb rescue this morning, and wait till you get 
details tonight on CNN or C-SPAN or whatever, because I have got the 
bare outlines off the wire service stories, I called the Pentagon, they 
are having down in the cellar of the Rayburn Building a goodbye party 
for some of our great military people, liaison people who help us 
understand everything we can about our heroic men and women all around 
the world they will they cannot tell me much because they are hanging 
off the wire services' stories too.
  But let me put this in perspective for the Marine Corps and the Army 
and every fighter pilot in those days was either Marine, Navy, or Air 
Force, I mean Army Air Corps, there was no Air Force. I was going to 
finish my Okinawa special orders today, June 8, 1945, and it is 
interesting, fascinating that the Battle of Okinawa started on Easter 
Sunday in 1945, that was April 1, and it was no April Fool's Day for 
the bloodshed on those beaches. It started off easily as the Japanese 
warlord forces were back in their caves and said come on, soft beach 
landings, everything looked good, and said oh, this is not going to be 
Iwo Jima, and then it became hell on Earth. That started April 1, 50 
years ago. So all of April is 30 days, all of May, we are up to 61 
days, this is the 8th, this was day 69 of an 87-day battle which means 
they had 18 brutal days to go where more marines and more Army soldiers 
died in a battle than ever before. This was the highest-fatality battle 
of the whole Pacific war.
  And MacArthur took a bum rap there. Some people called him Dugout 
Doug because they wanted to see more of him up front. If he was not up 
front with one unit it is because he was with somebody else. Where was 
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who stood right in front of you in one of the 
greatest speeches ever given at the Presidential lectern there and said 
and like most [[Page H5748]] old soldiers I will fade away, that 
ringing speech, hardly a dry eye on either side of the House here, 
everybody conceding that Harry Truman, President, had his right to fire 
him, but that on the merits of the issues MacArthur was right. We 
should have bombed Manchuria, we should have bombed the Yalu River 
bridges when once the Chinese came at him, which he did not think they 
would do because he did not realize we had filthy, sneaky, dirty, 
spying traitorous people in our government feeding a whole homosexual 
network of spies in the British Government of Burgess, Maclean, Kim 
Philby, all of them telling the Russians to tell the Chinese, go ahead 
and attack, the Americans will never come back at you, they will not 
bomb the bridges in the Yalu. All of our pasty-faced types in the State 
Department are not going to allow that to happen.
  So, MacArthur was wrong about the Chinese coming in, but when he was 
fired in April of 1951 I had just turned 17. It was a sad day when he 
came to this Congress and said goodbye and kept the promises.
  Where was MacArthur today? On the deck of a cruiser, in a combat 
action, could have been a kamikaze coming at him off the island of 
Borneo. He is on the bridge of one of our cruisers, the Boise, the 
Nashville, the Phoenix, and Australian cruiser Hobart named after the 
capital of Tasmania, seven destroyers with these cruisers, and they are 
bombarding one of the richest cities in the world today, the highest-
income city. The wealthiest man in the world today on the planet Earth 
is the Sultan of Brunei, and they were in Brunei Bay bombing northern 
Borneo in that harbor and MacArthur is on the bridge of the task force 
softening up the landing beaches for Australia's Ninth Division. Their 
glorious feats in combat are known in Australia, little known to us. 
Their prisoners like all prisoners were being severely tortured, beaten 
to death. This is less than 2 months from the dropping of the atom bomb 
on August 6. But MacArthur was not aware of the bomb at this point. He 
was preparing for on this onslaught on the Japanese homeland islands 
where we would have lost maybe 300,000 men were in danger of KIA, 
higher than all of the war before that, certainly a million overall 
casualties and a million dead Japanese people, all of them innocent of 
what their warlords had done to them except for a few officers in the 
officer corps, they would have been wiped out.
