[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 197 (Tuesday, December 12, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S18397-S18407]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE BOSNIA ISSUE

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be 
general debate on the Bosnia issue between now and the hour of 6 p.m.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, it is the intention of the majority leader 
at 6 p.m. pending agreement by the other side to turn to H.R. 2606, 
which concerns the use of funds for troops in Bosnia.
  Mr. President, it is also the intention of the majority leader to 
have the vote fairly early tomorrow, sometime around noon.
  So I urge my colleagues to come to the floor at this time--between 
now and any time this evening--to debate and discuss this issue. There 
will be limited time tomorrow. The majority leader asked me to announce 
that. So I hope that we can get to the bulk of the debate on this 
issue.
  Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. McCAIN. Let me just finish if I could, and I will be glad to 
yield to the Senator from Oklahoma.
  Right now, the tentative plans are to vote on H.R. 2606, which is the 
use of funds for troops in Bosnia. Following that, a vote on an 
amendment by, I believe, Senator Hutchison and Senator Nickles, and 
many others--Senator Inhofe, Senator Kyl--on the issue of a resolution 
concerning Bosnia, and that would be followed, is tentatively scheduled 
to be followed by a vote on the Dole amendment, the language of which 
has not been completely worked out.
  That is subject to change. There may be amendments, additional 
amendments from the other side of the aisle on this issue. The Democrat 
side has reserved the right to propose additional amendments on that 
side.
  I will be glad to yield to the Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. The question I had was, is it my understanding there will 
not be debate time tomorrow before the vote will be taken?
  Mr. McCAIN. I believe there will be debate time, but it will be 
extremely limited. We would like to have the debate and discussion 
between now and the hour later this evening Members wish to stay in to 
debate the issue.
  Mr. President, it is my understanding that the intention is to have 
general debate on Bosnia until 6, but then from then on, if we take up 
2606, continue debate on Bosnia as well as that bill. So I am not sure 
we need to restrain Members as far as time of speaking is concerned.
  I wish to emphasize that tomorrow morning there will not be 
sufficient time for every Member to speak on this issue, so again I 
strongly urge as much as possible to have those statements made this 
afternoon or this evening.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. KYL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thompson). The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I would like to begin this debate. I spoke on 
this floor, I think I was the first Member to speak after the President 
spoke to the Nation justifying his decision to commit 20,000 ground 
troops in Bosnia. I indicated my opposition at that time. I wish to 
reiterate that opposition now and very briefly indicate the reasons why 
and why I would support at least one and possibly two of the 
resolutions that will be before us tomorrow.
  I was privileged to serve in the House of Representatives during the 
time that we debated the issue of whether or not to commence the Desert 
Storm operation. I cannot think of a more serious debate that I 
participated in while a Member of the House of Representatives. It was 
an elevated debate in terms of the arguments that were raised on both 
sides, and I think that everyone felt at the end of that discussion the 
issue had been thoroughly debated, the good arguments presented on both 
sides, and I think the right result came from that vote.

  This is a similar issue, Mr. President. This is undoubtedly the most 
serious issue which we have had to debate in this year of the 104th 
Congress. In the long-term survivability of our country, I suppose one 
could talk about the balanced budget and those economic issues, but 
when one considers the possibility of sending young men and women in 
the Armed Forces into harm's way, all of us I think become very serious 
about the subject.
  On this particular subject, there is no right or wrong in the sense 
that reasonable people can have differing views. I would like to focus 
first on what we have agreed on, and I would like to say I know that 
although my colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain, and I may have some 
disagreement about the ultimate resolution that should be passed in 
this body, we agree on what we are for, and I think I would also say 
that in response to Senator Bennett, who said that no senior Senator 
had offered more assistance to a junior Senator than Senator Hatch had 
to him, I would suggest that Senator McCain has provided that same kind 
of assistance to me, and I would wish to commend him for all of his 
efforts in trying to come to grips with what these resolutions should 
be all about and how we influence the administration in conducting a 
sound policy with respect to Bosnia.
  All of us, undoubtedly I could say all of us, are for peace in 
Bosnia, for an end to the slaughter. Many of us believe we have made a 
commitment to that with the American ships that are steaming in the 
Adriatic, the planes that are flying under the banner of NATO, the 
other kind of assistance which we have provided in terms of transport, 
intelligence, humanitarian assistance, and the monetary assistance that 
we will be asked to supply in the future.
  Second, we are all for the support of our troops. There is no one 
here who would want to pull the rug out from under our troops once they 
have been deployed somewhere. Of course, many of us believe the way to 
support our troops is not to send them in harm's way in the first 
instance. But once they are there, none of us, obviously, will want to 
jerk the rug out from under them.
  Having said what we are for, peace in Bosnia and support for our 
troops, I think it is also important for us to say what we oppose. And 
there are many of us here who oppose what I would characterize as the 
unreflective and offhanded and premature commitment of troops by the 
President. Our view is that the President should not have made this 
commitment, and that is why support for the Hutchison resolution is so 
important--to express our opposition to that decision.
  I would like to discuss why I think this issue arises today. If this 
were a vital national security interest of the United States, we would 
not be debating this question. The Senate would have supported it long 
ago and the American people would be in support of it. But there is no 
vital national security interest. There is no national security 
interest of the United States involved. And when there is no national 
security interest, I think there is a higher threshold that must be met 
for the commitment of troops into combat situations. Here there is at 
best what could be characterized as a national interest. Any time there 
is a moral imperative to stop slaughter, to stop genocide, I think one 
could say that there is a national interest in seeing that that is 
stopped.
  That does not mean in every case that the United States would send 
ground troops or we would have ground troops in possibly 20 or 30 or 40 
places on the globe today. We do not. There are many situations that 
cry out for help but we cannot literally be the sheriff of the world. 
So the mere fact there is a moral imperative in some sense to stop the 
slaughter, to stop the genocide in different parts of the world, does 
not automatically mean the United States sends ground troops. We often 
do other things. There was a moral imperative to send humanitarian 
assistance to Somalia, and we did that. And there are moral imperatives 
in other places around the Earth where we have taken action.
  This is a moral imperative, but we should not be confused and call it 
a national security imperative because there is no national security 
interest of the United States involved here. And because it is only a 
moral imperative, it seems to me there should have been more debate by 
the Congress and with the American people about whether or not this is 
one of those occasions in 

[[Page S18398]]
which we send our people into harm's way. That debate could not occur 
before the commitment was made because the President made it, as I 
said, in an offhanded and premature way. Once he made the commitment, 
it is very difficult for us to argue about it because of the contention 
that we therefore are embarrassing the President; that we no longer 
have a foreign policy behind which we stand united in the world and 
therefore once the commitment was made it is no longer possible for us 
to debate it.

  That kind of catch-22 could occur in the future. There are other 
situations in the world where there is a possibility of commitment of 
U.S. troops. I have heard, for example, that if Israel and Syria should 
make peace, United States troops might be sent to the Golan Heights. I 
do not know whether that is a good idea or not, Mr. President, but I do 
believe that before a commitment is made we ought to debate that and 
come to a resolution of that question and the administration act with 
the advice and consent of the Senate in that matter. I suggest that 
probably the same thing will happen there that happened here. A 
commitment will be made in private. We will be told about it later. And 
because it was already made, we will be told that we cannot really 
argue about it because it would undercut American foreign policy. That 
is not sound decisionmaking and that is really what I object to and why 
I think it is important for us to have a resolution in opposition to 
the decision the President made.
  There are three basic responses that have been made. One is the so-
called Hefley amendment. This is the amendment that passed the House of 
Representatives overwhelmingly. And it is embodied in a sense-of-the-
Senate that was incorporated into the Defense appropriations bill as 
well, but that was a sense-of-the-Senate rather than actual 
legislation.
  This basically says that there should not be a commitment of funds 
until the Congress has acted affirmatively on the matter, and I think 
that is wise policy. That is the way it should have been done here. 
That is, in effect, the way President Bush did it when he sought 
Congress' approval to conduct the Desert Storm operation.
  The second response to what the President did is the so-called 
Hutchison amendment. This is an amendment which I have cosponsored 
which says that we oppose what the President did. It also says we 
support the troops. But I think we have to express that opposition.
  The third resolution is the one that Senator McCain referred to, the 
Dole resolution, which apparently has not been written yet and 
therefore obviously I cannot comment on that.
  But the point is, Mr. President, in all likelihood none of these 
three responses will become law. So we will have to do what is 
necessary to support the troops. And we will do that.
  What we are relegated to doing tomorrow when we have our vote is to 
send a message, and I think the message we send is very important.
  First of all, it ought to be a message of unity and support of our 
troops. Second, it ought to be a message of unity in support of the 
peace process through a variety of mechanisms that the United States 
has already been participating in and will in the future be 
participating in. Third, it ought to be a message that we oppose this 
particular commitment of troops both in terms of the lack of clarity of 
mission and exit strategy and of the premise for the mission in the 
first place; and that is that it is essential for U.S. ground troops to 
be a part of the so-called peacekeeping effort or else it will fail.
  As I said before, Mr. President, if this agreement is so fragile that 
the sine qua non--that without which--for its success is a commitment 
of 20,000 American ground troops, then it is probably a peace too 
fragile to be sustained in any event, and those are the messages I 
think we should send in the resolutions that we adopt tomorrow.
  I think that the bottom-line message should be that the President 
should not get us into these situations in the future, and it is not 
fair to those who we ask to do the fighting for the United States of 
America.
  And so, Mr. President, we commend those who have negotiated the 
peace. We pray for those who will be doing the fighting. We pray for 
the recovery of the area in which so much turmoil and difficulty has 
occurred over the last several years. And we certainly hope that while 
this mission begins in much controversy, that it can end successfully 
and without loss of life or casualty to our United States troops.

