[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 121 (Monday, September 17, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H5707-H5712]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CHALLENGE FACING AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, it is in deep sadness that I rise today 
to speak to my colleagues and to set down a record that is, I believe, 
necessary to understand the horrible loss that we have suffered.
  During these last few days, most of us have experienced a deep and 
painful sadness. Now that sadness, rightfully, is turning into anger. 
It is anger, as it should be, at those who perpetrated this monstrous 
crime against us; and those people who committed this crime will feel 
the wrath of the American people, a wrath that has not so been 
unleashed since Pearl Harbor.
  We must and we will avenge our countrymen. Anyone with a hand or even 
a finger in this mass slaughter of innocent Americans will pay the 
ultimate price. We do this because it is our duty, and nothing will 
deter us.
  One note of warning, Mr. Speaker: we must not permit our rage, and 
there is rage in my soul and the soul of all of our fellow Americans, 
but we must not let this rage lead to actions that will

[[Page H5708]]

strengthen the hand of the fanatic terrorists with whom we now do 
battle. These monsters are counting on us to strike out blindly and to 
attack people who are our potential allies and friends, thus alienating 
them and turning them into enemies.
  What bin Laden wants is for the United States, us, to turn this into 
a battle between us, the United States, and every Muslim in the world. 
He wants to push the world's Muslims, into his camp. We must not do 
that, and, in order not to, we must have a restraint and fortitude on 
our part so that we can guard against that outcome as we seek our 
retribution against the terrorists who have committed such a crime 
against us.
  Thus, as we proceed to do our duty, we must recognize that there are 
Muslims throughout the world who are on our side. These people, too, 
have been victimized by these terrorists and gangsters. We need to 
reach out and enlist freedom-loving Muslim people in the world to join 
us; and especially we must recognize that the many Muslim-Americans, 
our fellow citizens, are with us and feel even a greater sorrow for the 
despicable crime that has been committed against us, because they, too, 
are us, the United States.
  Our greatest strength as a Nation is that America is a land of people 
of all races and religions and ethnic groups. At the prayer service at 
our National Cathedral, all faiths, including Islam, were represented; 
and we can be very proud of that. Now is the time for all of us to 
stand together.
  So how is it that this land of liberty, this free and open society, 
should become the target of such hatred that it led to the slaughter of 
thousands of helpless, innocent, kind-hearted, working American people? 
Those folks were at their desks at work before 9 a.m., so why is it 
that they and we and America is so hated?
  Let us not forget that the Nazis knew that the light of freedom from 
America was a force which would derail their evil plans. Hitler then 
declared war on us. Similarly, the Japanese militarists of the 1930s 
knew full well that the only force in the world that stood in their way 
of ruling Asia and the Pacific with an iron hand was the United States 
of America; and they, too, attacked us.
  The attack on New York was, of course, worse than Pearl Harbor. Then 
our Navy, our military personnel and their weapons, were the target. 
What happened in New York was far more cowardly an attack, a ruthless 
slaughter of civilians, of unarmed and totally innocent men, women and 
children. A united America rose up after Pearl Harbor and righteously 
struck down those evil forces that threatened the world at that time.
  During the years after the Second World War, it was America that 
stood tall and faced down the last great totalitarian evil that 
threatened this planet, communism. Communism, like Naziism, was 
defeated in a Cold War that sometimes was very hot. Victory was assured 
by our resolve, by our courage, and by tough decisions made by our 
leaders, America's leaders.
  I worked in the White House during the years when Ronald Reagan 
brought an end to the Cold War, culminating with the dismantling of the 
communist dictatorship that controlled Russia and its puppet states. 
Essential to that great victory was President Reagan's support for 
various people who were fighting to free themselves from communist 
tyranny.
  The bravest and most fierce of these anti-Soviet insurgents were in 
Afghanistan. The American people can be proud that we provided the 
Afghan people the weapons they needed to win their own freedom and 
independence. That Cold War battle was a major factor in breaking the 
will of the communist bosses in Moscow, thus ending the Cold War, 
making almost everyone on this planet in these last 10 years, 
especially in the Western democracies, safer and more prosperous.
  This, however, is where we must begin to understand the grotesque 
crime that has now been committed against us. One of the common errors 
found in news reports in these last few days has been the suggestion 
that those holding power in Afghanistan today are the same people who 
we supported in the war against Soviet occupation in Afghanistan back 
in the 1980s. This, by and large, is wrong.
  Yes, some of those currently in power in Kabul also fought the 
Russians. But, by and large, we are talking about two different groups, 
two different sets of people. Those who fought the Soviet occupation 
were called the Mujahedin. During my time at the White House during the 
1980s, I had the opportunity to meet and get to know most of their 
leaders. The current Taliban leadership does not include any of those 
wartime leaders.
  After I left the White House and was elected to Congress, but before 
I was sworn into Congress, I knew I had that two months between 
November and January to do things that I could never do once I was 
elected to Congress. I chose to hike into Afghanistan as part of a 
small Mujahedin unit and to engage in a battle against the Russian and 
communist forces near and around the city of Jalalabad.
  The Mujahedin I marched with were incredibly brave, but they were not 
senseless killers. Their religious faith was devout, but they were not 
fanatics. They prayed daily, but I did not see them chastising those 
who were not joining them in prayer. They faced death, but their dreams 
were of life.
  I will never forget one moment as I hiked in from the Khyber Pass and 
around to the other side of Jalalabad to join this battle. As we 
marched forth into the night with the Mujahedin unit, the nights were 
lit up by, and you could hear the thunder, of cannons and see the flash 
of the cannons in the distance. We knew we were hiking into a battle.