  So what else was happening in the South Pacific? Down in Sumatra, the 
Japanese cruiser, Asha Gara, overloaded with 1,200 young Japanese kids, 
peasant kids recruited out of the countryside in Japan without ever 
firing their guns in anger go to the bottom of the sea because the 
British submarine, the Trenchant, sinks this Japanese cruiser and all 
1,200 soldiers and most of the crew drowned. Planes from the carrier 
Cowpens, the great Independence, the Shangri-La, so named because 
Roosevelt said the Hornet and Jimmy Doolittle was a Shangri-la where we 
launched our raid 53 years ago last April against 5 Japanese cities, 
and the Yorktown, the great fighting lady, the Yorktown, they were all 
pounding their planes kamikaze bases on the Japanese southern island of 
Kyushu, and when any of those pilots were captured they were murdered 
as some of the Japanese Bushido warrior, brace yourself Mr. Speaker, 
cut them open and ate their livers. I have just come across that 
research. They killed so many of our air crews out of the B-29's and 
our Navy pilots that we hung the Japanese commander on the island where 
George Bush almost drifted ashore, Chichi Jima, hung him for 
cannibalism.
  This was a rough conclusion to this war, less than 2 months to the 
first atomic bomb, 2 months and a day to the Nagasaki bomb, and I still 
get angry when I think about that phony politically correct exhibit 
that a bunch of liberals almost put around the fuselage of the Enola 
Gay.
  Back to Okinawa. Artillery, naval gunfire, air strikes pounding the 
Japanese positions on Yaeje-Dake Mountain. I spell that not only for 
our recorders but for the vets to jog their memory. It was a strong 
point of the military commander Ushi Jima's last defense line.
  The Sixth Marine Division, there was a day when we had six Marine 
divisions, the Sixth Marine Division compresses Admiral Minoru Ota, his 
marines, into a 3-mile pocket on the Oroku Peninsual, and how many 
Americans met their God on that peninsula during the next 18 days of 
fighting? So let us close the loop from 1945 to today.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not know as a ground NCO what your favorite motion 
picture representation of the hell that is warfare is. But for pilots, 
it has been a long dry spell. The best one ever was based on a 
fictional book, more truth than fiction, by the great writer, James 
Michener, written during the Korean war while it was still in progress 
in 1953. I read it on my way to pilot training, published in its 
totality in Life magazine, just as they did that same year with ``The 
Old Man and the Sea'' by Hemingway, and I read this story in Life 
magazine and then got the book later, called ``The Bridges at Toko-
Ri,'' and it had a gut-wrenching decidedly non-Hollywood ending. Bill 
Holden, at the peak of his career at 36 years of age playing a symbolic 
naval aviator named Brubaker is in a ditch in northern Korea, and he is 
with the rescue pilot, the crewman, the gunner on the rescue pilot, 
Mickey Rooney, and Mickey Rooney says to him ``Lieutenant, what are you 
doin' here in a ditch in human feces,'' they probably softened that for 
the movie, ``here in Korea? Aren't you a lawyer from Denver?'' And he 
says, ``That's what I'm trying to figure out.''
  Well, he was there because he was called. Within seconds the 
Skyraiders flew right up until a few years ago, flew all the way 
through Vietnam as rescue support, Spads, they call them, their code 
name was Sandy, the Navy A-1 Skyraiders, then called AD's aforeship, 
then painted Navy dark blue, they made their last strafing run, kill 
some of the enemy coming in on Brubaker, and the young enlisted man 
from the rescue helicopter sitting there smoking, and then they pull 
off, just as they had to do in Vietnam sometimes, wiggle their wings, 
goodbye, good luck, friend, and within seconds, Mickey Mooney is dead, 
shot in the chest, and then Bill Holden starts running back and forth 
in this filthy human manure ditch, and finally they drill him again and 
again, and he dies spread-eagled in this filthy mud, and then it goes 
to the carrier bridge, Frederick March in one of his great final roles 
says those words that Ronald Reagan used to quote all of the time, this 
fictional admiral again more true than fiction, and says, ``Where do we 
get such men, they go out, they do their job, they come back, they find 
this little pitching deck in these heavy seas, and they come home. 
Where do we get such men? Why is America lucky enough to have such 
men?'' That was 1954. Here we are 41 years later and it is not a good 
Hollywood movie, it is real, somebody will make a movie out of this.
  What happened with Capt. Scott O'Grady today is better than any 
Shakespeare could put it on print. Listen to this, Mr. Speaker.
                             {time}   1800

  June 2, Scott O'Grady's F-16 goes down over Bosnia. He had air-to-air 
missiles. He also had air-to-ground missiles. It was a deny-flight 
flight. As I argued with Secretary Perry, whom I deeply respect, and 
Shalikashvili, a soldier's soldier, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, they 
would contradict themselves in their own testimony in front of the 
Senate yesterday morning and in front of the National Security 
Committee yesterday, because they kept calling these air combat 
missions, and they kept saying we are not in combat. This is combat.