  Mr. President, I thank you, and I yield the floor.
  Mr. INHOFE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I wholeheartedly agree with all the 
comments made by the Senator from Arizona [Mr. Kyl]. He and I have 
talked about this long and hard, and for many, many hours here on the 
floor of this body, and it is something that has concerned us.
  We expressed the concern in the past when we both served in the other 
body and served at that time on the House Armed Services Committee 
about the problem that we have and are confronted with when the 
Commander in Chief, the President of the United States, is able to send 
troops into areas with a total disregard of Congress, of either House 
of Congress. It is as if we are totally irrelevant.
  We are the expression of the American people. We are the ones who are 
expressing the sentiments, I think, very clearly that shows up 
certainly in Oklahoma, and I suspect all over the country. The problem 
that we have is very simple, that the President sends the troops over 
on these humanitarian missions that do not relate to our Nation's 
security, and then he comes back to us and says he wants an emergency 
supplemental appropriation to pay for it when in fact we would not have 
incurred that cost if we could have been consulted or been made a part 
of the decision.
  I do not mean this to sound at all partisan because when the decision 
was made to go to Somalia, it was made in December 1992, which was 
right after President Bush--he was still in office, but he had been 
defeated. It was supposed to be for 45 days. In other words, in 
December, the troops are going to go over and in January they are going 
to come back. It was to open a roadway for the delivery of humanitarian 
goods to the people of Somalia who did not want us over there to begin 
with. I disagreed with President Bush, who was a Republican, like I am, 
at that time.
  Then, of course, right after that, in January, we reminded President 
Clinton that in fact we should bring our troops home because the intent 
originally was to send them over for 45 days. And so, each month 
thereafter, approximately each month, we sent resolutions to President 
Clinton saying, bring our troops home from Somalia. And he did not do 
it and did not do it, and months went by, until finally there was the 
brutal murder of 18 of our Rangers and their mutilated bodies, corpses 
were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Of course, then it was 
too late and then the American people rose up, and this was enough 
pressure that we indeed brought our troops back from Somalia.

  We sent troops down to Haiti. We were not part of that decision. 
Haiti was supposed to be considered as the crown jewel of President 
Clinton's foreign policy. He said he was going to send the troops down 
there for 12 months. Then we sent them down in September, and 12 months 
later--this was this past September--they are still not back. Now 3 
more months have gone by and things are getting worse down there, not 
better.
  We realize we made a mistake in Haiti. That was not anything that 
related to our Nation's security. Indeed, it was to go down there--at 
least it was reported by the President that we were going to go down 
and get someone who was duly elected back in office. We have been 
watching in recent weeks, in recent days of the turmoil that exists 
there, and we still to this day have troops in Haiti.
  Just a few weeks ago, we were asked to vote for an emergency 
supplemental to pay for Somalia and Haiti and some of these 
humanitarian gestures. I guess Rwanda was in there, too. It was a $1.4 
billion appropriation.
  So this procedure the Senator from Arizona, Senator Kyl, was talking 
about is what is really wrong because we do not have any voice in it, 
and yet we have to turn around and vote for a supplemental 
appropriations to appropriate money that has already been 

[[Page S18399]]
spent on a mission that we did not agree with.
  What happens if we do not make that appropriation? The President 
merely then just goes to the military budget and pulls it out of the 
operating budget which is already cut down to the bone, down to a level 
that we cannot defend our Nation on two regional fronts, as it is 
today. And then we are deleting those very scarce resources and assets, 
military assets, by these humanitarian gestures.
  So I am rising today during this time really to speak on two of the 
three votes that will be before us tomorrow. The first one, as I 
understand the order, from the leader is going to be H.R. 2606. 
Congressman Joel Hefley from Colorado, who incidentally spent the last 
weekend with me in the State of Oklahoma going around and explaining to 
the people and participating on nationwide radio talk shows to let 
people know just what is happening, that the President made a 
commitment more than 2 years ago to send 25,000 troops in on the ground 
in Bosnia, and we are now almost out of time. I am not sure there is 
anything we can do now to stop the President from doing this. But just 
on the possibility, remote possibility, as it is, that the President 
may, since he made that statement, have realized what he is doing in 
sending our troops over there into that incredibly hostile area, that 
maybe we can give him an out. So we have two efforts to do that.

  The first effort is H.R. 2606, as was passed by Congressman Hefley in 
the House of Representatives. I will read just the preamble to this.

       To prohibit the use of funds appropriated to the Department 
     of Defense from being used for the deployment on the ground 
     of United States Armed Forces in the Republic of Bosnia and 
     Herzegovina as a part of any peacekeeping operation, or as 
     part of any implementation force, unless funds for such 
     deployment are specifically appropriated by law.

  It is a very simple and straightforward two-page bill. That is all it 
says. It just says we in Congress are relevant. We in Congress should 
be heard. After all, we are the ones that appropriate money for our 
military operations. We are the ones who make the fiscal decisions in 
this country. The President submits his budget, but we are the ones who 
get down to the detail of passing budgets that are consistent with the 
desires of the American people.
  And so I strongly support H.R. 2606. I do not think it is going to 
pass. But I am going the tell you, it is a defining vote. Come the 
elections in the future, there are going to be people looking back and 
saying, we had an opportunity, not just intent of Congress. We already 
passed one of those. Senator Gregg put that on as an amendment. It was 
voice voted. And, of course, Senator Hutchison and myself and some 
others have a resolution of disapproval that we are going to be trying 
to pass tomorrow. That is important, too.
  But this particular bill has the meaning of law, has the force of 
law. It says that we are not going to appropriate the funds that are 
necessary for the mass deployment of troops into Bosnia unless it comes 
to Congress or Congress approves it.
  Now, this does not take away any of the powers of the President. It 
merely says that the President should not do it unless he has the 
Congress and the American people behind him. I can tell you right now, 
Mr. President, he does not have the support of Congress behind him, and 
he does not have the support of the American people behind him. He does 
not have the support of the vast majority of the people in this 
country; I think they are offended--unless Oklahoma is a lot different 
than any of the other States.
  I was all over Oklahoma this past weekend, and I can share the 
frustration that people all the way from Lawton, to Anadarko, to Tulsa, 
that they are offended that this has been railroaded through and that 
we have not had a chance to have the American people be heard.
  You might ask, is it really that hostile of an area there? The 
Senator from Arizona talked about such things as mission creep. You 
know, we have already had mission creep in this case. This was going to 
be peacekeeping. Now it is going to be peace implementation. There is a 
big difference between peacekeeping and peace implementation, because 
peacekeeping assumes that there is peace today, when there is not peace 
today. Peace implementation means we must implement peace. There is a 
big difference. That has seemingly gone unnoticed. This thing about 
mission creep is that it starts out simple and sounds good to the 
American people, just like, I suppose, Somalia sounded back in December 
1992. It sounded like it was very reasonable. Yet, who could argue at 
that time against opening up a road in order to send humanitarian goods 
up to the people who were having all kinds of social problems? So we 
did it. But that kept creeping and creeping until we lost many American 
lives.
  There are quite a few people in Congress who have been to Sarajevo. 
Sarajevo is the area people talk about and think about when they think 
about Bosnia. But that is not the area where our troops are going to 
be. Our troops are going to be, according to the map that has been 
drawn out, to the north of that, from the north of Sarajevo, all the 
way up, almost to Hungary. That is where we are going to have our 
troops. That is the hostile area.
  I had occasion to prevail upon a British general, Rupert Smith, who 
was kind enough to take me up, since none of the Americans had been up 
there. I found out later that even the two fine generals that were 
training the 1st Armored Division in Germany to go up, General Yates 
and General Nash, had not personally been in that area at that time, 
and they are training our troops to go into that area. Then I found out 
subsequently, the other day--last week, or a week ago today--when we 
had a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, that neither General 
Shalikashvili or Secretary of Defense Perry had been in that area. I 
know the President has not been in that area. So I have to come to the 
conclusion that those individuals have not been there to see how 
hostile it was.

