[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 130 (Monday, October 7, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H7167-H7169]
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
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, this evening I would like to insert
several articles into the Record dealing with the issue of war against
Iraq and the gulf, and I wanted to remind those who are listening that,
indeed, if we look at the foreign policy of the United States over the
last 30 years or so, we have had more Americans killed at home and
abroad as a result of rising terrorism than in the first 187 years of
our country.
So we have to begin to ask the question, why are we losing so many
Americans in this way? Why is Washington becoming more barricaded? Why
can we not go and ride in front of the White House anymore in our cars?
Why are there bomb searches all over this city? Why are American
embassies being built like bunkers all around the world? I would like
to submit the following.
If we think back to the time when President George Bush, Senior,
prior to his election as President was director of the CIA, that was
about 1977, the mid-1970s, before President Jimmy Carter became
President of the United States, and at the time my colleagues might
recall that the Shah of Iran was deposed in the late seventies. I think
it was late 1979, and many American hostages were taken, including
Terry Anderson.
At the moment that Jimmy Carter's presidency reverted to Ronald
Reagan after the election of 1980, the hostages were returned home.
President Carter worked very, very hard, as history will record.
Then when the Reagan-Bush administration, the new administration,
took over, they essentially made a deal between our country and the
Gulf states to go after Ayatollah Khomeini, the new leader in those
days of Iran, who had taken our hostages. And who did they hire to do
the dirty work for them? They hired none other than Saddam Hussein.
They gave him weapons through the government of the United States,
and, indeed, if we look back, and I am trying to find the exact set of
hearings right now. In the Committee on Banking of the House of
Representatives, a hearing was held regarding the extension of Treasury
tax credits, agricultural tax credits to Saddam Hussein in order to buy
fertilizers, in quotes, with chemicals from our country at the same
time in our country's history when we would not even make those same
extensions of credit to our farmers. Companies in Salem, Ohio, and
Bedford, Ohio, were being asked by our Treasury to sell those same
chemicals to Iraq; and, indeed, it was done.
The Gulf states and the United States were afraid perhaps that the
Ayatollah Khomeini at that time might bomb Mecca or try to spread his
revolution throughout the Middle East and get control of the oil
fields. So Saddam Hussein was promised access, better access from Iraq,
which is landlocked, to a waterborne commerce through Kuwait, a slip of
land, which
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in the end he never did get and, ultimately, he invaded in order to get
that access.
Then, of course, if we look back to the early 1990s, the United
States went to war to defend the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, but, in fact,
the very monster that we helped to create at that point was trying to
fulfill what he had been promised as a result of U.S. assistance all
through that period, especially when the Reagan and Bush administration
took office and then President Bush himself elected in 1988 and taking
us into the Gulf War.
It is really important to remember and to ask ourselves the question,
who encouraged Saddam Hussein? Who encouraged him to take on Iran? Who
encouraged him to try to depose the Ayatollah, and who gave him the
weapons and the credits to our Treasury Department to finance those
initial actions inside of Iraq that created the monster that the
President of the United States, the son of the first George Bush,
talked about on the television tonight?
My colleagues might also think about the fact, who armed Osama bin
Laden to fight inside Afghanistan against the then Soviet Army? Who did
that? Who was President of the United States when that happened? George
Bush, Senior, was President of the United States when that happened;
and, of course, the Russians went to certain defeat in Afghanistan
after a long period of time. Where did al Qaeda learn some of those
fighting techniques? Who helped them do that? Where did they get those
rifles?
So I just wanted to put that on the Record. I know there are other
historians who will add to this, but I also wanted to read from a
veteran who wrote an editorial to the New York Times last week
Wednesday entitled, Fighting the First Gulf War. The last sentence, and
I will end with this, reads, ``I watched the fallout from the burning
oil wells coat my uniform and I knew that I was breathing into my lungs
the crude oil I was fighting for.'' I ask America to think about it.
I will insert in the Record at this point the articles that I
referred to earlier.