                              {time}  1215

  One of the Mujahedin in this unit with which I marched rushed to my 
side, and he was probably around 16 or 17 years old, with an AK-47 
strapped across his back. He talked to me in perfect English saying, I 
understand that you are in politics in America. I said, yes, I am a 
political person in America. He said, I need to know, are you a donkey 
or are you an elephant?
  I will never forget that young person. He knew more about our 
politics, and certainly none of our young people could know that much 
about what was going on in that part of the world. As he marched into 
this battle, he told me of his dream to be an architect so that someday 
he could help rebuild his country, Afghanistan, into a decent place for 
families and for people to live, and expressed to me how grateful he 
was to me and to all Americans for the help that we were giving them to 
throw off the Soviet occupation forces that were so brutal to their 
countrymen. I do not know if that young man ever survived that war.
  It was a year later when the Russians retreated from Afghanistan and 
the Russians left. The United States, which had been providing $1 
billion a year to finance that war, we simply walked away. We walked 
away and left Afghanistan to its own fate.
  After years of death and destruction, we walked away; we left them 
with no guidance and no resources to even rebuild. We did not even help 
them clear the landmines which we had personally given the Mujahedin to 
help them defeat the Russians, much less clear the Russian landmines 
that were still there. We left these brave heroes who helped us end the 
Cold War; we left them to sleep in the rubble. Most importantly, we 
left them with no leadership, except that of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, 
two countries that have played a shameful role in Afghanistan over 
these last 10 years.
  After the collapse of the Communist regime in Afghanistan, the 
Mujahedin factions who fought the Russians, but with no direction from 
the United States, began bickering and fighting among themselves. This 
went on for several years. Then, in 1996, a new force appeared, 
seemingly out of nowhere: the Taliban. These were fresh, well-equipped 
forces who had, by and large, sat out the war in Pakistan. They had 
been in Pakistan in what they called schools. ``Taliban,'' by the way, 
means student, even though most of these are older men who are totally 
illiterate. All of the money America provided the Mujahedin during the 
war had to be sent through; that is, the war against Soviet Union 
occupation, had to be sent through the equivalent of the Pakistani CIA, 
which is called the ISI. But apparently, the Pakistanis had siphoned 
enough off to create a third force, and since the war was over and

[[Page H5709]]

