[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 114 (Wednesday, September 11, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H6208-H6213]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COMMEMORATING 9-11
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without prejudice to the resumption of
legislative business, 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, today America is reflecting on the
events of 9-11, as we should; and it is a time to remember. It is a
time to remember those who lost their lives and to remember those, like
the firemen and the police, who gave their lives trying to save others.
It is a time for rage, as we have heard, and a time for reflection, a
time for pride and a time for anger. What it is not, however, is a time
for mourning. That time is over.
Today, I join with all of those who solemnly commemorate this
anniversary. Heartfelt commemoration, I suggest, is not enough. We must
consider not just what happened a year ago, as we have been hearing for
the last hour; but instead we must find and discover and talk about and
we must make determinations about why 9-11 happened.
As a Nation, we are now engaged in a historic global conflict with a
vile enemy who slaughters innocent people by the thousands and then
makes sanctimonious references to God. Talk about blasphemy. I do not
know if bin Laden is dead or alive; but I do know that when he dies he
will burn in hell, and it is our job to get him there as quickly as
possible.
Our President laid down a battle plan that brought the liberation of
Afghanistan and will soon rid the world of threats like that of Saddam
Hussein. This is a result of 9-11 one year ago, but it did not start
one year ago.
The first order of business is for us to recognize that the murderous
attack on us in New York and at the Pentagon was not an act of God, nor
was it a natural phenomenon. It did not just happen; nor, let me add,
was it just a case of bad luck.
The slaughter of our fellow citizens need not have happened. It was
something that would not have happened had certain people done things
differently, had certain government policies been different, had
certain Federal agencies and Departments been given different marching
orders. In short, 9-11 need not have happened, and it is imperative
that the American people look closely at the policies, the systems, and
yes, the people which led to 9-11 to ensure that something like this
never happens again.
What policies am I talking about? Let us start with the fundamentals
or, if you will, the fundamentalists. Of the 19 hijackers on 9-11, 16
were Saudis or held Saudi passports. America's relationship with Saudi
Arabia is complex but not as unfathomable as some would have us
believe.
In the Cold War, we worked closely with the Saudi royal family; and
to be fair, they were our loyal allies. They helped us finance anti-
Communist projects that were of immense importance to our national
security in the days when the Soviet Union was spending billions of
dollars to bury us. Saudi help was vital on a number of fronts so there
was reason for us then to be grateful; and, yes, there is reason today
for us to be grateful.
What they did to help us in the past, however, does not excuse what
they are doing today that threatens us. Times have changed, and
dramatically so. If our policy towards Saudi Arabia does not change
significantly, there will be a heavy price to pay in the future, if we
have not already paid enough.
Relying on low oil prices and on Saudi largesse for special Cold War
projects left us dependent upon them, and who is them, who are we
talking about? We are talking about the royal family, the royal family
of Saudi Arabia that is autocratic and over the years has become fat
and incompetent and in many ways cowardly. However, again, they helped
us defeat an enemy intent on destroying us, Communism. So we paid
special attention to the Saudis.
[[Page H6209]]
Instead of pushing for democratic reform and human rights, we let the
Saudis, and because of their influence much of the Muslim world in
general, we let them off the hook in our push for democracy and human
rights.
In the short term, it makes sense. In the long term, it has had a
dramatically bad impact, negative impact. Young people in that part of
the world have suffered under despots and crooks; yet we Americans in
that part of the world continually talk about stability, when what we
should be pushing for is democratic reform and the opening of closed
societies.
Entrenched regimes, royal and secular, have been brutal and corrupt.
Is it any wonder that young people in a large chunk of the world turn
to Islamic fundamentalism as their idealistic alternative? In their
corrupt world, radical Muslims have been the only ones offering a
morally based alternative, but radical Islam is not a positive force.
It is tyrannical, arrogant and malevolent.
Right here we should note that most forms of religious extremism are
equally reprehensible and that radical Islam should not be singled out.
Although limited to a few loud voices, a drumbeat started right at
September 11 to paint all Muslims as the enemy of the United States and
of the West. That drumbeat started the moment those planes hit the
World Trade towers; but thanks to our wise President, we did not
succumb to a strategy of hate.
bin Laden wanted us to retaliate against Muslims in general, which
would have polarized hundreds of millions of people against us, many of
whom would have ended up supporting bin Laden and his terrorists as
their saviors. As I say, we did not fall into that trap.