  Let me just tell you why, how they happened to discover this. 
Secretary Perry was talking about how peaceful it is up in the Tuzla 
area. I said, ``Mr. Secretary, I was up in the Tuzla area. There was 
firepower going around up there, and it has not ceased since the cease-
fire took place. When was the last time you were?'' He said he had 
never been there.
  General Shalikashvili said, ``We are training them in an area and an 
environment that very nearly represents the environment up in Tuzla.''
  I said, ``I have been to Tuzla and to the training area in Germany, 
and it is not really analogous to the training area. When was the last 
time you were there?'' He had not been there.
  So here we have a hostile area, and we are guessing that there are 
more than 6 million mines in that area. This is not like it was in the 
Persian Gulf where you could go in and deactivate mines, because it is 
not a desert. This is ground that is frozen, and the only way to find 
out is if you drive an M-l or an armored vehicle on it and activate it. 
This is the type of hostility that is there.
  We hear a lot about the peace talks that took place in Dayton, OH. I 
say that maybe the wrong people were there. Sure, Milosevic was there, 
but it was my experience in the time I spent in Bosnia that he is not 
the one calling the shots. It is Karadzic occasionally and, of course, 
many factions have broken away from him. We are dealing with three 
major factions there--the Croats, the Serbs, and the Bosnian Serbs, and 
we have the Moslems. In addition to that, you have the Arkan Tigers, a 
throwoff of the Serbs; the Black Swans, which is related and was at one 
time a group of Moslems; the mujaheddin is still active; the Iranians 
are there. We have identified nine subfactions, or rogue elements, that 
are up in that area where we are talking about having our troops 
walking around. These elements have been known to fire upon their own 
troops, murder their own flesh and blood, just to blame it on one of 
the other elements.
  I suggest, Mr. President, if you are dealing with that kind of 
mentality, what would preclude them from firing on our troops to blame 
somebody else? The administration says, no, we have a couple of ways we 
can get out of Bosnia. One is at the end of 12 months. It was 
interesting that the President started out presenting this program and 
saying, ``We are going to send troops into Bosnia for 12 months.'' 

[[Page S18400]]


  Well, on October 17, during the Senate Armed Services Committee 
hearing, I said to General Shalikashvili, the Chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, ``I do not understand how you can have an exit 
strategy that is tied to time.'' I asked him, ``How do you know what is 
going to happen 12 months from today? Exit strategies are tied to 
events and our success in the various efforts there, and whatever we 
are enduring.''
  He said, ``No, it is going to go 12 months. On the 365th day they are 
coming back.''
  That did not sound realistic, and I think a lot of people further 
down in the bureaucracy were trying to withdraw from that 12-month 
commitment, until a week ago today when they reaffirmed their 
commitment. General Shalikashvili said, ``It is inconceivable that we 
will be there after 12 months.''
  Well, then the President, over the weekend, reaffirmed that. They are 
talking about an exit strategy of 12 months. What if we go over there 
and we have something--which I do not think we have--but something that 
relates to our Nation's security interests, or our vital interests, so 
we engage in combat. We go over there to do whatever we are supposed to 
be doing there, to contain the civil war, to protect the integrity of 
NATO, or whatever they say is worth the cost of hundreds of American 
lives, at the end of the 12th month, they are saying, no matter what, 
we come home anyway. What if we are almost there? No, we are going to 
come home.
  I had occasion to talk to people who are very familiar with the 
Bosnians, the former Yugoslavia, the various cults and ethnic groups 
and the rogue elements that are up there, and they said one thing 
people do not understand in the United States is that those people do 
not think like we do. Their conception of time is not what ours is. 
General Hoagland, who was the general from Norway, up in the Tuzla area 
where we are talking about sending our troops--and we are as we speak--
he said 12 months is absurd; it is like putting your hand in water and 
leaving it there for 12 months, and when you pull it out, nothing has 
changed, it is just like it was. And then when I commented to some of 
the soldiers up there who are familiar with that area, I said, ``What 
about the 12 months and being out in that time?'' They said, ``Are you 
sure you are not talking about 12 years?''
  So these are the unknowns that we are dealing with. These are the 
rogue elements. This is the hostility, and these are the chances we are 
willing to take. If you do not believe what I am saying, Mr. President, 
I suggest that you go back to that meeting of October 17, when we had 
Secretary Christopher, Secretary Perry both there at the meeting. That 
was shortly after Gen. Michael Rose from Great Britain, who was the 
commanding general in charge of United States forces in Bosnia, 
certainly there was no greater authority at that time on the conditions 
in Bosnia than Gen. Michael Rose. He said, if Americans go into Bosnia, 
they will sustain more loss of lives than they did in the Persian Gulf 
war. Well, that was 390.

  I specifically asked the question, I said, ``Secretary of Defense 
Perry, let us assume that all these experts are right and we are going 
to lose at least 400 lives over there. Is the mission as you have 
described it, that is to contain a civil war and to protect integrity 
of NATO, is that worth 400 American lives?''
  He said, ``Yes.''
  Secretary Christopher said yes. I say no. That is the defining issue 
here. We will have an opportunity to get people on record. I hope the 
Senators that are preparing to vote on these very significant things 
understand the seriousness of it.
  We have an opportunity to do something to stop it. It is remote. As I 
said when I began a few minutes ago, maybe we cannot pull it off. If we 
do, maybe the President, in the case of H.R. 2606, which I strongly 
support, maybe he would veto it or he would let it sit on his desk 
until we have the troops over there and then it is too late.
  As Senator Kyl and others have said, we are in full support of our 
troops. That is, everyone in this Chamber is in support of our troops. 
The best way to support our troops is not send them over there in the 
first place. Those who are over there, a handful, bring them back.
  That is essentially what we are attempting to do with H.R. 2606. We 
are saying we will not appropriate the money to send the troops over 
unless you come to Congress, present your case to the American people, 
and sell your case. It is as simple as that.
  There is a defining vote. People who vote against H.R. 2606 are 
saying ``No, Mr. President, you go ahead. You don't have to come to 
Congress. We will go ahead and appropriate the money. We are serving 
notice we will appropriate the emergency supplemental.''
  The same thing with the Hutchison-Inhofe resolution. That is a 
defining vote. People are going to have to answer to that in years to 
come--I am talking about U.S. Senators--as to whether or not they were 
supporting the troops being sent to Bosnia. We all support the troops.
  Mr. President, this is probably the most significant vote--these two 
votes will be the most significant votes we will be voting on. I know a 
lot of people, the families of the thousands of American troops that 
are going to be sent over there. This is the most defining vote.
  I could not find anyone yesterday in the streets of Anadarko, OK, who 
thought the mission as described to them is worth the loss of one 
American life, let alone 400 or 1,000 or whatever it ends up being. I 
think the American people are solidly behind our effort to stop the 
deployment, even though it is almost too late now.
  The President says this is only going to cost $2 billion. They gave a 
figure of what Somalia would cost, what Rwanda would cost, what Haiti 
would cost, and they are off by a few billion and had to come back for 
supplemental appropriations.
  Mr. President, we are going to have an opportunity to vote on three 
issues tomorrow. Two are resolutions without the force of law; one has 
the force of law. I think the toughest vote will be the vote on H.R. 
2606. Those who really feel so strongly that the American people and 
Congress should have to give permission before the President sends the 
mass deployment of troops into Bosnia, this is the opportunity for them 
to cast that vote.
  I had a phone call last week from Capt. Jim Smith, who I believe is 
from New Jersey. He is an American hero. He was a career military 
officer. He lost his leg in Vietnam. He lost his son in Mogadishu. He 
said to me, ``You know, I had two letters from my son. The first one 
was concerning the rules of engagement that we were using in Somalia. 
They said we would have robust rules of engagement,'' and he 
characterized those the same way that Captain Smith today is 
characterizing the rules of engagement that we have.
  The last letter he got, his son made the statement to his dad in this 
letter right before he was one of the 18 Rangers who lost his life over 
in Somalia and his corpse was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, 
and he said, ``Dad, over here we cannot tell the good guys from the bad 
guys.''
  I suggest that is exactly the situation in Bosnia. I know people who 
are trying to make that into something that is really relating to our 
Nation's security. I do not think we can tell the good guys from the 
bad guys. Take a snapshot in the history of that area in the last 500 
years and one is that the Serbs are the bad guys and the next is that 
the Croats are the bad guys. We saw what happened in the First World 
War; we saw what happened when Marshal Tito put together a coalition 
because he was in the unique position of being a Croat and yet was also 
a Communist, so he was able to break away from Hitler's operation where 
a lot of the Croats went, and held this very fragile country together 
against Hitler's onslaught on a ratio, for a 2-year-period, of 1 to 8. 
What I am saying is, this hostile area we went into, he was able to 
hold off the very best Hitler had to send in on a ratio of one soldier 
to eight soldiers. Until you fly over 100 feet off the ground and look 
down and see the environment and the cliffs and the cave, you cannot 
really appreciate this.
  Unfortunately, the five people who are in charge, the architects of 
this thing, the various Secretaries and the President himself, none of 
them at the time the decision was made had ever been in that part of 
the world. It is understandable why they might not understand the 
serious danger that lurks up there for our troops. 

