[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 193 (Wednesday, December 6, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H14162-H14167]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE BALANCED BUDGET MYTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Longley). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Hawaii [Mr. Abercrombie] is recognized for 60 
minutes.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I believe, if I understood the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] correctly, he was not quite 
finished with his remarks. If he would like, inasmuch as I have 
something I have to do off the floor for a few moments, I would yield 
to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] at this point. Did I 
understand correctly that he was not quite finished?
  Mr. DORNAN. If the gentleman will yield, Mr. Speaker, I was not. I 
thank the gentleman. If I can do this quickly in 10 minutes, I will not 
keep our hardworking staff here after your special order.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mine will not take the full hour. I yield to the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan].


          keeping america's troops out of the baltic conflict

  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I can save some of this for next week if I 
do not get my conference to meet, Mr. Speaker, tomorrow and plan our 
vote, irrespective of what the Senate does, with our great Members over 
there. I would like to finish, and I will ask permission to put the 
whole article from Time magazine by J.F.O. McAllister, including 
interviews with Clinton, into the paper.
  Mr. Speaker, one of my sons or daughters sent me the front page of 
the L.A. Times. You have already heard me, Mr. Speaker, say today that 
I find this the most offensive, and I do not know what they did in the 
San Diego 

[[Page H 14163]]
Union, Duke, but look at this. This is a staged photograph. This is the 
photograph of the Officer Corps of the First Armored Division.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I would 
like to make this perfectly clear. When I talk about the radical Muslim 
Islamic movement, it is not the Muslims across this world. Just as we 
have in any religion radical groups, these are the groups that are 
sworn to take blood, to take blood of anyone that does not believe as 
they do. That is wrong, but yet, I do not want to make any implication 
that it is Christians, Muslims, or any other religious group, other 
than the radicals that we are talking about in the 4,000 Mujaheddin.
  Mr. DORNAN. To show that I am fair too, and that there is plenty of 
guilt to spread around, the map that the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Cunningham] was holding up earlier, that takes a nation, Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, that looks like an arrowhead, and that is what it was, the 
arrowhead, the tip of the spear of Islamic penetration into the soft 
underbelly of Europe, stopped up at Vienna and Prague, totally burned 
Ottoman empire warriors, the cities of Buda and Pest on the other side 
of the Danube, now the capital city of Budapest, Hungary, and then they 
were eventually driven back by knights from Austria, from Styria, one 
of the major provinces, and there is an incredible armor museum of all 
of the Medieval and Renaissance ages of the armored war that went on 
between Islam and Christendom, and this was one of the main armories. 
The oldest and last surviving armory from that period in Europe is at 
Graz in Austria, a fascinating visit for historians and for even 
peaceniks to contemplate man's inhumanity to man, with women either 
standing by the sidelines crying because they have lost their son, 
their husband, their father, their uncle, or they are killed in the 
process of men tearing one another apart.

  But here is this normal-looking country, the shape of an arrowhead or 
a triangle, and it now looks like a distorted amoeba or a Rorschach 
test that the Bosnian government in Sarajevo, recognized by us on April 
7 of 1993, by the United Nations on May 22 of 1993, it is now cut into 
this bizarre shape. You have the Croatians, and Catholic Croatians, in 
an uneasy confederation with the Muslim Bosnians, while the Serbs are 
in two big globs, held together by a four kilometer little corridor 
called Posavina corridor, with Brijco, their main armament source on 
the border with Milosevic's Serbia proper, let me look at the 20 miles 
here, 20, 40, 60, 80, less than 100 miles from Belgrade, which has been 
one of the main problems in all of this.
  I look at this, and here is a brand new footprint, just sort of an 
oblong glob that is now held by Croatian forces from Croatia, with 
Croatian Bosnians, and Muslim Bosnians out of the Bihac pocket up in 
the north, the very tip of the Islamic spear. They now hold this area 
that they have been ordered to give back to the Serbs.
  There are two villages in there, I learned this morning, it is 
declassified, called Sipovo and Mrkonjic grad, grad being city, like 
Belgrade. These two cities, as we speak, or they are asleep now, when 
they wake up in the morning, and that is about another 4 hours, the 
Croatian forces, with the total acquiescence of the Muslim forces, are 
burning these villages to the ground, because if they are going to give 
these villages back to the Bosnian Serbs, they want them to be utter 
rubble, because that is what the Serbs did to 3,800 villages on the 
other side, destroying every minaret, every town hall meeting place, 
burned down all the homes; that if the people come back as refugees 
when they get tired of killing one another and a peace comes back to 
this land, however tentatively, given its 600 or 700 year history, 
2,000 year history, for that matter, they will come back to rubble. 
There is no City Hall, no marketplace, no minaret, no church. It is all 
gone. It is dirt.
  So they turn around and say that that is where my father died, there 
is my family home, my sister was raped there, I do not want these 
memories, and they go back to being a refugee. So the guilt is on all 
sides; the Croatians, who I admired so much in their special forces 
training camps down on the Dalmatian coast, they are now burning 
villages at this, tit for tat, giving to the Serbs what the Serbs did 
to them. So when they open this area up, and this is going to be in the 
British sector, the British will have to keep them apart here, the 
people come back to villages they fled from in September and the 
villages are rubble.
  I see the gentleman from Hawaii [Mr. Abercrombie] has come back. Let 
me ask for a special order, an hour next Tuesday night, next Wednesday 
night, and next Thursday night. Hopefully I will have gotten votes out 
of my leader, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], my majority 
leader, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey], and I know the majority 
whip, the gentleman from Houston, TX [Mr. DeLay] wants to do this, and 
let me put in the Record four articles. I beg, Mr. Speaker, people 
listening to our voices here today to read this material that is in the 
Congressional Record.
  The material referred to is as follows:

   Resume of Service Career of William Lafayette Nash, Major General

               (Commanding Officer, 1st Armored Division)

       Date and place of birth--10 August 1943, Tucson, AZ.
       Years of active commissioned service--over 26.
       Present assignment--Commanding General, 1st Armored 
     Division, U.S. Army Europe Seventh Army, APO AE 09252, since 
     June 1995.
       Military schools attended--The Armor School, Officer Basic 
     Course; The Infantry School, Officer Advanced Course; U.S. 
     Army Command and General Staff College; U.S. Army War 
     College.
       Educational degrees--U.S. Military Academy--BS Degree; no 
     major; Shippensburg University--MS Degree, Public 
     Administration.
       Foreign language(s)--Russian.