By the way, just to put things in perspective, in the decade leading
up to 9-11, Muslim people saw their fellow Muslims being ethnically
cleansed, raped and murdered in Bosnia by thugs calling themselves
Christians. They saw their fellow Muslims repressed and murdered by the
tens of thousands in Kashmir by people who called themselves Hindus and
cut down in the Middle East by the Israeli Army. Hundreds of thousands
of non-combatant Muslims have lost their lives due to the actions of
governments controlled by people of other faiths. So from their
perspective, Islamic people are no more terrorists than others.
In the West, all we see is the frightening picture of planes flying
into buildings and suicide bombers blowing up Pizza Huts in Israel. So
the first policy we need to change is that which has us tolerating
dictatorship and corrupt governments in Muslim countries in order to
maintain stability. Working with Russia, which is now our friend and
trying to build a democratic society, let us break our dependency on
oil from unfriendly and democratic and undemocratic anti-Western
governments. Let us seek out reformers in the Arab and Muslim world.
Let us demand free elections and freedom of speech and press as well as
religious tolerance in those Muslim countries.
Back to Saudi Arabia. Over the last 2 decades, the Saudi
establishment has dealt with the rise of their homegrown religious
extremists by ignoring them, giving them a free hand overseas and by
sending them to Afghanistan.
{time} 1530
Their extremists are called Wahabis. Those folks are on the outer
limits of Islam. They are the ones who insist that women must cover
themselves from head to foot. Now, that is okay if women voluntarily
accept this religious mandate. Instead, however, the Wahabis act as if
they have the right to control everybody, even those who do not accept
their particular view, claiming to have an infallible insight about the
wishes of God. They beat women with sticks if so much as their ankles
are showing. They feel free to commit violence against people of other
faiths and to prevent anyone with a different belief in God, even other
Muslims, from worshipping and living their lives as they see fit.
This is the most radical of all Muslim sects. Instead of standing up
to this religious gangsterism, the Saudi royal family allowed them to
establish their base of operations in Saudi Arabia and to export Wahabi
radicalism throughout the world, with the help, of course, of billions
of petrol dollars.
One of the places not just influenced but under the control of the
Wahabis was Afghanistan. The Taliban was not an indigenous religious
sect of Afghanistan. That is the mistake so many people make. They
represented a transplanted Wahabism. Transplanted from? Where else.
Saudi Arabia.
These crazies did not represent the character and/or the values of
the Afghan people. The Afghan people are devout in their faith but they
are not fanatic. They pray and are grateful to God, but they do not
feel compelled to have everyone else pray, much less feel compelled to
compel that everyone else pray just like they pray.
I have seen this tolerance firsthand, even in the most desolate
regions of that distant land. Years ago, 14 or 15 years ago, actually,
I was in Afghanistan with a mujahedin unit, the mujahedin being the
fighters against the Soviet occupation. During long treks across the
desert, the small group of mujahedin fighters I was with would stop and
pray five times a day. They would get on their knees and they would
pray, and they would thank God for everything that they had. I might
add that they had little. We did not even have a good clean glass of
water, much less the provisions of food that could keep people healthy.
Yet these people were grateful for everything.
It caused me reason to pause to think that here in the United States
we have so much and how rarely people think about how grateful they
should be for what we have. But here were these people, under attack by
the Soviets, on their knees praying. But there were many other people
in the surrounding area and with our group. About half of them were not
part of the praying during those prayer sessions. They stood there.
What impressed me is that those who were praying felt perfectly
comfortable. They were fulfilling their obligations to God but did not
feel threatened by these others who were not praying and who were not
compelled to participate. That was the essence of the Afghans. Grateful
to God, devoted to God, but not fanatics who were trying to suppress
other people into some sort of religious dictatorship.
The Taliban in Afghanistan, of course, was totally different than the
type of attitude I am talking about. And it was not a result of the
susceptibility of the people to the Taliban's form of Islam as much as
it was a result, meaning the Taliban's ascension to power, was not a
result of what is naturally in the Afghan people's hearts, but instead,
I believe, the result of a deal between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and,
unfortunately, the United States.
It, of course, goes back to the Cold War, when the United States was
helping the Afghan freedom fighters in their struggle against the
Soviet army that occupied their country. The Saudis were helping, too.
Now we helped, and we can be proud of that. The Saudis were also
helping, but as I discovered, it was not quite that simple.