[[Page S18401]]


  I stopped by the training area a few weeks ago and talked to a lot of 
the troops. I went into the mess hall. I have not been in a mess hall 
since I was in the U.S. Army, and I enjoyed visiting with all of them. 
It was very difficult for me to answer the question when they asked me: 
What is the mission? What is so important over there?
  I try my best because I am in full support of the troops. I said, if 
you go over there, you will have a mission. We will have the American 
people behind you. But I could not answer the question about the 
mission.
  I talked to one James Terry, a young man who would be in the first 
group. He may be over there now. He is probably part of the logistics 
team over there. When I came home, I talked to his mother, Estella 
Terry, in Oklahoma, and I got to thinking that the test that 
Congressmen heavily used over in the other body was, what do you tell--
I guess it is called the mother's test--what do you tell somebody who 
has lost a son or a daughter or a husband or a wife? What can you tell 
them they died for? This is the test that the President has failed to 
meet.
  I am hoping that with the two opportunities that we have on voting in 
the Hutchison-Inhofe resolution of opposition to the deployment of 
troops and H.R. 2606 to actually stop--this is the litmus test. We will 
stop the appropriations so they cannot be sent there in the first 
place, this mass deployment, and bring those who are there back.
  This is very, very significant and probably the most significant vote 
that we will vote on. There is a third vote, and that is the vote that 
will come up tomorrow that is trying to be conciliatory to the 
President's plan. I have looked at his plan. I think it is so flawed 
that it cannot be fixed. I do not think we can fix it. I plan to vote 
against the resolution that would, for all practical purposes, approve 
what the President is doing.
  Lastly, I will conclude by saying we are behind the troops and the 
troops are behind us. We are the ones--it says to stand up here and say 
we support the troops. How can you say we support troops and send them 
into the environment I just described? I do not think we can do it, and 
I do not think people are supporting the troops when we do that. We 
have an opportunity, a last-ditch effort, and after that the 
opportunity is behind us, and we will have to start watching what is 
going on, giving full support.
  If there is anyone here, Mr. President, who disagrees that the troops 
are behind what we are trying to do, I suggest you look at the veterans 
groups. A week ago we had a news conference. Every veterans group I am 
aware of in America was present. We had the American Legion, the DAV. 
We had the veterans of the Korean war. We had the veterans of Vietnam. 
We had the Jewish veterans. They were all there and they all stood up 
and said, we are for the troops, and the best thing you can do for the 
troops is keep us out of this fight over there that is not our civil 
war, because we could very well have some causes that would come up 
where we need to send troops.

  We cannot be depleting our resources. Certainly, people like Saddam 
Hussein and others around the world are looking at our weakened 
condition now and the fact we are further weakening our military assets 
by sending them out on the humanitarian gestures.
  Mr. President, I suggest we will have an opportunity tomorrow to cast 
three votes. I think the votes, the right votes, are to vote against 
the resolution of support for the President and vote for the resolution 
and the bill that supports our troops and stops the deployment of 
troops into Bosnia. I yield the floor.
  Mr. THOMAS. I rise to speak on the issue that is before the Senate, 
that has been before the Senate for some time, and our decision with 
respect to our role in Bosnia.
  This has been going on, of course, for a very long time, nearly 4 
years, so we have had a great deal of opportunity to think about it, 
consider what our role should be, also what great opportunities and, of 
course, to watch what is happening, watch the tragedy that has, indeed, 
taken place. So we hear a great deal of conversation about our role in 
keeping peace, our role in helping to provide freedom, our role in 
stopping the fighting. Everyone agrees. So the question is not whether 
you agree with being active in that effort, but how do you best do it? 
The question is, how do we deal with the crisis that has been there? 
The question is, what is our role in this particular incident?

  What is our role, then, as a matter of policy, in other places where 
there are similar problems? What is our policy with respect to civil 
wars? Our policy with respect to ethnic disturbances? Is it going to be 
our policy to participate in each of these, where we have troops now in 
the Golan Heights, where we have troops in Algeria, where we have 
troops around the world, keeping the peace--or, in fact, creating 
peace?
  Where do we not have a policy of that kind? We asked that question to 
the administration.
  ``Well, this is separate. We will make each decision separately.''
  I do not think that is the way it works.
  Mr. President, the first concern I have had for some time is with the 
process that has taken place here. The process has been one that has, 
either by design or by accident, co-opted the Congress almost entirely. 
It started 2 years ago. The President said, I think almost offhandedly, 
``We will put 25,000 troops in to help the United Nations pull out if 
need be.'' There was no particular reason for 25. It could have been 
10. It could have been 40. But 25 it was. So nothing happened, much, 
with that. And the United Nations continued, through their dual-key 
arrangement, not to be particularly effective; not effective at all, as 
a matter of fact. So the Congress acted finally. The Congress acted, 
and said we want to raise the arms embargo so we can provide an 
opportunity for the Moslems to defend themselves and create more of an 
even field. So we did that.
  There was no support from the administration for doing that. However, 
it did cause, I think, the administration to move. So, then they said 
to NATO, let us bring in some aircraft strikes. We did that. It did not 
affect a great deal but it did tend to even the playing field. The 
Serbs had much of an advantage in heavy weapons.
  So the Moslems and Croats got together, which tended also to make the 
playing field more even, which is really the basic reason the Serbs 
came to the table. So we said to the administration, What is our policy 
with regard to this?
  ``Well, we cannot talk about it now because we are going to have a 
peace conference and we do not want to get ahead of that.''
  OK. Did that.
  Then there was a peace conference and for whatever sticktoitiveness 
there is, that one came out, initialed peace conference in Dayton.

  We said, after the conference, What is our position? What are we 
committed to? What can we do? How do we participate as Congress?
  You cannot really participate because we have a peace conference and 
we do not really want to talk about it.
  Then the President goes off to Europe, agrees to do the things he has 
agreed to do, and of course they welcome it with open arms. Why would 
they not? We are willing to do the heavy lifting. So, then the next 
thing we know, the troops are there.
  Now, the big movement of troops has not taken place, but American 
troops are there now. So we had a hearing, not long ago, in the Foreign 
Affairs Committee, and the Secretary of State was there, the Secretary 
of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I asked, ``What, in 
your opinion, is the role of Congress in this matter of foreign policy 
and in this matter of troops to Bosnia?''
  Frankly, I did not get an answer. Finally, the Secretary of State 
said, ``Well, to provide the money.''
  I think there is a larger role than that. You can debate the 
Presidential power, Commander in Chief, debate the money--but there is 
a role in terms of having support for what we are doing and including 
the Congress; not coming up and telling them what we have already 
decided to do, but, rather, have a real role.
  I was in Bosnia about 6 weeks ago, along with several of my 
associates here. And we spent a day in Stuttgart with the Supreme 
Allied Commander. This was 6 weeks ago. I can tell you, in terms of the 
administration, that decision was already made. It was already made, 
what we were going to do. 

[[Page S18402]]

  We asked. ``We are impressed with what you are doing, general, in 
terms of training and preparation, but are there alternatives?''
  There were no alternatives.
  I do not believe that. There are, in fact, alternatives.
  So, that is where we are. I happen to oppose the idea of sending 
troops on the ground to Bosnia. The real, basic question has never been 
satisfactorily answered, as far as I am concerned.
  Let me divert, to say I respect the opinions of everyone who is 
involved here as being their basic gut-felt feeling about it. But the 
real question, what is our national interest, has never really been 
answered. What is our position? What is our policy? What will we do in 
instances similar to this? Is this what we are going to do hence?

