[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 16 (Thursday, February 26, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H653]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 CONGRESS SHOULD RALLY AROUND PRESIDENT'S DECISION WITH REGARD TO IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I want to spend the next few minutes talking 
about Iraq.
  In 1991, I voted for President Bush's program, Operation Desert 
Storm. I was one of a minority of Democrats at that time to do so 
because I felt then and feel very strongly now that we need to have a 
bipartisan foreign policy; that once the President, whomever the 
President is, makes a decision, it is incumbent upon all of us to rally 
around the President's decision and to support our troops who may be in 
harm's way.
  That is why, Mr. Speaker, I have been particularly chagrined to 
listen to the remarks of some of the critics of the President's policy 
in Iraq, the Senate Majority Leader and others, who have spoken out and 
said that this agreement, which the Clinton administration supports and 
which I support, have said it is not a good one.
  I think it is very, very important that we rally around our President 
and that we support this agreement.
  Is this a perfect agreement? Of course not. Are there some 
ambiguities in this agreement? Of course there are. But as Secretary of 
State Albright said the other day, let us try to work out these 
ambiguities. Let us place the onus on Saddam Hussein. Let us test this 
agreement.
  We are testing it by keeping our forces in the region. We are testing 
it by making sure that American power and American might remains there 
to force Saddam Hussein to comply.
  The main thing now is to get the inspectors into the presidential 
palaces and the other sites to make sure that we have adequate 
inspection on the ground.
  This new agreement puts the onus on Saddam Hussein. If he violates 
it, we will have the support of many of the other nations who might 
have been reluctant to support our undertaking if we had started with a 
bombing campaign. This puts the onus squarely on Saddam and says to 
Saddam that the international community, the United Nations, is unified 
in demanding that he comply with United Nations' resolutions and with 
this latest agreement.
  Rather than tearing down Kofi Annan, I would praise him for having 
the courage to go to Baghdad and trying to broker an agreement.

                              {time}  1215

  I am not annoyed that Saddam Hussein is claiming victory, as the 
Senate majority leader seems to be. Saddam Hussein claimed victory 
after Operation Desert Storm, when we know that his forces were 
decimated. I could not care less what Saddam Hussein says. The proof 
will be in the pudding. If indeed this gives the international 
community unfettered access to Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces 
and other sites, then this agreement will be successful. If it does not 
and if Saddam Hussein is devious, as we know he can very well be, and 
continues to hide things and we need to go in and do a bombing 
campaign, then President Clinton says that is what we will do.
  Rather than this being a lose-lose situation, I think it is a win-win 
situation. This is not the time for U.N. bashing. Let us encourage the 
U.N. to pass a resolution in the Security Council adopting this 
agreement and putting in penalties if Saddam Hussein violates the 
agreement.
  The critics of administration policy, I am sorry to say, would 
criticize the President for whatever he did. If we had a bombing 
campaign, they would criticize the President to say there will be 
civilian casualties, as we know inevitably there would be, or American 
casualties, as we know inevitably there would be. When the President 
was talking about a bombing campaign, these same critics were saying 
that the President had not told the American people what our objectives 
are, that he had not defined the objectives. If the President said, as 
he did say, the objectives would be to allow unfettered inspection of 
these sites and that is why we were bombing, the critics then said, 
``That's not enough. The objective should be the removal of Saddam 
Hussein.'' Well, we know the removal of Saddam Hussein, and I would 
like to see it as much as anybody else, would involve ground troops and 
would involve lots of casualties. If the President did that, the 
critics would say, ``Well, the ground troops will mean American 
casualties.''
  So whatever the President does, and I quite frankly think he has 
handled the situation very, very well, these same critics would 
criticize. This is not the time for criticism. There has been an 
agreement. Let us try this agreement. If this agreement does not work, 
we can go back to a policy of a bombing campaign to force Saddam 
Hussein to allow unfettered inspections. Rather than criticize the 
President, I commend President Clinton. I think he has handled this 
situation marvelously. I think he has acted like a real statesman and 
acted like the American people expect him to act. I daresay that is why 
his approval rating is hovering around 70 percent, because people think 
that the President has acted boldly, not only in Iraq but all the other 
things he has done to put this country on the right track.
  Mr. Speaker, I say it is time to go back to the traditional 
bipartisan policy of rallying around the President, rallying around our 
troops and, once the President has made a decision, to support that 
decision for the good of the American people.

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