As I was hiking through Afghanistan with that mujahedin unit heading
towards the battle of Jalalabad, which was one of the last battles the
Soviets participated in in Afghanistan, we came across an encampment of
white tents. These were very expensive tents. There were off-road
vehicles there. The people were well fed, well clothed. And I was told
by my mujahedin fellow freedom fighters to keep my mouth shut and to
speak no English because this was an encampment of a crazy psychopathic
killer, a Saudi named bin Laden, and bin Laden would kill all of us if
he knew there was an American with the group because he hated America
as much as he hated the Communists.
And much of the support that the Saudis gave to the Afghan freedom
fighters was right there. It was actually bin Laden and his group there
fighting against the Russians. And that was their contribution to
Afghanistan in the fight against the Soviets.
Well, after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, after the
mujahedin victory, instead of helping these people rebuild their
country, and we can be proud we helped them fight off the Soviets with
giving them the weapon systems they needed, but we did not help them at
that point rebuild their country. In fact, America simply walked
[[Page H6210]]
away and let them sleep in the rubble. We did not even help them dig up
the land mines that we had given them to defeat the Soviet army. And so
little young kids, little kids from Afghanistan have been blowing off
their legs ever since. And they cannot even treat their young people
because they do not have the medicines to do so because we have not
been there to help.
There was an agreement, however, as we left. It was probably not a
formal agreement; probably just an understanding to let Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan oversee that region. So we walked away from Afghanistan
and the entire region. Instead of insisting on a government that
reflected the will and values of the Afghan people, we left them in the
hands of the Saudis and the Pakistanis.
For several years, there was chaos and fighting. Not as bad as
before, but there was fighting that continued, and the Saudis then
unleashed their ace in the hole. We had left, but the Saudis had been
preparing for this eventuality. The term Taliban means student and
refers to those who spent most of the war against Soviet occupation not
fighting the Russians. That was a whole different group of guys. That
was the mujahedin. No, the Taliban were in schools, so-called religious
schools, in Pakistan. Later, they emerged from these schools seemingly
out of nowhere, but in fact trained, armed and financed by Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan.
Within 6 months, they had conquered over two-thirds of the country,
including Kabul, the capital city. But just as it was in Orwell's
Animal Farm, vicious dogs were surreptitiously nurtured and then
suddenly unleashed to do the bidding of pigs.
Just a reminder: Many pundits fail to understand the difference
between the mujahedin and the Taliban. The former fought the war
against Soviet occupation troops. That was the mujahedin. The latter,
the Taliban, arrived on the scene much later. And in the end, the same
mujahedin who helped defeat the Soviets were our allies in this last
year in driving the Taliban out of power. The mujahedin, the good
people of Afghanistan, have stood with us twice. Let us pledge that we
will not walk away from them again. Let us help them rebuild their
country.
Let the record show that I had spent a year trying to prevent the
Taliban from coming to power at that time. My goal right after the end
of the war with the Soviets was to try to bring the old King Zahir Shah
back from his exile in Rome. Zahir Shah was one of the most beloved and
pro-western of his people. He was anxious to serve as a transition
leader that would lead his country to a new political system that was
based on democratic elections; on ballots instead of bullets. As I say,
he was an honest, kind man, with a good heart, and respected by all the
people of Afghanistan.
Instead, the king was pushed aside, or should I say he was kept on
the sidelines. And I might add that our own State Department played a
major role in ensuring that this positive alternative did not come to
power. Instead, the Taliban assumed power with the acquiescence if not
the support of the Clinton administration. Knowing there was nothing
more I could do, I hoped for the best. I tried my best to try to
prevent the Taliban from getting into power. Now they were there, our
government seemed to be going along with it, so all I could do is sort
of hope for the best.
However, within a month or so, the tyrannical ways of these religious
kooks made it clear to me and to everyone that they had to go. Yes, it
was clear to me, but I take that back, it was not clear to everyone,
because the Clinton administration could never seem to come to that
conclusion, that the Taliban had to go. In understanding who should be
accountable for 9-11, we must understand that the State Department,
under President Clinton, was never anti-Taliban. Our State Department,
probably under the President's direction, undermined those efforts
aimed at undermining the Taliban. So those of us who were anti-Taliban
found ourselves the target of the State Department rather than having
the State Department target the Taliban for their misdeeds.
In several personal instances I was involved with helping obtain
medical and humanitarian support for people in the areas of Afghanistan
that was not yet under Taliban control. I was thwarted by our own
government. I was thwarted by our own State Department. NGOs with aid
for Afghans who were in areas that were controlled by the Taliban, on
the other hand, had no trouble with our government. They had some other
troubles that, of course, the Taliban gave them themselves, but our
government was perfectly happy to have NGOs operating in Taliban-
controlled areas but stopping people like myself who were trying to
help those people in areas that were opposed to the Taliban.
