[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 11 (Thursday, February 12, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H492-H493]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    POWERS WHICH BELONG TO CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HORN. I would just like to say, Mr. Speaker, I listened with 
great care to the remarks of my colleague from Texas. [Mr. Paul] I 
think he raises legitimate questions, and I recall back to my first 
years in the Congress in 1993-1994 when we had numerous meetings with 
the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell.
  He was always a very honest, gutsy Chairman. He put to us the tough 
questions such as: When do we know we have won? What do we have to do 
if we engage our forces? When do we know we will get out of the mire? 
There were a number of us on this floor who fought the use of troops in 
Bosnia.
  We have been very lucky in Bosnia, but when we were told that it 
would be only one year, we all knew that was utter nonsense; we could 
be there for 15 years for that matter.
  What the gentleman from Texas stressed is that perhaps it is time for 
this House to follow the Constitution of the United States and not act 
because a United Nations resolution is standing and we will defer to 
that.
  We should never defer to anybody when it comes to a war where 
American lives might be spent. What we should do is follow the 
constitutional procedures. The President should consult extensively 
with this Chamber, and I realize that Presidents sometimes do not have 
the time to do it, but we should have the series of meetings

[[Page H493]]

we had when the Croatians, the Serbians and the Bosnians were fighting 
what some called a civil war, and we did not at that time get ourselves 
involved in that matter.
  Some might say that we were wrong and we were too late and we should 
have acted earlier. What we should have done, I think most of us would 
agree, is to permit the arming of the Bosnians so they could defend 
themselves from the Croatians and primarily the Serbians.
  Now we do not have that situation where there is a democratic 
opposition to Saddam that is knowable. He is a brutal murderer, he 
would kill all opponents, he kills his generals on a regular basis. And 
we know what he did to the Shiites, and that was partly our fault when 
we did not reverse a stupid order which permitted him to use 
helicopters, and we know he killed the Kurds in northern Iraq.
  So we do have people in Iraq that have suffered under his brutal 
regime.
  But more of us should be involved in this decision than just a few. 
And that is the way the Constitution is written, and we ought to follow 
the Constitution.
  I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. We, of course, worked together in opposing the 
American military commitment in Bosnia. But you do believe that America 
cannot just stand aside and let Saddam Hussein develop stockpiles of 
weapons, and we need to act in some way because it might then 
precipitate some type of military action that he might take on Kuwait.
  Mr. HORN. Let me just say, for my own answer, I think that our 
problem here is that we have given too many Presidents powers that 
belong to Congress.

                              {time}  1730

  I was on the floor as a young Senate assistant when the Tonkin Gulf 
Resolution came in. Only two United States Senators had the guts to 
stand up and oppose it, Mr. Gruening of Alaska, and I believe Mr. Morse 
of Oregon, and now we know that they were right. The Tonkin Gulf 
Resolution was a lot of baloney. This situation is not baloney.
  The gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) correctly notes that 
it is a very serious situation, and we need to deal with these things, 
either on a collective security basis with the United Nations forces, 
but we should not be the sole police force that has to remedy all 
problems in the world. That is what bothers me. If we are going to do 
it, let the members of the executive branch come up here, discuss this 
serious matter with a lot of us, and see where we are on the subject.
  Now, President Bush did that in terms of the Gulf War. There was a 
debate, probably one of the better debates conducted in the House in 
the last twenty years, and then a vote was cast.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would 
like to make two points. The other gentleman from California makes a 
good point about the character of Saddam Hussein, but my colleagues 
have to remember and have to realize that he was a close ally that we 
encouraged for 8 years during the 1980s, so we helped build him up, 
which contradicts this whole policy. I would like to see a more 
consistent policy.
  Then the gentleman brings up the subject: Yes, he may be in the 
business of developing weapons, but he has gotten help from China and 
Russia, and possibly from Britain and the United States, and 20 other 
nations are doing the same thing. So if we are interested in stopping 
these weapons, we better attack 20 countries. So we have a job on our 
hands.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I do not know where the 
gentleman got his information that Saddam Hussein was an ally; a close 
ally, the gentleman says, of the United States. I am sorry that I was 
in the White House at the time. Saddam Hussein was never a close ally. 
He was not an enemy, but to label him a close ally is not only 
misreading history, it is naivete beyond anything.
  We supplied some support for the Iraqis and sometimes we gave support 
for the Iranians during that war because during that time there was a 
strategy of keeping that war going in order to prevent those two powers 
from themselves individually dominating the region. Having them attack 
each other was a good strategy at that time, but far from being an 
Iraqi ally.
  Saddam Hussein is obviously someone that right now, after we have 
already gone through this, our futures are linked. If Saddam Hussein 
ends up negating the results of the last war, who will then listen to 
us anywhere in the world? I pose that question to both of my 
colleagues. If he is able to have a lightning strike against Kuwait or 
stockpile these nuclear weapons, who will believe the United States 
again after we have made this commitment?
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, the question is not so much, let us say, that 
we could concede some of the gentleman's argument, but why do you have 
such hostility to the Constitution and to the process as what we are 
talking about? Why do we not have a declaration of war and win it? Why 
should we go with a U.N. resolution and legislation that is 8 years 
old? That is one of our greatest concerns.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I am 
certainly not here to oppose any particular plan of legislation; I am 
here specifically to make sure that people understand that this is a 
serious issue and that it cannot be negated simply by a misreading of 
history that Saddam was our friend back in the 1980s or some other type 
of wishful thinking about the nature of the strategic politics in the 
world that we have to play.
  Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would just say to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher), I am certainly not saying 
that Saddam was our friend, but I think our administration was naive in 
its support of Iraq against Iran, and that is what concerns me. The 
balance of power system, while academics can write about it, and the 
British did that for 500 years, is frankly not the way in modern times 
that we should conduct ourselves.

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