                         Major Duty Assignments

------------------------------------------------------------------------
             From                       To               Assignment     
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aug 68........................  Oct 68...........  Student, Ranger      
                                                    Course, U.S. Army   
                                                    Infantry School,    
                                                    Fort Benning, GA.   
Oct 68........................  Nov 68...........  Student, Armor       
                                                    Officer Basic       
                                                    Course, U.S. Armor  
                                                    School, Fort Knox,  
                                                    KY.                 
Dec 68........................  Apr 69...........  Platoon Leader, Troop
                                                    L, 3d Squadron, 3d  
                                                    Armored Cavalry     
                                                    Regiment, Fort      
                                                    Lewis, WA.          
Apr 69........................  Feb 70...........  Platoon Leader, Troop
                                                    A, 1st Squadron,    
                                                    11th Armored Cavalry
                                                    Regiment, U.S. Army,
                                                    Vietnam.            
Feb 70........................  Jun 70...........  Executive Officer,   
                                                    Troop B, 1st        
                                                    Squadron, 11th      
                                                    Armored Cavalry     
                                                    Regiment, U.S. Army,
                                                    Vietnam.            
Jun 70........................  Jul 71...........  Assistant G-3        
                                                    (Operations)        
                                                    Training Officer,   
                                                    later Assistant G-3 
                                                    (Operations) Chief  
                                                    of Force            
                                                    Development, 82d    
                                                    Airborne Division,  
                                                    Fort Bragg, NC.     
Jul 71........................  Nov 71...........  S-3 (Operations), 1st
                                                    Squadron, 17th      
                                                    Cavalry Regiment,   
                                                    later Procurement   
                                                    Officer, Board for  
                                                    Dynamic Training,   
                                                    82d Airborne        
                                                    Division, Fort      
                                                    Bragg, NC.          
Nov 71........................  Feb 73...........  Commander, Troop A,  
                                                    1st Squadron, 17th  
                                                    Cavalry Regiment,   
                                                    82d Airborne        
                                                    Division, Fort      
                                                    Bragg, NC.          
Mar 73........................  Jul 73...........  Student, Officer     
                                                    Rotary Wing Aviator 
                                                    Course, U.S. Army   
                                                    Helicopter Center/  
                                                    School, Fort        
                                                    Wolters, TX.        
Jul 73........................  Dec 73...........  Student, Officer     
                                                    Rotary Wing Aviator 
                                                    Course, U.S. Army   
                                                    Aviation School,    
                                                    Fort Rucker, AL.    
Jan 74........................  Sep 74...........  Student, Infantry    
                                                    Officer Advanced    
                                                    Course, U.S. Army   
                                                    Infantry School,    
                                                    Fort Benning, GA.   
Sep 74........................  Jun 77...........  Platoon Leader and   
                                                    Assistant Operations
                                                    Officer, later      
                                                    Platoon Commander,  
                                                    and later Regimental
                                                    Plans Officer, Air  
                                                    Cavalry Troop, 11th 
                                                    Armored Cavalry     
                                                    Regiment, United    
                                                    States Army Europe, 
                                                    Germany.            
Aug 77........................  Jun 78...........  Student U.S. Army    
                                                    Command and General 
                                                    Staff College, Fort 
                                                    Leavenworth, KS.    
Jun 78........................  Apr 79...........  Staff Officer,       
                                                    Regional Operations 
                                                    Division, Office,   
                                                    Deputy Chief of     
                                                    Staff for Operations
                                                    and Plans, U.S.     
                                                    Army, Washington,   
                                                    DC.                 
Apr 79........................  Jun 82...........  Aide and Assistant   
                                                    Executive Officer,  
                                                    later Executive     
                                                    Officer to the Vice 
                                                    Chief of Staff,     
                                                    Army, Office of the 
                                                    Chief of Staff,     
                                                    Army, Washington,   
                                                    DC.                 
Jun 82........................  Jun 83...........  Deputy Executive     
                                                    Assistant to the    
                                                    Chairman, Joint     
                                                    Chiefs of Staff,    
                                                    Washington, DC.     
Jun 83........................  Jun 85...........  Commander, 3d        
                                                    Squadron, 8th       
                                                    Cavalry Regiment,   
                                                    8th Infantry        
                                                    Division, United    
                                                    States Army Europe, 
                                                    Germany.            
Aug 85........................  Jun 88...........  Student, U.S. Army   
                                                    War College,        
                                                    Carlisle Barracks,  
                                                    PA.                 
Jun 86........................  May 88...........  Assistant Chief of   
                                                    Staff, G-3          
                                                    (Operations), 1st   
                                                    Cavalry Division,   
                                                    Fort Hood, TX.      
May 88........................  May 89...........  Executive Officer to 
                                                    the Commander-In-   
                                                    Chief, United States
                                                    Army Europe,        
                                                    Germany.            
Jun 89........................  Dec 90...........  Commander, 1st       
                                                    Brigade, 3d Armored 
                                                    Division, United    
                                                    States Army Europe  
                                                    and Seventh Army,   
                                                    Germany.            
Dec 90........................  Apr 91...........  Commander, 1st       
                                                    Brigade, 3d Armored 
                                                    Division, Desert    
                                                    Storm, Saudi Arabia.
Apr 91........................  Jul 91...........  Commander, 1st       
                                                    Brigade, 3d Armored 
                                                    Division, United    
                                                    States Army Europe  
                                                    and Seventh Army,   
                                                    Germany.            
Jul 91........................  Jun 92...........  Assistant Division   
                                                    Commander, 3d       
                                                    Infantry Division   
                                                    (Mechanized), United
                                                    States Army Europe  
                                                    and Seventh Army,   
                                                    Germany.            
Jun 92........................  Jul 93...........  Deputy Commanding    
                                                    General for         
                                                    Training, U.S. Army 
                                                    Combined Arms       
                                                    Command, Fort       
                                                    Leavenworth, KS.    
Jul 93........................  Jun 95...........  Program Manager,     
                                                    United States Army  
                                                    Office of the       
                                                    Program Manager,    
                                                    Saudi Arabian       
                                                    National Guard      
                                                    Modernization       
                                                    Program.            
------------------------------------------------------------------------