the other factions had been bled white, they could use this third force 
to dominate Afghanistan.
  Also behind the Taliban is and was Saudi Arabia. During the war 
against the Russians, the Saudis provided the Afghan resistance with 
hundreds of millions of dollars. For that we can be grateful. They are 
one of the few countries that stepped up to the plate during the Cold 
War to actually confront the Soviet Union aggression. Unfortunately, 
however, the Saudis were financing antiwestern as well as AntiCommunist 
Muslims, and one of those who they financed was bin Laden.
  I cannot forget also as I marched with that Mujahedin unit to the 
battle of Jalalabad and, by the way, that battle was a long-time siege 
that had been taking place around the city, we at one point in that 
march came across a camp of tents. They were white tents and you could 
see them in the distance, and I was told at that point I must not speak 
English for at least another 3 hours, because the people in those tents 
were Saudi Arabians under a crazy commander named bin Laden, and that 
bin Laden was so crazy that he wanted to kill Americans as much as he 
wanted to kill Russians. Thus, I must keep my mouth shut or we would be 
attacked by those forces, by those forces under bin Laden.
  Later, much later, after I had become a Congressman, I met with the 
head of Saudi intelligence, the man responsible for providing that 
money to the Afghans during the war, the $200 million or so, or 
whatever it was that the Saudis provided to the Afghans. His name was 
General Turkey. I suggested to General Turkey that what we needed to do 
now that the Russians had left Afghanistan was to bring back to 
Afghanistan the exiled king of Afghanistan. It was King Zahir Shah who 
was overthrown in 1972. It was that overthrow of this king who had been 
a very good person and a good man, it was his overthrow that started 
the bloody cycle of events which eventually led to the Soviet Union 
invasion of 1979 and the subsequent war against Soviet Union 
occupation.
  I suggested to bring back the king of Afghanistan because he was a 
wonderful person and beloved by his people. He was a person who was a 
moderate in his approach and never killed other people. He, in fact, 
was truly a moderate and, I might say, pro-western or western oriented, 
although a devout Muslim. But the Saudis wanted nothing to do with 
bringing back a moderate good-hearted king from exile. They and their 
Pakistani allies were in the process of creating a secret third force 
that I did not know anything about: the Taliban. But during my 
conversation, it was mentioned that a third force was being created, 
one that could take over Afghanistan and bring stability, but, of 
course, one that would do the bidding of their Pakistani and Saudi 
handlers.
  One must wonder why the Saudi Arabians and the Pakistanis are even to 
this day so involved in Afghanistan. This is an important fact of 
history that we need to understand. Number one, the type of religious 
fervor they have and the type of Islam they have in Saudi Arabia is 
very similar to that in Afghanistan. It is unbending and intolerant and 
they do not permit any other faith in their country. Also, the 
Pakistanis, a large number of the Pakistanis, especially those who were 
the Pastuns up near the border of Afghanistan, they too share the same 
type of extremist and fanatic branch of Islam, even though that has 
nothing to do, it is an aberration, with the rest of Islam throughout 
the world. So that is number one. They have that in common.
  But the Pakistanis and the Saudis have two other things in common. As 
long as chaos was able to reign and continues in Afghanistan, there 
will never be a pipeline built through Afghanistan that permits the oil 
from central Asia. This vast quantity of oil that we know exists in 
central Asia, it cannot be brought to market because a pipeline will 
never be built through Afghanistan while the Taliban is in power and 
while chaos reins. What does that mean? That means oil prices have been 
much higher, maybe $5 a barrel higher, than they would have been had 
Afghanistan been under a good king and a stable government and a 
pipeline built that would have brought that oil out into the world 