In mid 1988, however, even with this tacit support from the Clinton
administration, the Taliban were incredibly vulnerable. They had
overextended themselves in an invasion of the northern part of
Afghanistan, and many of their best, if not most of their best,
fighters were captured, along with huge amounts of war supplies. The
road to Kabul was open. And who interceded to prevent the collapse of
the Taliban at this pivotal moment? Who pulled their chestnuts out of
the fire? President Clinton, personally.
At this moment of maximum Taliban vulnerability, the White House
dispatched Assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth and Bill
Richardson, then our United Nations ambassador. They flew to northern
Afghanistan and convinced the anti-Taliban forces not to attack and not
to retake Kabul, but, instead, to accept a cease-fire and an arms
embargo.
This is at the moment, and I cannot stress this more forcefully, it
was at a pivotal moment. The Taliban could easily have been defeated.
The Northern Alliance was willing to accept a return of King Zahir Shah
to lead a transition government. Instead, under the direction of the
Clinton White House, these two top U.S. Government officials, Assistant
Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson,
arrived on the scene to convince the anti-Taliban forces to stand back.
And we thus saved this fanatical, anti-western regime from being
destroyed and being defeated.
This later led to a dramatic defeat of the anti-Taliban forces. The
cease-fire lasted only long enough for the Saudis and the Pakistanis to
fully rearm the Taliban. And the arms embargo that Bill Richardson and
Rick Inderfurth talked about, was only effective against the anti-
Taliban forces, which are the people called the Northern Alliance.
Think about that. We talked them into a cease-fire, which lasted only
long enough for the Taliban to rearm. We talked them into an arms
embargo, which was only an arms embargo against them.
Again, this was one of the major turning points that led to 9-11.
Later, the Taliban, with their supplies replenished, went on the
offensive and turned their country into a staging area for terrorism.
So the Taliban ended up, with the Clinton administration's somewhat
blessings, of taking over all but a sliver of Afghanistan. That
portion, of course, that little sliver, was under the command of
Commander Massoud, who stood alone in the Panjir Valley, a hero against
the war on the Soviets. Now he was all that was left to resist the
tyranny of the Taliban.
{time} 1545
This is where bin Laden makes his official entrance. Behind the
scenes, his foreigners, his radicals, had been there and been the
Taliban shock troops for a long time. They murdered anyone and everyone
who got in the way and ran roughshod over people all over Afghanistan.
bin Laden had already declared war on the United States, and had
already killed military personnel and bombed U.S. embassies. The
Taliban permitted them to use their country as a base of operations.
Yes, the Clinton administration repeatedly demanded that bin Laden be
given up or at least kicked out of Afghanistan. Yet there they were
using all of these words making demands, yet they never seemed to care
enough to help Massoud or help any of the others who wanted to resist
the Taliban.
So what was the Taliban leadership to think? Well, of course they
thought that the United States Government really did not mean what it
was saying. They believed it was simply posturing for domestic
political consideration. This is like when the Clinton administration
went to China and demanded human rights reform and then never
[[Page H6211]]
put any type of force behind that demand.
So our government made it clear to the Taliban by our inaction to
support anyone who was opposing the Taliban that our demands on them
actually were just made for public consumption here, and that we were
actually more concerned with our deal, whatever that deal was, with
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and that we were more concerned with that
than anything going on within Afghanistan, including bin Laden. Why
would the tough guys in the Taliban think that we cared about human
rights abuses, about their treating women like cattle, about their
harboring of terrorists like bin Laden, and about their rejection of
even a consideration of free elections of any kind when we were not
doing anything about it? We did not, as I say, support Massoud; and, in
fact, when several of us tried to help those resisting the Taliban, it
was our government, the State Department, that got in our way.
Let us be fair about it. If that is the impression the Taliban got,
we should admit it. Our government at that time was not serious about
democracy, human rights and such in Afghanistan. We were not serious
about their form of government or even their harboring of bin Laden
because our government in that administration did nothing.
What all this means is that if we stray too far from our basic
principles as a country, it is going to end up hurting us. If we stray
too far from the fundamental principles that make us Americans, a love
of liberty and justice, a belief in the democratic procedures to guide
men, and permit people to guide their own destinies and secure their
own destinies through election processes, if we ignore these
principles, it will come back to hurt the United States of America.
Over the years, I complained over and over again; and I will submit
for the record quotes of mine that warned America that we must act
against the Taliban. I did this for years.