  So, until that question is answered, really, all the stuff about how 
you withdraw, how you are in harm's way, how you enter, how you get 
out, how many troops, are not really relevant if you have not 
established the idea that it is in our national interest to be there.
  So, I think that question has never been resolved. There are many 
arguments. One is to stop the genocide. Of course we want to do that. 
As a matter of fact, it was my strong feeling when we were in Sarajevo, 
when we were in Croatia, that folks are anxious to stop. They are tired 
of fighting. You can imagine that. You can imagine that. And if there 
is real dedication to the peace agreement, it is hard to imagine that 
we need 80,000 or 90,000 troops on the ground from other places to 
cause this to happen.
  Is this the only alternative? I do not think so. They continue to say 
nothing would happen if the U.S. does not take leadership. We were also 
in Brussels, in Belgium, with NATO, and all 16 of the Ambassadors from 
the NATO countries stood up and said, ``Gosh, we just do not think we 
can do it without the Americans providing the majority--a third of the 
troops, the basic payments, the heavy lifting to get there.''
  Of course they could do it. Of course we can continue to participate 
in NATO. This was not really the mission of NATO originally. NATO is 
sort of looking for a mission and they are excited about the 
opportunity, generally, of doing this.
  We hear that Bosnia is the heart of Europe and the conflict may 
spread. It could, of course. Four years--4 years, during the height of 
the fighting, it has not spread. Bosnia is hardly the heart of Europe. 
Bosnia is the edge of Europe and, as a matter of fact, the strife that 
has taken place there has taken place, historically, because someone 
else has come there.
  So, Mr. President, this is a tough issue. We are going to have a 
chance, finally, to vote on it, as belated as that may be. And, as my 
friend from Oklahoma said, there will be a number of alternatives and 
we will have to make that tough choice. But it is my belief we can 
continue to involve ourselves in the diplomacy.
  I congratulate those who have done that diplomacy. We can continue to 
provide support. We can continue to provide airlift. We can continue 
the work in NATO. We do not necessarily have to have 30,000 troops on 
the ground there. It is a very tough area. This idea that you go in and 
separate them--this morning I sat in for a little time on the civilian 
aspect of it. What do you do when you are there? There are refugees, 
thousands of refugees, who will not be in the sector that they live in. 
And their property is gone. How do you return that? How do you get a 
Croatian back into the Moslem area to reclaim his home?
  They say we are not going to do that. So this morning they are saying 
we will have to do the policing; we will have to train them on 
policing; we will have to arm the Moslems. There is really a great deal 
more to this than separating those two areas and separating the zone, 
and we are obviously going to end up doing it.
  The price now talked about is $1.5 billion, plus another $600 million 
for nation building. If you would like to bet, it will be at least 
twice that. Of course it will. Of course it will. So we ought to really 
talk about the incremental costs and what that is.
  But more importantly, Mr. President, and I conclude, what is our 
role? What is our role in the world? How do we do this in terms of 
troops on the ground throughout the world? What is the division of 
understanding here as to what the role of the Congress is?
  I think most of us are very close to the people we represent. I can 
tell you that in our response in Wyoming, I think we have had two calls 
out of hundreds that favor the administration's position, which does 
not make it right or wrong, but it is an indication of how people feel.
  So, Mr. President, I hope we come to the snubbing post, and decide 
what our role is. In my view, that role is not 30,000 troops on the 
ground.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRASSLEY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I want to take this opportunity, as all 
of my colleagues are doing the rest of the day and tomorrow, to comment 
on this very important issue of sending troops to Bosnia and, of 
course, on the specific resolution before us.
  Given the President's obvious intention to move ahead regardless of 
whatever we decide to do in Congress, I am not sure what the effect, or 
even the need, is for the resolution before us because it seems to me 
that the train has left the station.
  Of course, we all have a constitutional responsibility to let our 
views be known. We have a responsibility to vote on these issues, and 
even though the President is moving forward it gives some of those of 
us who object to his doing that an opportunity to express our views.
  Of course President Clinton is touting support for his position from 
former Presidents, including former President Bush. However, the 
President does not have support where it counts the most--and that is 
support from the American people. Even former President Bush, in his 
qualified support, stated,

       I still have significant misgivings about the mission 
     itself, about exactly what our troops are expected to 
     accomplish, and about when they can get out and come home. In 
     my view, the answers on these points are less than clear.

  President Bush has expressed very well what a lot of Americans are 
thinking who tell us that they have questions about this or that oppose 
it. It really is not clear-cut. For instance, the President's speech to 
the Nation and several subsequent speeches to different groups trying 
to sell this mission has not won over the broad support that a 
President ought to have when American lives are being put in jeopardy.
  Unlike some of my colleagues, as well as the President, I believe 
Congress does have a leadership role in authorizing a military 
deployment that involves a large contingency, and a long period of 
operation. This certainly is not a Grenada or Panama-type of operation 
that lasts a few days or weeks. As a matter of fact, we know this 
Bosnia operation will last at least a year, and in reality probably 
multiple years. Last weekend, the President stated that we would be in 
Bosnia ``about a year.'' Of course, this President is not know for his 
accurate statements. This begs the question of what is our exit 
strategy? Well, the only strategy we have is that we will leave 
whenever the President decides to leave, which is hardly a strategy at 
all.
  We also do not know the cost of the mission. I have seen Pentagon 
estimates of around $2 billion. Other estimates double that price. And, 
even this princely sum amounts for only the 1 year we will supposedly 
be there.
  Even the troop numbers have been misleading. All we hear the 
administration talk about is the 20,000 troops on the ground.
  Obviously, there are going to be many more troops involved even if 
they are not there right on the ground.
  Of course this does not include the 14 to 20,000 additional support 
troops that will be required. So, we are really talking about closer to 
40,000 troops, which is a sizeable number of Americans the 
administration is putting at risk.
  And what are some of these risks? Well, beyond the obvious ones 
involved with getting stuck in the middle of warring sides that have 
hated each other for centuries, we know that up to 6 million landmines 
are in the area, but we only know where 1 million of them are. Major 
minefields are in or around the area of tuzla, where American troops 
are to be stationed. That is a fact.

[[Page S18403]]

  Also, hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Islamic mercenaries who 
have been helping the Bosnians, and are bankrolled by Iran and others, 
could now pose terrorist threats to our troops.
  Let me say that troops generally who are peacekeepers are in danger 
in a situation like this, but especially I believe American troops are 
a special lightning rod that terrorists would love to hit as opposed to 
maybe troops from other nations.
  There is supposed to be an agreement from the Bosnians to remove 
these mercenaries, but will they be removed? But even with the best of 
intentions, that will not happen in less than a month.
  In addition, there are those that want to train and arm the Bosnians 
before we do anything. What kind of a message does this send to the 
other side?
  Up to now, I have joined most of my colleagues in providing support 
for the Bosnian Moslems by reducing, or eliminating, the embargo of 
arms there. But now we are supposed to be an honest broker, or at least 
an objective mediator, once the peace agreement is officially signed. 
So I just do not see how we can be an objective referee when we are 
arming and training one side of the conflict.
  Then we hear the disturbing argument that we have to vote for this 
resolution in order to support our troops. Well, of course, this 
argument has absolutely no merit. We all strongly support our troops, 
and regardless of the outcome of this vote, we will do that just as we 
all did after the very crucial debate and vote on going to the Persian 
Gulf war even though there was a great deal of disagreement on the 
sending of those troops at that time.
  I was one of only two Republican Senators to oppose the Persian Gulf 
resolution, and this administration has provided even less of a need to 
deploy troops in Bosnia, notwithstanding the fact that this is supposed 
to be only a peacekeeping mission.
  The administration argues that NATO and our leadership of NATO is on 
the line. This just is not convincing to the American people, because 
none of our NATO allies--nor is the United States--under any kind of 
national threat as defined by the NATO treaty of 50 years now. Our 
European allies should be taking a lead in this matter and sharing more 
of the financial burden. And, yes, the United States should--and can 
and will --provide support for their effort, including air and naval 
assistance.
  Finally, what some are now saying is that the vote on this resolution 
boils down to helping a President keep his commitments. As a Senator, I 
have my own constitutional responsibilities, and those responsibilities 
do not include helping a President keep a commitment that many, if not 
a majority, of the people do not believe should have been made in the 
first place.
  So, Mr. President, the bottom line, as far as I am concerned, is 
there are a number of unanswered questions and a lot of questionable 
assertions made by President Clinton that simply do not add up to 
common sense. And, therefore, I cannot in good conscience support 
President Clinton's decision to deploy troops to Bosnia.
  I thank you. I yield the floor.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise to support the Hutchison-Inhofe 
resolution. The Hutchison-Inhofe resolution is very simple. It has two 
parts.
  The first part says Congress opposes President Clinton's decision to 
deploy United States military ground forces into the Republic of 
Bosnia-Herzegovina to implement the general framework agreement for 
peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina and to its associated annexes.
  Section 2 says:

       The Congress strongly supports the United States military 
     personnel who may be ordered by the President to implement 
     the general agreement for peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 
     its associated annexes.