market; and there are vast quantities of oil in central Asia waiting, 
just waiting to come to market.
  The other factor is drugs. Unfortunately, there are many corrupt 
people and there are corrupt people all over the world, but there are 
many corrupt people in the Pakistani intelligence system, people who 
have been involved with drugs right up to their eyeballs. And what has 
Afghanistan produced in these last 10 years? Sixty percent of the 
world's heroin. Sixty percent of the world's heroin comes from 
Afghanistan. That huge amount of money, I knew, would bring down the 
government of Pakistan, the democracy of Pakistan.
  Today, instead of a democracy, Pakistan has a military government 
because of the instability that is created by a Taliban regime of 
fanatics right next door. But there were people in Pakistan that 
profited by that regime.
  When the Taliban fist arrived on the scene, people believed that they 
would be a force for stability. So, by and large, they were welcomed by 
many Afghan people, except in the northern provinces. And let me note 
that when the Taliban first arrived on the scene, they were carrying 
pictures of the old exiled king, Zahir Shah, claiming they were going 
to bring back the king, as I say, a much beloved figure. Well, the 
people in the northern provinces were not fooled, and the Taliban, they 
did not want the Taliban to take over their areas; and the Taliban were 
blocked by local commanders unwilling to permit these unfamiliar 
troops, as I say, many of whom totally sat out the war against the 
Russians. They were not going to let them just come in and take over 
their territory. And all too soon, the people of Afghanistan and the 
rest of the world were to discover that the Pakistanis and the Saudis 
had created a monster.
  The Taliban were and are medieval in their words, in their world 
view, and their religious view. They are violent, they are intolerant, 
they are fanatics that are totally out of sync with Muslims throughout 
the world, even Muslims in their own country, and they are especially 
out of sync with Muslims living in the western democracies.
  The Taliban are best known for their horrific treatment of women, but 
they are violators of human rights across the board. They have jailed 
and threatened to execute Christian aid workers. And let us not forget 
those Christian aid workers who are in Afghanistan being held under 
arrest as we speak. In fact, they have jailed and threatened to execute 
these Christian aid workers, people who came there to help their 
people, for allegedly, allegedly daring to espouse a belief in Jesus 
Christ. That is enough to get them executed in Afghanistan.
  The Taliban have ended all personal freedoms. Freedom of speech and 
press are not even under consideration. And the Taliban ruled by fear 
and force and when they were asked, and I challenged them to have an 
election so the people of Afghanistan could choose their government and 
if they chose the Taliban, so be it, the Taliban only laughed and 
stonewalled and refused to even consider permitting the Afghan people 
to have an election and choose their leaders.
  Mr. Speaker, the Taliban are as big an enemy of the United States 
and, yes, as big an enemy to the Afghan people as they are to the 
people of the United States. The Talibans believe they have a private 
line to God, and the rest of us, with our religious constrictions are, 
according to the Taliban, we are not only wrong, but we are evil. That 
is why they have been willing to give safe haven to the likes of bin 
Laden, the Saudi terrorist who has been now in Afghanistan for several 
years. About 5 years he has been in Afghanistan, we have known he has 
been there, he has been visible. And while he has been there, he has 
been clearly training terrorists and planning out his attacks. This is 
nothing new. We have known about that. And oh, yes, bin Laden has an 
army of several thousand gunmen who he has brought in from various 
parts of the world, so they are foreigners to the people of 
Afghanistan, and this group of gunmen have been running around 
Afghanistan like a pack of mad dogs killing anyone who is an enemy to 
Taliban power. These foreign religious fanatics have killed thousands 
of Afghans, so the Taliban and bin Laden are as despised

