[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 10 (Wednesday, February 11, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H432-H437]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THREE IMPORTANT ISSUES FOR AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gilchrest). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Paul) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to discuss a few problems I think 
this country still faces. I want to mention three, but I will talk more 
about one in particular.
  Overall, I believe this country faces a serious problem in that our 
government is too big. When government is big, it means that liberty is 
threatened. Today, our governments throughout the land consume more 
than half of what the American people produce. In order to do that, 
there has to be curtailment on individual liberty.
  In the attempt to help people in a welfare-warfare state, 
unfortunately the poor never seem to be helped. A lot of money is 
spent, but due to the monetary system that we have, inevitably, the 
middle class tends to get wiped out and the poor get poorer, and very 
often in the early stages the wealthy get wealthier. In the meantime, 
the corporations seem to do quite well. So we live in an age where we 
have a fair amount of corporatism associated with the welfare-warfare 
state in which we live.
  The three specific problems that I want to mention, and I mention 
these because I think this is what the American people are concerned 
about, and sometimes we here inside the Beltway do not listen carefully 
to the people around the country. The three issues are these: The first 
are the scandals that we hear so much about, the second is an IMF 
bailout, and the third has to do with Iraq.
  Now, the scandals have been around a bit. We have heard about 
Travelgate and Filegate, and we also heard about interference in 
foreign policy dealing with foreign donations. Now, those I consider 
very serious and for this reason I join the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Barr) in his resolution to initiate an inquiry into the seriousness of 
these charges. Some of these charges have been laid aside mainly 
because there is another scandal in the news, something that has been 
much more attractive to the media, and that essentially is all that we 
have been hearing of in the last several weeks. I think this is a 
distraction from some of the issues that we should deal with. But that 
is not the one issue that I want to dwell on this evening.
  The IMF is another issue that I think is very important. This funding 
will be coming up soon. The Congress will be asked to appropriate $18 
billion to bail out the Southeast Asian currencies and countries, and 
this is a cost; although we are told it does not cost anything, it does 
not add to the deficit, there is obviously a cost, and we cannot 
convince the American people that there is no cost just because of our 
method of budgeting and we do not add it into the deficit.
  Once again, these funds, whether they go to Southeast Asia or whether 
they go to Mexico, they never seem to help the little people; they 
never help the poor people. The poor are poorer than ever in Mexico, 
and yet the politicians and the corporations and the bankers even in 
this country get the bailout. This $18 billion is nothing more than 
another bailout.
  Now, the third issue is Iraq, and I want to talk more about that, 
because I am fearful we are about ready to do something very foolish, 
very foolish for our country, and very dangerous.
  Of these three issues, there is a common thread. When we think about 
the scandals, we talk about international finance, a large amount of 
dollars flowing into this country to influence our elections and 
possibly play a role in our foreign policy.
  Also, the IMF, which has to do with international finance, the IMF is 
under the United Nations and therefore it

[[Page H433]]

gets a lot of attention and we are asked to appropriate $18 billion.
  Then, once again, we have this potential for going to war in Iraq, 
again, not because we follow the Constitution, not because we follow 
the rule of law, but because the United Nations has passed a 
resolution. Some have even argued that the U.N. resolution passed for 
the Persian Gulf War is enough for our President to initiate the 
bombings. Others claim that just the legislation, the resolution-type 
legislation passed in 1990 that endorsed this process is enough for us 
to go and pursue this war venture. But the truth is, if we followed the 
rules and if we followed the law, we would never commit an act of war, 
which bombing is, unless we have a declaration of war here in the 
Congress. Somebody told me just yesterday that yes, but that is so old 
fashioned.
  Just look at what we have been able to do since World War II without 
a declaration of war. Precisely. Why are we doing this? And precisely 
because when we do it, what generally happens is that we are 
not fighting these wars, and they are not police actions, these are 
wars, and we are not fighting them because of national interests. We 
are not fighting them for national security, and therefore, we do not 
fight to win, and subsequently, what war can we really be proud of 
since World War II? We have not won them. We set the stage for more 
problems later on. The Persian Gulf War has led to the stalemate that 
we have here today, and it goes on and on. I think this is a very 
important subject.