Well, obviously there was another policy. I am just a lone
Congressman. I do not make policy. I try to influence policymakers. But
my warnings, repeated warnings, were not heeded.
Well, who was responsible for the policies that left the Taliban free
from domestic rivals, the policy that left them free from outside
opposition, that left them free from the pressure to democratize and
respect human rights? Who was responsible for these policies? How about
Madeleine Albright? How about President Clinton? They could not get
themselves to endorse any meaningful action against the Taliban even
after we had been attacked in Saudi Arabia, blowing up our military
bases there, our military installations, our living quarters there, or
the blowing up of U.S. embassies in Africa.
Furthermore, there is ample evidence that in the last administration
they passed up promising opportunities to take out bin Laden. I, for
example, several years ago during the Clinton administration contacted
the CIA to let them know that I had an informant who knew exactly where
bin Laden was, that he was out of Afghanistan, and that he was willing
to pinpoint bin Laden for them. I gave them my contact's phone number.
They never called. After a week, I called my friend back and said, Did
the CIA get with you? No.
I went to the CIA again and explained that this person had impeccable
credentials of knowing what was going on in Afghanistan. They would get
to him, but they did not. A week later they still had not called. Then
I went and complained to the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), whom I respect;
and I told him what happened.
The next day he had a meeting in this building with representatives
of the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI. It was the bin Laden task force. I
told them what had happened and that my friend could pinpoint bin
Laden, and that he had been ignored for 2 weeks. They would get to it.
Guess what, a week later my friend still had not been contacted. By
then the trail was cold. But when I went to the gentleman from Florida
(Mr. Goss), it got action and my friend was called. He said it was a
lackadaisical call. It looked like it was a pro forma call.
Does that sound like an administration committed to getting bin
Laden? No. Let the record show there were numerous opportunities to get
bin Laden and not one was exploited. The government of Sudan tried to
give the U.S. a complete file on bin Laden and his whole gang.
Madeleine Albright personally turned that down.
I know of a situation at the Defense Intelligence Agency where a
young analyst felt there was a lack of information about Afghanistan
and that lack of information was threatening to our national security.
She wanted to get the information. She wanted to go up to Massoud's
territory and find out what was going on because we did not know what
was happening in Afghanistan. She was denied, and she had the gall on
her own time, on her own vacation time, to go there to Massoud's
stronghold to try to get that information. I think someone like that
should get a medal. Instead, she was fired.
I personally asked the general who then headed up the DIA not to fire
her. She got the ax anyway. By the way, there is no indication that the
DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, warned anybody about the attack
on 9-11, even though the murder of Commander Massoud 2 days prior to
the attack in New York should have set off alarm bells. Of course they
had fired the one person who was conscientious about Afghanistan. They
had fired that person for being too conscientious, over the objection
of a Member of Congress who pleaded that that was the type of
responsible behavior we needed.
I say this because the death of Commander Massoud had a special
significance to me. I had known Commander Massoud for many years, even
before I went to Afghanistan in 1988. During my time in the White
House, he sent his brother to me; and we continued a communication
through third parties over the years. He was a man I deeply respected.
He was a hero; not to say he did not make mistakes. Certainly he made
mistakes, and he did some things wrong. But over years of fighting,
everybody makes mistakes. But Massoud was a hero. He was a giant of a
man.
Mr. Speaker, 2 days before they attacked us, they murdered Massoud.
It took the wind right out of my lungs. I had been to his stronghold 5
years before. I visited him in the mountains of Afghanistan. Our
friendship was close, and I respected him. We worked out an agreement
to have King Zahir Shah return and that Massoud would support that if
the King would lead a transition government and have honest elections 2
years later. He was willing to support that, and then the Taliban
killed him.
After I had gotten myself together after his death, I knew that it
must be because they are going to attack the United States. That is why
the Taliban killed him, so we could not have anyone to turn to, to
rally behind in our counterattack. So the next day I called the White
House. I asked to speak to Condoleezza Rice, and I wanted a meeting
with her and the National Security Council because there was an attack
that would soon befall the United States of America.
They got back to me, and said, Congressman, we take your opinions on
Afghanistan and elsewhere very seriously, but we are very busy. Can you
come tomorrow? The earliest we can fit you in is 2:00 tomorrow. I woke
up on 9-11 expecting to have a meeting with Condoleezza Rice and the
National Security Council at the White House to warn them that there
was an imminent attack planned on the United States and to take
seriously any possible threat that they saw. Unfortunately, at 8:45,
the planes began crashing into the buildings in New York.
