[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 132 (Wednesday, October 9, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H7375-H7410]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF H. RES. 114, AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY
FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Hulshof).
(Mr. HULSHOF asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. HULSHOF. Mr. Speaker, ``When in the course of human events it
becomes necessary for the people to dissolve the political bonds which
have connected them with another, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them.''
When the delegates to the Second Continental Congress began to debate
those immortal words in July of 1776, they did not have the long lens
of history to guide them. These bold men adopted the radical idea of
independence based upon deeply-held convictions and beliefs that
bloodshed, though unwanted, was a probable course. Indeed, when the
document declaring independence was executed in August of that year,
30,000 British and Hessian troops were assembled at Staten Island, New
York, a 3 days' journey from Philadelphia.
At first blush, those of you reminded of this narrative would quickly
make the distinction that those Philadelphia delegates and the
colonists they represented were in imminent peril, and we are not. Is
that in fact the case after September 11? America's enemies today do
not dispatch columns of infantrymen ``across the green'' or battleships
upon the high seas. Instead, we face a deadlier threat in chemical and
biological weapons willing to be dispersed by an army of anonymous
killers. This 107th Congress, as our forefathers before, must face this
difficult issue without the benefit of history's clarity.
I have been contacted by a number of Missourians with wide-ranging
opinions, and some have proclaimed, ``Let us not wage war with Iraq.''
Would that I could will it so, possessing the knowledge as I do of the
threat Iraq poses. Would that Saddam Hussein lay down his arms, those
weapons designed to commit mass murder against the defenseless.
Now, time does not permit me to make my case, but there has been a
lot of discussion about the case that has been made, and I am convinced
that Iraq continues to possess and manufacture weapons of mass
destruction in defiance of 12 years of Security Council resolutions.
My colleague, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren), a good
friend, a moment ago said there is no definitive link between Iraq and
the attacks of September 11, 2001; and I acknowledge that. However, our
United States intelligence services have detected that Saddam's regime
has begun efforts to reach out to terrorist groups with global reach.
I acknowledge that Saddam Hussein's regime is largely secular and has
often clashed with fanatical religious fundamentalist groups. However,
I am mindful of a disquieting adage, the enemy of my enemy is my
friend.
The resolution I support today suggests a variety of means to disarm
Iraq without immediately resorting to the end of open warfare. It is
imperative that the United Nations take strong action to implement a
comprehensive and unfettered regime of weapons inspections. It is
deeply troubling to me, however, that the only thing that seems to
compel Saddam Hussein into compliance is the threat of military force.
Certainly many questions remain. However, the risks of inaction are
greater, in my mind, than the risks of action.
Ironically, a number of family members who lost loved ones last
September have come to Capitol Hill and have questioned the inability
of our intelligence agencies to foresee those attacks prior to
September 11. Why did we not act upon those threads of information,
they ask plaintively? Why did we not prevent the horrific attacks of
that crisp, clear morning?
Mr. Speaker, let us not allow that tragic history to be repeated. We
have a moral responsibility to defend our Nation from harm. This
conflict has been brought to us, and we have provoked it only by being
free. We must move forward decisively, confident in the knowledge that
our voices, which cry out so desperately for a lasting peace, have been
and will be heard by the rest of the world.
Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to my good friend, the
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Pastor), a member of the House Committee on
Appropriations, a top member of the Committee on Energy and Water and
on the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
(Mr. PASTOR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. PASTOR. Mr. Speaker, I am committed to the war against terrorism
and believe that stopping Saddam Hussein from developing weapons of
mass destruction is a necessary part of that effort. But at this time,
however, I believe it is premature to authorize a unilateral attack on
Iraq.
Working with the international community is the surest means of
addressing this threat effectively, sharing costs and resources and
ensuring stability in Iraq and throughout the Middle East in the event
of a regime change. While the President has spoken of the value of a
coalition effort, the resolution before the House today undermines the
importance of our allies and of maintaining the momentum of
international cooperation in the wider war on terrorism.
I support the Spratt amendment to this resolution. This amendment
would authorize the use of U.S. forces in support of a new U.N.
Security Council resolution mandating the elimination, by force, if
necessary, of all Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and means of
producing such weapons. Should the Security Council fail to produce
such a resolution, the amendment calls on the President then to seek
authorization for unilateral military action. In this way, the
amendment emphasizes our preference for a peaceful solution and
coalition support, while recognizing that military force and unilateral
action may be appropriate at some point.
We should not rush into war without the support of our allies. We
should not send American troops into combat before making a full-faith
effort to put U.N. inspectors back into Iraq under a more forceful
resolution. We should not turn to a policy of preemptive attack, which
we have so long and so rightly
[[Page H7376]]
condemned, without first providing a limited-time option for peaceful
resolution of the threat.
America has long stood behind the principles of exhausting diplomacy
before resorting to war; and, at times like this, we must lead by
example.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Graves).
Mr. GRAVES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of House Joint Resolution 114,
authorization of use of force against Iraq.
After the attacks of September 11, Congress reaffirmed our commitment
to keep the American people safe from international threats. That
commitment faces its first true test as we debate this resolution.
We are faced with clear evidence of a threat against the security of
the American people. We have several options to deal with this threat.
This resolution will provide all necessary options to the President for
protecting the security interests of the American people.
By giving the President the needed flexibility, Iraq and the rest of
the world will know that we are prepared to enforce our demands for
disarmament with the use of force.
By giving the President this flexibility, the American people can be
fully defended from the threat Iraq poses to our national security.
It is clear that Saddam Hussein constitutes a grave threat to the
security of the United States through his motives, history,
technological capabilities and his support for international terrorism.
Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator who has sworn eternal hostility
to the United States. There is evidence that this same dictator has
financed and supported international terrorism, including harboring
members of al Qaeda. Despite agreeing to fully disarm by ridding itself
of weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has worked to actually enhance its
weapons program, increasing its stockpiles of biological and chemical
weapons and working to build nuclear weapons.
Saddam Hussein has used weapons of mass destruction against his
neighbors and his own people. He has attempted assassinations of
foreign leaders, including an American president.
Alone, these facts are very troubling. Together, they present a clear
and present danger to the national security of the United States.
Saddam Hussein has the motive, has the capabilities and the absence of
humanity that is all too clear. Ignoring this evidence would be
abandoning our duty to the security of the American people.
Now we are faced with this question: How do we deal with this threat?
The answer is to leave all options at the President's disposal on the
table, including military options. Like everyone in this Chamber, I
sincerely hope and pray it will never come to that. Nevertheless, I
believe the evidence justifies the President to act in the interests of
our national security. This resolution gives the President the
necessary authority to deal with this threat.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, the resolution that will come before us for final
passage has already been written at the White House. I very much wish
that it had a different phraseology, but that is not the choice of
individual Members. The only question that will come before us that we
can influence as individual Members is by what margin does that
resolution pass. Does it get 325 votes, or 375, or somewhere in
between?
{time} 1645
Saddam Hussein does not fully understand our political process. He
sees a nation in the throws of an election where we speak quite harshly
to each other on domestic issues, and we will be doing more of that in
the coming weeks. There is no better way to assure that Saddam
capitulates on the issue of inspectors, no better way to assure that
this war does not have to be fought, no better way to assure a peaceful
resolution of this conflict than for us to pass this resolution by the
largest possible margin and make sure that Saddam understands that
America is united and capitulation on the issue of inspectors is the
only rational course and the only course that will assure his own
personal safety.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw).
Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
I rise in strong support of this most balanced resolution. Like most
of my colleagues who support the President in this important matter, I
am not voting for this resolution because I have any wish to speed to
war; I am voting for this resolution because I hold out hope for peace,
a peace that can still come, but only if the United Nations will apply
decisive pressure to Iraq to open itself to unconditional, unfettered
weapons inspection.
Unfortunately, the last decade has shown that without the use of
force as a threat, Saddam Hussein will continue to stonewall and ignore
every resolution issued by the United Nations, all the while amassing
weapons of terror. The resolution before us today does not send us to
war, but it does provide a powerful incentive for Hussein to finally
comply with the dictates of the United Nations. With the threat of
force, the United Nations and President Bush will be able to negotiate
from a position of strength.
Nobody, no legislator, Republican or Democrat, takes this
responsibility of sending our children off to war lightly, but nor can
we stand by as Saddam Hussein and his regime continue to work to amass
stockpiles of the world's most deadly weapons. My deepest fears lay in
the thought that he could soon supply terrorists with nuclear weapons.
We simply cannot ignore our responsibility to protect our country,
democracy, and our lone democratic ally in the Middle East, the State
of Israel.
Mr. Speaker, again, I hold out my hope for peace; but to rely upon a
dictatorial madman with little respect for the life of even his own
people, let alone American life, to bring about a peaceful resolution
to this crisis would be foolhardy. It is for that reason I strongly
believe that we must strengthen the President's hand. With a hopeful
heart, but realistic concern over this threat, I will cast my vote in
support of this resolution as a last chance for peace.
Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman from
California (Ms. Watson), a member of the Committee on International
Relations and former ambassador to Micronesia.
Ms. WATSON of California. Mr. Speaker, I stand to oppose H.J. Res.
114, the authorization for military force against Iraq.
Mr. Speaker, I have attended numerous administrative hearings on Iraq
where not one bit of new evidence was offered to demonstrate that
presently Saddam Hussein is more of a menace than that proven
diabolical character, Osama bin Laden. Why are we not still focusing
our attention on him? I remember so well the declaration made by the
President: ``Wanted, dead or alive.'' We have painfully experienced his
capacity to wreak havoc on thousands of our people from thousands of
miles from his own perch. And now, he appears to be an afterthought.
We have given Saddam Hussein the power to force the greatest country
on Earth to abandon its domestic agenda, to potentially violate the
U.N. charter, and possibly take unilateral and preemptive action before
exhausting all diplomatic efforts. I am not convinced that Saddam
Hussein warrants the daily headlines and the extraordinary amount of
time and resources given to him. We are equating his power with ours
and, in some ways, ascribing it to be beyond our ability to detect.
While we are monitoring his every move, I have no doubt that if he
were to plan an attack on the United States or on our allies, we would
be able to stop him in his tracks. But what we cannot do is to provide
the proof of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts or whether he is dead or
alive, or who spread anthrax and, currently, right here in this
country, who is killing innocent Americans in a close radius of the
White House. But our focus remains thousands of miles away on a villain
who cowardly goes after the weakest. It is beneath us to choose war
over diplomacy, and not only carry a big stick, but beat our perceived
enemy over the head with it.
The United Nations is being diminished with our rhetoric of the last
few weeks. As a charter member, we are not giving it credit for trying
to uphold the principle of sovereign equality of
[[Page H7377]]
all its members. The U.N. charter states that in recognition of the
sovereignty of all nations, all shall settle their international
disputes by peaceful means. The U.N. charter also states that all
members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat
or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any State.
Chapter VI of the charter empowers the Security Council to
investigate any disputes and to recommend appropriate procedures for
the settlement of the dispute. If the dispute is not resolved, it is
then referred to the Security Council for action. Under Chapter VII,
the U.N. Security Council shall determine the existence of threats to
peace. Article 46 provides that plans for the application of armed
force shall be made by the Security Council. The U.N. charter does not
provide for preemptive or first-strike options of member states against
a perceived threat.
Too little in this House has been made of peace. When will we mature
to a point when we will find noncombative ways to settle our
differences? When are we ready to use our higher selves to find ways to
be nonviolent? To effect a regime change, we are threatening an
invasion of a territorial foe to enhance our own security; but such an
invasion will, in fact, degrade and diminish us.
This resolution offers only the incessant drumbeat of war. During the
Vietnam War, it was often said that ever every time we kill a Viet Cong
guerrilla, we create two more. Our invasion of Iraq will be watched by
millions of Muslim men and women. Many governments around the world
will become less cooperative in helping us track down terrorist
operatives in their countries. Hundreds, if not thousands, of American
men and women may perish in the streets of Baghdad. Our invasion will
engender a bottomless well of bitterness and resentment towards the
United States that will haunt us for decades to come. We now have a
choice to maintain the moral high ground or sink to the depths of our
tormentors. History will record this moment.
Making in Order at Any Time Consideration of Conference Report on H.R.
3295, Help America Vote Act of 2002
Mr. NEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order at
any time to consider the conference report to accompany H.R. 3295; that
all points of order against the conference report and against its
consideration be waived; and that the conference report be considered
as read when called up.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Linder). Is there objection to the
request of the gentleman from Ohio?
There was no objection.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Pickering).
Mr. PICKERING. Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of the resolution
before us.
The most grave responsibility any Member of Congress ever undertakes
or considers is the vote to give the President of the United States the
authority to use force if necessary.
On September 11, I drove past the Pentagon. I came in to my
congressional office building, and I was informed that a plane had just
struck the Pentagon. We left our offices, we went to a place, we tried
to call our families, the communications systems were jammed. It took 3
hours until I could finally talk to my wife and I have five sons, and I
began talking to each of my boys. I got to my second son, Ross, and he
was crying, and he asked me, Daddy, are we safe?
In my lifetime, I never asked that question. I never asked that
question, Are we safe, of my mother and daddy, of my father, because
the generations that went before us gave us the blessings of liberty.
They protected and defended our safety and security when a threat, a
challenge emerged; when we were at risk, they answered the call. So
many times in our Nation's history, we have had the strong voices that
have given us warnings and called us to action, and so many times we
did not listen. Winston Churchill called on the world to look and to
act at the threat that Hitler posed, and the world did not listen; and
because of that, more death and more destruction and world war came.
Today, we have an opportunity, backed by a clear and convincing
threat, and backed by a leader of character, to hear the warnings, to
know that nuclear capability is around the corner in the hands of a
dictator, in the hands of a tyrant; and he could use it, and the death
and the destruction that it could cause would be devastating. It would
be overwhelming. But if we act now, we can stop it. We can prevent it.
We can preempt it.
For those reasons, we have the moral obligation to act. I support the
resolution, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd).
(Mr. BOYD asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time. I rise in support of H.J. Res. 114.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of giving the President the
authority to go to war with Iraq if it becomes necessary. I came to
this difficult decision only after considering the threat to our
national security that allowing Saddam Hussein to acquire long range
missiles and nuclear weapons represents. While we should continue to
seek a diplomatic solution, inaction is not an option. I feel that we
must give the president the option of using force to remove this threat
to our nation if diplomacy does not work.
No one in the United States wants another war with Iraq if it can be
avoided. However, we know that Iraq has chemical and biological
weapons, and is frantically working to develop nuclear weapons and a
way to deliver them to the United States. This presents a serious
threat to our national security and has the potential to destroy any
chance for peace in the Middle East.