  War should only be declared for moral reasons. The only moral war is 
a defensive war and when our country is threatened. Then it is 
legitimate to come to the people and the people then, through their 
Members in the House and Senate, and the President then declare war, 
and then they fight that war to win. But today that is considered very 
old fashioned, and the consensus here in this Congress is that it will 
not take much for Congress to pass a resolution.
  What worries me, though, somewhat is that this resolution will not be 
circulated among the Members for days and weeks and have real serious 
debate. There is always the possibility that a resolution like this 
will come up suddenly. There will be little debate, and then a vote, 
and an endorsement for this policy. The first resolution that has been 
discussed over in the Senate had language very, very similar to the 
same language used in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which endorsed the 
expansion of the war in Vietnam, where 50,000 men were lost, and it was 
done not with a declaration of war, but by casual agreement by the 
Congress to go along.
  Congress should have and take more responsibility for these actions. 
It is only the Congress that should pursue an act of war. Bombing is an 
act of war, especially if it is a country halfway around the world and 
a country that has not directly threatened our national security.
  All of the stories about the monstrosities that occur and how 
terrible the leader might be may have some truth to it, but that does 
not justify throwing out the rule of law and ignoring our Constitution.
  This effort that is about to be launched, it has not been endorsed by 
our allies. It is getting very difficult to even get the slightest 
token endorsement by our allies to start this bombing. One would think 
if Saddam Hussein was a true threat to that region, his neighbors would 
be the first ones to be willing to march and to be willing to go to 
battle to defend themselves. But they are saying, do not even put your 
troops here, do not launch your effort from our soil, because it is not 
in our best interests to do so. Kuwait, the country that we went to war 
over not too long ago has given some token endorsement, but even their 
newspapers are carrying news stories that really challenge what the 
people might be saying about this effort.
  There was a Kuwaiti professor who was quoted in a pro-government 
Kuwaiti newspaper as saying, the U.S. frightens us with ads to make us 
buy weapons and sign contracts with American companies, thus, ensuring 
a market for American arms manufacturers and United States continued 
military presence in the Middle East. That is not my opinion; that is a 
Kuwaiti professor writing in a government newspaper in Kuwait.
  A Kuwaiti legislator who was not willing to reveal his name said the 
use of force has ended up strengthening the Iraqi regime rather than 
weakening it. Most people realize that. In the Middle East, Saddam 
Hussein has more credibility among his Arab neighbors than he did 
before the war.
  Other Kuwaitis have suggested that the U.S. really wants Hussein in 
power to make sure his weak neighbors fear him and are forced to depend 
on the United States for survival.
  Now, these are very important comments to be considered, especially 
when we are getting ready to do something so serious as to condone the 
bombing of another country. Just recently in The Washington Post, not 
exactly a conservative newspaper, talked about what Egypt's opinion was 
about this. This is interesting, because the interview was done in 
Switzerland at the World Economic Forum, and the interview was made by 
Lally Weymouth, and she talked to Egypt's Foreign Minister, Amre 
Moussa, the Foreign Minister of Egypt, our ally, a country that gets 
billions of dollars from us every year.
  So one would expect with all this money flowing into that country 
that they should quickly do exactly what we want. But this Foreign 
Minister was rather blunt: Egypt, a key member of the Gulf War 
coalition, is opposed to U.S. military action in Iraq. He said, We 
believe that military action should be avoided and there is room for 
political efforts. He said, If such action is taken, there will be 
considerable fallout in the Arab world, he warned. He said, We are not 
afraid of Saddam. He added that his country believes the crisis is a 
result of allegations that have not been proven. Yet, we are willing to 
go and do such a thing as to initiate this massive bombing attack on 
this country, and there has been nothing proven.
  Moussa also said that Iraq's possession of chemical and biological 
weapons must be pursued, of course. But this requires cooperation with 
Iraq, not confrontation. Even our President admits that more weapons 
have been removed from Iraq since the war ended than which occurred 
with the hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq, as well as 88,000 
bombs that were dropped in the whole of World War II, and it did not 
accomplish the mission.