[[Page H5710]]

in that country as they are in our country today.
  For these last few years, the Taliban, with the support of Saudi 
Arabia and Pakistan, have captured control of all but a small portion 
of Afghanistan. Only the Panjshir Valley territory in northeastern 
Afghanistan and the Shamali Plains north of Kabul are under the control 
and have been under the control of a legendary and dashing leader named 
Commander Massoud and they remain free of Taliban domination.
  The day before the attack on the world trade towers and the Pentagon, 
there was an attempt to kill Commander Massoud. Many of us thought he 
was dead, he was reported dead, but he struggled for life for another 5 
days and just died 2 days ago.

                              {time}  1230

  However, the attack on Commander Massoud; and I knew him, I had met 
him in Afghanistan. By the way, I will just say that I have been in and 
out of Afghanistan several times in these last few years.
  The last time I went in was to see Commander Massoud. The attack on 
the commander told me something terrible was about to happen, something 
terrible was about to happen, because Massoud was someone that bin 
Laden understood that if he did something that would make the United 
States or someone else very angry at him, that Massoud was someone that 
would be turned to immediately by our side to ally with.
  So before the attack on the World Trade Towers and on the Pentagon, 
bin Laden and his terrorists attacked Commander Massoud and, 
unfortunately, succeeded in killing him and eliminating Commander 
Massoud from the equation today.
  I was so concerned about this, understanding that this was telling us 
that something horrible was going to happen, that I made an appointment 
to see the top officials in the White House in the National Security 
Council. My appointment with the National Security Council at the White 
House was to warn them that this attack on Massoud obviously meant 
something big was about to happen. My appointment was for 2:30 that 
afternoon. Unfortunately, at 8:45 that morning, the first plane slammed 
into the World Trade Center.
  But the Taliban domination of Afghanistan was something that we could 
have ended long ago. Commander Massoud and the Northern Alliance were 
fighting the Taliban unsupported, with no help from the outside for 
years.
  As a Member of Congress, for years I pleaded with the previous 
administration, I pleaded with them at the highest levels to provide 
some kind of help for the Northern Alliance, which was then fighting 
almost without bullets and weapons against the Taliban. They could have 
done something, and no one in that administration was willing to do it. 
So I believe that in many ways the previous administration was 
responsible for keeping the Taliban in power, even though during this 
very same time period, this very same time period, bin Laden was openly 
declaring war in the United States, planning attacks against us and 
building a terrorist network.
  Every time I suggest that the last administration was in some way 
acquiescing to the Taliban being in power, there are those who just go 
ballistic because they believe I am being partisan at a moment when 
national unity is obviously the order of the day.
  Let me emphasize that I am not being partisan. As a senior member of 
the Committee on International Relations, I officially requested State 
Department documents that would prove or disprove my suspicion that the 
last administration was secretly supporting the Taliban, and I was 
stonewalled in that request.
  Let me make this clear. I am a senior member of the Committee on 
International Relations. It is my job to oversee the State Department. 
Other people have other committees, and they oversee those agencies and 
departments. As a member of that committee, that is part of my job.
  The gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) joined me in a request for 
these. Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State, promised I would have 
the documents. I wanted the documents pertaining to the development of 
our government's policy toward the Taliban. Yet, as an elected 
official, I had unelected officials, executives at the State 
Department, refusing to grant me the access to understand what our 
policy was toward the Taliban. I was instead given meaningless 
documents.
  Members will hear in answer to this charge: ``We gave the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) documents,'' but these were 
meaningless documents that had nothing to do with the development of 
the Taliban strategy. I never saw any of the documents about how we 
should approach the Taliban.
  The State Department made a joke out of Congress' right to oversee 
America's foreign policy, especially towards Afghanistan. I pleaded 
with my colleagues to back me up in that demand. I will say that 
several Democrats did back me up in demanding that the previous 
administration provide me with that documentation.
  But why? Why is it that I was stonewalled? Why is it that they never 
gave me those documents? I have to believe because those documents 
would show that the previous administration did consciously acquiesce 
to having the Taliban in power, probably as some kind of agreement with 
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that they would be permitted to dominate this 
country, even though it was clear that a terrorist network was being 
set up there and that America was the target of that terrorist network. 
Americans had already been murdered by that time, in Saudi Arabia, with 
barracks blown up and such.
  By the way, in Afghanistan and in that region, it is commonly 
believed by the people that the United States created the Taliban and 
that we support the Taliban. There are reasons that they believe that 
we supported the Taliban.

  In 1996, for example, and this is a very poignant example, and I hope 
people will look at this example very closely, in 1996, the Taliban 
overextended their forces and thousands of their best fighters were 
captured in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban regime was vulnerable as 
never before and never since. It was a tremendous opportunity. The 
Northern Alliance could easily have dealt a knock-out punch to the 
Taliban.
  At that time, I was in personal contact with the leader of the 
Northern Alliance, and I recommended to them a quick attack and that 
they bring back the old king, Zahir Shah, and he is in exile in Rome, 
and that they bring him back until some form of democratic process 
could be established. Thus, they would have a figurehead government 
with the old king for a period of time, and then they could establish a 
democratic process.
  This was a turning point. That was doable. It could have been easily 
accomplished. The Taliban were vulnerable. Who saved the Taliban? 
Again, please, I am not being partisan when I say this, who saved the 
Taliban when they were vulnerable? It is my belief that President Bill 
Clinton saved the Taliban when they were the most vulnerable.
  I beg Members, do not dismiss what I say as being partisan. I would 
never sink to that level at a time like this, when American lives have 
been taken.
  What happened was at this moment, when the Taliban could have been 
eliminated, President Clinton dispatched Assistant Secretary of State 
Inderfurth and Bill Richardson, our United Nations Ambassador, to 
convince the leader of the Northern Alliance not to go on the 
offensive. That was when they were the most vulnerable. Our top 
leaders, our United Nations Ambassador, was dispatched, along with the 
top leader in the State Department, to go and tell them not to attack 
the Taliban.
  These two high-level American officials were sent by President 
Clinton to propose a cease-fire and a supposed arms embargo on all 
sides. Of course, the minute that the cease-fire went into effect, and 
of course the Northern Alliance agreed to that, because they thought we 
were being sincere and they could trust the United States, but the 
minute that cease-fire went into effect, the Saudis and Pakistanis 
began a massive rearming and resupply effort to rebuild the Taliban 
forces in an equivalent to the Berlin airlift, and that was easy to 
spot.
  It was easy to see that tons and tons, airplane after airplane was 
landing at

[[Page H5711]]