  My colleague from Colorado once said fighter pilots are not athletes. 
I almost took off out of my chair. I said, ``Excuse me? Would the 
gentle lady yield?'' She got all flustered. Fighter pilots are 
athletes, and these women officers demanding to go into combat, they 
have given up the fight to go into special operations. They do not want 
to be Delta Force people. They do not want to rappel off of helicopters 
in the middle of the desert or jungle or Arctic situation. They are not 
asking for infantry anymore. They certainly do not want to work around 
artillery with 100-pound shells, slinging them around, and they are not 
asking anymore to go into tank armored units, because they know trying 
to pull a wounded 200-pound unconscious man out of a tank is something 
I have never seen a woman can do, not even the ones 
[[Page H5749]] pumping weight to get on the Gladiators. I could not 
lift a 200-man out of a tank on fire about to explode. If I called for 
somebody, I want it to be somebody who, together, we can lift him out, 
not somebody with not too much upper body strength who says, ``Oh, I 
can't be of any help. Sorry. Let's get a third person here.''
  No, they are not asking for armor, special ops, infantry, or 
artillery any longer. But they are still lusting for those fighter 
pilot seats.
  So all the time I am discussing this, picture the strongest, best 
woman fighter pilot, and I do not think the Marines have any yet, in 
the Navy or the Air Force today, trying to do what Scott O'Grady did. 
He goes down June 2. His wingman, I just confirmed on the phone, did 
not see him go down.
  I bailed out once in peacetime on a gunnery range in the Gila Bend 
Mountains. I had a towship, two guys in the towship with a target, four 
guys in my flight, three others, a flight behind me, a flight in front 
of me; nobody saw me bail out, because I was going straight down 500 
knots, 500 miles an hour, 450 knots, and went out upside down. Nobody 
saw this guy go out.
  National Security Adviser Tony Lake tells Mr. Clinton that we could 
probably launch a search and rescue mission. Lake tells the President 
that he may be alive, based on a variety of sources. Meanwhile, the 
military is lying to me, and I love it. I want to be lied to. If there 
is a search and rescue operation going on. I do not have a need to know 
and, therefore, I am not in a position to be wishing well to some 
newsman that I trust for the umpteenth time and stabs me in the back, 
because an Air Force officer trusted some newsman, and they went 
running right out yesterday while Scott O'Grady is still on the ground 
and published we were getting beeper signals. Is the media not great 
with their first amendment right to know? Could have gotten O'Grady 
captured.
  So now we skip forward. That was on June 7, yesterday, that he might 
be alive, 5 days, for 5 days, and I will tell you the truth, Mr. 
Speaker, I started to say prayers for this young pilot without knowing 
his name. I thought his wingman was probably right, that he was blown 
up.
  June 8, that is today, Scott O'Grady, U.S. Air Force captain, F-16 
Fighting Falcon, snake-eating face on fire, fighter pilot makes contact 
with NATO aircraft. That is probably an Air Force AWACS.
  Two-twenty, and let us see, what time was it here in Washington, 7-
hour difference, so this is 7:20 at night, after I had said in 
committee to Secretary Perry and General Shalikashvili, in my mind 
thinking that Scott was probably gone, in heaven 5 days ago, I said, 
``And our F-16 pilot who may be lost,'' and I said, ``God willing, the 
F-16 jockey is hiding in the bush as we speak,'' and that is exactly 
what was happening yesterday at about 11, no, at about 1:30, when I 
asked that question.
  O'Grady makes contact with NATO airplane, 2:20, 7:20 last night, D.C. 
time, 4:20 in California, the signal is positively identified. The 
reason I brought up the West Coast is his mother, Mary Lou Scardapane, 
is up there in Washington State, in Washington, so she did not know, 
wherever you were, Mary Lou, at 4 o'clock, and I think she is watching 
this special order, wherever you were at 4:20, think about that moment. 
That is when God answered your prayers.
  The father, a physician, Bill O'Grady, over here in Alexandria, VA, 
at 7:00 at night, maybe he is in the office late, trying not to bug the 
Pentagon, but like any dad, worried about his hero son. Three-thirty 
a.m., Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lake calls the President in his residential 
quarters and says, ``It looks like it is real. It looks like a go.'' 