                              {time}  2130

  So he is suggesting that it is just not worth the effort and it is 
not going to work. And he, of course, speaks for one of our allies.
  He says, ``The whole Middle East is not comfortable with this, and I 
do not think there is support for such an option. All of us will face 
the consequence of such a military attack.'' ``All of us'' means all of 
them, not the people here in the United States.
  He said 7 years ago there was an occupation and an apparent 
aggression. Today it is a question over inspections, so therefore he is 
arguing strenuously that we not do this. The people in the Middle East, 
he says, see a double standard. He is talking for the Arabs.
  The people in the Middle East see a double standard because the 
Israeli Government does not comply with U.N. Resolution 242, but we see 
no action. The U.S. is too strong on one and too soft on the other. The 
peace process is falling apart. We do know that the peace process with 
Israel and the Palestinians is not going smoothly, yet this is behind 
some of what is happening because they do not understand our policy.
  He goes on to say, ``There is room for a political solution. Bear in 
mind the repercussions in the area. If the United States bombs, there 
will be Iraqi victims.'' Then he asks, ``What happens if the public 
sees a decisive move on the part of Iraq but not toward Israel? We have 
to take into consideration how the people who live near Iraq respond to 
something like this.''
  Now, Steven Rosenfeld, in the Washington Post, on February 6, also 
made comments about the Middle East and the failure of the Mideast 
policy. And I thought he had a very interesting comment, because he 
certainly would not be coming at this from the same viewpoint that I 
have.
  In his statement, this again is Rosenfeld in the Washington Post, he 
said, ``There is a fatal flaw at the heart

[[Page H434]]

of Netanyahu's policy. He is not prepared to address the Palestinians' 
basic grievance. To think that Israel can humiliate the Palestinians 
politically and then reap the benefits of their security cooperation is 
foolish. It can't happen.''
  Here we are being more involved in the Middle East process with Iraq 
in the hope that we are going to bring about peace.
  What about another close ally, an ally that we have had since World 
War II: Turkey. Turkey is not anxious for doing this. They do not want 
us to take the bombers and the troops out of Turkey. As a matter of 
fact, they are hesitant about this. This is an article from the 
Washington Times by Philip Smucker. He said, ``Turkey's growing fears 
of a clash in Iraq are based largely on what it sees as the ruinous 
aftermath of the Gulf War.''
  So Turkey is claiming that they are still suffering from the Gulf 
War.
  ``The people,'' and this is quoting from the Foreign Ministry Sermet 
Atacanli, ``the people have started thinking that Turkey is somehow 
being punished,'' a senior foreign official said. ``We supported the 
war, but we are losing now.'' So they are getting no benefits.
  He said that since the war, Turkey has suffered economic losses of 
some $35 billion stemming from the invigorated Kurdish uprising on the 
Iraqi border and the shutting down of the border trade, including the 
Iraqi oil exports through Turkey. They used to have trade; now they do 
not.
  We encouraged the Kurds to revolt and then stepped aside, so the 
Kurds are unhappy with the Americans because they were disillusioned as 
to what they thought they were supposed to be doing. ``Turkey's clear 
preference is for Iraq to regain control of its own Kurdish regions on 
the Turkish border and resume normal relations with Ankara.''
  Further quoting the foreign ministry of Turkey, ``Iraq cannot 
exercise sovereignty over these regions, so there has become a power 
vacuum that has created an atmosphere in which terrorists operate 
freely.'' It has taken quite some effort for Turkish forces to deal 
with this problem.
  What will happen if the bombs are relatively successful? More vacuum. 
More confusion. And more turmoil in that region.
  The military goals are questioned by even the best of our military 
people in this country, and sometimes it is very difficult to 
understand what our military goals are. We do not have the troops there 
to invade and to take over Baghdad or to get rid of Hussein, but we 
have a lot of bombs and we have a lot of firepower. Yet, we are 
supposed to be intimidated and fearful of this military strength of 
Saddam Hussein. Yet even by our own intelligence reports, his strength 
is about one-half what it was before the Persian Gulf War started. So 
there is a little bit more fear-mongering there than I think is 
justified.
  But if we do not plan to send troops, we just agree to send bombs, 
then it will not get rid of Hussein. Why are we doing this? Because 
some people question this and some people respond and say, that may be 
correct, maybe we do not have the ability to inflict enough damage or 
to kill Hussein. And some here have even suggested that we assassinate 
him.
  Well, I am not going to defend Iraq. I am not going to defend 
