[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 172 (Thursday, November 2, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H11758-H11759]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    ISSUES OF IMPORTANCE TO AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you that while listening to 
the excellent peroration of my colleague, the gentleman from American 
Samoa [Mr. Faleomavaega] about the danger to one of the most beautiful 
parts of the world from nuclear testing, a heartfelt report, I had 
prior to that listened to 
the special order of the distinguished gentleman from Kansas [Mr. 
Tiahrt]. I really appreciated the education that the gentleman gave us 
on the budget and why the Republican party is trying to keep its 
promises.
  Mr. Speaker, I have missed the opportunity to engage in several 
different special orders over the last 2 weeks because of the rush of 
events. I am on two different conferences; one on national security, 
one on intelligence. There is so much work coming at us. But there are 
so many things happening in the history of our country that are worthy 
of discussing on this House floor, that I am going to have a 
compartmentalized special order and touch on several things.
  First of all, I want to comment on one aspect of the debate 
yesterday. A statement of statistics that I made on the House floor 
that is so utterly tragic, I want to give the precise statistics right 
now.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Dornan] would yield.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to yield to my good friend.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank the gentleman for 
his kind comments. I certainly would like to submit to my colleagues 
that I could not have found a more perfect gentleman to travel with in 
the Pacific.
  The gentleman is so knowledgeable also, not only of our presence 
there at the time that we were at an international crisis there during 
World War II, but I would like to say to my good friend from California 
that I would enjoy the next instance and the opportunity of being with 
him to see how some of our soldiers and sailors fought bravely, 
especially during World War II. We visited Guadalcanal and other areas. 
I want to compliment the gentleman for his kind remarks on the floor.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would say thank you, 
Eni, and I could not think of a better person to traverse the Owen 
Stanley Mountain Range, on the spine of the dual countries of Irian and 
Papua, New Guinea. And if I had been lost, I know the gentleman would 
have brought me out. It was excellent also walking the battlefields of 
the Solomon Islands, particularly Guadalcanal with the gentleman.


             aids deaths compared to deaths in world war ii

  Mr. Speaker, I am going to briefly refer to World War II death 
statistics and give the exact figures that I rounded off yesterday on 
the most life-threatening venereal disease in modern times. And it is a 
sexually transmitted venereal disease, although it is never called that 
because it is not politically correct, speaking of the AIDS immuno-
destroying virus. It is also, coincidentally because it is blood-borne 
virus, spread by dirty narcotics needles, which ties it into another 
crisis on every continent in the world now.
  What I said in debate yesterday about the deaths of people in the 
prime of their lives, generally, to the AIDS virus finally reaching 
World War II statistics, and I pointed out that I had said way back in 
1985 on this House Floor, I think at this other desk, when the beloved 
movie star, Rock Hudson, died of AIDS, I believe that was toward the 
end of 1985, 10 years ago this month, I think, that some day this 
disease, if we did not change our culture, and use preventive 
behavioral conduct, it was easy to project out within a decade that we 
would reach more deaths than died in World War II. Here are the 
statistics.

  In World War II, we had killed in combat 291,557. I would hope for 
serious discussions across our country and out in Ini Faleomavaega's 
Guam, and Hawaii, and up to Alaska, and down to Puerto Rico and the 
Virgin Islands. That people, Mr. Speaker, would get a pencil and take 
these statistics down. It will cause some serious discussion down to 
high school and grade school levels about what drug use and sexual 
promiscuity will bring in the toll of not only lost man hours, but 
lives destroyed in their early years.
  World War II, in the jungles, on the seas, under the seas, desert 
heat of North Africa, the freezing cold of the Aleutians, and all 
around this world; as I said in the waters surrounding every continent, 
the Indian Ocean, Atlantic, pacific, North, South, Mediterranean, 
American men and many nurses died to bring freedom back to the most 
sophisticated and educated part of the world: Europe, and the bigger 
cities of Asia. Mr. Speaker, 291,557 Gold Star mothers, widows, 
children never to know their heroic parent.
  We have now passed that with death by AIDS by a large margin. It not 
only passed it during the last quarter; it went way past it. Dead by 
AIDS: 308,417. That is 17,000 more than died in World War II in combat. 
Broken down, tragically by children, it is stunning. Children: 3,812 
children dead, most of them because their mother used narcotics or 
slept around before or during the pregnancy.
  Children still alive with AIDS, I am not discussing anybody who is 
infected with HIV and has not manifested, medically, AIDS. Children 
with AIDS dying right now: 2,966. Mr. Speaker, 57 percent of the 
children infected are already dead.

                              {time}  1800

  That is under 12, not 12, 11 and under, excuse me, 12 and under--
6,777, 12 and under dying or dead, unbelievable. The adult figure, 
those that have AIDS and are suffering now, 184,880. When I first came 
back to this Congress, after a 2-year break in service, came back, 
instead of Los Angeles County, West Los Angeles, Orange County, the 
third largest county in California from the first largest county, when 
I came back in 1985, this was just still taking off. And I pointed out 
then that without massive behavioral changes, without a concerted 
effort by those people who understand what is meant by faith and 
family, an effort to discourage sex outside of marriage, hetero or 
homosexual sex, that we would be facing statistics that would make 
Legionnaire's disease look like a tiny little medical blip or tragedy. 
In those days the death toll was in the hundreds. Of course, 
Legionnaire's disease was in the thirties. Since then tuberculosis has 
come back with a punch because it has been augmented by the virus 
problem with AIDS, because it is an opportunistic disease that will hit 
people who are HIV positive with their immune system always going into 
a weaker and weaker and weaker situation.