Sunrise, Bosnian time, 5:06, so it is 10:06 at night. I am watching the 
Channel 5 news, still no word about our missing pilot; name kept 
secret.
  By the way, I want to tell you about Scott so you can picture him, 
and I do not know how tall he is or what color his hair is.
  Do know he graduated from Embry-Riddle University. There are two of 
those, one in New Mexico and one in Florida. I do not know which one. 
He has got a younger brother, Paul, who is 25, a sister, Sheila, 26. 
She is the one I woke up to this morning to hear through her eyes and 
ears that her father walked into her room in the middle of the night 
and says, ``Scott is alive. They have got him. He is rescued.''
  She said she thought it was a dream, and then she shook her head and 
realized that it was not a dream. Then she said, ``We went berserk.'' 
So I guess that means Paul and Stacey and Dr. Bill were jumping around, 
that God had answered their prayers.
  So it is now 5:45. A backup group of rescue aircraft and helicopters 
is launched. They remain offshore to monitor the rescue operation, to 
assist, if needed. Meanwhile, the Air Force guys, Avion, the best 
rescue guys in the world, are probably chomping at the bit to get 
there. But the Marines are closer on the deck of the Kearsage, and the 
primary rescue aircraft are told, ``Go get him.'' They are launched 
from the Kearsage, two gigantic CH-53 Sea Stallion assault helicopters 
made up here in Connecticut, two AH Cobra attack helicopters, probably 
made in Texas, if I am correct, and two AV-8 Harrier jump jets made in 
St. Louis, all of them launched from the Kearsage.
  I have been lucky enough to fly in all of these, and that Harrier 
still steals every air show everywhere in the country, everywhere it 
goes, when it bows to the audience, turns around, turns the vanes on 
those jets, and then it is up, up and away like Superman.
  Six-twelve, rescue aircraft make radio contact with O'Grady, a happy 
ending here to the bridges of Toko-Ri. This is utterly fantastic.
  Six-forty-four, rescuers spot a yellow smoke flare. Yes, Scott, our 
equipment does work, that O'Grady released to mark the landing site.
  O'Grady, Captain Scott O'Grady, runs out of the woods, pistol in 
hand, and is picked up by a big Marine Corps CH-53 helicopter.
  Six-forty-nine, 5 minutes later, Lake calls the commander-in-chief 
and says, ``Got him.'' Clinton says, ``It sounds like this is one 
amazing kid.'' Not a kid, a man, an athlete, a fighter pilot, a real 
man, not a young boy at 23 ditching classes at Oxford.
  Seven-oh-seven, missile fired at helicopters after they lift off with 
O'Grady. Helicopter carrying O'Grady leaves Bosnia. The way the Marines 
probably said that to the Kearsage is, ``Crossing the beach.''
  Over the Adriatic, 7:30, O'Grady is safely aboard the USS Kearsage. 
Break out the champagne aboard. So, from first contact, let us see, 
rescue makes contact at 6:12, and 1 hour and 8 minutes later, he is 
back on the deck of the Kearsage, and the Air Force rescue guys, Avion, 
probably launched, are probably saying, ``Oh, well, next time.''
  Now, you could not write a better story than that, Mr. Speaker. 
Listen to this, what a great happy day for America. We have gone from 
what was, in my mind yesterday, questioning our Defense Secretary, one 
killed in action, our first in 3 years of that Bosnian fratricidal, 
horrible killing scene; I thought we had our first KIA. By the grace of 
God, we have gone from one KIA back to zero, no American man or woman 
dead in the Balkans, and I want to keep it that way.
  Listen to this, Air Force Captain Scott F., and I wonder if that is 
for Fitzgerald or Francis, Scott F. O'Grady survived for 6 days after 
his F-16 was shot down by Serbs in Bosnia, shot down by a SAM-6 
missile. That is 4 quad missiles on a mobile unit, very tough to hunt 
out and destroy. He hid out by day, slept by day, and hid out, moved at 
night, living on a small supply of survival rations, sparingly 
activating a radio transmitter.
  His sister, Stacey, says he knew they were hunting him down, looking 
for him. She finally spoke to her brother by telephone between 3 and 4 
a.m. this morning. What a happy day for them. Over there it is already 
10 o'clock.