Hussein. But I do have a responsibility here for us in the Congress to 
obey the law, and under our law, under the Constitution, and with a 
sense of morality, we do not go around assassinating dictators. I think 
history shows that we were involved in that in South Vietnam and it did 
not help us one bit.
  Syria is another close neighbor of Iraq. Syria was an ally in the 
Persian Gulf War. Syria would like us not to do anything. Iraqi foreign 
minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf went to Damascus to see Syrian President 
Hafez Assad, marking the first time in 18 years that the Syrian leader 
met with an Iraqi official. This is one of the consequences, this is 
one of the things that is happening. The further we push the Iraqi 
people and the Iraqi Government, the further we push them into close 
alliances with the more radical elements in that region.
  It is conceivable to me that it would be to Hussein's benefit, and he 
probably is not worried that much, but I do not believe it is in our 
interest. I do not believe it is in the interest of the American 
people, the American taxpayers, the American fighter pilots, and 
certainly long-term interest in the Middle East. We will spend a lot of 
money doing it. That is one issue.
  We could end up having lives lost. We still have not solved all the 
problems and taken care of all the victims of the Persian Gulf War 
syndrome which numbers in the tens of thousands. Maybe we should be 
talking about that more than looking for more problems and a greater 
chance for a serious confrontation where lives were lost.
  The Iraqi and the Syrian views, according to this article, are very 
close and almost identical in rejecting a resort to force and American 
military threats. We do not get support there, and we should not ignore 
that.
  Just recently Schwarzkopf was interviewed on NBC TV's ``Meet the 
Press,'' and he had some interesting comments to make, very objective, 
very military-oriented comments. He would not agree with me on my 
policy or the policy that I would advocate of neutrality and 
nonintervention and the pro-American policy. But he did have some 
warnings about the military operation.
  He said, ``I do not think the bombing, I don't think it will change 
his behavior at all. Saddam's goal is to go down in history as the 
second coming of Nebuchadnezzar by uniting the Arab world against the 
west. He may not mind a big strike if, after it, the United Nations 
lifts economic sanctions against Iraq.''
  I am afraid that this policy is going in the wrong direction, that we 
are going to have ramifications of it for years to come, and that we 
will and could have the same type of result as we had in Vietnam that 
took a decade for us to overcome.
  Mr. Speaker, there is no indication that this bombing will accomplish 
what we should do. Charles Duefler, deputy chief of the U.N. Special 
Commission in charge of Iraqi inspection said, ``Put bluntly, we do not 
really know what Iraq has.''
  That is at the heart of the problem. Here is our U.N. inspector 
admitting that they have no idea. So how can we prove that somebody 
does not have something if we do not know what he is supposed to have? 
So the odds of this military operation accomplishing very much are 
essentially slim to none.
  Charles Krauthammer, who would be probably in favor of doing a lot 
more than I would do, had some advice. He said, ``Another short bombing 
campaign would simply send yet another message of American 
irresolution. It would arouse Arab complaints about American arrogance 
and aggression while doing nothing to decrease Saddam's grip on power. 
Better to do nothing,'' Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. 
These are not my views. They are warnings that we should not ignore.
  Richard Cohen from the Washington Post had some advice. He said, 
``Still military action is a perilous course. It will produce what is 
called `collateral damage,' a fancy term for the accidental killing of 
civilians and possibly the unintentional destruction of a school or 
mosque.''
  We have heard of that before. ``That, in turn,'' he goes on to say, 
``will provoke protests in parts of the Arab world, Jordan probably and 
Egypt as well. In both countries the United States is already 
considered the protector of a recalcitrant Israeli Government. As for 
Israel itself, it can expect that Iraq will send missiles its way armed 
with chemical or biological weapons.''
  This is Richard Cohen warning us about some of the ramifications of 
what might happen.
  But during these past 8 years since the war has ended, there has been 
no signs that that is likely to happen. It is more likely to happen 
that some missile or some accident will occur that will spread this war 
from a neat little war to something much bigger than we are interested 
in dealing with.
  There are several other points that I would like to mention here. The 
one thing we cannot measure and we cannot anticipate are the accidents 
that happen. So often wars are caused by people being in the wrong 
place at wrong time, and then accidents happen and somebody gets 
killed, a ship is sunk, and we have to go to war.