------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Dates of appointment         
                                 ---------------------------------------
                                       Temporary           Permanent    
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Promotions:                                                             
  2LT...........................  5 Jun 68..........  5 Jun 68          
  1LT...........................  5 Jun 69..........  5 Jun 71          
  CPT...........................  5 Jun 70..........  5 Jun 75          
  MAJ...........................  ..................  10 Jun 77         
  LTC...........................  ..................  1 Nov 82          
  COL...........................  ..................  1 May 89          
  BG............................  ..................  1 Mar 92          
  MG............................  Frocked...........  ..................
------------------------------------------------------------------------

                      u.s. decorations and badges

       Silver Star.
       Legion of Merit.
       Bronze Star Medal with ``V'' Device (with 2 Oak Leaf 
     Clusters).
       Purple Heart.
       Meritorious Service Medal (with Oak Leaf Cluster).
       Army Commendation Medal (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters).
       Army Achievement Medal.
       Senior Parachutist Badge.
       Army Aviator Badge.
       Ranger Tab.
       Joint Chiefs of Staff Identification Badge.
       
[[Page H 14164]]

       Army Staff Identification Badge.
       Source of commission--USMA.

                      SUMMARY OF JOINT ASSIGNMENTS                      
------------------------------------------------------------------------
           Assignment                    Dates               Grade      
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deputy Executive Assistant to     Jun 82-Jun 83.....  Major/Lieutenant  
 the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of                         Colonel          
 Staff, Washington, DC, as of 23                                        
 June 1995.                                                             
------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                                       
                                                                    ____
                  [From Reader's Digest, October 1995]

                     The Folly of U.N. Peacekeeping

                           (By Dale Van Atta)