  ``He told us he was thinking about us and that helped him get 
through,'' O'Grady's younger brother, Paul, said. ``If he made it out 
of the plane,'' Paul said, ``I was not worried about my brother's 
survival or not. He has been well trained. He told me about all the 
survival things. I knew he would be okay.''
  The siblings all gathered at the home of their father, Dr. William 
O'Grady, in Alexandria, immediately after hearing, and I hope you are 
watching, Doc. He remained there throughout the week waiting for news. 
Stacy flew in from [[Page H5750]] Chicago, where she is a teacher. Oh, 
gosh, what a heart-gripping vigil for the O'Gradys.
  Paul drove up from Chapel Hill, NC, where he has a summer job before 
beginning dental school in the fall. The family stayed in contact with 
Scott's mom, who lives in Seattle. I am going to call her when I walk 
off the floor here, Mr. Speaker.
  ``We had a lot of ups and downs as the week went on,'' said the elder 
O'Grady. Dr. O'Grady said, ``We knew he was hit by a missile. But at 
first we really did not know if he had ejected. There was no evidence 
of life.'' Later, news media reports indicated a parachute had been 
found. I missed that. A radio signal was being received. That sounded 
good. There was nothing definite.
  Then the military may have known more than they could tell us. Yes. 
And they handled it perfectly.
  I am a chairman, and they did not tell me, Doctor, and I am on the 
Intel Committee, and they did not tell me, Doctor, and I asked them, 
and I am glad I was not told. He was the first person to tell us that 
they had been contacted, if they contacted Scott by radio, and they 
were going in to get him, said the dad.
  A short time later, perhaps 20 minutes, an Air Force general called 
to say O'Grady had been brought out by helicopter, a class act, hearing 
from a general officer.
  The siblings reminisced, joked about old times together. ``I slept 
with it last night, and I told them,'' because she was dreaming about 
her brother being rescued when she got the call, adding it was a very 
emotional moment. He was overwhelmed by the fact that so many people 
were fussing over him.
  Stacey said she had been born on Scott's third birthday. They have 
the same birthday. ``I took the limelight away from him. Now he is 
getting it back. He can have it all.''
  In Seattle, Scott's mother, Mary Lou Scardapane, was relieved enough 
to joke with reporters, typical fighter pilot's mom. ``As a parent, I 
think one of our fears is when our kids are out at night and they are 
not at home on time. When they get home, they had better have a darned 
good reason. When he gets home, he had better have a darned good 
story.'' Oh, he does, Mary Lou, and Mrs. Scardapane and the stepfather, 
Joseph, said they planned to go to Italy to see Scott.
  O'Grady suffered little more than a burn on the neck. Little more 
than a burn on the neck? That is not a sunburn. That is from the SAM-6 
missile. Hunger pangs, he probably did not worry about that too much; 
and dehydration.
  Clinton has called the O'Grady family. Clinton says bravery and skill 
are an inspiration. Yes, sir, just what is needed up and down the whole 
civilian chain of command who is still abusing our military men and 
women, so are the bravery and skill of those who took part in the 
operation, just doing their duty, Mr. President. They are all American 
heroes. That is right, particularly under these trying times, no pay 
raises.
  Marine Colonel Marty Berandt, who helped coordinate the mission and 
was in one of the rescue choppers, it is getting too good to be 
believed here,
 Mr. Speaker, Marine Corps bird colonel, eagle type, in a chopper over 
enemy country, in the hot zone, with SAM-6 missiles and big SAM-2's 
tracking him; he is on the rescue board; that is my kind of Marine 
colonel, excellent, Marty, this is great.

  ``It won't be very soon,'' says the colonel, ``that I will forget the 
look on the pilot's face as he approached the helicopter this 
morning.'' He said in a NATO commander's report that he pulled the 
pilot aboard was wrong, well, a Marine Corps colonel being a little 
humble. Here he was probably watching from the front cockpit, and why 
did he not pull him aboard? I bet he would have loved to have. Berandt 
said O'Grady was very talkative. That is called high adrenaline rate, 
in good spirits, and got a block here, lost 3 or 4 lines, helicopter 
this morning, no, here it is, here it is, I skipped ahead.
  Once on board, O'Grady took some water and then dug right into a 
meal-ready-to-eat. Meals rejected by Ethiopians, and an MRE must have 
looked good to Scott, so he must have really been hungry, the colonel 
said.