[[Page H435]]

  Other times some of these events may be staged. One individual 
suggested the possibility of a person like Saddam Hussein actually 
acting irrationally and doing something radical to his own people and 
then turning around and blaming the United States or Israel or 
something like that. So we are dealing with an individual that may well 
do this and for his specific purposes.
  But we would all be better off, not so much that we can anticipate 
exactly who we should help and who we should support; we have done too 
much of that. We help too often both sides of every war that has 
existed in the last 50 years, and we have pretended that we have known 
what is best for everybody. I think that is impossible.
  I think the responsibility of the Members of Congress here is to 
protect the national interest, to provide national security, to take 
care of national defense, to follow the rules that say, we should not 
go to war unless the war is declared. If we go to war, we go to war to 
fight and win the war. But we do not go to war because we like one 
country over another country and we want to support them.
  We literally support both sides in the Middle East, and it is a 
balancing act and, quite frankly, both sides right now seem to be a 
little bit unhappy with us. So the policy has not been working; we have 
not been able to achieve what we think we are able to do. But we must 
be very cautious on what we are doing here in the next few weeks.
  People say, well, we have to do it because Hussein has so much of 
this firepower, he has all of these weapons of mass destruction. It was 
just recently reported by U.S. intelligence that there are 20 nations 
now who are working on and producing weapons of mass destruction, 
including Iran and Syria. So why do we not go in there and check them 
out too?
  Why is it that we have no more concern about our national security 
concern about China? I think China can pose a national threat. I do not 
think we should be doing it to China. I do not think we should be 
looking to find out what kind of weapons they have. We know they sell 
weapons to Iraq. And we know they are a very capable nation when it 
comes to military. But what do we do with China? We give them foreign 
aid. They are one of the largest recipients of foreign aid in the whole 
world.