[From the New York Times, Oct. 2, 2002]
Fighting the First Gulf War
(By Anthony Swofford)
Portland, Ore.--In August 1990 my Marine infantry
Battalion, deployed to Saudi Arabia to defend the country
from invasion by the Iraqi army. Iraqi soldiers had invaded
Kuwait during the early morning of Aug. 2. For more than a
week afterward we sat atop our rucksacks on the parade field
at the Marine base at Twenty Nine Palms, Calif., waiting for
transportation to Riyadh. From where we sat, the world looked
amazingly black and white, with little room or need for
diplomacy or cowardice. We were excited to retaliate against
Saddam Hussein, to enter combat.
When we finally arrived on the tarmac at Riyadh, everything
looked and felt extremely hot, a mirage on high boil, the
heat warping the terrain into a violent storm of sand and
weaponry and thirst. We spent the next six months living and
training in the Arabian Desert, in constant fear of the nerve
gas our commanders had warned us Saddam Hussein would use.
Even when I slept, the gas mask was there, a reminder of the
horrors of sarin gas. To negate the effects of the sarin, we
were ordered to take pyridostigmine bromide pills, now
considered a possible cause of the mysterious gulf war
syndrome. But worse than the pills was the constant ringing
in our ears--``Gas! Gas! Gas!''--the warning call we
practiced at all hours to don and clear our gas masks in less
than 10 seconds. Under a gas attack we'd also have to wear
Mopp suits, 10-pound charcoal-lined garments that were
unwieldy and hot--and were only available in a jungle-
camouflage pattern (not much help hiding in the desert).
On Jan. 16, 1991, the American-led coalition against Iraq
started the bombing campaign that would, over about six
weeks, devastate Iraq's military. Our colonel informed us
that Operation Desert Shield had changed to Storm, that we
were now at war. Two days later the Iraqis launched a few
Scud missiles into Israel and Saudi Arabia. Despite the fact
that my unit operated in the middle of the desert and that
Iraq's air force had been destroyed, and with it most of
Saddam Hussein's intelligence apparatus, we spent our
evenings jumping in and out of fighting holes for Scud alerts
that turned out to be false. During the air campaign we
traveled around the desert in our Humvees much the way we
had prior to the bombing--bored, tired, dehydrated,
anxious and afraid of what the future might bring.
We wanted to live, even though the way we'd been living was
unpleasant. We hadn't had proper showers in 10 or more weeks.
My friend Troy insisted one morning that I pour a five-gallon
water jug over his head while he scoured his body with Red
Cross soap. The water and soap and filth poured off Troy and
soaked the ground in a large damp circle, and for a moment,
while standing in this circle, I thought that I'd somehow
been made safe. I thought that with our little ring of water
and Troy's simple desire to be clean, we'd created a gap
between ourselves and the rest of the desert and the enemy
lurking there, and that we could sink into the earth, into
our small safe space. But in the distance I saw a Marine tank
battalion roaring across the desert, and I knew again that
safety had ended months before.
On Feb. 18, when my unit moved to the Saudi-Kuwaiti border,
the ground war was imminent. Combat engineers had built a 15-
foot-high earth berm between the two countries. On the other
side of the berm, we were told, were Iraqi antipersonnel
mines. My platoon dug fighting holes in a perimeter around
the command post. Before we completed our task, the Iraqis
attacked with artillery.
The incoming rounds were confusing, frightening and
ineffective. Someone incorrectly called out, ``gas.'' Had the
enemy's forward observer walked his rounds 100 yards north he
would've scored a direct artillery hit on our command post.
But he hadn't. At the border, while we awaited our orders to
fight, helicopters outfitted with tape players and powerful
speakers flew overhead and played 1960's rock music--Jimi
Hendrix, The Doors, the Rolling Stones--all day, to harass
the nearby enemy. As the music blasted, coalition propaganda
pamphlets blew across our side of the border like useless,
retired currency.
