[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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