Kabul Airport with military supplies from Saudi Arabia and from 
Pakistan. I knew about it. Our intelligence services had to know about 
it. But guess what, the Northern Alliance was kept in the dark until 
the Taliban were totally restored to their strength. When they were, 
the Taliban went on the offensive. They drove the Northern Alliance, 
which had had an arms embargo against them during this time period, 
which we enforced, and we convinced people not to give them weapons, 
they drove the Taliban, drove them out of the country.
  For years, I begged the previous administration, our government, to 
support those resisting the Taliban regime, to support the former King 
Zahir Shah, and to let him head an interim government until a more 
democratic process could be put in place. This was an alternative we 
had. Instead, the only response that I got from the previous 
administration was stonewalling, stonewalling that and stonewalling my 
request to find out what the government's real policies were.
  All the while, bin Laden, had killed American military personnel at 
that time, had declared war on the United States, and was running 
around Afghanistan openly, using it as a base of operations, a safe 
haven for terrorists. This man even tried to organize an attack on the 
Pope in the Philippines. His terrorists are responsible for the 
kidnapping there in the southern Philippines, and we have given him a 
safe haven all these years. We did nothing.
  We were, in fact, I believe, acquiescing to Taliban control because I 
believe it was an understanding, as I say, between Saudi Arabia and 
Pakistan to let them dominate Afghanistan. This understanding was 
obviously turning into a nightmare. Even if it made sense in the 
beginning to have such an understanding, we should have seen what was 
going on, but our leaders lacked the will to change that situation.
  Over and over again, I warned that our policy toward the Taliban 
would come back to hurt us. I was ignored and at times belittled.
  Mr. Speaker, I have an example of 7 times, and of the many, by the 
way, not just 7, not just 14, but many, many more times that I stood 
either on the House floor or in subcommittee warning that if we did not 
do something about the Taliban, that it would come back and 
dramatically hurt the United States of America. These warnings that 
were ignored over and over again, even while the State Department 
stonewalled my efforts to get the information.
  Mr. Speaker, I include these documents for the Record.
  The material referred to is as follows:

       September 9, 1999--IR Committee Hearing: ``I would again 
     alert my fellow members of this committee that what is going 
     on in Afghanistan is as important to America's National 
     security as what is going on in Iran, because we have a 
     terrorist base camp.''
       August 11, 1998--Letter to Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister 
     Pakistan: ``International Terrorists like Osama bin Laden 
     will become the deans of terrorism schools in Afghanistan. 
     For example, the recent bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa 
     are tied to Osama bin Laden and his thugs.''
       May 21, 1998--Letter to Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the 
     House: ``As you may know, Afghanistan has become the world's 
     largest source of heroin. It is also one of the key terrorist 
     training and staging areas in the world. Further, instability 
     in Afghanistan limits the economic and democratic development 
     of Central Asian states and negatively impacts U.S. Policy 
     toward Iran. In short events in Afghanistan affect the lives 
     of more than 200 million people in the Central and South 
     Asian region.''
       August 10, 1998--Letter to Karl Indefurth: ``I have been 
     preparing serious alternatives for Afghan policy for the past 
     six years. I have found no willingness on the part of this 
     administration to even try the alternatives that I have 
     suggested. I have come to the conclusion that our goals are 
     different. But for the time being I will give you the benefit 
     of the doubt. The Stakes go far beyond Afghanistan. There 
     will be no peace in central Asia, or on the subcontinent 
     between India and Pakistan until the U.S. decides that there 
     will be no peace on this region or elsewhere with a policy 
     that is not based on the fundamental principles of 
     representative government and opposition to tyranny.''
       June 29, 2001--IR Committee Hearing: ``This regime has 
     permitted terrorists to use Afghanistan as a base of 
     operations from which their country has been used as a 
     springboard for operations that have cost the lives of people 
     throughout the Middle East, as well as targeted Americans. 
     That alone should giveaways a message about the regime and 
     our commitment and what ultimately should have been done.''
       July 19, 1999--Floor Debate on the American Embassy 
     Security Act of 1999: ``As the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
     Gilman) has stated, among the greatest threats to the 
     security of American diplomatic missions and personnel is by 
     Osama bin Laden and his legion of terrorists who train and 
     operate out of Afghanistan. The primary benefactors of bin 
     Laden's terrorists are elements in Pakistan and the extremist 
     Taliban militia, who not only host and protect bin Laden but 
     have imposed a reign of terror on the people of Afghanistan 
     and especially on the women of Afghanistan.''
       October 30, 2000--Floor Debate on State Department 
     authorization: ``This member and anyone who is in the 
     Committee on International Relations will testify, for years 
     I have been warning what results of this administration's 
     policy towards Afghanistan would be. For years, I predicted 
     over and over again that, unless we did something in 
     Afghanistan to change the situation, that we would end up 
     with Afghanistan as the center of terrorism, a base for 
     terrorism not only in Central Asia but for the world.''
       November 9, 1999--House Floor Debate on Afghanistan: ``A 
     terrorist trained in Afghanistan helped blow up a building 
     which housed our military people in Saudi Arabia. There was 
     an assassination attempt on the Pope. They found out that the 
     terrorist who was going to assassinate the Pope was trained 
     in Afghanistan. We can not let this go on, because not only 
     is it immoral to let this go on, but practically speaking, if 
     we do, it will come back and hurt us.''