  That is it, Mr. President. It is very simple and very clear. I wish 
to state from the beginning a few parameters around the debate that I 
am getting ready to make. First, I think there is no politics in the 
debate on this issue. I truly believe that every Senator is making a 
vote of conscience. It is a tough decision. It is not easy for anyone. 
And I do not think anyone's integrity can be impugned by saying there 
is some political reason for how that person decides to vote. In fact, 
as you know, anytime you are sponsoring a resolution or an amendment in 
this body, if you care about it, you ask people for their votes. You 
try to talk them into voting for your issue, especially if it is 
something that affects your State.
  I have not asked anyone for a vote on this issue. I would not feel 
right asking someone to vote against his or her conscience on something 
that important. So this is not a matter where you work the floor to try 
to get support for what you are doing. What you do is take a position 
and say this is the way I think we should go, and everyone who agrees 
with you will be on that resolution. And in fact the Hutchison-Inhofe 
resolution has 28 cosponsors. I do not know how many votes we will get 
for the reasons that I have stated. I just have not asked.
  Mr. President, I would like to say I respect the President. I think 
he thinks he is doing the right thing. I think he did a good job of 
bringing people to the peace table to talk. I disagree with his 
decision to deploy American troops on the ground in Bosnia, but I 
certainly respect the office and I think he believes he is doing what 
is right.
  I wish to make the point--and it is what I said to the troops I met 
with last Saturday night at midnight at Killeen, TX, at Fort Hood, as 
the troops were getting ready to go to the airplanes to take off for 
Bosnia. I told them that I believe--and I know it is true, it is a 
fact--that 100 percent of the Senate is going to support the troops.
  Now, we are going to disagree on the policy, but we are not going to 
disagree that we support the troops, and they are going to have 
everything they need for their security if they are deployed in this 
mission. They will have the equipment. They will have the weapons. They 
will have the shelter. They will have the electric socks if they need 
them. They will have the training. And most important, they will have 
the spirit. They will have the spirit of knowing that the American 
people may disagree with the fact that they are going, but they support 
the troops 100 percent because they are giving their time and they are 
putting their lives on the line for our country. We are the greatest 
country in the world, and we appreciate every single one of them.

  I visited with some pregnant wives. I visited with some new wives, 
two-day-old wives. I visited with parents who had come in from all over 
the country to say an early goodbye to their loved ones, men and women 
who were getting ready to take off. They knew I did not want them to 
go, but they knew I was going to do everything in my power to bring 
them home safely.
  It gives me the greatest feeling in the world to visit with our 
troops. There is nothing more wonderful than an American in service to 
his or her country. They have the most wonderful attitude--positive 
thinking. They are well trained. They are professionals. They are ready 
to go when the Commander in Chief gives them the call.
  So now we must decide if we are going to support what we consider to 
be a bad decision. I think it is a legitimate question to ask, why 
oppose now; the troops are on the way. I am opposing now for three 
reasons. I am opposing because I disagree with this policy, and I wish 
to discourage future such missions. I disagree with this policy, and I 
believe it is my constitutional responsibility not to rubberstamp it. I 
disagree with this policy, and I hope to give the President every 
opportunity to back away from this decision--the basic tenets of the 
peace treaty are not in place--before he does the mass deployment.
  If the Serbs in Sarajevo continue to burn the American flag, if they 
are not committed in body and mind to this peace agreement, I hope the 
President will say, ``No. No, we are not going to deploy American 
troops if the peace treaty is not intact.''
  That is why I am putting this resolution in with 27 of my colleagues, 
to make sure that the President has every opportunity to say there is 
disagreement in Congress on this issue, and I am not going to send the 
troops into 

[[Page S18404]]
harm's way if a peace agreement is not intact. And if they are burning 
the American flag, the peace agreement is not intact.
  So let me take each one of my reasons and flush them out a little 
bit.
  I disagree with the policy, and I wish to discourage future missions. 
I do not want this to be a precedent for the future. The President has 
said NATO will fall if we do not do this. I disagree with that. I think 
NATO has a place in the post-cold-war era. But NATO was put together as 
a mutual defense pact when there was a big-time aggressor, the U.S.S.R. 
There is no big time aggressor, so we must look at our responsibility 
under the NATO treaty. We must look at the role of NATO in the world we 
live in today, not the world we lived in in 1945. And we need to say, 
what is the role? We need to debate it, if we are going to expand it, 
and we need for Congress to approve it, if we are going to have a new 
treaty with NATO. And we must do this thinking ahead, not by moving 
crisis to crisis, not by going to Somalia and saying we are going to 
try to capture a warlord, and then when we lose 18 rangers walk away, 
not by going into Haiti without the approval of Congress and $1 billion 
and 1 year later seeing the same problems arising in Haiti that they 
had before we landed. And now we have Bosnia, a civil war in a non-NATO 
country, and we are told NATO is going to fall if we are not there in a 
non-NATO country, in a civil war.

  Mr. President, that does not pass the commonsense test. We should 
have a strong NATO. To do that, we must determine what NATO's role is 
in the future, and we must not act crisis to crisis and send our kids 
into harm's way for a false reason. We could dissipate our strength if 
we bounce from one civil war to another across the globe because we do 
not have infinite resources.
  We have finite resources, Mr. President, and we have spent $1 billion 
in Somalia. We are going to spend $3 to $5 billion in Bosnia. What are 
we going to do when we are really needed in a crisis that does threaten 
U.S. security?
  What if North Korea, with nuclear capabilities, erupts? What if 
Saddam Hussein decides to take another march? Are we going to have the 
resources if we have spent $3 to $5 billion in a civil war when we 
could have spent less helping the people of Bosnia rebuild their 
country, which we want to do?
  Mr. President, we have not thought this through, and one of the 
reasons it has not been thought through is because Congress was not 
consulted. Which brings me, Mr. President, to my second reason for 
continuing to oppose the President's decision, and that is the role of 
Congress in the declaration of war, or sending our troops into 
hostilities, which are the equivalent of war under the Constitution.
  I do not like to oppose the President on a foreign policy issue, but 
I have a responsibility as a Member of Congress that was given to me in 
the Constitution of this country. I want to talk about that because 
that is a disagreement on this floor. It is not partisan. But many 
people believe that Congress really does not have a role in this, that 
the President has the right to do what he is doing.
  The President does indeed have the right to command our forces. He is 
the Commander in Chief, and he has the right to act in an emergency 
because Congress gave him that right in the War Powers Act. We did not 
want him to be hamstrung. We did not want him not to be able to send 
troops in if American lives were at stake, and if he did not have time 
to come to Congress.
  But, Mr. President, sending our troops into Haiti for 1 year without 
ever asking Congress' permission, or even asking their opinion, is 
wrong. That is a violation of the Constitution. And we are getting 
ready to do it again on Bosnia.
  I have the Federalist Papers right here. The Federalist Papers, of 
course, were written by three people who were crucial in the 
decisionmaking in writing our Constitution. In Federalist Paper No. 69, 
written by Alexander Hamilton, he discusses the role of the President 
as Commander in Chief, and he is comparing it to the role of the King 
of England, which, of course, we had just left and tried to make a 
better country because many people were dissatisfied with a monarchy. 
So here is what Alexander Hamilton said about the war powers of the 
President.

       The President will have only the occasional command of such 
     part of the militia of the nation as by legislative 
     provision may be called into the actual service of the 
     Union. The king of Great Britain and the governor of New 
     York at the time have at all times the entire command--

  Not part--

       . . . of all the militia within their several 
     jurisdictions. In this article, therefore, the power of the 
     President would be inferior to that of either the monarch or 
     the governor. Second, the President is to be commander-in-
     chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this 
     respect his authority would be nominally the same with that 
     of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior 
     to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme 
     command and direction of the military and naval forces, as 
     first general and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of 
     the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the 
     raising and regulating of fleets and armies--

  I move to No. 74 by Alexander Hamilton, where he says:

       Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction 
     of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which 
     distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand.

  Mr. President, he was speaking to us. He was saying, do not have one 
person able to declare the war and to run the war. And James Madison 
said exactly the same thing: Those who were to ``conduct a war'' could 
not be safe judges on whether to start one.
  James Wilson, a delegate from Pennsylvania, said the checks-and-
balances system ``will not hurry us into war.'' He said, ``It is 
calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single 
man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress.'' He was 
very clear, as were the others who have spoken on this issue.
  They did not want the President to be able to send our troops into 
distressed situations without consulting with Congress. They wanted it 
to be hard. They wanted it to be muddy. That is why they put both 
people in charge, the President and the Congress, and they wanted them 
to work together so it would be difficult.
  Louis Fisher, who wrote an article with some of the quotes that I 
have just given you, is a professor and an author. He has written the 
book ``Presidential War Power.'' He says:

       It might be argued that ``war power'' is not involved 
     because Mr. Clinton will use American forces for peace, not 
     war. ``America's role will not be about fighting a war,'' he 
     said. He said he refused ``to send American troops to fight a 
     war in Bosnia,'' and ``I believe we must help to secure the 
     Bosnian peace.''

  Mr. Fisher says, ``Mr. Clinton has already authorized air strikes 
against the Serbs.'' He now intends to send ground troops. By making an 
overwhelming show of force, he says, ``American troops will lessen the 
need to use force.'' Note the word lessen. Anyone who takes on our 
troops, he says, ``will suffer the consequences.''
  Mr. President, if that is not the equivalent of what would be 
considered war when the Constitution was written, what could be more 
clear?
  Mr. Fisher goes on to say:

       Whenever the President acts unilaterally in using military 
     force against another nation, the constitutional rights of 
     Congress and the people are undermined.