I believe our first step should be to develop a new, tougher weapons
inspection resolution which would allow the U.N. inspectors unfettered
access to all sights in Iraq, including the presidential palaces. If it
is implemented successfully, the resolution would serve to disarm Iraq
and would not require an armed confrontation. However, as President
Bush has noted, the track record of Iraq's compliance with U.N.
resolutions is abysmal, and this time we must give him the tools
necessary to ensure that Iraq is truly disarmed.
In addition, I believe that before we use military force against Iraq
that the administration should work to reassemble the coalition that
was so successful during the Gulf War or like the one we developed to
combat terrorism. While we could defeat Iraq without a coalition,
policing and rebuilding Iraq will take years, and we will need allies
to undertake this long and difficult task.
Those of us in this chamber who have worn the military uniform of
this great country, understand the ravages and consequences of war, and
do not take this vote lightly. All diplomatic options should be
exhausted before the use of military force, but I believe the option of
force must be available to the President as a last resort. Giving the
authority to use force does not mean war, it only gives our commander-
in-chief the maximum flexibility to protect our nation.
If it comes to war, many of our nation's sons and daughters will be
put in harms way in order to protect our freedoms from Saddam Hussein's
reign of terror and to keep him from acquiring nuclear weapons and the
means of delivering them to the United States. I would never send our
young men and women into combat unless it was absolutely necessary; and
unless Iraq allows weapons inspectors into the country with unfettered
access it will be necessary. Congress needs to give the President the
authority he needs to protect America while encouraging the use of
diplomacy and negotiations to try and arrive at a peaceful solution to
this problem before turning to military force and this is why I will
vote to give him the ability to eliminate this threat to American
security.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from
Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), who has just arrived and is now available to
convince the entire House of Representatives.
(Mr. KIND asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. KIND. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time. We have before us today one of the most important issues that a
democracy must decide, whether to potentially go to war against another
nation. It is a vote of conscience, and I believe reasonable people can
disagree while looking at the same set of facts.
{time} 1700
September 11, however, has changed the psyche of our Nation forever.
We witnessed in horror what a few suicidal terrorists can accomplish in
a low-tech
[[Page H7378]]
operation, and now we shudder to imagine what suicidal terrorists can
accomplish if they gain access to high-tech weapons of mass
destruction.
I believe Saddam Hussein has biological and chemical weapons of mass
destruction and that he is aggressively seeking to develop nuclear
capability. But I also believe that he can be deterred because, as New
York Times columnist Thomas Friedman puts it, Saddam loves his life
more than he hates us.
It is, however, irrefutable that Saddam is in blatant violation of
numerous U.N. resolutions that call for his disarmament of these
weapons. Now the question becomes: How do we enforce these resolutions
and accomplish the universal goal of disarming his weapons of mass
destruction?
I have come to the conclusion that my two sons' futures and the
future of all our children across the globe will be made a little safer
if Saddam disarms, on his own or with our help; militarily, if
necessary. I pray that it is done peacefully. I pray that he blinks.
But I have also concluded that we are dealing with a person who will
not do the right thing unless, literally, he has a gun pointing at his
head. Therefore, I support the resolution before us today.
But I also support the Spratt amendment, because how we accomplish
our goals and with whom can make all the difference. We need to do this
with the help and the support of the international community. I believe
that it would be disastrous if we try to accomplish disarmament through
unilateral military action.
The process we take will determine whether the rest of the world
views us as a beacon or as a bully. We could remain a beacon of hope
and optimism as the leader of the free world, promoting economic
progress for all, respecting human rights, and ensuring democratic
values such as freedom, political pluralism, religious tolerance, free
speech, and respect for the rule of law; or we could be viewed as the
superpower bully, imposing our military power whenever we want and
wherever we want.
I give the President the benefit of the doubt when he now says that
the use of military force will be a last resort, not a first option;
that regime change can also mean attitude change of Saddam's; and that
we will work hard to gather international support for disarming him
before military action is taken.
That is what the administration should have been saying from day one,
and it is now reflected in the new resolution before us today.
We need to do this the right way because U.N. engagement and
international support is essential. I subscribe to the Thomas Friedman
``crystal store'' theory of U.S. foreign policy: If you break it, you
own it. If we break Iraq, we will have the responsibility to rebuild
it, just as we need to rebuild Afghanistan today. This is another vital
reason why international support is critical for our action in Iraq,
for what happens the day after.
We have never been good at nation building. We can accomplish
military goals with little help, but our democracy does not have the
experience or the sustainability for successful nation building.
Therefore, we must approach the aftermath of any conflict in the region
with the greatest degree of humility.
In addition, I am concerned that the administration is developing a
blind spot. They are becoming overly intoxicated with the use of our
military power. I am glad that we have the world's most powerful
military; but this is not just a battle of military might, it is also a
battle of values and ideas in the region. Our message to the outside
world needs to be better than: You are either for us or you are against
us; and if you are against us, we are going to kill you.
Instead, we need to send a message through words and deeds that we
are interested in being good global citizens as well. Unfortunately,
the unilateralist message this administration has sent from day one has
now come back to haunt us in our attempt to secure support against
Iraq: No to the global climate treaty, no to the biological treaty, no
to the land mines treaty, no to the ABM treaty, no to an international
crimes tribunal. If the rest of the world does not like it, that is
just tough.
Instead, the world needs to hear from us that we are concerned about
our global environment; we are concerned about their economic progress;
we are concerned that 2 billion people must survive on just $1 a day;
that 1.5 billion people, most of them children, cannot even get a clean
glass of water; and that we want to help eradicate the scourge of AIDS.
Furthermore, the world needs to hear that we are truly interested in
being honest brokers in finding a peaceful solution to the conflict in
the Middle East. We need to recognize that the real battleground for
peace throughout the world ultimately lies in education. We cannot just
keep looking at the Arab world as a great gas station, indifferent to
what happens inside their countries, because the gas now is leaking,
and there are people starting to throw matches around.
If we have learned anything from September 11, it is that if we do
not visit and help in a bad neighborhood, that bad neighborhood can
come and visit us.
So for the sake of our young military troops, for the sake of the
Iraqi people, and for the sake of our Nation as it is perceived by the
rest of the world in the 21st century, I pray that we can accomplish
Saddam's disarmament peacefully and, if not, then with international
support.
But today we need to give the President this tool in his diplomatic
arsenal, and also pray that he uses it wisely.
May God continue to bless these United States of America.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bass).
(Mr. BASS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BASS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Joint
Resolution 114.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the House today
in support of the resolution before us. The decision to allow our
military to use force against Iraq will be one of the most important
votes we cast in this Congress, but the responsible choice to support
the resolution is clear.
Over the past few weeks, we have labored over the proper scope and
limitations for this significant measure. The compromise language has
been drafted by key House and Senate leaders, and the President.
This resolution is in the best interest of America's national
security. After a decade of deceit and deception, in which we have
permitted a hostile dictator to repeatedly violate every agreement we
have in good faith put before him, the use of force has become a
necessary option. I think I speak for all members of this Congress when
I say that I hope and pray that military force does not become
required; however, we must prepare for all possible outcomes.
This resolution protects the Congress' ability to remain fully
involved in future decisions and actions in Iraq. It provides the
resources for the United States to act ion the best interest of our
national security, while remaining committed to generating support for
a multilateral coalition.
I support our President and commend his efforts to ensure that the
citizen's of American do not live in fear of another tragic terrorist
attack or of harm from rogue nations. With passage of this resolution,
we will provide our Commander in Chief with the resources necessary to
carry out his greatest task of all--providing for the continued safety
of our citizens.
This resolution to authorizer military action against Iraq is one
that has been seriously deliberated by the President, his policy
makers, and this Congress.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), the chairman of the Committee on
Education and the Workforce.
Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, ``does this body have the will and resolve
to commit this Nation to a future of peace, or will we leave for our
children an inheritance of uncertainty and world instability? I do not
want to see our Nation at war, and I pray that this crisis will be
resolved peacefully. But I cannot in good conscience deny to the
President of the United States every power and tool that he is entitled
to in his efforts to resolve this crisis.''
Mr. Speaker, I spoke these words right here in this very spot on the
floor of the House of Representatives during my first speech as a
Member of this body. One day later, on January 12, 1991, I cast my
first vote, one to give
[[Page H7379]]
the President the authority to use the Armed Forces in removing Saddam
Hussein from Kuwait.
As a freshman Member of Congress, I could not ever have imagined that
more than a decade later this body again would be faced with the
challenge of dealing with Saddam Hussein's outlaw regime. But here we
are in 2002, and Saddam is once again at the heart of our national
security concerns.
The September 11 terrorist attacks have changed this Nation forever.
Those tragic events increased our appreciation of our vulnerability to
terrorist attacks, particularly from weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam Hussein has actively developed a deadly biological and chemical
weapons program, and he is actively pursuing the development of nuclear
weapons. We cannot ignore this reality.
What has changed since the last time I voted to use our Armed Forces
against Iraq has not been a new identification of our enemy, but the
reassessment of our national security risk. The last 11 years have
proven that attempting to contain Saddam through an ineffective weapons
inspection regime does not alter his intentions nor force him to
disarm. We must resolve to stand firm against Hussein's regime to
guarantee security for Americans and the international community and
justice for the Iraqi people.
I commend President Bush for his consistent consultation with the
international community and with the congressional leadership on both
sides as he develops a strategy for confronting this grave threat. The
resolution before us today is a result of those consultations, and its
passage is the United States government's opportunity to speak with one
voice in its efforts to protect American interests at home and abroad.
We cannot expect the United Nations Security Council to take action
to protect not only our interests but the interests of the
international community without sending it a strong signal of our own
resolve.
Looking back on the vote that this House cast to authorize force back
in 1991, I can recall how somber my colleagues and I were as we
contemplated the consequences of our actions. Today, I sense a similar
mood in the House. Whenever Congress votes to authorize the use of the
greatest Armed Forces in the world, it is destined to be one of the
most serious and difficult votes ever cast by our Members. It is not a
decision we relish, but it is one that we must make.
I pray and hope that the need to use military force to disarm
Hussein's regime is not imminent. However, I stand ready to support
such an action should the President deem it necessary.
The famous legislator and philosopher, Sir Edmond Burke from England,
once said, ``All that is needed for evil to exist is for good men to do
nothing.'' I also recall the words of our great President Ronald Reagan
when he said ``If not now, when? If not us, who?''
It is time for us to act, it is time to support our President, and it
is time to tell the rest of the world that the American people speak
with just one voice.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder).
(Mr. SOUDER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, today the Committee on Government Reform and
Oversight unanimously approved the report of the Subcommittee on
Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources titled ``Federal Law
Enforcement at the Borders and Ports of Entry,'' the most comprehensive
report ever on our Nation's border security.
As chairman of this subcommittee, I would like to discuss some of the
findings and how I feel they impact the debate on the resolution
regarding Iraq that is before us.
There are 130 official ports of entry on the northern border at which
it is legal to cross, whether by vehicle or foot. There are an
additional over 300 unofficial crossing areas along the northern
border, roads which are unmonitored and allow for individuals or groups
to cross undetected.
Near Blaine, Washington, the only barrier is a narrow ditch easily
stepped over and containing no water between two roads. In northwest
North Dakota, it is even easier: It is flat for miles, and there is no
ditch. As for the southern border, it is not exactly known as
impenetrable. If we cannot stop tens of thousands of illegal
immigrants, it does not breed a lot of confidence that we can stop all
terrorists.
Our subcommittee has also begun to study port security. The
challenges in our largest harbors, Long Beach and Los Angeles, are
overwhelming. But by the time a nuclear device has slipped into L.A.,
we are already in deep trouble. Preclearance at point of origin, or at
a point prior to coming into the U.S., is a probable method to reduce
risk; but shipments could have chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons
added en route at the receiving harbor or in transit to the next
shipping point.
I have not even discussed airport security.
The point of my comments is this: If those opposed to this resolution
somehow think we are going to stop terrorists from crossing our
borders, that by itself is an incredibly high-risk strategy doomed to
probable failure. As chemicals come across in different forms or
nuclear weapons in parts, even with dramatically improved security we
will not catch it all.
We need a multifaceted approach. We need a vastly improved
intelligence collection and information-sharing. That is obvious to
everyone. We are working to improve border security, port security, and
airport security. But when we can see the chemical and biological
facilities that have manufactured, can manufacture, and probably are
manufacturing weapons of mass destruction intended for us, we need to
act to destroy those facilities. When we get solid intelligence that
someone intends to kill Americans and that they have the weapons to do
so, we need to eliminate their capacity to do so.
If this leader and nation have already demonstrated, as Saddam
Hussein has, a willingness to use such weapons of mass destruction to
terrorize, like Iraq, alone in the world in demonstrating such
willingness, then the need to act becomes urgent.
The American people do not want to burn while the politicians fiddle.
We need to strengthen our borders. We need to monitor suspected
terrorists and arrest those who become active. We need to take out the
capacity of those bent on terrorizing our Nation.
If we implement all of these strategies, we have a chance of success.
Partial, timid strategies against people bent upon killing Americans
will not save lives. They will cost lives.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Jenkins).
Mr. JENKINS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution.
The preamble of this resolution sets out in detailed chronological
order the obligations that were imposed upon and accepted by the regime
of Saddam Hussein as the result of a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire
in 1991. They were clear obligations for Saddam Hussein to end his
nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to
deliver them and to end his support for international terrorism. I have
heard no one deny the existence of these obligations. I have heard no
credible denial of their breach.
Since our country has been attacked by terrorists and we continue to
be threatened, at least in part, due to the breach of these
obligations, it becomes the duty of the President and this Congress to
chart a course of action that will protect our country and all its
citizens. This resolution in my opinion charts such a course.
{time} 1715
It provides that the President is authorized to use the Armed Forces
as he deems necessary and appropriate to defend the national security
of the United States, and, secondly, to enforce all relevant United
Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
In the final analysis, it boils down to a matter of judgment, whether
we should vote ``yes'' or ``no.'' My judgment is unless I vote ``yes,''
I have failed to meet the obligation that I have to the more than
630,000 men, women and children who constitute the First Congressional
District of Tennessee who are at risk today because of the failures of
Saddam Hussein.
Is there any question in anybody's mind what the votes of any of
those brave leaders who founded or helped perpetuate our Nation would
be? Leaders like President Washington, President Lincoln, President
Truman, or
[[Page H7380]]
President Eisenhower, all who demonstrated during their time in office
the good judgment to chart and the courage to complete a difficult
course.
Can we not agree all of us in this Chamber that mankind would have
been spared terrible agony and death if the judgment of Winston
Churchill had been heard and heeded and adopted as a course of action
in the 1930's?
The eyes of all our great leaders of the past and the eyes of all who
have laid down their lives for our freedom are upon us today to see if
we are proper stewards of the freedom and the opportunities that they
afforded us with their sacrifices. This decision is vital, not only to
the future of Americans, but to the future of the world community and
to all who would throw off the yoke of tyranny and oppression and
escape the horrors of chemical, bacteriological, and nuclear warfare.