                              {time}  2145

  So we do not apply the rules to all the countries the same, and we 
get narrowed in on one item and we get distracted from many of the 
facts that I think are so important. Some people believe that it is 
conceivable that the oil is even very important in this issue as well.
  We obviously knew the oil was important in the Persian Gulf War 
because it was said that we were going over there to protect our oil. 
Of course, it was Iraqi oil but some people believe sincerely that 
keeping this Iraqi oil off the market helps keep the prices higher and 
they do not need that to happen.
  As a matter of fact, it was in the Wall Street Journal today that 
that was further suggested. It said: Equally important the U.S. must 
terminate illegal oil exports from the Iraqi port of Basra.
  There, submerged barges depart daily for Iran, which sells the oil 
and, after a hefty rake-off, returns the proceeds to fund Saddam. So 
there are sales and there might be people that are looking at this 
mainly as a financial thing dealing with oil.
  The odds now of us being able to stop this bombing I think are pretty 
slim. I think that is rather sad because it looks like there will be a 
resolution that will come to the floor. There probably will not be a 
chance for a lot of debate. It will come up under suspension possibly 
and yet in the words may be toned down a little bit.
  It might not be identical to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. But all I 
would like to do is point out to my colleagues that this is more 
important than it appears, and we should not be so glib as to give this 
authority, to give the cover for the President to say, well, the 
Congress said it was okay. I do not think the Congress should say it is 
okay, because I think it is the wrong thing to do. And I think it could 
lead to so many, so many more problems.
  So we have a responsibility. If the responsibility is that Saddam 
Hussein is a threat to our national security, we should be more honest 
with the American people. We should tell them what the problem is. We 
should have a resolution, a declaration of war.
  Obviously, that would not pass but it looks like it will not be 
difficult to pass a resolution that will condone and give sanction to 
whatever the President does regardless of all the military arguments 
against it.
  So I see this as really a sad time for us and not one that we should 
be proud of. I do know that the two weakest arguments I can present 
here would be that of a moral argument, that wars ought to be fought 
only for defense and for national security. I have been told that is 
too old-fashioned and we must police the world, and we have the 
obligation. We are the only superpower.
  Well, I do not think that is a legitimate argument. I do have a lot 
of reservation that we are so anxious to go along with getting 
authority elsewhere, and that is through the United Nations. When the 
Persian Gulf War was started, getting ready to start, it was said that 
we did not need the Congress to approve this because the authority came 
from the United Nations resolution.
  Well, that to me is the wrong way to go. If we are involved in 
internationalism, where international financing now is influencing our 
presidential election, if international finances demand that we take 
more money from the American taxpayers and bail out southeast Asian 
countries through the IMF and that we are willing to have our young men 
and women be exposed to war conditions and to allow them to go to war 
mainly under a U.N. resolution and a token endorsement by the Congress, 
I think this is the wrong way to go.
  I do realize that we have been doing it this way for 40 or 50 years. 
But quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, I do not believe the American people 
are all that happy about it. I have not yet had anybody in my district 
come up to me and start saying, Ron, I want you to get up there and 
start voting. I want to see those bombs flying.
  As a matter of fact, I have had a lot of them come and say, why are 
you guys up there thinking about going to war? I have had a lot of 
people talk about that. So we should not do this carelessly and 
casually.
  There is no reason in the world why we cannot be willing to look at 
the rule of law. The rule of law is very clear. We do not have the 
moral authority to do this. This is, we must recognize, this is an act 
of war.
  When the resolution comes up to the floor, no matter how watered down 
it is, I think everybody should think very seriously about it and not 
be careless about it, not wait until a decade goes by and 50,000 men 
are killed. I think that is the wrong way to do it.
  There is nothing wrong with a pro-American foreign policy, one of 
nonintervention, one where we are neutral. That was our tradition for 
more than 100 years. It stood out in George Washington's farewell 
address, talk about nonentangling alliances. These entangling alliances 
and our willingness to get involved has not been kind to us in the 20th 
century. So we should really consider the option of a foreign policy 
that means that we should be friends with all.
  People will immediately say that is isolationism. Even if you are not 
for the IMF bailout, this argument really bewilders me. If you are not 
for the $18 billion bailout of the IMF, you are an isolationist. You 
can be for free trade and get rid of all the tariffs and do everything 
else, but if you are not willing to give your competitors more money 
and bail them out and bail out the banks, you are an isolationist. You 
are not for free trade. It is complete nonsense. There is nothing wrong 
with isolating our military forces.
  We do not have to be the policemen of the world. We have not done a 
good job and the world is not safer today because of our willingness to 
do this. One act leads to the next one. We are still fighting the 
Persian Gulf War, and it sounds to me like we are losing our allies. We 
must take this under serious advisement. We must not be too anxious to 
go and do something that we could be very sorry for.
  I know that people do not like this statement I am going to be making 
to