So here we are. One year ago our country was blind-sided, attacked
without warning, resulting in the slaughter of 3,000 Americans. As I
have just discussed, this represents a failure of policy and a failure
of the people behind that policy, primarily those in the Clinton
administration, not because of politics, but because they happen to be
there at the time. Who knows if it would have been a Republican
administration. It was George Bush who walked away originally and left
the Pakistanis and the Saudis in charge of that region. But it was
during the Clinton administration that the Taliban took over,
consolidated their power in Afghanistan, and turned that country into a
base of operations for anti-American terrorists. The American response
is undermining those who oppose the Taliban.
[[Page H6212]]
This leads me to my conclusion that our policy was part of an
agreement with the Saudis and the Pakistanis to keep the Taliban in
power. The attack, however, reflects more than a failure of policy. It
reflects more than just that policy. The attack which was carried out
by a terrorist organization, a terrorist organization that we had been
told over and over again was the number one target of U.S.
intelligence, that organization, the number one target of U.S.
intelligence, was able to launch an attack of this scope and of this
magnitude requiring millions of dollars and the coordination of
hundreds of people against the United States. The number one target of
U.S. intelligence was able to slaughter 3,000 Americans, to blind-side
us. This represents a catastrophic failure of America's intelligence
system; it is a failure of the DIA, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and the
rest of the intelligence alphabet soup here in Washington, D.C.
We spend tens of billions of dollars every year, and the number one
target of American intelligence is able to organize and pull off an
operation of this scale. The magnitude of the screw-up boggles my mind.
Now we know there were warnings. The BBC is reporting that just 2
months before 9-11, the foreign minister of the Taliban was so upset
about the terrorist plot that he had heard of that he sent an emissary
to an American consulate in nearby Pakistan to warn the United States
of a pending attack.
{time} 1600
But no one listened to him. Then we know of FBI field agents who were
pleading that attention be paid to the terrorist ties of certain
students who were being trained to fly airplanes. These FBI agents were
chastised for going around channels. They had to go through channels,
but they were so concerned that the people in front of them were not
acting, they tried to get the attention of Washington but were
chastised for not going through channels and they were ignored. The
list of failures goes on and on.
I will just say that on 9-11, that something like that happened to me
indicates the type of mindset we are dealing with, even after the
attack. On 9-11, when the planes had already crashed into the
buildings, I realized, everyone realized it was an attack from
Afghanistan, based on the terrorists based in Afghanistan, and I called
the king of Afghanistan. I wanted to know if there was anyone there
protecting him.
``Do you have any police there protecting you?''
``No.''
``Are there any police outside your door?'' Remember, the king of
Afghanistan is in Rome, exiled in Rome. ``Are there any policemen
outside your door?''
``No, there aren't.''
``Are there any people inside your compound with you protecting
you?''
``No.''
I said, ``Is there anyone there with a gun to protect you?''
He said no.
I said, oh, my gosh, our number one asset, the one man who the people
of Afghanistan could rally behind now that they have killed Massoud,
only the king, Zahir Shah, was someone we could rally the people behind
to counterattack against the Taliban, and he was hanging out there in
the wind. He was totally exposed.
So I talked to someone, a very high official in one of our
intelligence agencies. I told him, and he said he realized the
importance of Zahir Shah and he was totally exposed, and he was
vulnerable. And, guess what? Five hours later I happened to talk to
that same high level official again. I can tell you when I asked him
about, well, Zahir Shah, is he under guard now, his response to me was,
``You don't expect us to act that fast, do you?''
Give me a break. Of course we expect our people to act that fast. You
are within a phone call's distance of the Marine guards who guard our
embassy in Rome. Our ambassador, or whoever was there, could have gone
over and picked up the king or sent Marines over to protect him, or the
agency has people in Rome, et cetera, et cetera.
Instead, 5 hours later, after 3,000 of our people, at that time we
thought it was 20,000 people had been slaughtered, but you do not
expect us to act that fast, do you?
The people in our intelligence community are, by and large, fine and
dedicated people. I will tell you that right now. I respect them, but
those individuals who may have my respect as people of good hearts and
are patriots, they are now part of a bureaucratic behemoth.
We are relying on what has become organizationally incompetent, a
system in which individuals get fired for showing initiative, like that
young analyst at the DIA, or they get reprimanded, like those FBI field
agents, for begging attention on some pressing threat.