If we are forced to action following this resolution, and it is
everybody's hope that we will not be, it will be easier in proportion
to our accord for those who represent us on the battlefield.
Mr. Speaker, I urge passage.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman
from Massachusetts (Mr. Capuano).
Mr. CAPUANO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, over the last 6 weeks, the President has changed long-
standing policy that prohibits a unilateral American first strike and
has argued that his new policy should be imposed upon Iraq.
President Bush, to his credit, has decided to include Congress in
this process and to seek international support for his positions,
although he will not wait for such support to enforce his new policy.
The process is important, but it is not the most important aspect of
his efforts. For me, the most important question in this entire matter
is what happens after Saddam Hussein is dethroned. Forty years ago we
amended our policies to state that America will no longer allow long-
range nuclear weapons to be installed in our hemisphere, a precise
policy that applied only to Cuba at that time.
Twenty years ago we amended our policy to state that America will not
allow foreign leaders to enrich themselves by using their governmental
structure to ship illegal drugs into America. Again, a precise policy
which applied only to Panama at the time. Although the President has
changed some of his arguments, there do seem to be three constant
points that he uses.
Number one, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Number two, Iraq
has supported terrorists even if the link to al Qaeda cannot be proven.
Number three, Iraq has a history of aggression and brutality against
its own people and against its neighbors. We all agree on all of those
points. They are not subject to debate. Based on constant repetition of
these factors, we must conclude these are the criteria America will use
to implement our new unilateral strike policy. But is this reaction to
Iraq's threat comparable to previous reactions to such threats? Is it
clear and precise? Who else violates this new policy and, therefore,
who would be next to have our new policy implemented against them?
Let us start with Iran. They have weapons of mass destruction. Iran
has certainly supported terrorists and does so today. In fact, many
people believe that this country, Iran, now is home to more al Qaeda
members than any other country in the world. Finally, Iran has a
history of aggression and brutality against its own people and its
neighbors. When do we attack Iran?
What about China? They certainly have very powerful weapons of mass
destruction, including nuclear weapons. They are the leading sellers of
both weapons of mass destruction and, more importantly, the industrial
means to produce such weapons around the world. They have ignored all
calls to withdraw from Tibet or to treat Tibetans fairly. They
brutalize the Falun Gong. They brutalize Christians. They threaten
Taiwan and the peace in of all of Asia. When do we attack China?
When do we attack the Sudan? When do we attack North Korea? When do
we attack Russia itself?
Each of these countries meets all of the criteria the President is
now using to say we should attack Iraq unilaterally.
Most Americans want Saddam Hussein gone. So do I. Most Americans want
the United States to remain the strongest Nation in the world. So do I.
But most Americans also want the United States of America to continue
to be the world's moral leader while we accomplish both of these goals.
President Bush's unclear, imprecise new policy in support of a
unilateral force first strike does not do it.
Not long ago another American stated, ``Our purpose is peace. The
United States intends no rashness and seeks no wider war. We seek the
full and effective restoration of international agreements.'' This
House reacted by voting, ``The United States is prepared as the
President determines to take all necessary steps including the use of
armed forces.''
I am sure some of you recognize these words from the 1963 Gulf of
Tonkin Resolution that led to the Vietnam debacle. We all know the
results of that resolution. We all know that this House had to repeal
this resolution 6 years later.
This resolution before us tonight uses virtually the same language
and grants the President comparable authority to the Gulf of Tonkin
resolution. But I think our actions here today may actually prove to be
more dangerous because we base them on a new policy of unilateral first
strike. At a minimum, the President needs to refine his new policy
before we implement. Until we do so, America must adhere to the long-
standing policies in existence now. Those policies require
international agreement on war and peace, and they require war to be
the last alternative, not the first.
As of today, the United States, and we know it, has not exhausted our
peaceful options; and by tomorrow when we vote on this, we will have
set America and the world on a new course that has not yet been fully
thought out or debated. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to
go slow.
Others have cited history as well. Let me be clear, no one has
forgotten September 11. Everyone wants to avoid another such incident.
But no one has divine insight as how to best accomplish that goal. Let
me ask those who have cited World War II and to remind them that when
Iraq did try to expand its borders, the world did react. This Congress
reacted, unlike Europe in the 1930's. The comparison is not valid.
If necessary there will be plenty of time to wage war against Iraq,
and I may support it. But if an unnecessary war is waged, we risk
forfeiting America's well-deserved reputation as humanity's best hope
for a long-lasting worldwide peace.
Mr. Speaker, I urge this Congress to vote ``no'' on this resolution.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon).
(Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise
and extend his remarks.)
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of
the resolution and want to focus on what this debate is all about.
This debate is all about whether Saddam continued to build weapons of
mass destruction after 1991 and would he use them. Well, I think
everyone is in agreement in the second question, that he will use them
because he has already done that. He has done it with the Kurds. He has
done it with his own population a number of times.
Let us talk about whether or not he has weapons of mass destruction
and how he got them. Mr. Speaker, I have given no less than 12 speeches
on the floor of this House about the proliferation that occurred to
Saddam Hussein in the 1990s.
Mr. Speaker, I insert two documents that I have inserted in the
Congressional Record five times in the past.
Mr. Speaker, these are chronologies of weapons-related transfers of
technology to Saddam by Chinese interests and Russian interests.
[Los Angeles Times Editorials, May 21, 1998]
Indignation Rings Shallow on Nuke Tests
(By Curt Weldon)
Escalating tensions between India and Pakistan should come
as no surprise to the Clinton administration. Since the
president took office, there have been dozens of reported
transfers of sensitive military technology by Russia and
China--in direct violation of numerous international arms
control agreements--to a host of nations, including Pakistan
and India.
[[Page H7381]]
Yet the Clinton administration has repeatedly chosen to
turn a blind eye to this proliferation of missile, chemical-
biological and nuclear technology, consistently refusing to
impose sanctions on violators. And in those handful of
instances where sanctions were imposed, they usually were
either quickly waived by the administration or allowed to
expire. Rather than condemn India for current tensions, the
blame for the political powder keg that has emerged in Asia
should be laid squarely at the feet of President Clinton. It
is his administration's inaction and refusal to enforce arms
control agreements that have allowed the fuse to grow so
short.
In November 1992, the United States learned that China had
transferred M-11 missiles to Pakistan. The Bush
administration imposed sanctions for this violation but
Clinton waived them a little more than 14 months later.
Clearly, the sanctions did not have the desired effect:
Reports during the first half of 1995 indicated that M-11
missiles, additional M-11 missile parts, as well as 5,000
ring magnets for Pakistani nuclear enrichment programs were
transferred from China. Despite these clear violations, no
sanctions were imposed. And it gets worse.
Not to be outdone by its sworn foe, India aggressively
pursued similar technologies and obtained them, illicitly,
from Russia. From 1991 to 1995, Russian entities transferred
cryogenic liquid oxygen-hydrogen rocket engines and
technology to India. While sanctions were imposed by
President Bush in May 1992, the Clinton administration
allowed them to expire after only two years. And in June
1993, evidence surfaced that additional Russian enterprises
were involved in missile technology transfers to India. The
administration imposed sanctions in June 1993, and then
promptly waived them for a month, never following up on this
issue.
Meanwhile, Pakistan continued to aggressively pursue
technology transfers from China. In August 1996, the
capability to manufacture M-11 missile or missile components
was transferred from China to Pakistan. No sanctions. In
November 1996, a special industrial furnace and high-tech
diagnostic equipment were transferred from China to an
unprotected Pakistani nuclear facility. No sanctions. Also
during 1996, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency
issued a report stating that China had provided a
``tremendous variety'' of technology and assistance for
Pakistan's ballistic missile program and was the principal
supplier of nuclear equipment for Pakistan's program. Again,
the Clinton administration refused to impose sanctions.
Finally, in recent months we have learned that China may
have been responsible for the transfer of technology for
Pakistan's Ghauri medium-range ballistic missile. Flight
tested on April 6, 1998, the Ghauri missile has been widely
blamed as the impetus for India's decision to detonate five
nuclear weapons in tests earlier this month. Again, no
sanctions were imposed on China.
Retracing the history of these instances of proliferation,
it is obvious that Pakistan and India have been locked in an
arms race since the beginning of the decade. And the race has
been given repeated jump-starts by China and Russia, a clear
violation of a number of arms control agreements. Yet rather
than enforce these arms control agreements, the Clinton
administration has repeatedly acquiesced, fearing that the
imposition of sanctions could either strain relations with
China and Russia or potentially hurt U.S. commercial
interests in those countries.
Now the Clinton administration has announced a get-tough
policy, threatening to impose sanctions on India for testing
its nuclear weapons. But what about Russia and China, the two
nations that violated international arms agreements?
Shouldn't they also be subject to U.S. sanctions for their
role in this crisis? Sadly, the Clinton administration is
likely to ignore the proliferators and impose sanctions
solely on India. In the meantime, China and Russia will
continue their proliferation of missile and nuclear
technology to other nations, including rogue states such as
Iran, Iraq and Syria.
____
CHRONOLOGY OF CHINESE WEAPONS-RELATED TRANSFERS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reported transfer by Administration's
Date of transfer or report China Possible violation response
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nov. 1992........................... M-11 missiles or MTCR--Arms Export Sanctions imposed on
related equipment to Control Act, Export Aug. 24, 1993, for
Pakistan (The Administration Act. transfers of M-11
Administration did not related equipment (not
officially confirm missiles); waived on
reports that M-11 Nov. 1, 1994.
missiles are in
Pakistan.).
Mid-1994 to mid-1995................ Dozens or hundreds of MTCR--Iran-Iraq Arms No sanctions.
missile guidance Nonproliferation Act,
systems and Arms Export Control
computerized machine Act, Export
tools to Iran. Administration Act.
2nd quarter of 1995................. Parts for the M-11 MTCR--Arms Export No sanctions.
missile to Pakistan. Control Act, Export
Administration Act.
Dec. 1994 to mid-1995............... 5,000 ring magnets for NPT--Export-Import Bank Considered sanctions
an unsafeguarded Act, Nuclear under the Export-Import
nuclear enrichment Proliferation Bank Act; but announced
program in Pakistan. Prevention Act, Arms on May 10, 1996, that
Export Control Act. no sanctions would be
imposed.
July 1995........................... More than 30 M-11 MTCR--Arms Export No sanctions.
missiles stored in Control Act, Export
crates at Sargodha Air Administration Act.
Force Base in Pakistan.
Sept. 1995.......................... Calutron NPT--Nuclear No sanctions.
(electromagnetic Proliferation
isotope separation Prevention Act, Export-
system) for uranium Import Bank Act, Arms
enrichment to Iran. Export Control Act.
1995-1997........................... C-802 anti-ship cruise Iran-Iraq Arms No sanctions.
missiles and C-801 air- Nonproliferation Act.
launched cruise
missiles to Iran.
before Feb. 1996.................... Dual-use chemical Arms Export Control Sanctions imposed on May
precursors and Act, Export 21, 1997.
equipment to Iran's Administration Act.
chemical weapon
program.
summer 1996......................... 400 tons of chemicals Iran-Iraq Arms No sanctions.
to Iran. Nonproliferation
Act,\1\ Arms Export
Control Act, Export
Administration Act.
Aug. 1996........................... Plant to manufacture M- MTCR--Arms Export No sanctions.
11 missiles or missile Control Act, Export
components in Pakistan. Administration Act.
Aug. 1996........................... Gyroscopes, MTCR--Iran-Iraq Arms No sanctions.
accelerometers, and Nonproliferation Act,
test equipment for Arms Export Control
missile guidance to Act, Export
Iran. Administration Act.
Sept. 1996.......................... Special industrial NPT--Nuclear No sanctions.
furnace and high-tech Proliferation
diagnostic equipment Prevention Act, Export-
to unsafeguarded Import Bank Act, Arms
nuclear facilities in Export Control Act.
Pakistan.
July-Dec. 1996...................... Director of Central MTCR--Arms Export No sanctions.
Intelligence (DCI) Control Act, Export
reported ``tremendous Administration Act.
variety'' of
technology and
assistance for
Pakistan's ballistic
missile program.
July-Dec. 1996...................... DCI reported MTCR--Iran-Iraq Arms No sanctions.
``tremendous variety'' Nonproliferation Act,
of assistance for Arms Export Control
Iran's ballistic Act, Export
missile program. Administration Act.
July-Dec. 1996...................... DCI reported principal NPT--Nuclear No sanctions.
supplies of nuclear Proliferation
equipment, material, Prevention Act, Export-
and technology for Import Bank Act, Arms
Pakistan's nuclear Export Administration
weapon program. Act.
July-Dec. 1996...................... DCI reported key NPT--Iran-Iraq Arms No sanctions.
supplies of technology Nonproliferation Act,
for large nuclear Nuclear Proliferation
projects in Iran. Prevention Act, Export-
Import Bank Act, Arms
Export Administration
Act.
July-Dec. 1996...................... DCI reported Iran-Iraq Arms No sanctions.
``considerable'' Nonproliferation Act,
chemical weapon- Arms Export Control
related transfers of Act, Export
production equipment Administration Act.
and technology to Iran.
Jan. 1997........................... Dual-use biological BWC--Iran-Iraq Arms No sanctions.
items to Iran. Nonproliferation Act,
Arms Export Control
Act, Export
Administration Act.
1997................................ Chemical precursors, Iran-Iraq Arms No sanctions.
production equipment, Nonproliferation Act,
and production Arms Export Control
technology for Iran's Act, Export
chemical weapon Administration Act.
program, including a
plant for making glass-
lined equipment.
Sept. to Dec. 1997.................. China Great Wall MTCR--Iran-Iraq Arms No sanctions.
Industry Corp. Nonproliferation Act,
provided telemetry Arms Export Control
equipment used in Act, Export
flight-tests to Iran Administration Act.
for its development of
the Shahab-3 and
Shahab-4 medium range
ballistic missiles.
Nov. 1997/April 1998................ May have transferred MTCR--Arms Export No sanctions.
technology for Control Act, Export
Pakistan's Ghauri Administration Act.
medium-range ballistic
missile that was
flight-tested on April
6, 1998.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Additional provisions on chemical, biological or nuclear weapons were not enacted until February 10, 1996.
BWC: Biological Weapons Convention; MTCR: Missile Technology Control Regime; and NPT: Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty.
CHRONOLOGY OF SUSPECTED RUSSIAN WEAPONS-RELATED TRANSFERS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reported Russian
transfers that may have Possibly applicable Administration's
Date of transfer or report violated a regime or treaties, regimes, and/ response
law or U.S. laws
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
early 1990s......................... Russians sold drawings AECA sec. 81, EAA sec. No publicly known
of a sarin plant, 11C. sanction.
manufacturing
procedures, and toxic
agents to a Japanese
terrorist group.