       Sonja's Kon-Tiki cafe is notorious Serbian watering hole 
     six miles north of Sarajevo. While Serb soldiers perpetrated 
     atrocities in nearby Bosnian villages, local residents 
     reported that U.N. peacekeepers from France, Ukraine, Canada 
     and New Zealand regularly visited Sonja's, drinking and 
     eating with these very same soldiers--and sharing their 
     women.
       The women of Sonja's, however, were actually prisoners of 
     the Serb soldiers. As one soldier, Borislav Herak, would 
     later confess, he visited Sonja's several times a week, 
     raping some of the 70 females present and killing two of 
     them.
       U.N. soldiers patronized Sonja's even after a Sarajevo 
     newspaper reported where the women were coming from. Asked 
     about this, a U.N. spokesman excused the incident by saying 
     no one was assigned to read the newspaper.
       The U.N. soldiers who frequented Sonja's also neglected to 
     check out the neighborhood. Less than 200 feet away, a 
     concentration camp held Bosnian Muslims in inhuman 
     conditions. Of 800 inmates processed, 250 disappeared and are 
     presumed dead.
       Tragically Sonja's Kon-Tike illustrates much of what has 
     plagued U.N. peackeeping operations: incompetent commanders, 
     undisciplined soldiers, alliances with aggressors, failure to 
     prevent atrocities and at times even contributing to the 
     horror. And the level of waste, fraud and abuse is 
     overwhelming.
       Until recently, the U.N. rarely intervened in conflicts. 
     When it did, as in Cyprus during the 1960s and `70s, it had 
     its share of success. But as the Cold War ended, the U.N. 
     became the world's policeman, dedicated to nation building as 
     well as peacekeeping. By the end of 1991, the U.N. was 
     conducting 11 peacekeeping operations at an annual cost of 
     $480 million. In three years, the numbers rose to 18 
     operations and $3.3 billion--with U.S. taxpayers paying 31.7 
     percent of the bill.
       Have the results justified the steep cost? Consider the 
     U.N.'s top four peacekeeping missions:
       Bosnia.--In June 1991, Croatia declared its independence 
     from Yugoslavia and was recognized by the U.N. The Serbian 
     dominated Yugoslav army invaded Croatia, ostensibly to 
     protect its Serbian minority. After the Serbs agreed to a 
     cease-fire, the U.N. sent in a 14,000-member U.N. Protection 
     Force (UNPROFOR) to build a new nation. (The mission has 
     since mushroomed to more than 40,000 personnel, becoming the 
     most extensive and expensive peacekeeping operation ever.)
       After neighboring Bosnia declared its independence in March 
     1992, the Serbs launched a savage campaign of ``ethnic 
     cleansing'' against the Muslims and Croats who made up 61 
     percent of the country's population. Rapidly the Serbs gained 
     control of two-thirds of Bosnia, which they still hold.
       Bosnian Serbs swept into Muslim and Croat villages and 
     engaged in Europe's worst atrocities since the Nazi 
     Holocaust. Serbian thugs raped at least 20,000 women and 
     girls. In barbed-wire camps, men, women and children were 
     tortured and starved to death. Girls as young as six were 
     raped repeatedly while parents and siblings were forced to 
     watch. In one case, three Muslim girls were chained to a 
     fence, raped by Serb soldiers for three days, then drenched 
     with gasoline and set on fire.
       While this was happening, the UNPROFOR troops stood by and 
     did nothing to help. Designated military observers counted 
     artillery shells--and the dead.
       Meanwhile, evidence began to accumulate that there was a 
     serious corruption problem. Accounting procedures were so 
     loose that the U.N. overpaid $1.8 million on a $21.8 
     million fuel contract. Kenyan peacekeepers stole 25,000 
     gallons of fuel worth $100,000 and sold it to the Serbs.
       Corruption charges were routinely dismissed as unimportant 
     by U.N. officials. Sylvana Foa, then spokesperson for the 
     U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva said it was no 
     surprise that ``out of 14,000 pimply 18-year-olds, a bunch of 
     them should get up to hanky-panky'' like blackmarket dealings 
     and going to brothels.
       When reports persisted, the U.N. finally investigated. In 
     November 1993 a special commission confirmed that some 
     terrible but ``limited'' misdeeds had occurred. Four Kenyan 
     and 19 Ukrainian soldiers were dismissed from the U.N. force.
       The commission found no wrongdoing at Sonja's Kon-Tiki, but 
     its report, locked up at U.N. headquarters and never publicly 
     released, is woefully incomplete. The Sonja's Kon-Tiki 
     incidents were not fully investigated, for example, because 
     the Serbs didn't allow U.N. investigators to visit the site, 
     and the soldiers' daily logbooks had been destroyed.
       Meanwhile, Russian troop commanders have collaborated with 
     the Serb aggressors. According to U.N. personnel at the 
     scene, Russian battalion commander Col. Viktor Loginov and 
     senior officer Col. Aleksandr Khromchenkov frequented lavish 
     feats hosted by a Serbian warlord known as ``Arkan,'' widely 
     regarded as one of the worst perpetrators of atrocities. It 
     was also common knowledge that Russian officers directed U.N. 
     tankers to unload gas at Arkan's barracks. During one cease-
     fire, when Serbian materiel was locked in a U.N. storage 
     area, a Russian apparently gave the keys to the Serbs, who 
     removed 51 tanks.
       Eventually, Khromchenkov was repatriated. Loginov, after 
     finishing his tour of duty joined Arkan's Serbian forces.
       Problems remained, however, under the leadership of another 
     Russian commander, Maj. Gen. Aleksandr Perelyakin. Belgian 
     troops had been blocking the movement of Serb troops across a 
     bridge in northeastern Croatia, as required by U.N. Security 
     Council resolutions. Perelyakin ordered the Belgians to stand 
     aside. Reluctantly they did so, permitting one of the largest 
     movements of Serbian troops and equipment into the region 
     since the 1991 cease-fire.
       According to internal U.N. reports, the U.N. spent eight 
     months quietly trying to pressure Moscow to pull Perelyakin 
     back, but the Russians refused. The U.N. finally dismissed 
     him last April.
       Cambodia.--In 1991, the United States, China and the Soviet 
     Union helped broker a peace treaty among three Cambodian 
     guerrilla factions and the Vietnamese-installed Cambodian 
     government, ending 21 years of civil war. To ease the 
     transition to Cambodia's first democratic government, the 
     U.N. created the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia 
     (UNTAC). In less than two years, about 20,000 U.N. 
     peacekeepers and other personnel were dispatched at a cost 
     of $1.9 billion.
       Some of the Cambodian ``peacekeepers'' proved to be 
     unwelcome guests--especially a Bulgarian battalion dubbed the 
     ``Vulgarians.'' In northwest Cambodia, three Bulgarian 
     soldiers were killed for ``meddling'' with local girls. One 
     Bulgarian was treated for 17 different cases of VD. The 
     troops' frequent carousing once sparked a mortar-rifle battle 
     with Cambodian soldiers at a brothel.
       The Bulgarians were not the sole miscreants in Cambodia, as 
     internal U.N. audits later showed. Requests from Phnom Penh 
     included 6500 flak jackets--and 300,000 condoms. In the year 
     after the U.N. peacekeepers arrived, the number of 
     prostitutes in Phnom Penh more than tripled.
       U.N. mission chief Yasushi Akashi waved off Cambodian 
     complaints with a remark that ``18-year-old hot-blooded 
     soldiers'' had the right to enjoy themselves, drink a few 
     beers and chase ``young beautiful beings.'' He did post an 
     order: ``Please do not park your U.N. vans near the 
     nightclubs'' (i.e., whorehouses). At least 150 U.N. 
     peacekeepers contracted AIDS in Cambodia; 5000 of the troops 
     came down with V.D.
       Meanwhile, more than 1000 generators were ordered, at least 
     330 of which, worth nearly $3.2 million were never used for 
     the mission. When U.N. personnel started spending the $234.5 
     million budgeted for ``premises and accommodation,'' rental 
     costs became so inflated that natives could barely afford to 
     live in their own country. Some $80 million was spent buying 
     vehicles, including hundreds of surplus motorcycles and 
     minibuses. When 100 12-seater minibuses were needed, 850 were 
     purchased--an ``administrative error,'' UNTAC explained, that 
     cost $8.3 million.
       Despite the excesses, the U.N. points with pride to the 
     free election that UNTAC sponsored in May 1993. Ninety 
     percent of Cambodia's 4.7 million eligible voters defied 
     death threats from guerrilla groups and went to the polls.
       Unfortunately, the election results have been subverted by 
     the continued rule of the Cambodian People's Party--the 
     Vietnamese-installed Communist government, which lost at the 
     ballot box. In addition, the Khmer Rouge--the guerrilla group 
     that butchered more than a million countrymen in the 1970s--
     have refused to disarm and demobilize. So it was predictable 
     that they would repeatedly break the ceasefire and keep up 
     their killing. The U.N. has spent nearly $2 billion but there 
     is no peace in Cambodia.
       Somalia.--When civil war broke out in this African nation, 
     the resulting anarchy threatened 4.5 million Somalis--over 
     half the population--with severe malnutrition and related 
     diseases. U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the 
     first African (and Arab) to hold the position, argued 
     eloquently for a U.N. peacekeeping mission to ensure safe 
     delivery of food and emergency supplies. The U.N. Operation 
     in Somalia (UNOSOM) was deployed to Mogadishu, the capital, 
     in September 1992. It was quickly pinned down at the airport 
     by Somali multiamen and was unable to complete its mission.
       A U.S. task force deployed in December secured the 
     Mogadishu area, getting supplies to the hungry and ill. After 
     the Americans left, the U.N. took over in May 1993 with 
     UNOSOM II. The $2-million-a-day operation turned the former 
     U.S. embassy complex into an 80-acre walled city boasting 
     air-conditioned housing and a golf course. When U.N. 
     officials ventured out of the compound, their ``taxis'' were 
     helicopters that cost $500,000 a week.
       The published commercial rate for Mogadishu-U.S. phone 
     calls was $4.91 a minute, but the ``special U.N. discount 
     rate'' was $8.41. Unauthorized personal calls totaled more 
     than $2 million, but the U.N. simply picked up the tab and 
     never asked the callers to pay.
     