We need to reform the system and make it better. To do so we need to
hold those accountable who made errors and to change the structure and
mindset. Most importantly, we need to change the structure and the
mindset of our intelligence organizations. We cannot let the cloak of
secrecy be used to shield the consequences of failure and incompetence.
For that reason I voted for an investigation of 9-11, not just that
it be done by our Congressional oversight committees. And I have great
respect for those leading those committees and members of those
committees, but I believe that it should be also the responsibility of
an independent commission on the level of the Warren Commission and
perhaps the commission we established after Pearl Harbor to get all the
facts about this historical failure of U.S. intelligence.
Let me stress again that I have tremendous respect for and trust for
the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) and the others in the Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence here in the House, but a redundancy
like we are calling for with an independent commission looking into the
problem as well cannot in any way hurt. An independent commission could
do nothing but contribute to the understanding of the idea pool that is
needed to reform and to fix the system.
This anniversary is with us today. We must commit ourselves to see
that such surprise attacks will never again be successfully launched
against the United States. We will accomplish this by making the
changes in policy and the changes in personnel that are needed to keep
our country secure.
We must change the way we deal with Saudi Arabia. We must evaluate
how we dealt with Afghanistan and admit that it was horrendously wrong.
The people behind those policies, especially those people who are still
in influential positions in the State Department and elsewhere, must
understand that they bear a significant share of the responsibility for
the death and destruction that fell on America one year ago today.
The arrogant so-called experts, for example, who shoved aside exiled
King Zahir Shah for years, they shoved him aside for two decades,
claiming that he was too old to play a positive role in bringing about
a better Afghanistan and peace in Afghanistan. They were so absolutely
wrong. People in the State Department should find out who it was who
pushed this idea that the Zahir Shah could not participate, and those
people should be talked to, and those people should look in the mirror
and think very seriously about what they did to contribute to this loss
of American life.
In essence, they kept the Taliban in power, because they prevented us
from getting behind a positive alternative, whether it was Massoud or
the others fighting the Taliban, or whether it was Zahir Shah. In
essence, they kept the Taliban in power until 3,000 Americans were
slaughtered by an attack that was launched from Taliban-controlled
territory.
We were attacked a year ago today, and over these last 12 months our
military has been able to launch a counterattack that has dislodged the
Taliban and sent them, along with their terrorist allies, the al Qaeda,
running for cover and running to hide their heads.
Our military has done a tremendous job. They did this in a landlocked
country halfway around the world. This has been a magnificent victory
for our country and for its military. To the degree that we sort of
have questions about the need to restructure our intelligence system,
we need to praise our military and make sure that we build upon the
success of our military. They need certain amounts of changes, too,
[[Page H6213]]
but we need to do that with the military. We can see the positive
things they have done and build upon that.
This has been a magnificent victory. If bin Laden is alive today, he
is in hiding and he is spending all of his hours not trying to launch
some attack on us, but instead he is spending his time trying not to be
captured. He could be spending his time mapping out attacks on the
United States. Instead, thanks to the expertise and bravery and courage
and great job our military has done, we have bin Laden and his likes in
hiding, looking over their shoulders, freezing their assets, not able
to launch another attack of the magnitude that we suffered one year ago
today.
We have accomplished all of this, a tremendous accomplishment in a
country on the other side of the world, landlocked. We did this with
fewer than 50 American combat deaths. We dislodged the Taliban
government from power, we destroyed the regime, we dislodged the
terrorists, all with fewer than 50 American combat deaths.
Yes, there have been some mistakes, and in every combat situation
there are. If accidentally a house or area is bombed, if we bombed some
of our friends accidentally, which has happened, we just need to admit
that it was a mistake and help those people rebuild. They will
understand, because the Afghan people are praising us as their
liberators. We have fought beside the mujahedin again, the freedom
fighters of Afghanistan again, to free their land from the Taliban
tyranny. As I say, there have been mistakes, but compared to what has
been accomplished, this mission gets an A.
Let me note that I have two complaints. They are small complaints and
the Afghan people will put up with them for now, but I think that we
need to pay attention.
Number one, I do not believe Karzai was the right guy to pick. He
does not have a wide base of support in Afghanistan. When the loya
jirga was held, we should have permitted the king to emerge, as would
have naturally happened. I think there was some wheeling and dealing
going on that led to Karzai's ascension, and the king could have been
there. He was the natural choice.
But I believe the Afghan people have good hearts and understanding.