1991................................ Transferred to China MTCR, AECA sec. 73, EAA No publicly known
three RD-120 rocket sec. 11B. sanction.
engines and electronic
equipment to improve
accuracy of ballistic
missiles.
1991-1995........................... Transferred Cryogenic MTCR, AECA sec. 73, EAA Sanctions against Russia
liquid oxygen/hydrogen sec. 11B. and India under AECA
rocket engines and and EAA imposed on May
technology to India. 6, 1992; expired after
2 years.
1992-1995........................... Russian transfers to MTCR, AECA sec. 73, EAA Sanctions reportedly
Brazil of carbon-fiber sec. 11B. secretly imposed and
technology for rocket waived.
motor cases for space
launch program.
1992-1996........................... Russian armed forces MTCR, AECA sec. 73, EAA No publicly known
delivered 24 Scud-B sec. 11B. sanction.
missiles and 8
launchers to Armenia.
[[Page H7382]]
June 1993........................... Additional Russian MTCR, AECA sec. 73, EAA Sanctions imposed on
enterprises involved sec. 11B. June 16, 1993 and
in missile technology waived until July 15,
transfers to India. 1993; no publicly known
follow-up sanction.
1995-present........................ Construction of 1,000 IIANPA sec. 1604 and Refused to renew some
megawatt nuclear 1605, FOAA, NPPA sec. civilian nuclear
reactor at Bushehr in 821, FAA sec. 620G. cooperation agreements;
Iran. waived sanctions on
aid.
Aug. 1995........................... Russian assistance to BWC, AECA sec. 81, EAA No publicly known
Iran to develop sec. 11C, IIANPA sec. sanction.
biological weapons. 1604 and 1605, FAA
sec. 620G and 620H.
Nov. 1995........................... Russian citizen AECA sec. 81, EAA sec. Sanctions imposed on
transferred to unnamed 11C. Nov. 17, 1995.
country technology for
making chemical
weapons.
Dec. 1995........................... Russian gyroscopes from United Nations No publicly known
submarine launched Sanctions, MTCR, AECA sanction.
ballistic missiles sec. 73, EAA sec. 11B,
smuggled to Iraq IIANPA sec. 1604 and
through middlemen. 1605, FAA sec. 620G
and 620H.
July-Dec. 1996...................... DCI reported Russia MTCR, AECA sec. 73, EAA No publicly known
transferred to Iran sec. 11B, FAA sec. sanction.
``a variety'' of items 620G and 620H, IIANPA
related to ballistic sec. 1604 and 1605,
missiles. FOAA.
Nov. 1996........................... Israel reported Russian AECA sec. 81, EAA sec. No publicly known
assistance to Syria to 11C, FAA sec. 620G and sanction.
build a chemical 620H.
weapon plant.
1996-1997........................... Delivered 3 Kilo diesel- IIANPA sec. 1604 and No publicly known
electric submarines to 1605, FAA sec. 620G sanction.
Iran. and 620H.
Jan.-Feb. 1997...................... Russia transferred MTCR, AECA sec. 73, EAA No publicly known
detailed instructions sec. 11B, FAA sec. sanction.
to Iran on production 620G and 620H, IIANPA
of the SS-4 medium- sec. 1604 and 1605,
range missile and FOAA.
related parts.
April 1997.......................... Sale of S-300 anti- IIANPA sec. 1604 and No publicly known
aircraft/anti-missile 1605, FAA sec. 620G sanction.
missile system to Iran and 620H.
to protect nuclear
reactors at Bushehr
and other strategic
sites.
Oct. 1997........................... Israeli intelligence MTCR, AECA sec. 73, EAA No publicly known
reported Russian sec. 11B, IIANPA sec. sanction.
technology transfers 1604 and 1605, FAA
for Iranian missiles sec. 620G and 620H,
developed with ranges FOAA.
between 1,300 and
10,000 km. Transfers
include engines and
guidance systems.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regimes:
BWC: Biological Weapons Convention; and MTCR: Missile Technology Control Regime.
U.S. Laws:
AECA: Arms Export Control Act; EAA: Export Administration Act; FAA: Foreign Assistance Act; FOAA: Foreign
Operations Appropriations Act; IIANPA: Iran-Iraq Arms Non-Proliferation Act; and NPPA: Nuclear Proliferation
Prevention Act.
Mr. Speaker, during the 1990s, I would remind my colleagues, 37 times
we had evidence of China and Russia transferring weapon technology to
Hussein. Every one of those should have required a response, should
have required sanctions. The previous administration imposed sanctions
a total of four times out of 37. In nine of those cases, it was
chemical and biological weapon technology, the very technology today
that we are worried about. We saw it being transferred, and we did
nothing about it. In fact, only in two of those nine cases did we
impose the required sanctions.
Mr. Speaker, we have evidence which I will submit in the Record also
of Iraq's policy on their defense system and offensive capabilities,
both a 1984 document and a 1987 document. In the document Saddam's
military talks about the use of chemical and biological weapons.
In President Bush's speech this past week he said, ``All that might
be required of Saddam are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi
intelligence operative to deliver it.''
Well, here it is. Mr. Speaker, this is a biological disbursing
device. You can build it for less than $100. If I would not offend the
Parliamentarian, I would turn it on and you would have a plume in this
room. If you put that device in the Metro station subway in D.C. and
activate it, based on a study by the Office of Technology Assessment,
you would have 150,000 people in the D.C. commuter system killed by the
dispersion of 4.5 kilograms of anthrax.
Just like we saw back in the 1990s when we had evidence that Russian
entities transferred these devices, a Soviet accelerometer and a Soviet
gyroscope, which the previous administration did nothing about, never
imposed the required sanctions. Now we have to pay the price.
Does Saddam have chemical and biological weapons? Absolutely. Where
did he get it from? He got it from those 37 transfers that we knew
about that are now in the record that we did nothing about. Does he
have a nuclear weapon like the one I have in front of me that General
Alexander Lebed told my delegation in 1997 that they built? And the
previous administration when it became public said, we deny the
Russians ever built them.
The previous administration sided with the Russian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and said we have no reason to doubt them, even though
two top Russian leaders said there was reason to believe 80 of these
devices were missing.
The reason why we have to support the President is because the
failures of our policies in the past decade have given Saddam Hussein
biological and chemical weapon capability, nuclear weapon capability,
missile capability, none of which should have occurred during the 1990s
if we would have enforced the very arms control agreements that the
other side now talks about. Thirty-seven times we had evidence, nine
cases of chemical and biological weapons going from Russian and China
to Iraq. And what did we do? We went like this and like that. And now
we are faced with the consequence.
So what President Bush has said is we must stand up and we must show
the world that we will not tolerate what went on in the 1990s. We will
not sit back and allow 37 violations to go unchecked. We will not
pretend we do not see them because we want to keep Yeltsen in power. We
will not pretend we do not want to see them because we want to protect
the financial interests of the PLA for our fund-raising purposes.
We should have done this during the 1990s, but we did not. I say to
my colleagues, support this resolution. Give the President a unanimous
voice that says to the U.N., we will act to finally do what we did not
do in the 1990s, and that is enforce the requirements of the six
resolutions that were passed back then.
And if my colleagues want to see what a biological disbursement
weapon looks like, come see me. I will activate it for them in the
cloak room.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis).
Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the
resolution. As I have listened to this thorough debate and thought
about the resolution we are about to vote on, it seems to me the
Persian Gulf War has never really ended. In 1991 Saddam Hussein agreed
to a conditional surrender. He has not met the conditions of his
surrender. Iraq is still fighting, and we need to respond.
I have heard some of my colleagues say that use of force against Iraq
would be a preemptive strike. I disagree. In 1991 Saddam Hussein said
Iraq would comply with all United Nations resolutions. Iraq has not
done so. Iraq agreed to eliminate nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons programs. Today Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction and
the will to use them.
Hussein agreed to allow unfettered weapons inspection in this
country. However, Iraq has done everything possible to obstruct those
inspections. Iraq pledged to keep planes out of the no-fly zone. In the
past few years, his pilots have fired on U.S. and British troops 1,600
times. They have shot at us 460 times this year alone.
Iraq continues to be a threat to the area. In 1993 Iraqi troops moved
toward the Kuwaiti border. Iraqi planes continued to fly in the no-fly
zone. When Iraq banned U.N. inspections in 1998, President Clinton
responded by launching missiles into the country.
{time} 1730
Was that a preemptive strike? Along with the British, we dropped more
than 600 bombs on Iraqi military targets. We have continued strikes
against Iraq air defense installations and in response to Iraq shots at
our planes in the no-fly zone.
Iraq must be held to the conditions it agreed to. This Congress
authorized action to bring Iraq into compliance in 1998. We must do so
again. Until Iraq
[[Page H7383]]
complies with the terms of its conditional surrender, there has been no
surrender. The Persian Gulf War is ongoing.
Further, U.S. action against Iraq is not a preemptive strike, but is
our responsibility to bring Saddam Hussein's continued plotting of his
international obligations to an end. President Bush wants the
commitment that Congress stands with him in dealing with Iraq.
I urge that Congress stand with President Bush and support the
resolution to finally end the Gulf War once and for all.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns).
(Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the resolution, but we
are engaged in debating the most difficult decision that Members of
Congress are called upon to make.
Notwithstanding that, Saddam Hussein is uniquely evil, the only ruler
in power today, and the first one since Hitler, to commit chemical
genocide. I believe there is reason for the long term to remove him
from power. This resolution is the first step.
My colleagues, remember that Israel absorbed the world's hatred and
scorn for its attack on and destruction of Iraq's Osirak nuclear
reactor in 1981. Today it is accepted by most arms control experts that
had Israel not destroyed Osirak, Hussein's Iraq would have had nuclear
power by 1990, when his forces pillaged their way through Kuwait.
We can see on this chart all the resolutions that were passed and
that Saddam Hussein did not comply with. In fact, there were 12
immediately after the war; 35 after those 12. All together, 47
resolutions, of which he scarcely complied.
Now, let us take the resolution on this chart, which is 687,
governing the cease-fire in 1991. It required that Iraq unconditionally
accept the destruction, removal or rendering harmless its chemical and
biological weapons. Within 15 days after the passage of the resolution,
Iraq was to have provided the locations, the amounts, and types of
those specified items. Over a decade later, we still have little
information on that.
That is why I applaud President Bush for taking his case to the
United Nations and placing the burden of action upon the organization
to enforce its own resolutions passed on Iraq. We owe diplomacy and
peaceful opportunities the due diligence necessary to rid this despotic
regime of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism sponsorship.
However, if the U.S. is not credible in alternatives for noncompliance,
we will again be at the crossroads asking the same question: If not
now, when?
Let us move forward with this resolution, develop a consensus, and
work together with other nations to remove this evil dictator.
Mr. Speaker, our vote this week will be whether or not to authorize
the President of the United States to use necessary and appropriate
force to defend the national security of the United States against the
continuing threat posed by Iraq. I would like to emphatically state
that no decision weighs heavier on the mind of a President, or a Member
of Congress, than the decision to send our men and women of the Armed
Forces into action.
And I want to thank the President for working hard to make the case
for possible--and I want my colleagues and the public to understand
this--possible action against Iraq. The President stated last night
that he hopes military action is not required. Iraq can avoid conflict
by adhering to the security resolutions requiring ``declaring and
destroying all of its weapons of mass destruction, ending support for
terrorism and ceasing the persecution of its civilian population. And,
it must release or account for all gulf war personnel, including an
American pilot, whose fate is still unknown.''
To quote a recent article from the ``Weekly Standard'':
There are, of course, many repugnant dictators in the
world; a dozen or so in the Middle East alone. But Saddam
Hussein is a figure of singular repugnance, and singular
danger. To review: There is no dictator in power anywhere in
the world who has, so far in his career, invaded two
neighboring countries; fired ballistic missiles at the
civilians of two other neighboring countries; tried to have
assassinated an ex-president of the United States; harbored
al-Qaida fugitives . . . attacked the soldiers of an enemy
country with chemical weapons; conducted biological weapons
experiments on human subjects; committee genocide; and there
is, of course, the matter of the weaponized aflatoxin, a tool
of mass murder and nothing else.
And lastly, my colleagues, President Bush is not alone in calling for
a regime change. Congress made the need for regime change clear in 1998
with the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act. The congress specifically
stated ``It should be the policy of the United States to support
efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in
Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace
that regime.'' In that legislation we also called upon the United
Nations to establish an international criminal tribunal to prosecute
Saddam Hussein and those in his regime for crimes against humanity and
criminal violation of international law.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond to the
comments made by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), who
pointed out that our actions against Saddam during the 1990s were not
as aggressive as they should have been.
I would point out that we were also not aggressive until September 11
of the prior year. Both administrations failed to grasp the importance
of Saddam Hussein's weapons program until September 11 of last year.
I would also point out that when the prior administration did take
military action against Saddam Hussein, it did not receive the level of
support and unified support that it should have.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5\1/2\ minutes to the extremely distinguished
and thoughtful gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ford).
Mr. FORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time, and I join the gentleman from California and associate myself
with his remarks. I would hope my friend, the gentleman from
Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), who I believe is right on this issue, would
refrain from politicizing. If there is blame to go around, there is
certainly enough blame to go around here in this town today, yesterday,
and even a few days ago.
After careful consideration, Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this
resolution. This vote is the most important and difficult one I have
cast since coming to Congress some 6 years ago. I sincerely hope, as I
imagine most of my colleagues do, that we will never have to cast
another one like it.
I have listened carefully to the concerns and objections of many of
my colleagues and constituents; and having never served in the Armed
Forces, I have sought the counsel of those who have. I have reviewed
the available intelligence about the threat from Iraq and weighed the
risk of a potential conflict with Iraq in the context of our ongoing
war on terrorism; and I have reached the conclusion, as many have, that
the risk of inaction and delay far outweigh the risk of action.
Saddam Hussein has stockpiled chemical and biological weapons, as all
have mentioned today, and is seeking the means to deliver them, if he
does not already have the capacity now. He is developing missile
delivery systems that could threaten American citizens, service
members, and our own allies in the region. But in today's world, a
sworn enemy of America does not need a missile to deliver weapons of
mass destruction. All he needs is a suitcase, a small plane, a cargo
ship, or a single suicidal terrorist.
The most compelling case for action, however, Mr. Speaker, is the
nuclear threat. Let us be clear. We do not have the intelligence
suggesting that an imminent nuclear threat is upon us. I would urge
Secretary Rumsfeld to cease suggesting to Americans that there is some
connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda unless he has evidence
to present to this Congress and to this public.
What we do have evidence of is that Saddam Hussein continues to
desire to obtain a nuclear weapon. And we know that should he obtain
the raw materials, which may be available to him in any number of ways,
he could build a nuclear bomb in less than a year. The Iraqi regime's
efforts to obtain nuclear weapons are coupled with the recklessness of
the Iraqi dictator. We know that Saddam is capable of murder and untold
cruelty. We know that Saddam is capable of aggression and also capable
of miscalculating his adversary's response to his aggression.
Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a cruel, reckless, and
misguided dictator pose a clear and present danger to our security. I
could not vote to authorize military action
[[Page H7384]]
abroad if I did not believe that Saddam Hussein poses a growing threat
to our security, one that will not recede just because we hope it goes
away. That is why I support giving the President the authority to
achieve our fundamental goal: disarming the Iraqi regime of all weapons
of mass destruction.
As we consider this resolution, every Member should read it carefully
so we do not mischaracterize what we are voting on here today. So what
is this resolution for? First, it is a resolution stating Congress'
support for our diplomatic efforts. This resolution must not be taken
as an endorsement of unilateralism. It explicitly affirms Congress'
support for the President's efforts to work through the U.N. Security
Council to address Iraq's ``delay, evasion and noncompliance.'' It
calls for prompt and decisive action by the U.N. Security Council to
enforce its own mandates on Iraq.
Second, this resolution is not a declaration of war. The resolution
forces the President to affirm that all diplomatic and peaceful means
have proven inadequate to protect our Nation's security. This gives the
President the flexibility to dangle a stick with that carrot.
At the same time, it affirms that military action must be used only
as a last resort. If it were up to some of us in this Congress, we
would have done it another way, perhaps building international support
before coming to Congress, but this President chose to do it another
way.
Third, the resolution more defines our purpose in authorizing the use
of force. The use of force has two clearly defined purposes: one, to
defend the national security of the United States against the
continuing threat posed by Iraq; and, two, to enforce all relevant
United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
Unlike the White House's draft language, the resolution carefully
limits its authorization to Iraq and only Iraq. And it is clear that
our purpose is to protect against the threat to the United States. This
resolution authorizes military action to disarm Iraq but does not
mention regime change. The goal is Iraq's disarmament and full
compliance with U.N. mandates.
I applaud Leader Gephardt and others, including Republicans and
Democrats in the Senate, for helping to negotiate such language.
Although I strongly support the President in addressing the threat
from Iraq, I believe the President must be more candid with us and the
American people about the long-term commitment that is going to be
needed in Iraq. It has been a year since we began the campaign in
Afghanistan; and our efforts there politically, economically, and
militarily are nowhere close to concluding. I visited Afghanistan in
February and March and witnessed firsthand how fragile the peace is
there. It will take years to forge stability in Afghanistan and years
in Iraq.
War is the last outcome that I want, and the last outcome I believe
the President wants; but when America's national security is at stake,
the world must know that we are prepared to defend our Nation from
tyrants and from terrorists. With that, I ask every Member of Congress
to support this resolution supporting our President and supporting our
Nation.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time, and I stand in support of Joint Resolution 114.
Mr. Speaker, the way I see it is this way. Let us just say,
hypothetically, if it was August 2001, and I stood before this House
and said, listen, there is a guy out there named Osama bin Laden who is
associated with a terrorist group named al Qaeda, and this terrorist
group has found safe haven inside the corrupt Taliban government of
Afghanistan. And, my colleagues, I think we should do something about
it because our intelligence is not necessarily absolute, but this guy
is up to no good and we need to strike before he strikes us.
Now, if I had said that in August of 2001, people would have said,
that war monger, that jingoistic guy from Georgia. What is he talking
about? Yet before September 11, would it not have been nice if we could
have had that speech and maybe prevented the tragedy of September 11?
Well, here we are. We know Saddam Hussein has violated treaty after
treaty which happened after Desert Storm, starting with U.N. Resolution
660, U.N. Resolution 678, U.N. Resolution 686, 687, 688, 701, all of
them. In fact, 16 total of very significant matters going back to
Resolution 660. All of them violated, Mr. Speaker.
And then here is the situation with the weapons. We know that they
have VX. It is a sticky, colorless liquid that interferes with nerve
impulses of the body, causes convulsions and paralysis. U.N. inspectors
estimate that Iraq has the means to make 200 tons of VX. Sarin Gas.
And, of course, we know that it causes convulsions and paralysis as
well. It was used in a small quantity in a Tokyo subway in 1995. Again,
inspectors estimate that they have maybe as high as 800 tons of sarin
gas. It goes on. Mustard gas, anthrax, and other great worrisome
chemical and biological weapons in their stockpile. We also know that
he is trying to become nuclear capable.
Finally comes the question of terrorism. We know that the State
Department has designated Iraq as a state that sponsors international
terrorism. We know that they shelter the Abu Nidal terrorist
organization that has carried out terrorist attacks in 20 different
countries and killed over 900 people.
We also know that Iraq shelters several prominent terrorist
Palestinian organizations, including the Palestine Liberation Front,
which is known for its attacks on Israel, including one on the Achille
Lauro ship that killed the United States citizen, Leon Klinghoffer.
My colleagues, the time to act is now. If we could just think for a
minute what the price of action is versus inaction. Had Todd Beamer and
the other passengers of Flight 93 elected a course of inaction on
September 11, the price would have been significantly different for
particularly those of us in this building. This is a time that calls
for action. And in the great words of Todd Beamer, let me close with
this: ``Let's roll.''
It is time to do something. Let us pass this resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Joint Resolution 114,
Authorizing the Use of Military Force Against Iraq.
Here's how I view the situation: Suppose last August (2001), I gave a
speech announcing, ``There's a guy named Osama Bin Laden who is
involved in a terrorist group called Al Quida, which has found a safe
haven and training opportunities inside the corrupt Taliban government
of Afghanistan. Bin Laden and his terrorist allies probably were
involved in the 1993 bombing of the WTC, the bombing of the USS Cole in
Yemen, and the bombing of our embassies in Africa. We know Bin Laden
hates America and it is likely his group will attack our country in the
future. Therefore we need to eliminate him. I suggest we start bombing
his hideouts in Afghanistan immediately.''
Had I given that speech, I would have been laughed at and called a
warmonger, even though action against Al Quida in August 2001 could
have saved thousands of lives in both America and Afghanistan. But
this, in fact, is our situation today. Saddam Hussein hates us. He
harbors terrorist groups, possesses chemical and biological weapons,
and may become nuclear capable in a short period of time. America
traditionally does not do preemptive strikes, but the events of
September 11th change everything. Americans will not tolerate the
threat of another horrific attack against the United States. Although
no American desires a war, the best way to ensure Hassein's compliance
with UN resolutions, and reduce the threat he poses to our national
security, is for Congress to confirm the United State's willingness to
use force if necessary.
Mr. Speaker, let me give you an account of all the reasons why I
support this resolution.
The whole world knows that Saddam Hussein has repeatedly violated all
16 of the United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) for more
than a decade. These violations should not be taken lightly and are
worthy of review. The list is substantial:
UNSCR 678--November 29, 1990--violated
Iraq must comply fully with UNSCR 660 (regarding Iraq's illegal
invasion of Kuwait) ``and all subsequent relevant resolutions.''
Authorizes U.N. Member States ``to use all necessary means to uphold
and implement resolution 660 and all subsequent relevant resolutions
and to restore international peace and security in the area.''
UNSCR 686--March 2, 1991--Violated
Iraq must release prisoners detained during the Gulf War.
[[Page H7385]]
Iraq must return Kuwaiti property seized during the Gulf War.
Iraq must accept liability under international law for damages from
its illegal invasion of Kuwait.
unscr 687--April 3, 1991--violated
Iraq must ``unconditionally accept'' the destruction, removal or
rendering harmless ``under international supervision'' of all
``chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all
related subsystems and components and all research, development,
support and manufacturing facilities.''
Iraq must ``unconditionally agree not to acquire or develop nuclear
weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material'' or any research,
development or manufacturing facilities.
Iraq must ``unconditionally accept'' the destruction, removal or
rendering harmless ``under international supervision'' of all
``ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 KM and related major
parts and repair and production facilities.''
Iraq must not ``use, develop, construct or acquire'' any weapons of
mass destruction.
Iraq must reaffirm its obligations under the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty.
Creates the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) to verify the
elimination of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs and
mandated that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verify
elimination of Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
Iraq must declare fully its weapons of mass destruction programs.
Iraq must not commit or support terrorism, or allow terrorist
organizations to operate in Iraq.
Iraq must cooperate in accounting for the missing and dead Kuwaitis
and others.
Iraq must return Kuwaiti property seized during the Gulf War.
UNSCR 688--April 5, 1991--Violated
``Condemns'' repression of Iraqi civilian population, ``the
consequences of which threaten international peace and security.''
Iraq must immediately end repression of its civilian population.
Iraq must allow immediate access to international humanitarian
organizations to those in need of assistance.
unscr 707--august 15, 1991--violated
``Condemns'' Iraq's ``serious violation'' of UNSCR 687.
``Further condemns'' Iraq's noncompliance with IAEA and its
obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Iraq must halt nuclear activities of all kinds until the Security
Council deems Iraq in full compliance.
Iraq must make a full, final and complete disclosure of all aspects
of its weapons of mass destruction and missile programs.
Iraq must allow U.N. and IAEA inspectors immediate, unconditional and
unrestricted access.
Iraq must cease attempts to conceal or move weapons of mass
destruction, and related materials and facilities.
Iraq must allow U.N. and IAEA inspectors to conduct inspection
flights throughout Iraq.
Iraq must provide transportation, medical and logistical support for
U.N. and IAEA inspectors.
UNSCR 715--October 11, 1991--Violated
Iraq must cooperate fully with U.N. and IAEA inspectors.
UNSCR 949--October 15, 1994--Violated
``Condemns'' Iraq's recent military deployments toward Kuwait.
Iraq must not utilize its military or other forces in a hostile
manner to threaten its neighbors or U.N. operations in Iraq.
Iraq must cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Iraq must not enhance its military capability in southern Iraq.
UNSCR 1051--March 27 19961--Violated
Iraq must report shipments of dual-use items related to weapons of
mass destruction to the U.N. and IAEA.
Iraq must cooperate fully with U.N. and IAEA inspectors and allow
immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access.
UNSCR 1060--June 12, 1996--Violated
``Deplores'' Iraq's refusal to allow access to U.N. inspectors and
Iraq's ``clear violations'' of previous U.N. resolutions.
Iraq must cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors and allow
immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access.
UNSCR 1115--June 21, 1997--Violated
``Condemns repeated refusal of Iraqi authorities to allow access'' to
U.N. inspectors, which constitutes a ``clear and flagrant violation''
of UNSCR 687, 707, 715, and 1060.
Iraq must cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors and allow
immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access.
Iraq must give immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access to
Iraqi officials whom U.N. inspectors want to interview.
UNSCR 1134--October 23, 1997--Violated
``Condemns repeated refusal of Iraqi authorities to allow access'' to
U.N. inspectors, which constitutes a ``flagrant violation'' of UNSCR
687, 707, 715, and 1060.
Iraq must cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors and allow
immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access.
Iraq must give immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access to
Iraqi officials whom U.N. inspectors want to interview.
unscr 1137--november 12, 1997--violated
``Condemns the continued violations by Iraq'' of previous U.N.
resolutions, including its ``implicit threat to the safety of''
aircraft operated by U.N. inspectors and its tampering with U.N.
inspector monitoring equipment.
Reaffirms Iraq's responsibility to ensure the safety of U.N.
inspectors.
Iraq must cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors and allow
immediate, unconditional unrestricted access.
unscr 1154--march 2, 1998--violated
Iraq must cooperate fully with U.N. and IAEA weapons inspectors and
allow immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access, and notes that
any violation would have the ``severest consequences for Iraq.''
unscr 1194--September 9, 1998--violated
``Condemns the decision by Iraq of 5 August 1998 to suspend
cooperation'' with U.N. and IAEA inspectors, which constitutes ``a
totally unacceptable contravention'' of its obligations under UNSCR
687, 7078, 715, 1060, 1115, and 1154.
Iraq must cooperate fully with U.N. and IAEA weapons inspectors, and
allow immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access.
unscr 1205--November 5, 1998--violated
``Condemns the decision by Iraq of 31 October 1998 to cease
cooperation'' with U.N. inspectors as ``a flagrant violation'' of UNSCR
687 and other resolutions.
Iraq must provide ``immediate, complete and unconditional
cooperation'' with U.N. and IAEA inspectors.
unscr 1284--December 17, 1998--violated
Created the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspections
Commission (UNMOVIC) to replace previous weapon inspection team
(UNSCOM).
Iraq must allow UNMOVIC ``immediate, unconditional and unrestricted
access'' to Iraqi officials and facilities.
Iraq must fulfill its commitment to return Gulf War prisoners.
Calls on Iraq to distribute humanitarian goods and medical supplies
to its people and address the needs of vulnerable Iraqis without
discrimination.
While all these violations are extremely serious, there are 3 or 4
items that stand out in my mind.
His blatant refusal to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to oversee the
destruction of his weapons of mass destruction.
His continued development of new biological and chemical weapons.
His continued pursuit of nuclear weapons, and
His support and harboring of terrorist organizations inside Iraq
(including Al Quida).
Mr. Speaker, some people have said, ``why are we doing this now?''
They say there is no ``clear and present danger.'' I don't know how
much clearer it has to be. The facts of the matter are documented, and
undoubtedly pose a clear and present danger to our national security.
Documented U.N. weapons inspector reports show that Iraq continually
deceived the inspectors and never provided definitive proof that they
destroyed their stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons.
Iraq has admitted producing the world's most dangerous biological and
chemical weapons, but refuses to give proof that they destroyed them.
Examples of Iraq's chemical weapons include VX, Sarin Gas and Mustard
Gas.
VX, the most toxic of chemical weapons, is a sticky, colorless liquid
that interferes with the body's nerve impulses, causing convulsions and
paralysis of the lungs and blood vessels. Victims essentially chock to
death. A dose of 10 milligrams on the skin is enough to kill.
Iraq acknowledged making nearly 4 tons of VX, and ``claimed'' they
destroyed it, but they never provided any definitive proof. U.N.
inspectors estimate that Iraq has the means to make more than 200 tons
of VX, and Iraq continues to rebuild and expand dual-use facilities
that it could quickly adapt to chemical weapons production.
Sarin gas, a nerve agent like VX, causes convulsions, paralysis and
asphyxiation. Even a small scale Sarin Gas attack such as the one used
in the Tokyo subway in 1995 can kill and injure vast numbers of people.
Iraq acknowledged making approximately 800 tons of Sarin gas and
thousands of rockets, artillery shells and bombs containing Sarin, but
they have not accounted for hundreds of these weapons. Iraq willingly
used these weapons against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, and it also
used them against Kurdish Iraqi civilians.
Mustard Gas, a colorless liquid that evaporates into a gas and begins
dissolving upon
[[Page H7386]]
contact with the skin causes injuries similar to burns and damages the
eyes and lungs.