[[Page H436]]

be made, but I think there should be a consideration for it. So often 
Members here are quite willing to vote to put ourselves and our men in 
harm's way that could lead to a serious confrontation with many deaths. 
But if those individuals who claim that it would be best to assassinate 
Saddam Hussein or put land troops on there, I wonder if they would be 
willing to be the first ones on the beachhead. That really is the 
question. That is a fair statement.
  If you are willing to go yourself, if you are willing to send your 
child, then it is more legitimate to vote casually and carelessly to go 
marching off with acts of war. But if that individual who is getting 
ready to vote, if he himself or she herself is not willing to land on 
that beach and risk their lives, they should think a second time.
  In a war for national defense, if this country is threatened, every 
one of us should participate in it. We should and we can. We could do 
it our way, to participate in the defense of this country. But once it 
is being involved in a casual and a careless manner with not knowing 
what the goals are, not knowing what victory means, not fighting to 
win, this can only lead to bigger problems.

  This is the time to reassess it. I know time is running short. 
Everybody is afraid of losing face. Some people say, well, how do we 
back off and we cannot let Saddam Hussein lose face, and what about our 
own politicians who have been saying that we must do something. They 
will lose face. Would that not be the worst reason in the world to do 
this, because they are afraid of losing face because we threatened 
them? If it is the wrong thing to do, we should not do it. And there 
seems to me to be no direct benefit to the American people, certainly 
no benefit to the American taxpayer, certainly no benefit to peace in 
the Middle East. It is more likely to cause more turmoil. It is more 
likely to unify the Islamic fundamentalists like they have never been 
unified before.
  So what we are doing here is very serious business. Unfortunately, it 
looks like it is going to happen and it looks like there will be one or 
two or three or four of us that will say, go slow, do not do this, let 
us question this. But unfortunately, the only significant criticism we 
have had of the policy has been, do more faster.
  We do not need to do more faster. We need to do less quicker, much 
less quicker. Nothing has been happening in the last few years, the 
last few weeks. Does President Clinton need to bomb over the weekend or 
next week or two weeks from now? I say absolutely not. There is no need 
for this.
  Saddam is weaker than he used to be. He could be stronger after this 
is finished. So we must be cautious. We must take our time and think 
about this before we go off and make this declaration. It sounds like a 
lot of fun. We have a lot of bombers. We have a lot of equipment that 
we have to test, and we can go over there and see if the B-1 and the 
stealth bombers will work a little bit better than they have in the 
past. But this is not a game. This is not a game. This is serious 
business.
  One item like this, one event like this can lead to something else, 
and that is what we have to be cautious about. We cannot assume that, 
yes, we can bomb for a day or two or three or four and the stronger the 
rhetoric the more damage we are going to do. We need less rhetoric. We 
as a Nation have on occasion been the initiators of peace talks. We 
encourage the two groups in the Middle East, the Israelis and the 
Palestinians. We bring them to our country. We ask them to sit down and 
talk. Please talk before you kill each other. We go to the Protestants 
and we go to the Catholics and we say, please talk, do not kill each 
other. Why do we not talk more to Hussein? He is willing to.
  I know, I mean you have to take his word with a grain of salt, but 
would it not be better to sit down across the table and at least talk 
rather than pursue a course that, a military course that may be more 
harmful?
  If this would be a guarantee that it would get a lot better and that 
we would solve a lot of problems, maybe we could consider it. But even 
those who advocate this do not claim they know when the end stage is, 
what the ultimate goal is, and that they would expect success. They are 
not expecting this. They just want to bomb, bomb people. Innocent 
people will die. Those pictures will be on television.
  And I, quite frankly, do not believe the polls that most Americans 
want us to do this. I go home; I talk to a lot of my constituents. I do 
not find them coming and saying, do this. They do not even understand, 
the people who come and talk to me, they ask me what is going on up 
there. Why are they getting ready to do this?
  I mean, most people in this country cannot even find where Iraq is on 
the map. I mean, they are not that concerned about it. And yet all we 
would have to do is have one ship go down and have loss of life and 
then all of a sudden, then do we turn tail? Then is it that we do not 
lose face after we lose 1,000 men by some accident or some freakish 
thing happening?
  Sure, we will lose more face then. But we can save face if we do what 
is right, explain what we are doing and be open to negotiations. There 
is nothing wrong with that. I mean, there has not been a border 
crossing.
  The other thing is it would be nice if we had a policy in this 
country, a foreign policy that had a little bit of consistency. I have 
been made fun of at one time on the House floor for being consistent 
and wanting to be consistent.
  I do not particularly think there is anything wrong with being 
consistent. I think there should be a challenge on my ideas or our 
ideas. We should challenge ideas. But if you want to be consistent, if 
they are the right ideas, you should be consistent. But we talk about 
this horrible country, I am not defending the country and I am not 
defending Hussein, but we criticize him as an individual who invaded 
another country. I wonder what they are talking about.
  I wonder if they are talking about when he invaded Iran with our 
encouragement and our money and our support. Is that what they are 
talking about? Or are they talking about the other invasion that we did 
not like because it was a threat to western oil? I think that might be 
the case.
  So they talk about poison gas. Yes, there is no doubt about it. I 
think the evidence is out that he has used poison gas against his own 
people. Horrible, killed a lot of people. But never against another 
country, which means the line could be drawn by if he had ever used 
these weapons. We cannot investigate 20 countries. We cannot 
investigate North Korea. We cannot investigate China. Why do we have 
this obsession with investigating this country? But poison gases, under 
international agreements, we are not supposed to use poison gases.
  Poison gases, we used them, not against a foreign power but we used 
them against our own people. No, we did not have a mass killing but 
those families understood it. Over 100, more than 100, 150 people were 
gassed with gas that was illegal, according to our own agreements, and 
we used them at Waco.
  So at one time we were an ally of a country, at the same time he is 
using poison gas and invading another country and then, when he invades 
the wrong country, then we give him trouble.

                              {time}  2200

  For many, many years, Noriega was our ally, and he was no angel when 
he was our ally. He received money from the CIA, but all of a sudden he 
wanted to be his own drug lord. He did not want to be beholding to our 
CIA, so we had to do something about him.
  There is nothing wrong with a foreign policy that is consistent based 
on a moral principle and on our Constitution. That means that the 
responsibility of the U.S. Congress is to provide for a strong national 
defense. There is nothing wrong with being friends with everybody who 
is willing to be friends with us. There is nothing wrong with trading 
with as many people that will trade with us, and there is nothing wrong 
with working for as low tariffs as possible.
  There is no reason why we should not consider at least selling some 
food and medicine to Castro. We have had a confrontation with Castro 
now for 40 years, and it has served him well because his socialism and 
his communism was an absolute failure. But he always had a scapegoat. 
It was the Americans. It was the Americans because they boycotted and 
they would

[[Page H437]]