[[Page H 14165]]

       Meanwhile, the peacekeeping effort disintegrated, 
     particularly as warload Mohammed Aidid harassed UNOSOM II 
     troops. As the civil war continued, Somalis starved. But U.N. 
     peacekeepers--on a food budget of $56 million a year--dined 
     on fruit from South America, beef from Australia and frozen 
     fish from New Zealand and the Netherlands.
       Thousands of yards of barbed wire arrived with no barbs; 
     hundreds of light fixtures to illuminate the streets abutting 
     the compound had no sockets for light bulbs. What procurement 
     didn't waste, pilferage often took care of. Peacekeeping 
     vehicles disappeared with regularity, and Egyptian U.N. 
     troops were suspected of large-scale black-marketing of 
     minibuses.
       These losses, however, were eclipsed in a single night by 
     an enterprising thief who broke into a U.N. office in 
     Mogadishu and made off with $3.9 million in cash. The office 
     door was easy pickings; its lock could be jimmied with a 
     credit card. The money, stored in the bottom drawer of a 
     filing cabinet, had been easily visible to dozens of U.N. 
     employees.
       While the case has not been solved, one administrator was 
     dismissed and two others were disciplined. Last summer, 
     UNOSOM II itself was shut down, leaving Somalia to the same 
     clan warfare that existed when U.N. troops were first 
     deployed two years before.
       Rwanda.--Since achieving independence in 1962, Rwanda has 
     erupted in violence between the majority Hutu tribe and 
     minority Tutsis. The U.N. had a peacekeeping mission in that 
     nation, but it fled as the Hutus launched a new bloodbath in 
     April 1994.
       Only 270 U.N. troops stayed behind, not enough to prevent 
     the butchery of at least 14 local Red Cross workers left 
     exposed by the peacekeepers swift flight. The U.N. Security 
     council dawdled as the dead piled up, a daily horror of 
     shootings, stabbings and machete hackings. The Hutus were 
     finally driven out by a Tutsi rebel army in late summer 1994.
       Seven U.N. agencies and more than 100 international relief 
     agencies rushed back. With a budget of some $200 million, the 
     U.N. tried unsuccessfully to provide security over Hutu 
     refugee camps in Rwanda and aid to camps in neighboring 
     Zaire.
       The relief effort was soon corrupted when the U.N. let the 
     very murderers who'd massacred a half-million people take 
     over the camps. Rather than seeking their arrest and 
     prosecution, the U.N. made deals with the Hutu thugs, who 
     parlayed U.N. food, drugs and other supplies into millions of 
     dollars on the black market.
       Earlier this year the U.N. began to pull out of the camps. 
     On April 22, at the Kibeho camp in Rwanda, the Tutsi-led 
     military opened fire on Hutu crowds. Some 2000 Hutus were 
     massacred.
       Where was the U.N.? Overwhelmed by the presence of nearly 
     2000 Tutsi soldiers, the 200 U.N. peacekeepers did nothing. A 
     U.N. spokesman told Reader's Digest, meekly, that the U.N. 
     was on the scene after the slaughter for cleanup and body 
     burial.
       With peacekeeping operations now costing over $3 billion a 
     year, reform is long overdue. Financial accountability can be 
     established only by limiting control by the Secretariat, 
     which routinely withholds information about peacekeeping 
     operations until the last minute--too late for the U.N.'s 
     budgetary committee to exercise oversight.
       In December 1993, for example, when the budget committee 
     was given one day to approve a $600-million budget that would 
     extend peacekeeping efforts in 1994, U.S. representative 
     Michael Michalski lodged an official protest. ``If U.S. 
     government employees approved a budget for a similar amount 
     with as little information as has been provided to the 
     committee, they would likely be thrown in jail.''
       More fundamentally, the U.N. needs to re-examine its whole 
     peacekeeping approach, for the experiment in nation building 
     has been bloody and full of failure. Lofty ideas to bring 
     peace everywhere in the world have run aground on reality: 
     member states with competing interests in warring 
     territories, the impossibility of lightly armed troops 
     keeping at bay belligerent enemies, and the folly of moving 
     into places without setting achievable goals.
       It has been a fundamental error to put U.N. peacekeepers in 
     place where there is no peace to keep,'' says Sen. Sam Nunn 
     (D., Ga.), ranking minority member of the Senate Armed 
     Services Committee. ``We've seen very vividly that the U.N. 
     is not equipped, organized or financed to intervene and fight 
     wars.''
                                                                    ____


                       [From Time, Dec. 11, 1995]

                       The Art of Selling Bosnia

                          (By Michael Kramer)