Iraq acknowledged making thousands of tons of mustard gas and using
the chemical during it's war with Iran, but told U.N. inspectors they
``misplaced'' 550 mustard filled artillery shells after the Gulf war.
Examples of Iraq's biological weapons include Anthrax, Botulimun
Toxin and Aflatoxin
Anthrax, as we all know, is a potentially fatal bacterium that causes
flu like symptoms before filling the lungs with fluid and causing
death. Just a few tiny spores are enough to cause the deadly infection.
Iraq has acknowledged making 2,200 gallons of anthrax spores--enough
to kill millions, but U.N. inspectors determined that Iraq could have
made three times as much. Inspectors say that at least 16 missile
warheads filled with Anthrax are missing, and Iraq is working to
produce the deadlier powdered form of Anthrax that could be sprayed
from aircraft, put into missile warheads, or given to terrorists.
Botulimun Toxin, is a poison that is one of the deadliest substances
known to man. Even in small doses it causes gastrointestinal infection
and can quickly advance to paralysis and death. A mere 70 billionths of
a gram is enough to kill if inhaled.
Iraq acknowledged making 2,200 gallons of Botulimun Toxin, most of
which was put into missile warheads and other munitions. At least five
missile warheads with Botulimun Toxin are missing according to U.N.
inspectors.
Aflatoxin, is a poison that can cause swelling of the abdomen, lungs
and brain resulting in convulsion, coma and death.
Iraq acknowledged making more than 520 gallons of Aflaxtoxin and
putting it into missile warheads and bombs. At least four Aflatoxin--
filled missile warheads are missing according to U.N. inspectors.
It is also a fact (and a clear and present danger) that Saddam
Hussein continues his work to develop a nuclear weapon.
We know he had an advanced nuclear weapons development program before
the Gulf War, and the independent Institute for Strategic Studies
concluded that Saddam Hussein could build a nuclear bomb within months
if he were able to obtain fissile material.
We now know that Iraq has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials
to make an atomic bomb. In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy
thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which are believed to
be intended for use as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium.
As if weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a ruthless dictator
were not enough, we now know that Saddam Hussein harbors terrorist
organizations within Iraq.
Iraq is one of seven countries that have been designated by the State
Department as ``state sponsors of international terrorism.'' UNSUR 687
prohibits Saddam Hussein from committing or supporting terrorism, or
allowing terrorist organizations to operate in Iraq. Saddam continues
to violate these UNSUR provisions.
Iraq shelters the Abu Nidal Terrorist Organization that has carried
out terrorist attacks in twenty countries, killing or injuring almost
900 people. These terrorists have offices in Baghdad and received
training, logistical assistance, and financial aid from the government
of Iraq.
Iraq also shelters several prominent Palestinian terrorist
organizations in Baghdad, including the Palestine Liberation Front
(PLF), which is known for attacks against Israel and is headed by Abu
Abbas, who carried out the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille
Lauro and murdered U.S. citizen Leo Klinghoffer.
Hussein increased from $10,000 to $25,000 the money he offers to
families of Palestinian suicide/homicide bombers who blow themselves up
with belt explosives.
Several former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret
terrorist training facility in Iraq known as Salman Pak, where both
Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and
trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations.
And in 1993, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) attempted to
assassinate former U.S. President George Bush and the Emir of Kuwait.
Kuwaiti authorities thwarted the terrorist plot and arrested 17
suspects, led by two Iraqi nationals.
Mr. Speaker, I don't know how much clearer it needs to be. The
American people will not understand if we ignore these facts, sit back,
and wait for the unacceptable possibility of Saddam Hussein providing a
weapon of mass destruction to a terrorist group for use against the
United States.
Saddam Hussein was the only world leader to fully condone the
September 11 attacks on America. His media even promised the American
people that if their government did not change its policies toward
Iraq, it would suffer even more devastating blows. He has even endorsed
and encouraged acts of terrorism against America.
The case is clear. We know Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass
destruction, we know he harbors terrorists including al-Qaida, and we
know he hates America, so the case against Saddam really isn't the
issue. The question is what are we going to do about it.
Cearly, we must authorize the use of military force against Iraq in
case it becomes necessary. The President has said that military action
is a last resort, and our bipartisan resolution calls for the same
tact, but Saddam Hussein must know that America is prepared to use
force if he continues to defy UN Security Council resolutions and
refuses to disarm.
As the President said, approving this resolution does not mean that
military action is imminent or unavoidable. The resolution will tell
the United Nations, and all nations, that America speaks with one voice
and is determined to make the demands of the civilized world mean
something. Congress will be sending a message to Saddam Hussein that
his only choice is full compliance--and the time remaining for that
choice is limited.
The Speaker, the price of taking action against this evil dictator
may be high, but history has shown that the price of inaction is even
higher. Had Todd Beamer and the passengers of flight 93 elected a
course of inaction on September 11th, the price may have been far
higher for those of us in this building. There comes a time when we
must take action. A time when we must risk lives in order to save
lives. This resolution authorizes action, if necessary, to protect
America.
Mr. Speaker, I am confident that I speak for every member of this
House when I say I hope we can avoid war & that Saddam Hussein will
allow unfettered access to all sites and willingly disarm. But if he
does not, then the Congress will have done its duty and given the
President the authority he needs to defend our great nation. The
authority to take action if Iraq continues to delay, deceive and deny.
If Hussein complies, our resolution will have worked, but if he does
not, then in the words of that brave American Todd Beamer, ``Let's
Roll!''
{time} 1745
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Pennsylvania (Mr. English).
Mr. ENGLISH. Mr. Speaker, in this body our first and highest
responsibility is protecting our homeland, and that responsibility may
from time to time require us to embrace unpopular policies and justify
them to our constituents when we recognize a transcendent danger to our
country.
Mr. Speaker, I realize my vote for this resolution authorizes a
military action that may put at risk thousands of American lives in
Iraq. However, the tragedies of September 11 have vividly highlighted
the danger that inaction may risk tens, if not hundreds of thousands of
innocent American lives here at home from terrorism.
This bipartisan resolution was drafted in recognition of this fact
and, therefore, presents our President with the initiative in
continuing the global war against terrorism.
Mr. Speaker, we know that Saddam Hussein, like Osama bin Laden, hates
America and has called for the murder of Americans everywhere. We know
that Saddam Hussein even in the face of crippling economic sanctions
has found the resources to reconstruct his chemical and biological
weapons programs, even at great painful expense to his people.
We know that Saddam Hussein is directing an aggressive program to
procure components necessary for building nuclear devices and that he
actively supports terror in other nations, including Israel. So the
question before us is, do we wait for Saddam Hussein to become a
greater threat, or do we address that threat now?
CIA Director Tenet has told us in recent days that al Qaeda has
sought cooperation from Iraq. I cannot stand here and trust that Saddam
Hussein will not supply al Qaeda and other terrorist networks with
weapons that could be used to massacre more Americans. On the contrary,
we have every reason to believe that the Iraqi dictator would share his
growing arsenal of terror with agents willing to strike at the United
States.
With this in mind, and given other revelations from captured members
of al Qaeda, it is clear that time is not on our side. That is why I
support this balanced and nuanced resolution providing our President
with the powerful backing of Congress in an effort to disarm Iraq. It
is my sincere hope that this resolution will stimulate intrusive and
decisive action by the United Nations and at the same time lead to a
full disarmament of Saddam Hussein. But if it does not, the United
States of America must stand willing to act in
[[Page H7387]]
order to prevent more events like those of September 11.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman
from California (Mr. Thompson), a member of the Committee on Armed
Services and a combat veteran from Vietnam.
Mr. THOMPSON of California. Mr. Speaker, the vote we are debating
today will be the most significant vote that we cast during this
Congress and perhaps during our entire careers. I say that for two
reasons.
First, this vote may very well send our American soldiers into what
has been called on this floor ``harm's way.'' Make no mistake about it,
it is important to note that is a very nice and sanitary way of saying
that our soldiers will be going to war. They will face combat
conditions that our forces have not seen during most of our lifetimes.
According to the military experts and the generals I have heard from,
the casualty rates may be high.
If, as some expect, Saddam Hussein uses chemical and biological
weapons to defend Baghdad, the results will be horrifying.
Mr. Speaker, I have been in combat; and I am not willing to vote to
send another soldier to war without clear and convincing evidence that
America or our allies are in immediate danger and not without the
backup and support of allied forces.
The President delivered a good speech on Monday evening. I agree with
him that Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator and that he is trying to
build an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. However, he showed us
no link between Iraq and September 11, nor did he produce any evidence
that even suggests that America or our allies are in immediate danger.
This morning we learned from the CIA that Saddam Hussein is unlikely
to use chemical or biological weapons if unprovoked by a U.S. military
campaign. Most alarming about that news today is the report concludes
by saying that, if we attack, the likelihood of him using weapons of
mass destruction to respond would be ``pretty high.''
Second, this vote is a radical departure from the foreign policy
doctrine that has served us honorably for the past 200 years. This
radical departure to an unprovoked, preemptive first-strike policy
creates what I believe will be a grave new world. This new foreign
policy doctrine will set an international precedent that tells the
world, if they think their neighbor is a threat, attack them.
This, I believe, is precisely the wrong message for the greatest
Nation, the only true superpower Nation and the most wonderful
democracy our planet has known, to send to Russia and Chechnya, to
India and Pakistan, to China and Taiwan, and to whomever else is
listening. And one thing we know, everyone is listening.
For these two reasons, I cannot support a resolution that does not
first require that all diplomatic options be exhausted, that we work
with the United Nations Security Council, and that we proceed to disarm
Iraq with a broad base of our allies.
I appreciate the President's new position that war is the last option
and that he will lead a coalition in our effort in Iraq. But,
unfortunately, that is not what this resolution says. This resolution
is weak at best on exhausting the diplomatic options and relinquishes
to the executive branch Congress' constitutional charge to declare war.
I believe that is wrong.
We must address the potential danger presented by Saddam Hussein. The
first step should be the return of the U.N. weapons inspectors; and
they must have unrestricted and unfettered access to every square inch
of Iraq, including the many presidential palaces. We must then work
with the Security Council to ensure the strictest standards, protocols,
and modalities are in place to make certain that Hussein cannot weasel
out of any of these inspections.
Finally, we need to amass the allied support necessary to carry out
the inspections in a manner that will guarantee Iraq is completely
stripped of all weapons of mass destruction and left unable to pursue
new weapons of this type.
We had great success in building a coalition to fight terrorism, and
we should do no less when it comes to disarming Saddam Hussein. We must
respect international order and international law in our efforts to
make this world a safer place.
With our military might, we can easily gain superiority over anyone
in the world. However, it takes more than military might to prevail in
a way that provides hope and prosperity, two ingredients that make it
less likely for terrorism to breed and impossible for repressive
dictators to rule.
Mr. Speaker, if it is the decision of this Congress to go to war, I
will support our troops 1,000 percent. However, I saw Baghdad and I
know fighting a war there will be ugly and casualties may be extremely
high. Let us exhaust the diplomatic options, return the weapons
inspectors, continue to build an international coalition so Saddam
Hussein sees the world, not just the U.S. at the end of the gun. By
doing this, we can avoid sending our soldiers into combat in Baghdad
unless it is absolutely the last option.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), chairman of the Committee on
Appropriations.
Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the
resolution.
Mr. Speaker, voting to authorize sending young Americans to war is a
serious decision. Members will make that decision in this Chamber
tomorrow.
Yesterday and today we have heard very impressive debate, most of
which favors the resolution; some did not. We have heard over and over
again the threat that Saddam Hussein and his regime is not only to the
United States and our interests but to many other parts of the world.
I am not going to restate those issues that have already been stated
yesterday and today, but as one of the many cosponsors of House Joint
Resolution 114, I do rise in support of this resolution to authorize
the use of United States military force against Saddam Hussein's
regime.
Much like the first hours and days after September 11, the world, our
friends and our foes, wondered how would the United States respond to
that attack on our Nation? They wanted to know if we as a Nation would
follow through with a serious response to bring the terrorists to
justice. They wanted to see if we would respond with a token strike, as
we did following the attack on U.S. troops in Somalia, at Khobar Towers
in Saudi Arabia, against our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and in
the attack on our sailors aboard the USS Cole. The world watched. Our
credibility was at stake. Before joining us, many of our friends were
waiting to see if we were serious this time. Our enemies were not
concerned because they believed they could absorb another token
response, as they had in past years.
But the message became clear just 3 days after September 11. A
response was certain when Congress, with a strong bipartisan vote,
stood and unanimously approved a $40 billion emergency supplemental
appropriations bill to allow the President of the United States to lead
not only a recovery effort in those parts of our country that were
attacked in New York City and at the Pentagon but to pursue the war
against the Taliban and against al Qaeda and against any terrorist,
wherever they might be hiding. It was to fund the war against
terrorism, wherever they were waiting to attack again.
When Congress spoke, almost immediately, with unity and with force,
our friends knew we were serious this time, and it was with confidence
that they joined our cause. And our enemies knew right away that
America was serious; and when President Bush said what it was we were
going to do, they knew that we had the resolve to fight the battle, no
matter how long it would take or where it would lead.
Today, we are in a similar situation. There is no question about the
threat to our Nation from Saddam Hussein's regime, to our allies, and
to world peace. As has been pointed out here many times today, he has
defied one United Nations resolution after another for more than a
decade.
Remember, he lost the war. He lost the war in Desert Storm, and he
signed up to certain rules and regulations which go along with losing a
war, and he has ignored all of them. He has developed and stockpiled
chemical and biological weapons. We know that he is seeking nuclear
weapons. We know
[[Page H7388]]
that he has aided and abetted terrorists who have struck international
targets around the world. But now it is time for Congress to speak
again with a firm and resolute voice, just as we did on September 14, 3
days after the cowardly attacks on innocent Americans.
Many of our friends are watching and they are waiting today, as they
were last year. Are they going to join with us, or not? Is this a
serious effort, or not? Is Congress speaking for the American people to
support the President of the United States as he seeks to protect this
Nation and our interests?
President Bush needs Congress to act to convince our allies, our
friends, and our enemies that we are serious. They need to know that
our Nation is resolved to continue this battle against terrorism into
Iraq if necessary.
Many have said that Saddam Hussein is not a real threat to the United
States because he is so far away, and he is far away. It is a long
distance.