  I agree with Mr. Fisher: We are not upholding our part in the 
Constitution if we let this pass.
  The third area of disagreement that is very important for why I 
continue to oppose this deployment is because I want to narrow the 
mission. I want there to be a time limit. The War Powers Act is 
supposed to give emergency capabilities to the President to go in when 
he cannot come to Congress. This President is asking for a year. That 
is not an emergency. We have been looking at this situation for 3 
years.
  We have asked the President to lift the arms embargo. He has refused 
to do it, and now we are put in the position of knowing that if there 
is going to be any kind of cease-fire that will last in that part of 
the world, it has to be when there is parity among the three warring 
factions. We wanted to lift the arms embargo so that parity would be 
there now. The President said no. In effect, the President did lift the 
arms embargo, but he made us the ones who used the arms when we started 
bombing the Serbs.
  So I want to narrow the mission, and I want there to be a time limit 
so that the expectations will not be there any 

[[Page S18405]]
further than 1 year. It is the expectations that got us into this mess 
because the President, without consulting with Congress, went forward 
and said, oh, yes, we will put troops on the ground, when he had so 
many other options. And troops on the ground should have been the last. 
Instead, they were the first.
  So then people come and say, well, the only way you can show your 
commitment to peace in the Balkans is troops on the ground. When, in 
fact, there are many ways that we could have shown our commitment to 
peace in the Balkans that would have been much more effective than 
American troops on the ground because now the President says we cannot 
arm and train the Moslems because we are on the ground precisely. We 
should have said we would arm and train the Moslems and not put troops 
on the ground so we would not be taking sides at the time that we were 
trying to bring parity into the region. And we must have parity in the 
region if, when we leave, there is going to be any equity in the 
region.

  So, Mr. President, many of my colleagues want to speak on this very 
important issue. I will just close with the last reason that I am going 
to oppose the President's decision, and that is the Larry Joyce test. 
One day when I was on the plane going back to Dallas from Washington, 
DC, a man walked up to me and said, ``Hi, Senator. I'm one of your 
constituents. My name is Larry Joyce.'' And I said, as I normally would 
to someone like that, ``Well, hi, Larry. How are you doing? What were 
you doing in Washington?'' And he said, ``I was burying my son in 
Arlington National Cemetery.'' And I said, ``Did he die in Somalia?'' 
And he said, ``Yes, he did.''
  And as tears streamed down his face, he said, ``Senator, I went to 
Vietnam twice. I am a military man. And now my only son, on his very 
first mission as a Ranger, is not coming home. Senator, I would just 
like to know why.''

  I did not feel good about an answer to Larry Joyce because I do not 
think our troops should have been doing what they were doing in 
Somalia. Now, his son did not die in vain because he was doing what he 
had signed up to do, and he was doing it with honor, and he was a great 
kid, Casey Joyce, just the kind of young man or the kind of young woman 
that I see as I visit our bases across the country. But I said that 
night I would never vote to send our troops into harm's way if I could 
not give the mother or father a good answer about why.
  Mr. President, sending our troops into Bosnia under these 
circumstances is not meeting the test. Mr. President, I am urging the 
President of the United States to reconsider his decision, to make sure 
that he is sure, before he deploys American troops, that it is a U.S. 
security interest--not just an interest, which we certainly have and 
which we can fulfill without American lives on the line. I want the 
President to reconsider his decision, and I hope that he will.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. BROWN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The Senator from Colorado.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Michael 
Montelongo, a fellow in Senator Hutchison's office, be granted floor 
privileges during the consideration of the resolution on Bosnia.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Hutchison motion. 
I want to share with the Senate the concerns that I bring to a 
deployment of combat troops into Bosnia. Mr. President, I would, first, 
like to start with some things I think Members will agree on--at least 
I think they are facts that would be acknowledged by both sides in this 
debate.
  First, the confrontation that we now enter by sending troops into 
what was the old Yugoslavia is a confrontation that is not new. It is a 
conflict that is at least 500 years old and, in some respects, goes 
back 800 years. For those who have talked to the participants, whether 
Croatian, Bosnian, or Serbian, they well know that those people not 
only are aware of that conflict, but they can recite to you the names 
and dates of the battles, going back hundreds and hundreds of years. In 
many cases, they remember battles that go back before the founding of 
our own Nation. This is not a new conflict. It is a conflict that 
predates even the discovery of America.
  Second, Mr. President, I think it should be noted that what we enter 
into is a civil war. We enter into a conflict between the Croatians, 
the Serbs, and the Bosnians, and potentially other parties as well. But 
this is different than an effort by Germany to conquer the world. It is 
different than an effort by the Nazis to impose their will upon the 
people of the world. It is different than the efforts of the former 
Soviet Union to spread its influence and control over the world. This 
is not an invasion of a country, this is a civil war. I think all 
Members will agree that that is a fair and accurate summarization of 
the conflict we enter.

  Third, Mr. President, I think Members would be remiss if they did not 
honestly note that the members of this conflict, the parties to this 
conflict, have not had a record of honoring peace agreements. For over 
500 years, this conflict has waged, and people have talked about peace, 
a truce. For over 500 years, consistently, the peace agreements have 
been ignored.
  When I talked to our troops in Sarajevo over Thanksgiving, one of the 
things that our troops told me--there was a gathering at the Embassy of 
the enlisted men of the contingent who have been in Sarajevo for some 
time. One of them paused and said, ``I think I speak for all the people 
here, I believe, when we say that while we view the Bosnians in this 
struggle as the victims--and in many ways they have been--all sides 
have committed atrocities in this confrontation and, frankly, we expect 
the Bosnians, as well as the others, to break the peace agreement.''
  Mr. President, it would be a tragic mistake for Americans to go into 
this conflict without understanding that this peace agreement is not 
going to last.
  Fourth, Mr. President, we now have an estimate from the 
administration that the cost of this adventure will be at least $2 
billion. Frankly, Mr. President, there no presentation of how you are 
going to pay for it. At a time when we are struggling to bring the 
deficit under control, we now have a proposal to spend $2 billion over 
the budget. Mr. President, I must tell you, it is my own estimate that 
the cost of this will be much higher than $2 billion. If there are 
Members who disagree and would like to place a friendly wager on that, 
I welcome them. If anybody seriously believes that $1.5 to $2 billion 
is all this will cost the American people, I hope they will come 
forward and say it, and I hope they will back their belief with a wager 
as well. My own belief is that this will run much higher and could well 
run $5 billion or more.
  The reality is that we are sending combat troops into an area where 
we do not have barracks, or quarters, or adequate roads to get them 
there, or adequate equipment, and they do not have water or essential 
utilities. The reality is that the cost of this project will be much 
higher.
  Fifth, I think most Members would agree that the terrain where 
American troops will be stationed, around the Tuzla area, is ideal for 
guerrilla warfare. Americans ought to understand guerrilla warfare. 
Perhaps we were one of the earliest ones who started it in our combat 
with the British. We did not put on uniforms. We tended to stand behind 
trees and shoot at the British, and it worked pretty well. The reality 
is that we did not fight by the rules the British thought we should 
fight by in the Revolutionary War. Anybody who thinks the Bosnians, 
Serbs, or Croats are going to fight by our rules in Bosnia is dreaming.
  Mr. President, let me summarize, because I hope all Americans will be 
aware of these five factors when they go into it. One, this conflict is 
over 500 years old. Second, we are interfering in a civil war--not an 
invasion, but a civil war between the parties that have occupied that 
country.
  Three, the parties involved have a history, a continuous history, of 
not honoring the peace agreements that they enter into. For us to 
assume that the winter period when they traditionally have truces is 
going to be a permanent peace is naive, perhaps beyond description.
  Four, the cost of this to the American people will be at least $2 
billion and perhaps more. 

[[Page S18406]]

  Five, the terrain is ideal for guerrilla warfare. Mr. President, 
specifically, what that means is the terrain is very rugged and very 
rough. It means that the area is heavily wooded, forest. In military 
terms, it means our advantages which are in air power and armored 
personnel carriers and tanks, will be minimized. The roads are 
extremely narrow and there are over 3 million mines stated to be in the 
American sector. Who in the world came up with the idea of deploying 
U.S. troops in that kind of conflict?
  Mr. President, this is goofy. We are standing here and debating this 
question as if it were a real question. This is not a real question. 
This is a goofy proposal--send American troops to stand in between 
warring factions that have been at war for 500 years and never honor a 
peace agreement, under circumstances where we do not have the 
advantages that our technology provides, and stand in between them as 
they shoot at each other? That is not a realistic proposal. That is 
just plain goofy.
  Mr. President, I think every American and perhaps every Member of 
this body has to answer a question before they vote on this issue. The 
question is basically this: Under what circumstances do you send 
American soldiers into combat? We have never had a unanimous feeling on 
that in this country.
  Perhaps defending our own shores, though, has garnered the strongest 
support of any measure. Americans have been willing to shed their blood 
to defend the shores of our country. We have been willing to shed our 
blood to defend freedom around the world, whether it was in World War I 
or World War II or perhaps even Korea.
  We have never shrunk from defending freedom around the world. First, 
through alliances, for we had an obligation; second, for a country 
where we did not have a formal alliance but we saw freedom was at stake 
that could ultimately affect the ability of Americans to obtain their 
freedom; we have had times where we have been willing to shed blood to 
deter aggression. We defended our shores in the Revolutionary War. We 
defended our freedom through alliances in World War II. We defended our 
freedom overseas in Korea. We defended countries from aggression in the 
gulf war.