  But why were we not warned then? It was clear something was going on 
in Afghanistan. Why were we not warned by others of the horrific attack 
that was about to be launched on us, the American people?
  There was a headline in The Washington Post on September 14 
suggesting that America's intelligence services have been conducting a 
secret war against bin Laden for several years. If that is true, then 
we need to fire all of the incompetent leaders of that covert war, 
because they were responsible for protecting us from this heinous and 
cowardly gang; and they obviously have dramatically failed.
  Instead, there was no warning. Yet, we were told the heads of our 
intelligence organizations were focused on bin Laden. There is a war 
being conducted against bin Laden, we were focused on him, and he was 
able to attack us and slaughter thousands of our people without any 
warning from these people who were supposedly focused on him?
  We spend tens of billions of dollars annually for good intelligence, 
and we have tens of thousands of people committed to this endeavor. And 
they totally missed a terrorist operation of this magnitude run by 
their number one targeted terrorist. This was clearly the worst failure 
of American intelligence in our history.
  I cannot help but remember, in another poignant story, I cannot help 
but remember a few years ago I was called by a friend who had worked in 
Afghanistan during the war against the Russians. This man has thousands 
of friends in Afghanistan because he had been there, and he had helped 
thousands of Afghans who were his friends and looked at him as a 
wonderful person. He had kept in touch with them.
  He indicated to me that he could pinpoint bin Laden's location. I 
passed on his phone number to the CIA. After a week, he had yet to be 
contacted, so I called them again. For another week there was no 
response. When I gave them this man's credentials, I told them, ``This 
is a man who knows about Afghanistan. He has sources that you do not 
have.'' They did not call him for 2 weeks. Another week, no response.
  Finally, I contacted the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), the 
chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence here in the 
Congress. He set up a meeting with me and the bin Laden task force. 
There they were, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI. Guess what? They, too, left 
my friend waiting by his phone and did not follow up.
  After weeks, finally, a second time when the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Goss) had to call them on the carpet, my friend was at last 
contacted. He described the agents who talked to him as being somewhat 
disinterested. That may have been because by the time they got to him, 
over a month had passed and perhaps the tip-off was a little stale. Or 
perhaps, as we are learning in the paper today, or not today but 
yesterday, when there were reports in the paper, that our intelligence 
services knew about the location of bin Laden several times but were 
not permitted to attack him. So there are people in the intelligence 
services that wanted to go forward and did not end and could not 
because of decisions

[[Page H5712]]

made by people higher up, or perhaps in their own agencies, people who 
were incompetent.