A few days later, we entered Kuwait and fought the Iraqi
Army. The tankers experienced the most combat. At one point,
another Marine task force mistook my task force for the
enemy. Those devastating tank round passed over my head and I
watched them explode. For a split second I imagined myself
the victim of my own country's firepower. My team leader
screamed into his radio handset to stop the friendly attack.
One of my platoon mates, a burly Texan, folded himself into a
ball and wept and cursed quietly. I knelt, stung by shock, a
statue of fear. At least 35 of the 148 United States service
members killed during the Persian Gulf war died at the hands
of allied forces.
My six-man night patrol passed near enough to an Iraqi
troop carrier to hear the troops speaking. We were outgunned,
so we listened and didn't shoot. I urinated down my legs and
into my boots. The next morning, in my wet boots and useless
Mopp suit, I marched 20 miles north from the Saudi border. I
put on and took off my gas mask dozens of times for false gas
alerts. We marched past Marine artillery battalions busy
sending their fierce rounds 10,000 yards north. The men
screamed and clapped as each round left their powerful
weapons.
From the ground, I witnessed the savage results of American
air superiority: tanks and troop carriers turned upside down
and ripped inside out; rotten, burned, half-buried bodies
littering the desert like the detritus of years--not weeks--
of combat. The tails of unexploded bombs, buried halfway or
deeper in the earth, served as makeshift headstones and
chilling reminders that at any moment, the whole place could
blow.
On the last day of the war, from a sniper hid I observed a
confused Marine infantry battalion attempt to overtake an
airfield while smoke from burning oil wells hampered command
and control. Across the radio frequency I heard medevac
calls, after two Marines shot each other with rifles; on the
other side of the airfield hundreds of Iraqi soldiers
surrendered, their boots hanging around their necks, white
towels and propaganda surrender pamphlets clutched in their
hands like jewels. I watched the fallout from the burning oil
wells coat my uniform, and I knew that I was breathing into
my lungs the crude oil I was fighting for.
____
[From the New York Times, Oct. 7, 2002]
Sharon Tells Cabinet To Keep Quiet on U.S. Plans
(By James Bennet)
Jerusalem, Oct. 6.--Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon,
warned his cabinet ministers today not to talk about American
plans for Iraq, urging them to overcome for the good of the
possible war effort what often seems a national compulsion to
share one's insights as widely as possible.
Prodded by the Bush administration, Mr. Sharon concluded
that it was time to address what one senior Israeli official
today called ``the blabbering thing that occurs here.''
Given the rollicking tumult of Israeli politics, it is not
uncommon to see leaks in the news media about official anger
over leaks, or to read an inside account of one high official
dressing down another for talking too much to reporters. The
Israeli media have been awash recently with officials' views
on Iraq.
The Israeli media have also been reporting that the Bush
administration is furious about the chatter.
``Everybody wants to voice his opinion on any lively
subject,'' the senior Israeli official said. ``This is
healthy. But there are times when you need to be responsible,
to take responsibility, and to shut up.''
Late last week, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who
in the past has shared too much for the Bush administration's
taste, ventured that the Americans would attack Iraq at the
end of November. His comment
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captured banner head-lines, even though his hasty
clarification said that he was merely voicing a ``personal
assessment'' and that he meant the attack would begin at the
end of November or later.
Mr. Sharon is planning to go to Washington this month, at
President Bush's invitation, to discuss Iraq and the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict.
After today's cabinet meeting, the official public summary
reported tersely, ``Prime Minister Sharon requested that
ministers cease making remarks about Iraq.''
Even as Mr. Bush has sought in recent days to play up the
imminence and potency of the Iraqi threat, some of Israel's
top security officials have played both down.
Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, Israel's chief of staff, was quoted
in the newspaper Maariv today as telling a trade group in a
speech over the weekend, ``I'm not losing any sleep over the
Iraqi threat.'' The reason, he said, was that the military
strength of Israel and Iraq had diverged to so sharply in the
last decade.
Israel's chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon
Farkash, disputed contentions that Iraq was 18 months away
from nuclear capability. In an interview on Saturday with
Israeli television, he said army intelligence had concluded
that Iraq's time frame was more like four years, and he said
Iran's nuclear threat was as great as Iraq's.
