[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 125 (Thursday, September 12, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H10352]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  ANSWER OUR QUESTIONS, MR. PRESIDENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of theHouse, the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Chambliss] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, you know there is something going on here 
that I simply do not understand. A couple weeks ago when the President 
took the action that he took to counteract the action of Saddam Hussein 
and Iraq, I came out immediately in strong support of the action that 
the President took. I think the President did the right thing. There is 
not time in an emergency situation like that for the President to come 
to Congress and say, ``Hey, this is going on, this is what I want to 
do, can I do it, should I do it?'' That is his decision to make. He 
made that decision; the American people fully support that.
  But now we are 2 weeks after the fact. We are 2 weeks into a crisis 
situation in the Middle Eastern part of this world, a very dangerous 
part of the world and a part of the world in which we already had 
sacrifices back 3 or 4 years ago. It is a part of the world that we 
have got to keep our pulse on, and what we are into now is the 
President of the United States again sending our young men and women 
into harm's way without coming to the Congress and saying after this 2-
week period, ``Ladies and gentleman of the Congress, this is what is 
going on, I need you to know this, and I need your input into this.''
  As I go home this weekend, I have 3 military bases in my district, I 
am going to be asked by men and women, not only military men and women, 
but civilian men and women, ``Tell me about what is going on in Iraq.''
  I am going to say, ``Hey, you pick up the Atlanta Journal, you pick 
up the Macon telegraph, you will find out what's going on, and you'll 
know just as much as I know.''
  There is something basically wrong about that.
  The chairman of a very powerful subcommittee on the Committee on 
National Security got up a minute ago and said that he knows nothing 
about this. He is the gentleman that is responsible for the research 
and development of the weapons that are being sent to Iraq today. He 
has no idea whether what he has been working on for the last several 
years by being a member of the Committee on National Security is the 
right thing to do. He knows nothing, nobody in this Congress 
knows anything about what is going on.

  I do not think we are asking a whole lot of the President to say, 
``Mr. President, please come to us and just tell us what's going on. 
Why are you sending our men and women into harm's way? What should we 
tell our constituents out there as to why we are supporting you?'' And 
it is a very crucial question on a very crucial issue that I simply do 
not understand why we are not being advised on, and I yield to my 
friend from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for 
yielding, and I commend him for his leadership on armed services 
issues. He has been one of our brightest stars on the committee this 
year, and we appreciate that.
  The issue here, Mr. Speaker, is we supported I publicly supported, 
President Clinton when he said we were going to send our troops to take 
action because of the situation with the Kurds. But then, Mr. Speaker, 
we heard that the first strikes were not successful, that some of the 
cruise missiles were off by as much as 500 miles. We were not given a 
specific briefing on that. I sat through the limited briefing that 
occurred last week, but then a second wave of a attacks occurred, and 
we were told that was a mop-up operation.
  By now, day by day, hour by hour, new information comes out, Mr. 
Speaker, that we have no idea what is going on. It is all from the news 
media that we are now sending 8 or 10 F-117's over, that we are 
redeploying some other troops, that we are now putting in Kuwait, that 
perhaps Saudi Arabia is not being as supportive as it was, that the 
whole coalition that was there initially in Desert Storm is falling 
apart, that we cannot get that kind of support because the action has 
not taken--we need to have those questions answered because these are 
our kids that this President is sending into harm's way.
  And believe me, Mr. Speaker, if there are casualties over this 
weekend, we are going to demand to know why we were not consulted, and 
we are going to demand to know why we did not have compliance with the 
War Powers Act; why, in fact, we are going beyond the U.N. resolutions 
where unilaterally it looks like the United States alone is taking up 
this mission. These are questions that Floyd Spence and Ron Dellums and 
Ben Gilman and LeeHamilton need to have answered and should have been 
briefed on.
  But, Mr. Speaker, as of today, as the gentleman pointed out, less 
than an hour ago in an arms national security markup meeting when I 
asked the chairman very directly, ``Mr. Chairman, have you at all been 
briefed on what is going on''; he said, ``No, I will be coming out with 
a statement and a letter shortly, today or tomorrow, expressing my 
concern on this issue.''
  Mr. Speaker, we are talking about American kids. We are not talking 
about some far-off. We are talking about our kids that are now being 
put on alert status to be sent over into a hostile environment where we 
know this madman is out to get them, and if this President wants us to 
get behind him, then he better make that case to us.
  We will support the troops, no doubt about that. The question is, 
will we support the President, and that remains to be seen based upon 
what the plan is. None of us know what the plan is. We read about it 
every day and not only hear about it from the news announcement by a 
man named McCurry. He is not the President of the United States, and he 
is not charged with the responsibility of briefing us.

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