[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 160 (Thursday, November 13, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12536-S12538]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            BOSNIA AND IRAQ

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, a short while ago, the Senate adopted 
the foreign operations bill. Last week, the Senate adopted the 
Department of Defense authorization bill. Previous to that, we adopted 
the Defense appropriations bill for the coming year--all of those aimed 
at keeping America both strong and involved in the world.
  There is no small measure of common sense and reason for us to do 
that. Mr. President, all we have to do is follow the news of the day to 
see how much our own leadership in the world is depended upon by other 
people and how critical that leadership is to the peace and stability 
of the world. This is, apparently, the last day in which the people's 
forum, the Senate Chamber, will be open for public discussion, 
particularly in morning business, which is such an extraordinary and, I 
think, constructive forum for public debate.
  I want to address my colleagues on two matters that may well be acted 
upon, or decided partially at least, in the time after we leave this 
first session of the 105th Congress and before we come back in January. 
Those are events abroad relating to, first, Bosnia and then to Iraq.
  Mr. President, if I may speak briefly about the situation in Bosnia. 
As the record is clear here, acts of aggression were occurring, acts of 
genocide, slaughter, unseen in Europe since the end of the Second World 
War which, in this case, was being portrayed on our television screens 
every night, bringing understandable agitation and demands for action. 
Ultimately, particularly after the fall of Srebrenica and the slaughter 
that occurred there, the President led the NATO forces to decisive 
airstrikes, which led to the Dayton conference, which led to the Dayton 
peace accords and to the cessation of hostilities on the ground in 
Bosnia and the beginning of a civilian reconstruction of that war-torn 
country, based on the Dayton agreements, based on a goal of trying, 
over a period of time, to reconstruct a multiethnic country there in 
Bosnia, on the premise that partition into ethnic conclaves was 
inherently unstable because one group would inevitably strike another 
group. If one looks at this glass, there is still plenty of empty room 
in it. It is also a glass that, thanks to the

[[Page S12537]]

allied effort, an effort that encompasses in this case Russia as well, 
not only has the slaughtering stopped and have troops been disengaged, 
but there is substantial progress being made on the road to civilian 
reconstruction.
  I have felt all along, Mr. President, that we made a mistake in 
setting deadlines for the presence of American personnel as part of, 
first, the IFOR and then the SFOR--Implementation Force and then the 
Stabilization Force--in Bosnia. I understand that the deadline was 
probably attached as a way to garner sufficient support for the 
American involvement. But, in my opinion, respectfully, it was a 
mistake. Better to have set out goals for our participation in Bosnia 
and when those goals were reached to withdraw, than to establish the 
expectation, both in this Chamber and more broadly among the public, 
that we were going to pull out by a date certain, only to have to come 
back and say, no, no, no, that is not what we meant, and then imposing 
another deadline.
  It is clear from statements that are coming from the President, the 
Secretary of State, others in the administration of our country, and 
our allies in Europe, that there is a strong inclination to keep 
American troops on the ground in Bosnia as part of a follow-on force 
after the previously, and I think mistakenly, set deadline of June 30, 
1998. I support that inclination. I hope it is a fact, because I think 
if we pull out now--we Americans--the Europeans will follow suit, and 
what is likely to take place at this stage is a slide back downward 
into the pit of separation and of conflict.
  I do hope that, in extending our presence there, we are mindful of 
two factors. One is to not repeat the mistake of again setting an 
artificially explicit deadline. If we are going to stay there, let's 
try to define the goals most comfortably related to the Dayton process, 
the Dayton agreement, and see if we can express more generally what 
those goals are, and when we achieve them, be ready to pull out.
  Some have said--and it may be a good beginning point--that we can and 
should leave, we should not be there for a long time, we certainly 
should not be there forever. We can and should leave when the Dayton 
peace process appears to be self-sustaining. That is not a bad goal. So 
I hope, one, we don't repeat the mistake of setting an artificial and 
misleading deadline.
  Second, if we decide to keep American troops as part of the follow-on 
peacekeeping force in Bosnia as a way of guaranteeing that the conflict 
does not erupt there again, that we don't threaten stability in Europe, 
that we don't run the risk of a wider war throughout the Balkans and 
beyond. If we decide to keep American troops there, I hope we will 
leave it to the professional soldiers, to the Pentagon, to the 
Secretary of Defense, advised by our military on the ground in Bosnia, 
by the chiefs of the services involved here in the Pentagon, as to how 
many American troops we want to leave there. There has been some 
indication, some comment, that it would be a good idea to reduce the 
number of American personnel there as a way of showing that we continue 
to be on the way out. The fact is that we started out with almost 
30,000; we are down to about 8,500 American personnel.