       The man whose brilliant head knocking finally produced a 
     Bosnian peace agreement two weeks ago traveled to Capitol 
     Hill last Wednesday seeking another miracle: congressional 
     support for the plan that will shortly land 20,000 American 
     troops in an area steeped in hatred and skilled at war. ``It 
     was kind of like running into a brick wall,'' says U.S. 
     Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, ``and the 
     critics weren't just Republicans.'' Holbrooke addressed about 
     100 members of the House Democratic Caucus and received a 
     standing ovation. It was ``great,'' he says, ``for about two 
     minutes. Everyone was polite at first, saying things like 
     `Blessed are the peacemakers.' And then, one by one, they got 
     up and shouted, `But I haven't gotten a single call from a 
     constituent supporting you yet.' It was the most friendly 
     hostile experience I've ever had.''
       The vote the Administration hopes to win will be taken 
     soon, and the outcome remains uncertain. In the Senate, the 
     support of majority leader Bob Dole will probably win the 
     backing that Bill Clinton desires, and Dole's courage should 
     not be minimized. With the exception of Senator Richard 
     Lugar, all the other G.O.P. presidential candidates oppose 
     Clinton on Bosnia--the most vocal being Phil Gramm, who, in 
     declaring his position even before the President made his 
     case, showed again that he seems never to have encountered a 
     principle he won't rise above in the service of ambition. 
     Dole knows what is coming (``I'll take some hits for this,'' 
     he says), but he, more than most, respects presidential 
     prerogatives and would like to enjoy them himself in 1997.
       In moving to Clinton's side last Thursday, Dole highlighted 
     an irony. Had the President earlier forced an end to the arms 
     embargo against the Bosnian Muslims, Dole argued it might not 
     be necessary for U.S. soldiers to enforce the peace 
     agreement, an accord whose ultimate goal is to strengthen the 
     Bosnians so they can defend themselves when the U.S. leaves. 
     As a consistent opponent of the embargo, Dole had the 
     standing to complain. But the heart of the matter, he said on 
     the Senate floor, is simple: ``The troops are on their way. 
     We cannot stop their deployment,'' and they deserve ``our 
     support.''
       Will that rationale resonate in the House? Early 
     indications are that Speaker Newt Gingrich will declare a 
     ``conscience vote,'' which means members can do as they 
     please without regard to party loyalty. ``The problem with 
     that,'' says Holbrooke, ``is that many Representatives are so 
     new that they've never had to cast a pure national security 
     vote.'' Indeed, 210 of the House's 435 members (including 134 
     Republicans) weren't in Congress in 1991, when it narrowly 
     voted to support George Bush's war against Iraq. ``Most of 
     them,'' says Holbrooke, ``don't like spending money on 
     anything, view all issues as partisan fights and have never 
     had to wrestle with something like Bosnia.''
       The Administration will clearly take any resolution it can 
     get, even a weak one that says, in effect, ``The President is 
     sending the troops; we support the troops.'' That there will 
     be a vote of some kind seems all but certain. Clinton has 
     asked for a congressional expression. If Congress ignores 
     that call, it will marginalize itself, which Holbrooke 
     insists would be a ``dumb'' move. ``It may seem paradoxical, 
     but the best way to stick the policy on us is to support us. 
     If we fail, and Congress hasn't voted, they'll share the 
     blame. If they vote to support the troops in the field, they 
     can still blast the policy,'' he says.
       By pushing an unpopular course, Clinton looks presidential 
     (a rarity for him), and if all goes well, he could win some 
     credit on Election Day. In fact, if all he has done is buy 
     time, that could help too. The President could claim that he 
     tried, and if the factions delay resuming their war till the 
     U.S. goes home, he could be saying that from the cozy perch 
     of a second term.
       But far more than the politics of 1996 is involved here. A 
     ``no'' vote by Congress would be ``catastrophic'' to use Vice 
     President Al Gore's word. It would constrain the Bosnian 
     operation (both strategically, if the mission must be 
     changed, and financially, if more must be spent), but the 
     true downside of a negative congressional resolution could 
     come later during a future horror. Then, when a U.S. 
     President seeks to lead, those asked to follow could not be 
     faulted for wondering if Congress will go along. ``We only 
     have one President at a time,'' says Dole, and his word must 
     count. Since other crises will surely come, the question of 
     who leads in dealing with them will always matter. ``And no 
     one but us will ever lead,'' says Gore. ``And who would we 
     want to lead besides us, even if they were willing?'' asks 
     Dole. ``The Germans? The Japanese? Gimme a break.''
       As the drama plays out this week, Clinton may yet again 
     speak to the nation. ``If Dole says Clinton needs to give 
     another speech to win the vote,'' says a White House aide 
     ``he will.'' If he does, the President might consider 
     repeating the lines he used last Wednesday in London: ``In 
     this new era, we must rise not to a call to arms but to a 
     call to peace. . . To do so we must maintain the resolve we 
     share in war when everything was at stake. In this new world 
     our lives are not so very much at risk, but must of what 
     makes life worth living is still very much at stake.''
                                                                    ____


                     [From Newsweek, Dec. 11, 1995]

                         We're the Ones Who Die

                        (By David H. Hackworth)

       The fog was so thick in Baumholder that President Clinton 
     had to drive from Ramstein AFB, instead of choppering in. 
     This miserable spot in Germany hasn't changed much since I 
     trained here in the early 1960s. It's now the home of the 
     ``Old Ironsides''--as the first commanding general dubbed the 
     First Armored Division, comparing the inside of his tank to 
     the famous American warship. As dismal a place as 
     Baumholder--known as a soldier's Siberia--is, it's a perfect 
     setting for a pep talk about the grim mission ahead.
       Our warriors know what they're up against. I hooked up with 
     the Third Platoon of Company B, Fourth Battalion, 12th 
     Infantry, which will move out in mid-December. When I asked 
     them if they were ``good to 