not trade and, therefore, that was the reason they suffered. So it 
served him well.
  I would think that being willing to talk with people, if we believe 
in our system, if we believe that liberty is something to be proud of 
and that that works, I am convinced that it is better to have set an 
example to talk with people, trade with people, and go back and forth 
as freely as possible and we will spread our message much better than 
we ever will with bombs.
  How many bombs did we drop in South Vietnam? How many men were lost 
on our side? How many people were lost on the other side? How many 
innocent people were lost? So the war ends, after a decade. After a 
decade of misery in this country where we literally had to turn on our 
own people to suppress the demonstrations. But today I have friends who 
are doing business in South Vietnam, making money over there, which 
means that trade and talk works. They are becoming more Westernized.
  This whole approach of militancy, believing that we can force our way 
on other people, will not and cannot work. Matter of fact, the few 
quotes that I used here earlier are indicating that we are doing 
precisely the wrong thing; that we are further antagonizing not only 
our so-called enemies, but we are further antagonizing our allies. So 
if there is no uniformity of opinion of the neighbors, of Iraq, that we 
should be doing this, if we will not listen to the moral, if we will 
not listen to the constitutional issue, we should listen to the 
practical issue. His neighbors do not want us to do it.
  And what are we going to prove? We should not do it. We should 
reassess this. We should decide quietly and calmly and deliberately in 
this body that quite possibly the move toward internationalism, abiding 
by the U.N. resolutions, paying through the nose to the IMF to bail out 
the special interests, never helping the poor but always helping the 
rich, encouraging a system that encourages foreign countries to come in 
and buy influence, should be challenged. We should change it.
  And we do not have to be isolationists. We can be more open and more 
willing to trade and talk with people and we will have a greater chance 
of peace and prosperity. That is our purpose. Our purpose is to protect 
liberty. And we do not protect American liberty by jeopardizing their 
liberty and the wealth of this country by getting involved when we 
should not be involved.
  The world is a rough enough place already, and there will continue to 
be the hot spots of the world, but I am totally convinced that a policy 
of American intervention overseas, subjecting other nations to our 
will, trying to be friends to both sides at all times, subsidizing both 
sides and then trying this balancing act that never works, this is not 
going to work either. It did not work in the 1980s when we were closely 
allied and subsidizing Hussein and it will not work now when we are 
trying to bomb him.
  Neither will it work for us to not have somewhat of a consistent 
policy to ignore the other countries that are doing the very same thing 
at the same time the real threat possibly could be a country like 
China. And what do we do? We give them billions and billions of dollars 
of subsidies.
  There is nothing wrong with a consistent defense of a pro-America 
foreign policy. People will say, well, the world is different and we 
have to be involved. That is exactly the reason that we ought to be 
less aggressive. That is exactly the reason why we ought to take our 
own counsel and not do these things. Because we live in an age where 
communications are much more rapid. The weapons are much worse. There 
is every reason in the world to do less of this, not more of it.
  But none of this could happen. We could never move in this direction 
unless we asked a simple question: What really is the role of our 
government? Is the role of our government to perpetuate a welfare-
warfare state to take care of the large special interests who benefit 
from this by building weapons and buying and selling oil? No, the 
purpose cannot be that.
  The welfare-warfare state does not work. The welfare for poor is 
well-motivated; it is intended to help people, but it never helps them. 
They become an impoverished, dependent class. And we are on the verge 
of bankruptcy, no matter what we hear about the balanced budget. The 
national debt is going up by nearly $200 billion a year and it cannot 
be sustained. So this whole nonsense of a balanced budget and trying to 
figure out where to spend the excess is nonsense. It just encourages 
people to take over more of the responsibilities that should be with 
the American people.
  We here in the Congress should be talking about defending this 
country, providing national security, providing for a strong currency, 
not deliberately distorting the currency. We should be protecting 
private property rights and making sure that there is no incentive for 
the special interests of this country to come and buy their influence 
up here.
  We do not need any fancy campaign reform laws. There is no need for 
those. We need to eliminate the ability of the Congress to pass out 
favors. I do not get any PAC money because there is no attempt to come 
and ask me to do special favors for anybody. I get a lot of donations 
from people who want liberty. They want to be left alone, and they 
know, they know that they can take care of themselves.
  Now, this point will not be proven until the welfare state crumbles, 
and it may well crumble in the next decade. The Soviet system crumbled 
rather suddenly. We cannot afford to continue to do this, but we must 
be cautious not to allow the corporate state and the militant attitude 
that we have with our policy to rule. We have to decide here in this 
country, as well as in this body, what we want from our government and 
what kind of a government we want.
  We got off from the right track with the founders of this country. 
They wrote a good document and that document was designed for this 
purpose, for the protection of liberty. We have gone a long way from 
that, until now we have the nanny state that we cannot even plow our 
gardens without umpteen number of permits from the Federal Government. 
So our government is too big, it is too massive, and we have undermined 
the very concept of liberty.
  Foreign policy is very important because it is under the conditions 
of war; it is under the condition of foreign confrontation that people 
are so willing to give up their liberties at home because of the fear. 
We should avoid unnecessary confrontations overseas and we should 
concentrate on bettering the people here in this country, and it can 
best be done by guaranteeing property rights, free markets, sound 
money, and a sensible approach to our foreign policy.

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