[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 72 (Wednesday, June 5, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H3205-H3206]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             AMERICA SHOULD NOT INSTIGATE WAR AGAINST IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, ever since the Gulf War ended in 1991, the 
U.S. has been spending about $4 million a day enforcing a no-flight 
zone in Iraq, $4 million a day. This has been a tremendous waste of 
money and manpower.
  I believe almost all Americans would have preferred that this 12 or 
$13 billion that has been spent over these years would have been spent 
in almost any other good way. Most Americans have not even noticed that 
we have been dropping bombs and still shooting at missile sites all 
these years in Iraq. I remember reading a front page lengthy story 
about a group of Iraqi boys we accidentally killed there.
  Now there are some people here in Washington who seem to be clamoring 
for us to go to war against Iraq. I represent a very patriotic pro-
military district in Tennessee. My people will strongly support our 
troops if we go to

[[Page H3206]]

war. But I can assure you that as I go around my district I hear no 
clamor or even a weak desire to go to war against Iraq.
  Saudi Arabia had much more to do with the September 11 tragedies than 
Iraq did. I heard yesterday that one of the main financial backers of 
the terrorists is from Kuwait. Yet we are not talking about going to 
war against Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, nor should we. We have been too 
quick to get involved in ethnic or religious disputes around the world. 
We have been too quick to drop bombs on people who want to be our 
friends. We turned NATO from a defensive organization into an offensive 
one in Bosnia.
  Chris Matthews on ``Hard Ball'' the other night said, ``In the past 
we always had the world on our side because we did not go to war unless 
we were attacked.''
  He strongly questioned this eagerness to go to war against Iraq. He 
said in a recent column that the American people are being ``herded 
into war.'' A war that he says will just lead to more hatred of the 
U.S.
  David Ignatius, the nationally syndicated columnist for the New York 
Herald Tribune and The Washington Post wrote on March 15: ``How can the 
United States sell a war against Iraq to skeptical Arabs and Europeans? 
A good start would be to level with them and admit there is no solid 
evidence linking Baghdad to Osama bin Laden's terrorists attacks 
against America.''
  The Joint Chiefs of Staff have questioned this eagerness to go to war 
against Iraq. Yesterday, William Raspberry, the very highly respected 
columnist for The Washington Post, in a nationally syndicated column 
repeated words he had written a dozen years ago. He wrote: ``The 
prospect of a bloody war with no price worth the tens of thousands of 
American lives it would cost can make you a little nervous. I am 
getting a little nervous. It is not that I doubt the ability of 
America's fighting forces to take out a third-rate power like Saddam 
Hussein's Iraq. My doubts concern the purpose for doing so. Saddam is 
being described as a ruthless and power-mad tyrant bent on achieving 
political control of the Arab world. I do not question the description, 
but it does seem to me that most of the current saber rattling is 
coming from Washington, not Bagdad.'' And Mr. Raspberry continued: ``I 
wrote those words a dozen years back when the first President Bush was 
contemplating the invasion of Iraq. Why are we rattling sabers now? The 
reason I recall my earlier doubts is that they are so much a carbon 
copy of my present ones.'' Mr. Raspberry says: ``Maybe it was a mistake 
not to wipe out the last scrap of Iraq's military power back then, not 
to mow down the surrendering republican guard like shooting fish in a 
barrel. But surely the failure to do so then cannot justify a 
unilateral attack now.''
  Mr. Raspberry said: ``We should not become the playground bully of 
the word.'' In 1990, Saddam Hussein, who I am not praising or defending 
in any way, had invaded Kuwait and was threatening to go further.
  We had to act and I voted for the original Gulf War. However, we 
later found out the Iraqi military strength had been greatly 
exaggerated. The so-called ``elite'' Praetorian Guards were 
surrendering to CNN camera crews or anybody who would take them. 
Hussein has been greatly weakened since then in almost every way. Let 
us not exaggerate his strength this time. If he starts to attack us, I 
will be the first to support a war effort, but please let us not 
provoke war. Let us not change the name of the Department of Defense 
into the War Department once again. We should not try to be the 
policemen of the world. We should try as hard as we can to reestablish 
our reputation as the most peace-loving Nation on the face of the 
Earth.

                          ____________________