  The point I want to make is this: The administration should not feel 
pressured, as a way to build more support here or among the American 
people for our continued presence in Bosnia, to reduce the number of 
American soldiers that are there, unless that is what the generals in 
charge and the Secretary of Defense advise and request. We are getting 
down to a relatively small number of Americans there. We have an 
obligation to each and every one of them to make sure that we keep a 
critical mass present on the ground so that, in case of trouble, in 
case of conflict, in case of the eruption of hostilities, we have 
enough people and resources there so that we can minimize the risk of 
any damage to our personnel.
  This is an occasion like the next one I want to speak of, where, 
though there is disagreement here among Members of the Senate and the 
other body and the American people about whether or not and under what 
circumstances or not American personnel should remain in Bosnia, this 
Senator is convinced that if the President as Commander in Chief states 
the case, and particularly one which is strongly backed up, as to the 
number of American personnel there by our military, the majority of the 
Congress across party lines will support the President in that 
leadership.
  Second, Mr. President, is the question of Iraq--once again, very much 
on our minds and, once again, threatening stability under Saddam 
Hussein in the Middle East, an area of vital interest to the United 
States, morally, militarily and economically. This is a crisis that is 
totally the work of one man--Saddam Hussein. An agreement made to end 
the gulf war, in which we were the dominant power, with our allies 
involved an agreement by Iraq to have international inspection teams 
constantly there to make sure that Saddam Hussein and his government 
were not concealing or constructing weapons of mass destruction--
ballistic missiles--done not in a punitive way, but because the record 
makes clear who Saddam Hussein is and what he is prepared to do. In the 
time he has been the leader of Iraq--I believe I have this number 
right--he has carried out five invasions of neighboring countries. When 
he has had capacity to wage warfare with gas, a relatively rudimentary 
form of chemical warfare, he has done so. He has used gas against his 
own people in Iraq to suppress an uprising. He used it against the 
Iranians in the Iraq-Iran war during the 1980's. There is some evidence 
to believe that he would have armed his personnel in the gulf war with 
chemical weapons that might have been used against American personnel 
were it not for his fear that we might retaliate with nuclear weapons.
  So we know the ambitions of this leader, we know his willingness, 
beyond the formal considerations of devastation to humans, to use every 
weapon in his control to achieve a wider hegemony over the Middle East 
and particularly over the oil resources there that we continue to 
depend on.
  As I said before, this crisis is one that is totally of his making--
by forbidding Americans from being part of this international 
inspection team, by threatening now to evict, to eject, to push out of 
Iraq that small number of Americans that are part of that inspection 
team. And while the threat posed at the current moment is not as 
visually frightening and destabilizing as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 
in 1990, its consequences, the consequences of U.N. inspections 
stopping and the Iraqis developing and broadening their capacity at 
special warfare, at warfare with weapons of mass destruction and the 
ballistic missile capacity to deliver them to distant targets, is every 
bit as consequential and profoundly disruptive of stability in the 
Middle East and profoundly threatening to the vital interests of the 
United States, and we have little choice but to respond.
  The threat may be at least as fundamental and destabilizing as the 
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But the challenge to leadership 
internationally will be to marshal the same kind of international 
coalition against the possibility of Iraqi aggression that was 
marshaled in 1990 and 1991.
  Part of the problem is that time has passed and people's taste for 
conflict is reduced. People in some sense have to be reminded of what 
is on the line. Part of the problem is that some of those nations that 
stood by our side and fought with us in the Gulf war may have short 
memories and be drawn more by economic interests in doing business with 
Iraq than a realistic appreciation of the consequences of allowing 
Saddam Hussein to develop chemical weapons of mass destruction and 
ballistic missiles to deliver them. It won't be easy for those in the 
alliance--the international alliance--who understand the seriousness of 
this threat from Iraq under Saddam Hussein to marshal as broad an 
international coalition to respond. But it is most certainly a worthy 
effort and in our national interest.
  If we cannot by inspection guarantee that Saddam Hussein is not 
developing weapons of mass destruction and the ballistic missile 
capacity to deliver them against our troops on land and sea in the 
region to our allies in the Arab world and in Israel, then we must 
consider doing so by intervention--if not by inspection, then by 
intervention. Because history tells us--and it is fresh history--that 
whatever capacity

[[Page S12538]]

for war making Saddam Hussein develops and possesses, he will use. And 
that is why it is so critical to deny him that capacity.
  The specific course that President Clinton and some of those of our 
allies who seem more likely to stand with us--such as the British, 
probably the Turkish, others, hopefully in the moderate nations of the 
Arab world--the specific course that President Clinton as Commander in 
Chief chooses to take is, of course, respectfully his judgment. But I 
hope in the fateful days that are ahead when this Congress is out of 
session and these decisions will probably have to be made that the 
President appreciates what I sense as I talk to colleagues here in the 
Senate, that there is a broad bipartisan understanding of the 
seriousness of the challenge that Saddam Hussein has cleverly and 
diabolically set before us; and that there will be broad bipartisan 
support for an effective response as determined by the President of the 
United States, hopefully in joint action with a large number of our 
allies.
  So, Mr. President, this has been a long session--a session of 
extraordinary accomplishments, certainly on the balanced budget, and 
some disappointment, of course, as always is the case in other areas.
  But, as we depart, we leave some immense decisions to be made by the 
President and the administration. And I hope that they will be made in 
the spirit that this Congress across party lines will support the 
Commander in Chief when he chooses to lead, and that across party lines 
we understand that partisanship, though it may occasionally rear its 
head too often perhaps here in Congress, certainly does end at the 
Nation's coasts when our security and our values are threatened 
throughout the world.
  I thank the Chair. I thank my colleagues for their patience.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. ALLARD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.

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