[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 118 (Wednesday, September 18, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H6351-H6352]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             WAR WITH IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, there is probably no issue that this 
House will deal with of the gravity of the one we are facing. Sending 
this country to war, putting our young people, men and women, in harm's 
way is a heavy responsibility. It cannot be done on the basis of 
misinformation.
  Some of us who serve here served in the Vietnam era. I dealt with 
casualties for 2 years coming back from Vietnam. The young men and 
young women of the Seventh Fleet came to Long Beach Naval Station, 
where I was the chief psychiatrist. I saw what happens to people in 
war, so I do not come out here with an easy heart to say, well, let us 
go off and do this and do that. I think it has to be thought through 
very carefully what this country is doing, because if we put our people 
on the line, they have to know what they are doing.
  If we say to the world that we can make a preemptive strike, we do 
not like what that person is doing, and we are not sure exactly what he 
is doing, but we are pretty sure we do not like what he is doing so we 
are going to take him out, when this country moves to that point, we 
are moving into a very dangerous period.
  I want to read a quote. It was not said in this body, it was said on 
the other side: ``I believe that history will record that we have made 
a great mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the 
United States. I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake. I 
believe that within the next century, future generations will look with 
dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to 
make such a historic mistake.''
  Now, we went to war in Vietnam with a voice vote in the House of 
Representatives.

                              {time}  1700

  No recorded votes. In the Senate they had a vote. Two Members spoke 
against it and voted against it. One of them was this speech I just 
read by Wayne Morse of Oregon. Another Senator voted for it but asked a 
question. He said, ``I do not want to do this because I think we are 
going to wind up with 500,000 troops on the ground.'' They went down 
and asked President Johnson and President Johnson called Gaylord Nelson 
and said, ``Gaylord, for heaven's sake you know I am not going to do 
anything like that.'' He lied to him. He lied to him.
  And when people tell me they have facts, that they know that there 
are weapons out there, there are nuclear weapons, that, oh, the United 
States is in grave danger, we knew what Saddam Hussein was doing with 
those weapons

[[Page H6352]]

when he turned them on the Iranians. We were encouraging him. We did 
not like this bunch over in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini and all that 
bunch. So we said, Hey, Saddam, go get him and we will give you some 
weapons, and we knew what he was doing.
  When this country decides they are going to take out a leader 
somewhere, one ought to look at history. There was a country called 
Iran, and the leader was a guy named Mossadegh. He had been elected by 
the people. He was the Prime Minister elected in Iran. The United 
States Government did not like him because his politics were kind of a 
little bit to the wrong direction, whatever that was. So they decided 
to take him out and install a king. They brought back the Shah of Iran 
and put him on the throne. So in 1979 things erupted there. Somebody 
said to me, Well, gee, Jim, we got away with 25 free years. Is that the 
kind of foreign policy this country wants to pursue? Do we want to say 
we are going to go to any country and we are going to take out whatever 
is there and put in our guy and then we will use him? The reason we did 
not like Mossadegh, the reason we do not like Saddam Hussein, it all 
has to do with oil, who has control of the oil. Mossadegh was talking 
about nationalizing. Saddam did. This is not an issue for us to do a 
regime change, simply on oil. We must be careful.

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