  Mr. President, where have we come up with the idea that we would 
interfere in a civil war? That is without precedence. Deploying 
American Forces overseas to interfere in the middle of a civil war, 
this takes it to a new height.
  Mr. President, the mistakes we made in the past, and Americans have 
made mistakes in the past, have led to some guidelines. The Weinberger 
guidelines came out after Lebanon and after Vietnam. There were a 
number of factors but the most significant one was this: Before we 
deploy American troops overseas, before we put their lives in harm's 
way, before we risk their very lives, we ought to have a clear, 
achievable, military mission that is accomplishable.
  I hope Members will ask themselves if they really think this is a 
clear, achievable, military mission that can be accomplished? Listen to 
what they are saying. The first task is to mark the border, the area of 
confrontation, and secure people moving back 2 kilometers on either 
side. But that border is not meant to close off traffic across it. How 
do you ensure people will not get within the 2 kilometers of the border 
when you have an established policy that allows people to move through 
the border all of the time?
  Mr. President, that is double-talk. If you are going to have a 
border, and if you are going to have people kept away from it on 2 
kilometers on either side, and if you are going to have a policy at the 
same time that says people can go back and forth at will, how in the 
world do you make that policy stick? You cannot. It is unrealistic and 
undefined right from the start.
  Who do you stop? Who do you stop? Do you search everybody? It is not 
clear.
  To call in a clear military mission is to play games with words as 
well as play games with the lives of our troops.
  Ultimately, Mr. President, I believe it comes down to this: Are you 
willing to send American troops overseas and risk their lives for an 
ill-defined mission that interferes in the middle of a civil war? Are 
you willing to face their parents, tell them why their son or daughter 
gave their life?
  Are memories so short that Members have forgotten what happened in 
Vietnam? Does no one remember that we sent hundreds of thousands of 
American volunteers to Vietnam, as well as draftees, and asked them to 
put their lives on the line, and our political leaders were not willing 
to take the risk of making a commitment? I do not know of any American 
that is proud of that fact but it is the truth. Over 50,000 Americans 
lost their lives in Vietnam, and for what?

  Mr. President, I volunteered to serve in Vietnam and I did because I 
believed in it. I believed we were there to defend freedom worldwide, 
and whether it was the face of a Vietnamese or the face of a European-
American, blood could be proudly spilled to save their freedom.
  Mr. President, our political leaders did not believe that. Our 
political leaders asked people to give their blood but were not willing 
to take a chance and make a clear stand. They were not willing to 
establish a clear military mission.
  Mr. President, this is not a PR game. The risks are not good press or 
bad press. The risks are American lives. The risk is parents losing 
their child. The risk is a spilling of blood and not standing for a 
cause.
  We made a mistake in Vietnam because our leaders risked American 
lives for a cause they were not willing to commit themselves to win. 
Now, not many of us realized that was the case. If you told the people 
that served in Vietnam their political leaders were not willing to 
stand up to win the cause they were asked to give their life for, they 
would not have believed you. Who would have believed you? How could you 
ask people to give their lives when their political leaders did not 
believe in the cause? That is what this country did.
  Mr. President, it is my belief that the American people when it was 
over vowed that would never happen again. If the cause was important 
enough to ask people to sacrifice their lives, it is important enough 
for us to try to win. Our mistakes did not end there.
  President Reagan deployed troops into Lebanon. We were so concerned 
about PR that the guards at the gate were not even given the bullets 
for their guns. Let me repeat that because I think most Americans will 
find it hard to believe. We had a barracks full of Marines, and the 
guards at the gate were not given bullets for their guns because we 
were afraid of an incident. Instead of suffering bad publicity for an 
incident we were willing to sacrifice the safety of troops.
  That is what happened. A terrorist truck drove through the gate 
because the guards did not have bullets to stop him and killed over 250 
Americans, or close to 250 Americans. For what? For what? Tell me what 
they gave their lives for.
  We made a political commitment that sounded good but we would not 
stand behind it. It seems to me before we make a political commitment, 
before we send U.S. troops, we better have a good reason for doing it, 
and it ought to be important enough for us to stand behind the people 
who put the uniform of this country on.
  Does anybody believe that we will not stand behind the troops that we 
send to Bosnia? Come on, now. Yes, this will generate press. Yes, there 
will be a lot of attention. Does anybody really believe we will not 
stand behind those young men and women who go over? Does anybody 
believe the cause of interfering in a civil war is important enough to 
lose their lives?

  Somalia should come to mind to some. President Bush deployed the 
troops. President Clinton expanded the mission. And when the commander 
of the troops asked for equipment to do their jobs, to protect the 
troops, the Secretary of Defense--because the decision went all the way 
up to the Secretary of Defense--turned them down. He refused to allow 
them to have armored personnel carriers which had been specifically 
requested. Why? We asked the Armed Services Committee to ask the 
Secretary that question. Before he gave the answer, he left office.
  But the truth is, the military establishment of this country made a 
decision to not supply the equipment that was needed to save those 
boys' lives because they were afraid it would send 

[[Page S18407]]
the wrong public relations signal. That was the word that came out: We 
did not want to send the wrong signal. Public relations was apparently 
more important than the lives of the American servicemen that were on 
the line.
  In case anyone has forgotten, that helicopter went down and they 
defended themselves from attack and they called for reinforcements. And 
reinforcements tried to come from the airport compound but they did not 
have armored personnel carriers. And when people shot at them from both 
sides they pinned down the reinforcements, they could not get through 
to help them. American forces held out as long as they could and, when 
their ammunition ran out, when their ammunition ran out the Somalis 
came and hacked them to pieces. And the armored personnel carriers that 
they requested and had been turned down by the Secretary of Defense for 
PR reasons, could have saved their lives.
  We are not playing games. This is not a PR move. These are real 
troops and real bullets in a real civil war. We are risking American 
lives. For what? Because you are going to end a 500-year-old conflict? 
Do not be silly.
  Because these people, with American troops' presence, will suddenly 
honor their peace commitments that they have never honored in 500 
years? Somebody would like to sell you some land in Florida, if you 
really believe that.
  The truth is, I do not believe we have placed a high enough value on 
the lives of the Americans who serve our country in uniform. The 
question is not whether or not they should ever risk their lives. No 
one should go in the military not knowing they do that. Americans are 
willing to risk their lives and we are willing to shed our blood for 
freedom around the world, and we have done it more effectively and more 
efficiently than any people in modern history. But the line is drawn 
when you ask Americans to give their lives for nothing. I believe that 
is morally wrong. I believe it is morally wrong, to have Americans give 
their lives in Somalia when you do not have a clear military mission 
and you will not stand behind them.

  It is not wrong to ask them to give their lives and shed their blood. 
It is wrong to ask them to do it for nothing, and that is what we did 
in Somalia. It is wrong to ask them to do it for nothing in Lebanon, 
which is precisely what happened. It is wrong to ask them to do it for 
nothing in Vietnam, when our very leaders would not stand behind the 
men and women who risked their lives.
  I believe it is wrong, it is morally wrong for us to send young 
people to Bosnia to risk their lives in the middle of a civil war among 
people who have not honored a peace agreement.
  Some would say, if we do it, at least they have had their chance. 
Tell me how you would feel, looking into the eyes of a parent who had 
lost his or her only child. ``Yes, your son or daughter died, but at 
least we gave them a chance.'' Would it not be fair and reasonable to 
ask, ``Was it a good idea? Did it have reasonable prospects to succeed? 
Did you do everything you could to protect them?''
  Mr. President, what we are faced with is a decision that degrades the 
value of American servicemen and servicewomen. It says that their blood 
can be shed on a whim; that they are pawns in a chess game; that their 
lives are not important enough for us to take seriously.
  I believe every person who puts on a uniform has an obligation to 
this country, and the obligation goes to laying down their very lives. 
But I think it is wrong for us to think that obligation runs in only 
one direction.
  This country has an obligation to those who serve it as well, and 
that obligation is to make sure we never put them in harm's way unless 
it is on a clear, achievable, military mission, one that we are 
committed to win. Then I think we have the right to ask everything in 
the world from them, everything they can give, because the existence of 
freedom in this world depends on them. What we see is an effort to 
cheapen the value of the lives of young Americans who are willing to 
serve this country. I, for one, will not vote to authorize it.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.

                          ____________________