[[Page H 14166]]
     go,'' all 23 voices shouted, ``Hoo ah!''--the equivalent of a 
     paratrooper's ``Airborne!'' or a marine's ``Semper fi!'' But 
     like all soldiers going into a potential killing field, 
     they're concerned about the unknown ``Our biggest worry is 
     the mines,'' says Sgt. Darrell McCoy. The Third Platoon has 
     been well trained to handle those widow-makers. But that 
     doesn't make the ``gnawing feeling go away,'' confides Sgt. 
     Robert Crosbie, ``We're a mech unit, and our Bradleys are 
     vulnerable'' to land mines, which can pierce the thin armor 
     like a sledgehammer going through a watermelon.
       The division looked formidable as it awaited the commander 
     in chief. At attention, the soldiers stood like tall rows of 
     corn when the 21-gun salute sounded. Clinton spoke for 22 
     minutes. The troops especially liked hearing about the rules 
     of engagement. ``If you are threatened with attack,'' (the 
     president said) ``you may respond immediately--and with 
     decisive force.''
       But after Clinton took off, a certain gloom set in. One 
     soldier complained that the visit was ``a pain in the ass'' 
     because it ruined his Saturday, normally a day off. Some 
     griped about spending Christmas in Bosnia. Others felt the 
     president's address reduced them to props ``His talk seemed 
     more designed to motivate the American public than us,'' 
     groused an NCO. Some of the grumbling was plain old 
     bitching--as familiar and comforting as an old pair of boots. 
     But one sergeant, miffed at Clinton's pledge to accept ``full 
     responsibility'' for any U.S. casualties, expressed a 
     collective resentment. ``We're the ones who are going to 
     die,'' he said.
       While Washington debates the exit strategy, the grunts are 
     worried about what will happen when they get there. Many 
     soldiers I talked to think the 12-month mission to cool down 
     the warring factions is too short a time, a ``fairy tale'' 
     invented by politicians. ``If we don't do this right,'' 
     explains a sergeant, ``we'll end up being the meat in the 
     sandwich; it will be Vietnam all over again.'' The First 
     Armored Division now designated Task Force Eagle--will go in 
     cocked, locked and ready. It can deliver a terrifying punch; 
     tank M-1 Bradley and artillery fire, Apache and Kiowa armed 
     helos shooting Hellfire missiles, 30-mm cannons and 50-
     caliber machine guns, and infantry weapons and all the 
     thunder that NATO aircraft can bring. No one's afraid of a 
     fire fight.
       But what about an ambush? The Third Platoon is currently 
     down nine guys for the rugged, hilly terrain of central 
     Bosnia. Will the new recruits click with the team during 
     dangerous and uncertain operations? Lt. Salvatore Barbaria, 
     the platoon leader with recruiting-poster good looks, left 
     little doubt about his men's resolve. ``War fighting or peace 
     enforcement,'' he said. ``That's our job.''
                                                                    ____


                [From the New York Times, Dec. 5, 1995]

                 Europe Has Few Doubts on Bosnia Force

                         (By Craig R. Whitney)

       Paris, Dec. 4.--Except in Germany, the European debate 
     about sending troops to join the NATO peacekeeping force in 
     Bosnia was over before it started in most other countries. 
     Nearly every other European country already had troops there 
     with the United Nations force, which NATO will replace after 
     a peace treaty is signed here 10 days from now.
       ``France has lost 54 soldiers in Bosnia, and almost 600 
     have been wounded,'' Defense Minister Charles Million said 
     recently, explaining his Government's willingness to join the 
     NATO force. France led an effort last summer to give the 
     United Nations soldiers more artillery firepower and ground 
     reinforcements, and Mr. Million said that the heavily armed 
     NATO force was the best chance yet of permitting peace to 
     take root in Bosnia.
       France and Britain, which has lost 18 soldiers in Bosnia, 
     will provide the NATO operation with about 24,000 troops 
     together, drawing many of the soldiers from their United 
     Nations contingents already there. This is nearly as many as 
     the United States will have in Bosnia and in support 
     assignments in Croatia.
       Both countries were empires until half a century ago, and 
     are used to deploying troops to trouble spots.
       ``We have a long history of having an essentially 
     professional army which was sent all over the Empire to 
     fight, and that attitude has tended to survive a bit,'' said 
     Sir Laurence Martin, the director of the Royal Institute of 
     International Affairs in London. ``Sending troops for limited 
     operations is something the British take great pride in, and 
     because of the history of fighting colonial wars, there is a 
     belief that the British are particularly good at peacekeeping 
     operations short of war.''
       Officials from these and other European countries believe 
     American fears of casualties in Bosnia are overdrawn.
       ``If you go to war, you get killed from time to time,'' 
     said Andre Querdon, spokesman for the Belgian Foreign 
     Ministry and formerly the ministry's liaison officer with 
     several hundred Belgian troops in the United Nations force in 
     Croatia.
       In most European countries, there is more anguish about 
     Europe's failure to stop the war in Bosnia in spite of the 
     sacrifices it has made over the past four years.
       Christian Soussan, 22, a student at the Institute of 
     Political Studies in Paris, said, ``At least these troops 
     will be able to shoot back when attacked, and they won't just 
     look on passively at ethnic cleansing.''
       Sibylle Dura, a 21-year-old student of French literature at 
     the Catholic Institute in Paris, said of the lightly armed 
     United Nations mission: ``They were quite useless in going 
     just to sit there. They should have been more forceful at the 
     start.''
       France and Britain have made clear that they will pull 
     their troops out of Bosnia at the same time the United States 
     does, in about a year.
       The Netherlands, whose soldiers with the United Nations 
     force near Srebrenica were unable last summer to prevent the 
     Bosnian Serb army from overrunning Bosnian Government 
     positions there and executing hundreds of Muslim men and 
     boys, will put its 2,100 troops now in Bosnia under NATO 
     command.
       ``The debacle at Srebrenica has made a difference,'' said 
     Gerrit Valk, a Dutch Labor Party Member of Parliament. 
     ``People are now asking more questions. There are more 
     reservations about this than, say, two years ago.''
       Peter Paul Spanjaard, an 18-year-old Dutch high school 
     student in Sittard, in the southeastern Netherlands, said: 
     ``I'd be scared if I had to go. But as long as this is for a 
     good purpose and all the other countries are taking part, I 
     think we should, too.''
       The Dutch Parliament is expected to approve the NATO 
     mission later this week.
       Germany sent no ground troops to the United Nations force 
     in Bosnia, out of concern that memories of the Nazi 
     occupation in the Balkans during World War II were still too 
     vivid even 50 years later. But on Wednesday, the Parliament 
     in Bonn is expected to give approval to Chancellor Helmut 
     Kohl's decision to provide 4,000 support troops to the NATO 
     force. Most of them will be stationed in neighboring Croatia.
       ``Nobody in Germany or anywhere else would understand if we 
     said we had to stay out even though all the combatants have 
     asked us to come in,'' said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the onetime 
     leader of the 1968 student uprising in Paris and now a member 
     of the largely pacifist Greens party. ``I am sure that quite 
     a few Green members of Parliament will support the Government 
     on Wednesday.''
       In the student bars of Frankfurt and Bonn, many young 
     Germans seem less reluctant to consider military involvement 
     than the 1968 generation, whose thinking dominates both the 
     Greens and the opposition Social Democratic Party today.
       ``I think it is good for German soldiers to be part of the 
     peacekeeping force,'' said Daniela Paas, a graduate student 
     in American Studies in Bonn. ``Germany should have taken part 
     a long time ago. We are members of NATO, after all.''
       Martin Zieba, 21, a law student in Bonn, said: ``If they 
     are attacked, they should be allowed to defend themselves. 
     But they shouldn't take the offensive.''
       But Klaus Eschweiler, a 24-year-old history student, said, 
     ``Because of our history, it could leave a bad taste in a lot 
     of people's mouths.''
       Walther Leisler Kiep, a Christian Democratic party leader, 
     said: ``German participation grows from recognition that we 
     can no longer use our past as an alibi. Our past makes us 
     duty-bound to step in where genocidal policies or racism lead 
     to horrible events like the things we've seen in the former 
     Yugoslavia in recent years.''