{time} 1800
Many have said that the President's speech Monday night did not
address a lot of new subjects. He compiled and organized very well,
many of the existing arguments. But he did say something new for those
who paid really close attention. The President discussed for the first
time publicly information that many of our colleagues who work with
intelligence issues have been aware of for quite some time. That
involves Saddam Hussein's aggressive efforts to develop and use
unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, as a delivery method for his weapons of
mass destruction. The SCUDs did not have a very long range. The SCUDs
were not very accurate. I can attest to that because one night visiting
with General Schwarzkopf during Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia, a SCUD
was launched near our site, and it landed not too far away; but it was
far enough away that it did not hurt anybody. So we know that the SCUDs
were not that accurate. UAVs are a different story. UAVs have a much
longer range; UAVs are able to be piloted and trained specifically on a
target. UAVs are dangerous. And if my colleagues do not think UAVs have
a long range, we ourselves have flown a UAV from the United States to
Australia and back. Saddam is aggressively seeking ability to use those
long-range UAVs to put so many more targets in his sights. We cannot
let that happen.
Mr. Speaker, with this resolution Congress reaffirms our support for
the international war against terrorism. It continues to be
international in nature, as this resolution specifically expresses
support for the President's efforts to strictly enforce, through the
United Nations Security Council, and I will repeat that, through the
United Nations Security Council, all relevant Security Council
resolutions applicable to Iraq. It also expresses support for the
President's efforts to obtain prompt decisive action by the Security
Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion,
and noncompliance with those resolutions.
One of the lessons of September 11 is that terrorism knows no
boundaries. Its victims are men and women, children and adults. It can
occur here; it can occur abroad. It can occur anywhere. Terrorists
strike without warning. If we are to fight and win the war on
terrorism, we must remain united, united in the Congress, united with
the President of the United States, and united with the American
people. President Bush told the Nation last September that victory
would not come quickly or easily. It would be a battle unlike any our
Nation has ever waged. Now is not the time to send a mixed message to
our friends and allies. Now is not the time to show our enemies any
weakness in our resolve.
Mr. Speaker, as we prepare to record our votes on this important
resolution, we should remember the victims of terrorism, September 11
and other examples, and our promise last year to seek out and destroy
the roots of terrorism whether it be its sponsors, planners, or the
perpetrators of these cowardly missions. We should remember the unity
of our Nation and the world. The battle continues, the stakes remain
high, and the cause remains just. America must again speak one more
time with unity, with force, and with clarity. This resolution does
that.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Camp).
Mr. CAMP. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, the Iraqi regime has posed a threat to peace, to the
United States, and to the world for too long. In order to protect
America against this very real and growing threat, I support giving the
President the authority to use force, to use military action if
necessary against Iraq. Without a doubt this is one of the most
difficult decisions I have had to make as a Member of Congress. But
after briefings from the administration, testimony from congressional
hearings, I am convinced the threat to our Nation's safety is real.
After repeatedly failing to comply with U.N. inspections, Saddam
Hussein's efforts to build weapons of mass destruction, biological,
chemical and nuclear, have gone unchecked for far too long. The world
cannot allow him to continue down this deadly path. Saddam Hussein must
comply with U.N. inspections; but if not, America and our coalition
must be prepared to meet this threat.
After the Gulf War, in compliance with U.N. resolutions, a no-fly
zone was implemented. The purpose was to protect Iraqi Kurds and Shiite
Muslims from Saddam Hussein's aggressions and to conduct aerial
surveillance. But since its inception, pilots patrolling the zones have
come under repeated attack from Iraqi missiles and artillery.
The connection between Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and its
longstanding ties to terrorist networks such as al Qaeda has
significantly altered the U.S. security environment. The two linked
together pose a clear and present danger to our country. Consider that
Saddam Hussein could supply the terrorists who have sleeper cells in
our land with weapons of mass destruction to attack the U.S. while
concealing his responsibility for the action. It is a very real and
growing threat. The Iraqi regime has been building a case against
itself for more than 10 years, and if we fail to heed the warning signs
and allow them to continue down this path, the results could be
devastating, but they would not be a surprise.
After September 11, we are on notice. If Saddam Hussein refuses to
comply with U.N. resolutions and diplomatic efforts, we have only one
choice in order to ensure the security of our Nation and the safety our
citizens.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts), a member of the Committee on International
Relations.
Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, years ago when I was a world away fighting to
contain the scourge of communism in Southeast Asia, a movement grew up
here at home to protest what we were doing. Late in the war, one of the
anthems of that movement was a song by John Lennon called ``Give Peace
a Chance.'' We are not here to debate the Vietnam War, but we are
discussing war and peace. Peace is a very precious thing, and we should
defend it and even fight for it. And we have given peace a chance for
11 long years.
We gave peace a chance through diplomacy, but Saddam Hussein has
broken every agreement that came out of that diplomacy. We gave peace a
chance through weapons inspections, but Saddam Hussein orchestrated an
elaborate shell game to thwart that effort. We gave peace a chance
through sanctions, but Saddam Hussein used those sanctions as an excuse
to starve his own people. We gave peace a chance by establishing no-fly
zones to prevent Saddam Hussein from killing more of his own citizens,
but he shoots at our planes every day. We gave peace a chance by
allowing him to sell some oil to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi
people, but instead he used the revenue to build more weapons of mass
destruction.
Mr. Speaker, we have given peace a chance for more than a decade, and
it has not worked. Even now our President is actively working to
achieve a diplomatic solution by getting the United Nations to pass a
resolution with teeth; and while the United Nations has an important
role to play in this, no American President and no American Congress
can shirk our responsibility to protect the American people. If the
U.N. will not act, we must.
[[Page H7389]]
If we go down to the other end of the national Mall, we will see on
the Korean War Memorial the words ``Freedom is not free.'' Peace is not
free either. What some of those who are protesting the President's
request for military authority do not understand is that our freedoms
were not won with poster paint. Antiwar protestors do not win our
freedoms or our peace. The freedom to live in peace was won by men and
women who gave their lives on the battlefields of history.
As the world's only remaining superpower, we now even have an even
greater responsibility to stand up to prevent mass murder before it
happens. No world organization can override the President's duty and
our duty to protect the American people. If Mohammed Atta had had a
nuclear weapon, he would have used that weapon in New York and not an
airplane. By all accounts Saddam Hussein is perhaps a year away from
having nuclear weapons. He already has chemical and biological weapons
capable of killing millions.
When police detectives investigate a crime, they look for three
things: means, motive, and opportunity. Clearly Saddam Hussein has the
means, he has the weapons, and he has the motive. He hates America, he
hates the Kurds, he hates Kuwaitis, he hates Iran, he hates Israel, he
hates anyone who gets in his way. And we know that when he hates
people, he kills them, sometimes by the thousand. He has shown the
propensity to use his weapons and so he has the means and the motive.
But does he have the opportunity? Saddam Hussein could easily pass a
suitcase with a nuclear weapon off to an al Qaeda terrorist with a one-
way ticket to New York. No fingerprints, no evidence, and several
million dead Americans.
Mr. Speaker, this is a very real danger. Before September 11 we might
have thought this could never happen. Today we are too wise to doubt
it, and it is a danger that grows every day. Every day Saddam Hussein
grows stronger. Every day Saddam Hussein builds more chemical and
biological weapons. Every day Saddam Hussein comes a little closer to
achieving nuclear weapons capability. Every day that passes, America
grows more vulnerable to a Saddam-sponsored terrorist attack.
In this case inaction is more costly than action. The price of delay
is a greater risk. The price of inaction could be catastrophic, even
worse than September 11. We must disarm Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Speaker, we are not advocating war. We are calling for peace, but
peace might only be possible if we are willing to fight for it, and the
President needs that authority to do that. I urge support for the
resolution.
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield 15 minutes
to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) and that he be able to control
and yield that time to others.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gilchrest). Is there objection to the
request of the gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman from
New York (Mrs. Maloney).
Mrs. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, this is a very difficult vote for me. If there is ever
one vote that should be made in the national interest, a vote that
transcends politics and where Members must vote their conscience, it is
the one that is before us tonight.
I have received thousands of letters against the resolution, and just
this past weekend over 15,000 gathered in Central Park in my district
to protest. But what is at stake are not our political careers or an
election, but the future of our country and our way of life. I believe
there is a more compelling case now against Saddam than 12 years ago.
Then the threat was of a geopolitical nature, a move to change the map
of the Middle East. But I never saw it as a direct threat to our
Nation.
The main question before us today is whether Saddam is a threat to
the United States and our allies. No one doubts that he has chemical
and biological weapons. No one doubts that he is trying to stockpile
weapons of mass destruction. No one doubts that he has thwarted
inspections in the past and has developed UAVs. No one doubts that he
has consistently worked to develop nuclear power. No one doubts that he
has twice invaded his neighbors. The question is, Will he use these
weapons against the United States and our allies, and can we deter him
without using force?
As Lincoln said in the beginning days of the Civil War: ``The dogmas
of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is
piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. As our
case is new, so must we think anew and act anew.''
I would be for deterrence if I thought it would work. We are in a new
era and no longer in the Cold War. Deterrence depends on the victim
knowing from where the aggression will come and the aggressor knowing
the victim will know who has attacked him. It has been a year since the
anthrax attacks in our Nation, and we still do not know where the
attacks came from. Saddam has likely taken notice that we were unable
to tie evidence of attacks to their source, and if he believes he can
give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists to use against us
without our knowing he has done so, our ability to deter him from such
a course of action will be greatly diminished.
{time} 1615
Opponents of our war talk about the unintended consequences of war.
They do not talk about the unwanted consequences of not disarming
Saddam. In today's environment, it is very possible he could supply
weapons to terrorists who will attack the United States or our allies
around the world.
I am pleased the resolution has been improved with congressional
input. We should proceed carefully, step by step, and use the United
Nations and the international community to disarm Saddam so that we are
safer in the United States and New York and in our respective States
and clear around the world.
Just today I spoke with British Permanent Representative to the
United Nations, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, on this issue. Ambassador
Greenstock told me that the members of the Security Council, both
permanent and otherwise, will approve a robust inspection resolution;
and if this fails to disarm Iraq, he expects a second resolution that
may authorize force.
I come from a family of veterans. Most recently, my brother served in
the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. It happens to be his birthday today. He
told me that he parachuted many times behind enemy lines to acquire
enemy intelligence. He saw many of his friends machine gunned down.
This searing experience left deep wounds. So it is my deepest hope that
we will not have to send our men and young women into harm's way.
So it is with a very heavy heart, but a clear resolve, that I will be
voting to support this resolution. The accumulation of weapons of mass
destruction by Saddam and the willingness of terrorists to strike
innocent people in the United States and our allies across the world
have, unfortunately, ushered in a dangerous new era. It is a danger
that we cannot afford to ignore.
I will be voting yes. I will be supporting the President on this
resolution.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
South Carolina (Mr. Brown).
Mr. BROWN of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this resolution to
authorize the use of military force against Iraq. I stand behind the
Commander-in-Chief and our men and women in uniform who may be called
upon to defend America's freedom again.
The War Powers Resolution was passed to ensure that the collective
judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply before the
introduction of our Armed Forces into hostilities. I want to commend
the President for working with Congress on crafting this critical
resolution.
Time and time again, Mr. Speaker, Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime
have refused to comply with the sanctions imposed by the United States
and its international community. In 1990, Iraq committed an unprovoked
act of aggression and occupation against its Arab neighbor Kuwait, a
peace-loving nation.
[[Page H7390]]
After the Gulf War, the Iraqi government continually violated the
terms of the United Nations-sponsored cease-fire agreement. They
refused to provide access to weapons inspectors to investigate
suspected weapon production facilities.
Americans and coalition force pilots have been fired upon thousands
of times while lawfully enforcing the no-fly zone crafted by the United
Nations Security Council. In 1993, they attempted to assassinate former
President Bush. As we speak here today, members of al Qaeda are known
to be within the borders of Iraq.
Mr. Speaker, history has proven that Saddam Hussein and his
government cannot be dealt with through diplomatic channels or peaceful
means. He only understands death, destruction and trampling on the
human rights of others, as evidenced by his treatment of the Kurdish
people in Northern Iraq and anyone in his government who questions his
power.
Some may argue that America is acting as the aggressor and planning a
preemptive strike without justification. To the contrary, this is
anticipatory self-defense against evil forces and weapons that threaten
our national security and peace and stability throughout the Persian
Gulf and the world.
We do not want to see another day like September 11 ever again in
America, or anywhere else on God's great Earth. If we do not put an end
to Iraq's development of its weapons of mass destruction program, the
future could be worse.
America must act forcefully and with great resolve because the costs
are too high. The time has come for America once again to set the
example for the rest of the free world. Our children and our
grandchildren should not have to face this threat again.
I ask all of my colleagues to vote in favor of this joint resolution.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
Alabama (Mr. Aderholt).
Mr. ADERHOLT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my support for the
President in his policy regarding Iraq. Resolutions regarding war are
not something we consider without much thought, and this should be very
serious business for this House and each Member of it.
The last few months, there has been much talk about Iraq being given
the opportunity to respond to weapons inspections. Sometimes this is
said as if it were a new idea. However, when a defiant Saddam Hussein
has repeatedly rejected inspections and threatened inspectors, there is
little reason to believe that he will cooperate.
You may have seen the movies in which a prison is going to be
inspected. The warden replaces the spoiled food with fresh vegetables
and maybe even a meat entree. If Saddam Hussein allows inspectors in,
it will only be at specific locations and not the unlimited, surprise
inspections that we need in order to have our questions answered.
The fact that our President would consider any additional form of
inspection is a testimony of his desire to avoid conflict. Saddam
Hussein's actions in the past show a lack of regard, both for his own
people and for his neighboring nations.
I remember back about 10 years ago as a young man preparing to
practice law. It was about that time that the U.S. and our allies spent
an enormous time and effort freeing the Kuwaiti people and hoped that
the Iraqi people would also be able to free themselves from the
dictator.
In World War II, Hitler introduced a concept of blitzkrieg, a high-
speed attack by land and air. Today's increasingly long-range and
accurate rockets, armed with warheads of mass destruction, makes
blitzkrieg look like slow motion.
The President's top advisers and the Secretary of Defense, along with
other members of the President's Cabinet, have briefed Members of
Congress repeatedly and in a timely manner. I went down to Pennsylvania
Avenue to the White House just last week, and back on September 19 met
with the Secretary of Defense along with several other Members of
Congress at the Pentagon to discuss and be briefed on the situation in
Iraq.
Now, the President needs our support so that he can act quickly and
decisively against the threat of Iraq should he deem that action
necessary.
Again, let me stress, the action that we take this week is not just
another vote for the United States Congress. It is, indeed, one of
those landmark votes that will be long remembered and recorded in the
history books. The action that we take this week might just, and
certainly we pray, negate the need to send our troops into harm's way.
I would urge all the Members to support our President and vote yes on
this resolution.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure to yield 2 minutes to
the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt).
(Mr. NETHERCUTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks.)
Mr. NETHERCUTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me
time.
Mr. Speaker, it is appropriate that we fully discuss here the most
serious responsibility that is entrusted to Congress, and that is
authorizing the President to use force in the defense of our Nation.