  Paul O'Grady praised his brother's rescuers. ``I want to thank the 
Armed Forces, just from the bottom of my heart. I cannot thank them 
enough.''
  O'Grady, oh, it is getting better, born in Brooklyn, NY. I am born in 
Harlem, I hate to trump him, but Harlem trumps Brooklyn, probably not 
if you are born in Brooklyn, born on Columbus Day, October 12, 1965, so 
he has got his 30th birthday coming up. What an adventure for a 29-
year-old.
  O'Grady grew up in Spokane, WA, his home of record, earned a degree 
in aerospace aviation management in 1989. So he has only been out of 
college 6 years this month, from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. 
It is the one in Prescott, AZ. He was commissioned on April 20; that is 
the birthday of my young nephew, Matt, who is fighting as we speak to 
get into pilot training. Good luck, Matt. Commissioned April 20, 1989, 
6 years ago, pilot training in the Euro-NATO joint jet pilot training. 
That is my nephew's fondest dream, at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas, 
served as an F-16 pilot in Korea, Osan, I will bet, in Germany, and 
most recently in Italy, and has more than 780 hours of flying time.
                              {time}  1815

  I am glad I went long enough to get one of the hottest Marines 
serving in this House, my vintage, from the early fifties, the chairman 
of our great Committee on Rules, Jerry Solomon.
  May this Air Force peacetime fighter pilot thank this Marine, as I 
did Wayne Grisham when he was in? God bless you for saving this snake-
eating, face-on-fire, 29-year-old fighter pilot, plucking him right out 
of the hands of the crazed Serbian guys there.
  I yield happily to the gentleman.
  Mr. SOLOMON. I just want to thank the great American for yielding to 
me, but you know what happened yesterday in the rescue of that downed 
pilot just speaks to the real need of what we are going to be doing 
next week on the floor of this House, and I do not have to tell the 
gentleman because he is such a valuable member of the Committee on 
Armed Services, but we are going to take up a bill which is going to 
turn this country around and turn our military preparedness around.
  The gentleman knows the condition that we were in back in the early 
1970's, when just to attempt to rescue our hostages in a place called 
Iran we had to cannibalize about 14 helicopter gunships just to get 5 
that would work, and they failed. So did the mission. That is the 
condition of our military preparedness back in the seventies. We have 
almost reached that area now.
  Mr. DORNAN. Same helicopters, by the way, big H-53----
  Mr. SOLOMON. Absolutely, and in the budget that we are going to be 
taking up, the armed services bill, on next Tuesday, which the 
gentleman had a lot to do with writing that bill, we are going to 
increase procurement by 11 percent instead of cutting our defense. We 
are going to be increasing procurement by 11 percent----
  Mr. DORNAN. Hurrah.
  Mr. SOLOMON. Research and development increased by 5 percent instead 
of a 20-percent cut, operation and maintenance up 3 percent, military 
facilities and installations up 5 percent.
  And more than anything else, Bob, instead of putting a ceiling on how 
many Members can serve in the Armed Forces, we are putting a bottom on 
it, saying that this is how we cannot go any lower than this. We are 
going to maintain a strong military preparedness.
  But the whole idea was in the rescue of that pilot which you know so 
well, the state-of-the-art technology in order to find the pilot, to 
communicate with him, and then to go in there and bring him out. That 
took great state-of-the-art technology, the same kind we used in Desert 
Storm where we could see them with night vision; they could not see us.
  That is what we need to do any time we put any man or woman in 
combat. They better be there with the best we can give them, and that 
is what this bill is going to do next Tuesday, and I thank you for what 
you have done that way.
  Mr. DORNAN. Jerry, I just wanted to touch on one thing.
  I am the chairman of the Military Personnel Committee, so all of 
these ceilings and floors on military strength falls under my purview 
at first, until I turn it over to my friend and super chairman, Floyd 
Spence, Navy captain [[Page H5751]] type on Armed--now renamed the 
National Security Committee.
  We also re-added to the floor that we put there now 7,500 new slots, 
and so as not to get into micromanaging, we told the Secretary of 
Defense, fine gentleman, Mr. Perry, ``Look, here is 7,500 birds. You 
need them in Patriot missile batteries. You may need them in the Air 
Force and AWAC's. You may need them in the Marine Corps in certain 
areas where the Marines are stretched too thin. You pick them out for 
us, and, if we have disagreement with you, try not to micromanage. We 
will counsel together and figure out where we can put these slots.''