General Farkash also said Iraq had grown militarily weaker
since the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and had not deployed any
missiles that could strike Israel.
The torrent of newspaper articles continued today with
Yediot Ahronot elaborating on reports in the United States
about the details of American-Israeli plans for coordination
in the event of war. It said that Mr. Bush would give Mr.
Sharon 72 hours notice and that the two nations had agreed on
targets in Iraq. It also mentioned previously published
reports that the Americans would offer Israel a satellite to
provide early warning of Iraqi missile strikes and that spare
parts and other American equipment would be stored in Israel.
The Bush administration wants to dissuade Israel from
responding should Iraq attack it after an American invasion,
fearing that Israeli action would rally Arab support for the
Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein.
____
[From the New York Times, Oct. 7, 2002]
A Hidden Cost of War on Iraq
(By Shibley Telhami)
Washington.--One of the most appealing thoughts about a
possible war with Iraq is that it could help spread
democracy, transforming a rotten political order in the
Middle East. But more likely, such a war would render the
Middle East more repressive and unstable than it is today.
Democracy cannot be imposed through military force, even if
force is used successfully to oust antidemocratic dictators.
And our vital aims in fighting terrorism, securing oil
supplies and protecting the lives of American soldiers will,
in the context of the Middle East, almost certainly ensure
that the spread of democracy will again take a back seat to
our national priorities.
Aside from the significant challenges in Iraq itself, the
picture in the rest of the region will be troubling.
Regardless of our real objectives, most Arabs and Muslims
will see in the war American imperialism. Governments in the
region may support the war for fear of being on the losing
side, or may simply stay neutral. Because support goes
against the over-whelming sentiment of their citizenry, they
will likely endorse our course through political repression.
If King Abdullah of Jordan, like other rulers in the Middle
East, has to face a choice between supporting the war while
repressing his people and yielding to Jordanian public
opinion by opposing our effort, it's clear what our
preference will be. For that we need not dig deep into
history; our commitment to fighting al Qaeda has
understandably defined our current relationship with
Pakistan in a way that has caused us to put aside
democratic values in order to achieve a more vital goal.
These values will likely be sacrificed in our relationship
with other nations in the Middle East, even with the best
of intentions.
At the same time, we would not be comfortable if democratic
change in the region results in the victory of radical
Islamist groups, as happened in Algeria a decade ago. Nor is
it likely that we would be willing to accept democratically
elected militant Islamist groups to run the Saudi government
and control the world's largest oil reserves as well as the
pulpit of Mecca.
The political order in the Middle East is bankrupt today,
and if stability means the continuation of the status quo,
that would not be appealing. Change is necessary for the good
of the people of the Middle East and for the good of the
world. But not any change, and not through any means. The use
of military force may be necessary for other reasons, but it
is more likely to stifle than to nurture democracy movements
in authoritarian Arab states.
America's political success has undoubtedly been bolstered
by its superior military power. But our military power itself
is a product of a successful economic and political system.
Those around the world who sought change of their political
and economic systems did so in large part on their own--and
in many cases with America's political and economic success
as a model. Those who want to achieve that success will have
to emulate the model. And those who don't will likely fail.
Powerful ideas are willingly accepted because they inspire,
not threaten. Even those who are reluctant to embrace
democracy, like the leaders in Beijing, have understood the
need to emulate much of America's economic approach lest they
be left further behind. And in embracing a new economic
approach, they have also unleashed a political process they
will not be able fully to control.
Ultimately, America's role is to assist in the spread of
democracy and, above all, to inspire. Wars may simultaneously
open up new opportunities for change, as in Afghanistan, and
close others, as in Pakistan. But democracy cannot be
dictated through war, especially when war is opposed by
people of the region. The thought that, because America has
unequaled power, we know what is best for others--even better
than they do themselves--would not be comforting to most
Americans. Certainly, such a notion is not compatible with
the very ideal of democracy we seek to spread.
____________________