                              {time}  1245

  My friends, the slaughter of these thousands of Americans must be 
avenged, there is no doubt about it; and we must see to it that such a 
monstrous crime can never happen again. To accomplish this, we must be 
strong and we must be smart. Now, we do not need our troops, the worst 
thing we could do is just try to send an army into Afghanistan. If 
there are two rules of modern warfare it is you do not march on Moscow 
and you do not invade Afghanistan. That does not mean, however, that we 
cannot commit military action. I think this calls for military action.
  We should already be dispatching special forces teams and rangers to 
those countries on the northern border of Afghanistan. Those teams and 
other military units should establish a system of supply and equip 
those Afghans friendly to the United States so that they can free 
themselves, with our help, from Taliban rule. We can then join them. 
Once Taliban rule has been eliminated in Afghanistan, we can join them 
in hunting down and killing every member of bin Laden's terrorist gang 
and hanging their bodies from the gate.
  But revenge is not an end in itself. We cannot permit ourselves to 
strike out blindly, to hurt people who have nothing to do with this. 
Some people have said, oh, let us bomb Kabul. Kabul is filled with 
people who hate the Taliban. Afghanistan is filled with people who hate 
the Taliban. We cannot make enemies out of people who will be our 
allies.
  We must be smart and not just strong. Revenge in itself is not the 
answer, even though revenge is called for. By killing bin Laden and his 
gang, it is not just revenge; it is an act also of deterrence, of 
saving lives. We must keep in mind that our motive is to prevent 
further terrorist attacks slaughtering our own citizens, and especially 
by making sure we work with other people in the Muslim world and 
elsewhere who will join us in this effort, and not just the Muslim 
world and not just others who are on the periphery.
  We need to lead this world, as our President, George W. Bush, is 
doing, to set a new moral standard. We have to keep to that moral 
standard as we proceed to seek justice and vengeance for the death of 
our people. That new moral standard has got to be that noncombatants 
will not be attacked. We will not kill unarmed innocent people in order 
to achieve a political objective.
  Now, when people attack other people's military, as the Japanese did 
in the beginning of World War II, that was an act of war; it was not an 
act of terrorism. Yes, people can commit acts of war; but let us set a 
standard, a moral standard that we will proceed and demand and enforce 
that no longer will anyone be able to set a bomb off in a pizza place 
or retaliation will not take place against unarmed civilians, no matter 
what that crime was. And there are legitimate concerns in the Middle 
East by all sides that both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli battle 
have over the time of this conflict attacked unarmed people or 
retaliated against unarmed people when someone else's unarmed people 
were attacked.
  The new standard should be for this world that we will not tolerate 
women and children be used as targets or unarmed combatants being used 
for targets for any reason. First, our dead Americans, yes, they will 
be avenged; but they will be avenged by establishing this new standard. 
Hopefully, that will deter at least some of those swine who contemplate 
such attacks in the future. And by affirming that the targeting of 
unarmed combatants anywhere in the world for whatever reason will not 
be tolerated, we have taken a major step forward.
  We will be building a better world even if it is being built on the 
ashes of this tragedy. We will do it by seeing to it that the bin 
Ladens of this planet are never again, which is a corollary to this, 
those people who are committing such terrorist attacks against unarmed 
people, nowhere will they be given safe haven. And any country that 
provides safe haven for the terrorists who target these innocents, that 
will not be tolerated; and they will be held responsible for the 
terrorist acts that are being committed by people who use their country 
as a staging area. And those countries which harbor the criminals, 
those countries which help them launder their money, those countries 
that give them support, they themselves will pay a heavy price for this 
criminal disregard for the victims of terrorism. There will and must be 
an accounting across the board.
  At home, those top government executives whose policies protected the 
Taliban must be held accountable. Those people who stonewalled the 
Congress' efforts to get that information of what our policy was; those 
officials who in the Taliban were vulnerable convinced their enemies 
not to attack. The intelligence officers who were supposed to be 
protecting us, those people in the State Department who should have 
been adhering to America's moral and ethical and political standards 
and supporting those opposed to the Taliban rather than acquiescing to 
leaving the Taliban in power because of the argument of stability, 
those State Department people, those intelligence officers, these are 
executives, are not political appointees. These are top-level 
executives who have been there for years. They need to be cleared out. 
They need to be held responsible for the slaughter of thousands of 
Americans without any warning.
  We had no warning here in Washington, D.C. at all. They could have 
destroyed this Capitol building. We had no warning. With a massive 
operation like this, and we had no warning. It is incompetence on our 
side. We have to do that; we have to correct this in order to make sure 
it does not happen again. All of this pounding of our chests and 
expressing our moral outrage means nothing unless we are willing to 
take that type of action. And it is not easy telling someone, I am 
sorry you're out of your job because you were incompetent.
  Those countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, they have a 
price to pay. We will figure out what it is. First and foremost they 
have to do a reversal on what they are doing to protect the Taliban and 
protect the terrorists right now. And we will figure out what they have 
to do to make up for what they have done that led to this crime.
  And, finally, the murdering terrorists themselves will pay the 
ultimate price. They will pay this price. We will have victory over 
those ghouls who murdered our defenseless fellow Americans. We will 
win, because we are united as never before, and because this generation 
of Americans, as these terrorists will find out, have the courage, the 
tenacity, and the ideals that have always been America's greatest 
source of strength.
  It is up to us to do this. Past generations of Americans met the 
challenge. They saved the world time and again. It is up to us to do it 
again, and we will. We will do it because it is our duty and nothing 
will deter us.

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