  Now I had an account for something else, and it looks like the battle 
is over. Even though you know just about everything on that Rules 
Committee, you do not know that I just went over to the Senate and 
asked my equivalent over there--we served with him, one of our class of 
'80, great Members in the House, Dan Coats, Senator, Indiana, chairman 
of their Military----
  Mr. SOLOMON. Great Senator.
  Mr. DORNAN. Right.
  He told me he will put in his chairman's mark my HIV language, and it 
is not cruel. It simply says, as you and I have spoken, that if you 
have contracted the AIDS virus, and nobody is left in the military who 
got it through polluted blood.
  You and I know that the odds are a 100 to 1, a 1,000 to 1, 10,000 to 
1 you got it from
 violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You put a dirty needle 
in your arm. That is the biggest category out of the roughly 400. You 
went to an off-limits house of prostitution where 100 percent of the 
prostitutes are infected with AIDS--the killing venereal disease 
virus--or you went to an off-limits homosexual bar. That is the 
smallest of the three categories. You are going to get a honorable 
discharge, and you ought to thank your stars for it, and you got 6 
months to pack up your bags. I hope the military will move paster 
because they are going to go ``figmo,'' and you remember what that 
means, not much you can get out of somebody when they know they are 
going to leave in a few months and they are leaving a little 
disgruntled. They will get the world's best hospital treatment in the 
VA hospitals. You worked those hospitals for almost two decades here. 
They transfer even to the very same hospital where they are already 
getting care.

  But here is the important part. I have actually bought our military 
by putting off active duty honorably 1,400 HIV carriers. Not only do we 
make the walking blood bank safer, but we now have 1,400 slots to add 
to the 7,500 of men and women who are deployable anywhere in the world, 
who can fly, shoot, sail, and get in an armored vehicle, Jerry.
  These people could not do any of this, and we have put off active 
duty, Mr. Speaker, 8,114 good, patriotic Americans because they did not 
have the will power to control their diet, for being overweight, and a 
few hundred for being underweight or too weak to do push-ups, lack of 
discipline. They are being honorably discharged.
  How could we put our 8,000 people who have not violated the UCMJ, 
and, to be politically correct, keep on board 1,400 who cannot leave 
Virginia or California, if they were under the Naval Department, and 
not much else if they are Air Force or Navy? We have won that battle. 
No abortions in military hospitals. There is going to be a fight on the 
House floor.
  Chairman Coats said he will put that in his mark, and next year, you 
will be happy to hear--and I am kind of an up front guy, that is my 
style, it is yours, too, Jerry--hearings on women in combat. We have 
agreed to have that this winter, hearings on ``Don't ask.''
  I believe it is immoral not to tell a confused young person who maybe 
comes out of this all homosexual, weird high school in New York City 
that it is not compatible with military life. Democrat Sam Nunn's 
words, or Ike Skelton, Democrat here in this House, other side of the 
aisle, good patriotic, gung-ho American whose son is in the First 
Armored Division in Europe. You must ask them so they can go, ``Oh, I 
didn't know that. I won't join, then, if you don't want me.'' Instead, 
we bring them on board. They then get the news that then it is an 
administrative discharge and we wasted all that money.
  We have fixed a lot of things, and there is more to fix, and, 
Chairman Solomon, you know how I look at this as a one-two punch in the 
104th Congress. We have a lot of work left to do. We have got to work 
together.
  Next year's defense bill will continue this earth-shaking bill that 
you have just discussed. It is going to be a great debate on the House 
floor, and hopefully this weekend I will be in Aviano hugging a lot of 
heroes over there and be back to give you a firsthand report; okay?
  Mr. SOLOMON. We wish you well over there, and I will be interested in 
getting your report when you come back.
  Mr. DORNAN. You got it.
  Mr. SOLOMON. Thanks so much for being such a great Congressman.
  Mr. DORNAN. You got it. Semper Fidelis, and, if I may say so, the Air 
Force is still aiming high. Off we go into the wild blue yonder, but 
not over Bosnia. Off the coast, stay out over the Adriatic.
  I yield back the balance of my time. Have a good weekend, Mr. 
Speaker, and take care of all your Air Force guys down there in your 
neck of the woods.

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