                        operation joint endeavor

       United States.--20,000 heavily armed U.S. ground troops, 
     about 13,000 of them from U.S. 1st Armored Division, based in 
     Bad Kreuznach, Germany. Other Germany-based U.S. units are to 
     supply most of the rest, along with 2,000 to 3,000 
     reservists. Troops are to be equipped with about 150 M1-A1 
     Abrams tanks, about 250 Bradley fighting vehicles and up to 
     50 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.
       Headquarters: Tuzla, northeast Bosnia.
       Britain.--13,000 troops, incorporating units from its U.N. 
     contingent already in Bosnia. The force will comprise a 
     divisional HQ, a brigade with armor, infantry and artillery. 
     Air and sea forces in the area will contribute to the 
     operation.
       Headquarters: Gornji Vakuf, central Bosnia.
       France.--10,000 troops, with about 7,500 in the peace force 
     itself and the remainder on logistics duty, either on ships 
     in the Adriatic or at air bases in Italy. There are already 
     about 7,000 French soldiers on the ground, including about 
     3,300 with the NATO Rapid Reaction Force and 3,800 with the 
     United Nations.
       Headquarters: Probably Mostar, southern Bosnia.
       Germany.--4,000 soldiers, primarily to support logistics, 
     transport, engineering and medical units. It will also make 
     available radar-busting Tornado fighter-bombers based in 
     Italy. Most of the German contingent will be based in 
     Croatia.
       Italy.--2,300 troops, with 600 more in reserve at home.
       Norway.--1,000 troops as part of a Nordic brigade.
       Spain.--1,250 ground troops, two frigates, eight F-18 
     aircraft, two Hercules C-130s and a C-235.
       Portugal.--900 troops. The government approved sending 
     troops from the Independent Air-Transport Brigade, including 
     about 700 combat troops, 200 support troops and 120 vehicles.
       Netherlands.--About 130 Dutch soldiers will leave for 
     Bosnia next week as a preparatory force. A cabinet decision 
     on the full complement will be made Dec. 8 and submitted to 
     parliament for approval Dec. 13. The 

[[Page H 14167]]
     Dutch media say the force will include 2,000 military personnel, 
     including an armored infantry battalion, a tank squadron, one 
     Hercules transport aircraft, two F-27 aircraft and 12 F-16 
     jets.
       Troops from Denmark and Turkey will also join the peace 
     force.

                            Non-NATO members

       Russia.--2,000 combat troops and a 2,000-strong logistical 
     support unit.
       Troops from Finland, Sweden (about 870), Estonia, Hungary 
     (about 100 technical personnel), Latvia, Lithuania and Poland 
     will be offered to the peace force.

                              {time}  2230

  Save them from going to their libraries and looking up old Reader's 
Digest. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to put four articles into 
the Record at this point, and then turn his own time back to Mr. 
Abercrombie, or if I could ask unanimous consent to put them at the end 
of the special order of the gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham] 
and myself. That keeps the special order of the gentleman from Hawaii 
[Mr. Abercrombie] clean.
  As a matter of fact, this article, ``Europe Has Few Doubts on Bosnian 
Force,'' which gives the best troop breakdown on our NATO allies, and 
how they are not equaling what we are doing anywhere nearly close 
enough in manpower. This is by Craig Whitney, and I believe it is from 
the New York Times. Another page of facts and figures that goes with it 
with the same article.
  I neglected to put in the Reader's Digest article last night from the 
October issue, ``The Folly of U.N. Peacekeeping With Scandals in 
Bosnia, Cambodia, Somalia and Rwanda,'' all of the U.N. vehicles lined 
up at the whorehouses with documents saying, try not to put your 
vehicles too near the night clubs, they call them.
  Then I would like to put in the November article, the ``United 
Nations Is Out Of Control,'' last month's Reader's Digest. This will at 
least bring American taxpayers to an angry point of saying, if the 
United Nations must be saved, it must be saved from itself. It has no 
accountability. They treat money like it grows on trees. None of them 
pay taxes, nobody is accountable.
  Again, I want to close on this picture, a two-page spreadout, the 
same one that is on the front page of the L.A. Times, of Clinton in 
Bosnia with the troops, our forces there; here it is; and I am all 
through with this one last picture, even though it is going to be a 
long shot. There is Clinton with all the top sergeant majors, the 
commanding general whose biography I would like to put in at this 
point, as I am going to put in the history of first armored division 
fighting from Algiers, Tunisia, Anzio, Salerno, and all the way up into 
the area where Bob Dole was so savagely wounded. How did Clinton set 
this up where he said to all of these people, will you follow me? Will 
you follow me down this driveway, chin up in the air like Mussolini, 
jaw jutted out, neck muscles flexing, and there he walks saying, follow 
me, but only as far as the reviewing field. You will go on to Bosnia by 
yourselves; I will be back in the White House thinking about a 7-year 
balanced budget.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the courtesy of the gentleman from Hawaii 
[Mr. Abercrombie], and I would say to the gentleman, what goes around 
comes around. I will do it for you sometime, Neal.

                          ____________________