They know we are there to help them. They know there are political
considerations. But they are demanding, of course, free elections in 2
years, and that is what we should be doing, making sure that we keep
that pledge and that there are free elections. And if they want to
elect anybody, whether it is Karzai or a member of the royal family or
whoever it is, they should have a right to do so. We should work with
them and help to rebuild their country, and that will be one way to
really defeat the Taliban and really defeat al Qaeda. The people of
Afghanistan have looked at us as liberators.
The other concern is about drugs. We have not eliminated the drug
production in Afghanistan. The poppy crop was not destroyed. We have
got to do so next year. That commitment has to be there. That drug
money goes into bad hands.
Finally, let us take a look at the challenge we have today and look
ahead a year. The President has wisely suggested that now is the time
for us to eliminate that threat that hangs over us and has hung over us
for 10 years. We did not complete the job in the Gulf War. We left
Saddam Hussein in power. That was the gift that George Bush, Sr., gave
to us. George Bush, Jr., is going to make up for that. He has committed
us to eliminating the dictatorial, fascistic regime of Saddam Hussein.
We should not be weary of this. In fact, we should know that Saddam
Hussein has less support in Iraq than the Taliban had support in
Afghanistan. Our strategy should be to help the people of Iraq liberate
themselves from this monstrous regime headed by Saddam Hussein. The
people of Iraq will be waving American flags and dancing in the street
because we will help them build a democratic society. We can do so with
the same strategy as we did in Afghanistan, work with Special Forces
teams and air support. We can support those people who want to fight
for their own freedom. It worked in Afghanistan, it will work in Iraq.
We should not have fear and trepidation about getting rid of this
threat of Saddam Hussein. He is, as George Shultz suggested, a
rattlesnake in our front yard, and we should not wait until he bites us
to cut its head off.
Now we can move forward in Iraq and eliminate that threat, as we have
eliminated the Taliban threat, and we can do so not by sending huge
numbers of American forces, but by helping the people in Iraq, as we
did in Afghanistan, to liberate themselves. That is what the challenge
the President is giving us is. That is why we as Americans should
always stand for those people who want to live in a free society and
are willing with their courage and blood to fight for their freedom,
but need our help logistically, need our air support, perhaps need our
advice from our Special Forces teams.
So, as we remember 9-11, let us never repeat that, by being proactive
in the future. Where there are dictatorships and fascist regimes, like
the Taliban, and if they threaten the West and the United States, we do
not have to do with this all regimes that are dictatorial, but if they
threaten us, let us work with the people who suffer with a boot on
their face and with an iron grip around their necks, let us work with
those people to help them free themselves.
We have on the floor of the House of Representatives two pictures,
one of George Washington, a great painting of George Washington, and a
painting of Lafayette. Lafayette came here during the American
Revolution to help us win our freedom. Let us not forget the French
helped us win our freedom, and that people like Lafayette were heroes
to early Americans.
While we must serve that same role that Lafayette served to us, we
must serve that role to those people overseas who long for liberty and
justice. If we do so, we will be the light of the world. We will be the
hope of all the young people in the Muslim countries who are looking
for some people who believe in something, rather than people who are
talking about stability and keeping the status quo.
We need to be the ones who offer moral alternatives, and the morality
we offer is democratic government and a respect for human rights,
treating people decently. Our flag should stand for justice and hope.
If we do, rather than the type of things we were doing in the 1990s
with Communist China and the Taliban and all of these regimes, where we
were not doing anything to make it clear that we honestly and sincerely
believed these founding principles of our society, if we do that, we
will be free and we will be safe.
{time} 1615
There is a dynamic in this world between peace and freedom. Freedom
tomorrow will bring peace. Just as we lived under the threat of some
sort of war with the Soviet Union, the Soviet people, the Russian
people were never our enemies. It was that system. As soon as we made
it a fight between communism and democracy and stopped just supporting
any dictatorship that was against the Communists, the Communist system
itself began to crumble in Moscow, and no one was more heroic in that
fight against the Soviet dictatorship than the people of Afghanistan.
They fought and they bled and they gave us a more peaceful and a freer
world.
We did not do what was right by them. We did not help them rebuild
their country at that time; we did not stick with them. We left it up
to the Saudis and the Pakistanis. We have a chance now to make up for
that. But we must persevere in helping them rebuild their country; and
that will cement peace in that region, because people will believe in
us again. We need, again, to make sure that we become the force for
liberty and justice and decent treatment for people all over the world,
and that is where we will find America's security. Let us have the
courage to do so. Our President has charted a wise course, and we
should have the tenacity and the courage to follow this through now
that we have learned after 9-11 that there are consequences to pay when
we do not.
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