  Let me give you the adult statistics, reported 489,485. Already dead 
adults, 304,605. That is a 62 percent death rate for adults. I repeat, 
56 percent death rate for children. So there it is. Total number of 
AIDS cases dead or dying, 496,263.
  If you take our World War II killed in action figure, 291,557, and 
add all the noncombat deaths, the billions killed in the Philippines 
when they were attacked by the Japanese warlords, innocent people 
killed, caught up by combat all around, American citizens, not the 55 
million killed by Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini by starting this worst 
war in all of history, our noncombat American deaths, 113,842.

[[Page H 11759]]

  I have not added those together. It is 405,399 Americans dead, killed 
in action, noncombat, and we are already now in AIDS cases pressing 
500,000. Two years from now, in many cases in only 6 months, in all 
cases within 5 years, we will have added 100,000 more to the death 
toll, and it will have passed all deaths from World War II, just within 
the next few months, already passed the combat deaths. What a tragedy 
that more candidates other than myself and Alan Keyes are not 
discussing the moral crisis and meltdown we have.
  When we come back into session next Tuesday night, Mr. Speaker, for 
votes at 6:00, it will be Tuesday November 7. The date of the 
Presidential election next year is November 5. I have a countdown watch 
quite seriously to remind me of that date every day, several times 
during the day. It is only 445 days to the inauguration of hopefully a 
new President. But it is 76 days in the interregnum from the election 
on November 5 to January 20, 1997.
  So let us just talk about the election. We will be inside the 
Presidential election year by 2 days after I am through speaking when 
this House next convenes. It is a leap year, so there will be 364 days 
left to the election.
  Now, have we gotten into a serious discussion, a debate between the 
10 Republican candidates, that is with the two millionaire CEO's 
involve, Mr. Morey Taylor and Steve Forbes, good men both, with the 
eight millionaires and the two of us who are nonmillionaries, Alan 
Keyes and myself, have we had a chance to exchange 
one question between one another? No, we have not. Every Presidential 
forum has been a job interview, put your best foot forward, try to be 
gentle to the other candidates. Most of us are except one. When you are 
running No. 2, it is tempting I guess to try and tear down No. 1. But 
we have not had an exchange.
  I hope that will come up on the 17th and 18th in mid-Florida in 
Orlando with what Jeb Bush, the organizer of it, has proudly called 
Presidential 3. Maybe we will get to exchange questions. And maybe I 
can get some of my worthy competitors, the other nine, to answer some 
of the questions that they are all asking Colin Powell to answer. And 
foremost among those questions, and I have the 22 that I proposed in 
the well last evening, and I finally have here the 22 questions that 
George Will proposed, I am going to put all 44 in the Record, but let 
me first ask five questions of our leader in the Senate, which will 
take me into a heartbreaking situation that I have just learned about 
this week and discussed in depth in the Rayburn Room just off the 
Democratic cloakroom. It involves our missing in action.
  There are five items in the Republican conference bills for Chairman 
Ben Gilman's Committee on International Relations, authorization and/or 
appropriations bills, and for the Committee on National Security, 
formerly known as the Armed Services Committee, in our authorization 
and appropriations bills that are now in the hands of the Republican 
majority in the Senate. And its leader is the leading Presidential 
candidates. In most general polling in our 50 States, Robert Dole has 
more percentage points, now that we are almost within a few days of 
being inside the election year itself, he has got more points than all 
the rest of the other nine put together. So I propose, Mr. Speaker, 
through you to my good friend, and he knows I admire him, Mr. Dole, the 
five following questions:

  One, when are you going to crack the whip, use your whip--my pal, who 
I served with for a decade in the House here, Mr. Trent Lott, Senator 
Lott of Mississippi--when are you going to crack the whip, use your 
leadership powers to resolve the Ben Gilman-Bob Dornan-Floyd Spence 
language on the missing in action, missing persons office under the 
secretary of defense, the POW missing in action, secretary of defense 
office for missing persons, military persons? When will that be 
resolved so that we do not have a repeat of the agonizing situation I 
am about to discuss that is before me, involving a funeral, a forced 
funeral next Wednesday of an air crewman from an AC-130 Hercules 
Spectra gunship. So, Mr. Leader, in the Senate, through you, Mr. 
Speaker, I ask for action on this.
  Item No. 2 in Ben Gilman's bills are words from our Contract With 
America that I wrote together with Congressman John Doolittle of 
northern California, no U.S. soldiers, Marines or pilots under foreign 
officers, under U.N. command or any other command unless there is a 
ratified treaty such as NATO where we have trained together, in the 
case of NATO it is almost half a century, a few years shy of half a 
century of training together, no U.S. troops under U.N. command, and we 
will not have the nightmare of E-5 specialist Michael Nu who has no 
recollection of ever raising his right hand and swearing to uphold any 
Constitution other than the one written by James Madison and worked 
over and perfected in this very Congress 200 years ago and the other 
body. He has no recollection. Senator, has anybody in the United States 
military ever been asked under oath to defend the U.N. charter, let 
alone to wear regalia or insignia of any other military force in Bosnia 
or anywhere else?
  I want to know what is the status of that, Mr. Speaker, what is our 
leader doing to nail that down in the next few days? We were supposed 
to have adjourned a month ago. A year from now we will have been 
adjourned for an election, on or about October 1st. So there is only 11 
months left, no matter what, before we all go home for at least a month 
to campaign for the 1996 election.
  No. 3, in Mr. Gilman's legislation, authorization/appropriations, 
again I was one of the authors of this, together with a freshman, Bob 
Barr of Georgia, we only had one speaker on the Floor, probably the 
preeminent hero, military hero in this Chamber, Sam Johnson of Texas 
spoke about no money for the normalization of any relations with Hanoi 
until we have resolved lots of remaining agonizing missing in action 
cases.

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