The decision by Congress to authorize the deployment of the U.S.
military requires somber analysis and sober consideration, but it is
not a discussion that we should delay.
The President has presented to the American people a compelling case
for intervening in Iraq, and this body has acted deliberately in
bringing to the House floor a resolution that unequivocally expresses
our support for our Commander-in-Chief.
The threat to our national security from Iraq could not be more
apparent. After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the United Nations Special
Commission on Iraq succeeded in destroying thousands of chemical
munitions, chemical agents and precursor chemicals. Iraq admitted to
developing offensive biological weapons, including botulinum, anthrax,
aflatoxin, clostridium and others.
Yet this list of poisons describes only what the U.N. inspectors were
able to detect in the face of official Iraqi resistance, deception and
denial. They could not account for thousands of chemical munitions, 500
mustard gas bombs and 4,000 tons of chemical weapons precursors. In the
intervening period, development efforts have continued unabated, and
accelerated following the withdrawals of U.N. inspectors.
Iraq has repeatedly demonstrated a resolve not only to develop deadly
weapons of mass destruction but to use them on their own people: 5,000
killed, 20,000 Iranians killed through mustard gas clouds and the most
deadly agents that were inflicted on human beings. Perhaps in different
hands the deadly arsenal possessed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq would be
less of an imminent threat.
This authorization of force that we will vote on soon is at some
level also a recognition of the ongoing state of war with Iraq. In the
last 3 weeks, 67 attempts have been made to down collision aircraft.
Four hundred and six attempts have been made this year.
The U.S. has struggled against the tepid resolutions and general
inactivity of the international community for a decade. Regime change
cannot happen through domestic posturing. Disarmament requires more
than fervent hopes and good wishes.
On December 9, 1941, President Roosevelt said, ``There is no such
thing as impregnable defense against powerful aggressors who sneak up
in the dark and strike without warning. We cannot measure our safety in
terms of miles on any map.''
In 1941, Congress stood with the President and promised full support
to protect and defend our Nation. I urge our colleagues today to do the
same.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. Brown), who serves with distinction on the Committee on
International Relations and is the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee
on Health Care of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding me
time.
Mr. Speaker, for years our policy in this country has been one of
containment, of deterrence, of collective security, of diplomacy. We
contained and we deterred Joseph Stalin and the Soviets for decades. We
have contained and deterred Fidel Castro and the Cubans for 40 years.
We have contained and deterred Communist China in its expansionist
tendencies for 5 decades.
[[Page H7391]]
Now this President wants to radically change our decades-old foreign
policy of containment and deterrence to a policy of first strike. What
does that tell the world? Does it embolden Russia to attack Georgia to
better deal with Chechnya? Does it set an international precedent for
China to go into Taiwan or deal even more harshly with Tibet? Does it
embolden India or Pakistan, or both, each with nuclear weapons, from
going to war in Kashmir?
The whole point of the Security Council is to prevent member states,
including veto-wielding permanent members, perhaps especially veto-
wielding permanent members, to prevent those member states from
launching first strike, unilateral, unprovoked war.
Resolution 678, which authorized the Gulf War, called explicitly for
countries cooperating with the exiled Kuwaiti loyals to create a
coalition to use force. No country, no country in international law,
has the unilateral right to decide Iraq has not complied with U.N.
requirements, let alone what the U.N. response should be.
A couple of weeks ago, three retired four-star generals testified in
the other body, stating that attacking Iraq without a United Nations'
resolution supporting military action could limit aid from allies,
would supercharge, in the general's words, supercharge recruiting for
al Qaeda and undermine our war on terrorism.
{time} 1830
There are too many questions the administration has yet to answer. If
we strike Iraq on our own, what happens to our campaign against
terrorism? Most of our allies in the war on terror oppose U.N.
unilateral action against Iraq. Will our coalition against terrorism
fracture? And if we win a unilateral war, will we be responsible for
unilaterally rebuilding Iraq?
I am not convinced this administration possesses the political
commitment to reconstruct the damage after we defeat Saddam Hussein to
bring democracy to that country. It will entail appropriations of
hundreds of millions of dollars a year, year after year after year. Do
we have the political will and the financial commitment to do that in
that country, in that region? Should a new enemy arise while we are
paying for the campaign against al Qaeda and the reconstruction of
Iraq, will our resources be so overextended that we will not be able to
address this new threat?
This Congress should not authorize the use of force unless the
administration details what it plans to do and how we will deal with
the consequences of our actions, namely, what will the U.S. role be
after military action is completed? We should set stronger conditions
before any military action is permitted.
The President should present to Congress a comprehensive plan that
addresses the full range of issues associated with action against Iraq:
a cost estimate for military action, a cost estimate for reconstruction
of Iraq, along with a proposal for how the U.S. is going to pay for
these costs. We are going more into debt. Will there ever be a
prescription drug benefit? Will we continue to underfund education?
Will the economy continue to falter if we do this war?
We should do an analysis of the impact on the U.S. domestic economy
of the use of resources for military action and the use of resources
for reconstruction of Iraq. We should answer the questions.
We should have a comprehensive plan for U.S. financial and political
commitment to long-term cultural, economic, and political stabilization
in a free Iraq if the President is going to talk about Iraq being a
model of democracy in the Middle East.
We should have a comprehensive statement that details the extent of
the international support for military operations in Iraq and what
effect a military action against Iraq will mean for the broader war on
terrorism.
We should have a comprehensive analysis of the effect on the
stability of Iraq, and the region, of any regime change in Iraq that
may occur as a result of U.S. military action.
And, finally, we should have a commitment that the U.S. will take
necessary efforts to protect the health, safety, and security of the
U.S. Armed Forces and Iraqi civilians.
Mr. Speaker, before we send our young men and women to war, before we
put our young men and women in harm's way, we must make certain in
every way that this is the best course of action.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire as to the time remaining on
both sides.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gilchrest). The gentleman from
California (Mr. Issa) has 2 hours and 26 minutes remaining; the
gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff) has 39 minutes remaining; and
the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) has 20 minutes
remaining.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the gentleman on the other
side of the aisle if we could agree to a 2- or 3-to-1 split in order to
normalize the time, since there is such a disparity in the amount
consumed.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I would agree to a 2-to-1 split, I would
say to my friend from California.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. We will proceed with
two in a row and then yield.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr.
Tom Davis).
(Mr. TOM DAVIS of Virginia asked and was given permission to revise
and extend his remarks.)
Mr. TOM DAVIS of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, if there is anything that 9-11 and the events of that
day taught us, it is that our policy of containment and deterrence does
not work against terrorists who are willing to blow themselves up and,
at the same time, innocent civilians.
I rise in support of this historic resolution, fully aware that this
may be one of the most important votes this body casts.
We all hope that we can disarm Iraq without bloodshed. That is our
goal. We all hope and pray that risking the lives of the women and men
of our Armed Forces will prove unnecessary. We hold out hope that this
time, against the recent tide of history, Saddam will allow U.N.
inspectors full access, free of deception and delay. But if the events
of 9-11 and ongoing intelligence-gathering have shown us anything, Mr.
Speaker, it is that we must remain ever vigilant against the new and
growing threat to the American way of life. Terrorists who are willing
to commit suicide to murder thousands of innocents will not be halted
by the conventional means and policies of deterrence we have deployed.
The greatest danger we face is in not acting, in assuming the
terrorists who are committed to destroying our Nation will remain
unarmed by Saddam. The first strike could be the last strike for too
many Americans.
Mr. Speaker, we know enough at this point about the specific dangers
posed by Iraq to make this resolution unavoidable: large stockpiles of
chemical and biological weapons, an advanced and still-evolving nuclear
weapons production program, support for and the harboring of terrorist
organizations, the brutal repression and murder of its own civilian
population, and the utter disregard for U.N. resolutions and dictates.
Mr. Speaker, we know enough.
We all applaud and support the President's commitment to working with
the U.N. Security Council to deal with the threat that Iraq poses to
the United States and our allies. I continue to hope and pray for a
peaceful, internationally driven resolution to this crisis, but I
believe that passing this resolution strengthens the President's hand
to bring this about.
But with the events of September 11 still fresh in our minds and in
our hearts, we cannot rest our hopes on the possibility that Iraq will
comply with U.N. resolutions. Iraq has defied the United Nations openly
for over a decade.
Today we are being asked to fulfill our responsibilities to our
families, our constituents, and our Constitution; and I think we have
to give the President the appropriate tools to proceed if Saddam does
not cooperate with the arms inspectors and comply with existing U.N.
resolutions.
While we should seek the active support of other nations, we must
first and foremost protect our homeland, our people, and our way of
life.
Mr. Speaker, I pray for the best as we prepare for the worst. Today,
we recognize that there may come a time in a
[[Page H7392]]
moment when we realize that we are involved in a profound global
struggle in which Saddam's regime is clearly at the epicenter on the
side of evil; when it becomes clear there are times when evil cannot be
appeased, ignored, or simply forgotten; when confrontation remains the
only option.
There are moments in history when conscience matters, in fact, when
conscience is the only thing that matters. I urge my colleagues to vote
their conscience and acknowledge the danger confronting us, by not
entrusting our fate to others, by demonstrating our resolve to rid the
world of this menace. I urge this with a heavy heart, but a heart
convinced that if confrontation should be required, we are ready for
the task.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Buyer).
Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution.
Defending America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, is the
first and fundamental purpose of the Federal Government. Once, it took
countries of great economic wealth to field a powerful military, to
threaten the United States, and to place our people in fear. The threat
of this new century has now changed, because we have individuals that
truly hate us and can use something as simple as box cutters to place
our people in fear and terror.
With regard to the threat of Saddam Hussein, it must be recognized
for what it is: a deliberate and patient campaign by Saddam to
terrorize free people and undermine the very foundations of liberty.
I am sufficiently convinced without hesitation that Saddam represents
a clear and present danger. As a Gulf War veteran, I am filled with
emotion to contemplate that my comrades will once again be upon the
desert floor. I submit that it is easier to be ordered to war than to
vote that someone else may go in my place. However, now is the time for
our Nation to in fact be vigilant and to authorize the President to
preserve freedom through military action, if necessary, and to take our
foreign policy as defense in depth.
In many respects, this resolution represents a continuation of the
Gulf War. Saddam Hussein agreed to provisions of the cease-fire. He has
violated his cease-fire, he has been flagrant in his violations, and
the hostility is now open and notorious. After a decade of denial,
deception, and hostility toward the world, it is time to seek Iraq's
compliance and, if necessary, remove this despotic dictator, his
weapons of mass destruction, and the terrorists he supports and
harbors.
Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party rule Iraq through terror and
fear. I will share some personalized stories.
Through interrogations at the enemy prisoner of war camp during the
Gulf War, having done these interviews with Iraqi high command
conscripts, I learned several things: number one, the Iraqi people do
not like Saddam because he, in fact, keeps the great wealth to himself,
keeps different tribes in ignorance, to the pleasure of his own tribe.
In fact, one of the conscripts that I interrogated was scared to death
of an American soldier. Why? Because they had been told that if you are
captured by Americans, that you, in fact, would be quartered, your body
would be quartered. Over 90,000 Iraqis that were held in two prisoner
of war camps, I say to my colleagues, have had the opportunity to tell
the stories of how well they were treated by Americans and, in fact,
they called the prisoner of war camps ``the hotel.''
Let me tell about their leadership. Before the interrogation of a
two-star Iraqi general, he was sitting with his legs crossed on the
desert floor with his hands in his face weeping like a child. I had an
interpreter with me. When I walked up, I kicked the bottom of his boot
and, through the interpreter, I asked him to stand at attention. He
stood up and I asked him if he was an Iraqi general. He responded and
said yes, he was. Here I am, an American captain in the Army, and I
told him, then if you are an Iraqi general, then act like one.
Mr. Speaker, why would an Iraqi general be weeping upon the desert
floor? Because Saddam hand-selects his general officers. They do not
earn it. The men who serve in their military have not earned the trust
and confidence.
Also, what will be told is the lethality of American combat troops.
They know exactly what happened in the short war of the gulf. The
operations with regard to any military action that may occur in the
Gulf War, I say to my colleagues, is so completely different than the
operations of 10 years ago.
Mr. Speaker, I have faith in the Iraqi people because I also remember
them. Do my colleagues know what their request was at the prisoner of
war camp to bring calm? They just wanted to listen to Madonna. So that
is what we did. We piped in Madonna. They wanted to listen to ``The
Material Girl.'' Their culture is far more Westernized than we could
ever imagine, and they like Americans.
This is not against the Iraqi people. This is any action to get
Saddam Hussein to comply with the cease-fire to disarm; and if, in
fact, he does not, then force is the means of last resort. And the
soldiers, while they prepare to fight and win the Nation's wars, they
are the ones who have taken the oath to lay down their life for the
Constitution, and they do not want to fight. In fact, they want peace.
But if called upon, they, in fact, will serve.
So I will vote for this resolution, and I will think about my
comrades who may be placed in harm's way, and I also will think of the
children that are left behind and the spouses who will keep the watch
fires burning for their loved ones. Support the resolution.
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Carson).
Mr. CARSON of Oklahoma. Mr. Speaker, for more than a decade, American
foreign policy has struggled to define its role in the post-Cold War
world. Unsure of when to use military force, how to use it, and with
which allies, we have stumbled from engagement to ad hoc engagement
from Somalia to Kosovo. We have at times acted hastily in the world;
more often, far too late.
Our recent fecklessness points up the foreign policy confusion that
the welcome end of the long war with totalitarianism has left with us.
Confronted with the Soviet Union, Democrats and Republicans were united
in the goals of containment and deterrence, this latter purpose backed
up by the threat of nuclear annihilation. Such strategies are, of
course, still not outdated, as we face an unstable Russia and a growing
China, both armed with significant nuclear arsenals. But the primacy of
these doctrines has no doubt receded with the Peace of Paris and with
the difficult challenges that have arisen since.
As our Nation enters the 21st century, we are confronted by some of
these challenges, like humanitarian crises in Somalia which are brought
into our homes through the global reach of communications technology,
and world opinion demands action to bring relief. Ethnic cleansing,
with its echoes of the Holocaust, insist that the United States and its
Western allies make good on the promise of ``never again.'' And the
spread of weapons of mass destruction, which means that, for the first
time in history, a nonstate actor can inflict lethal harm on a State,
compels us to develop new doctrines of defense.
{time} 1845
It is amidst this intellectual muddle that the current crisis with
Iraq arises. There are certain undeniable facts about Saddam Hussein,
who has so ruthlessly ruled Iraq for more than 20 years. He alone in
the world has used chemical weapons, against his own people. He has a
sophisticated biological weapons program. Most importantly, he has an
insatiable appetite for nuclear weapons, which, but for the foresight
of Israel and the success of the Gulf War, he would already possess.
With these capabilities, Saddam Hussein has repeatedly tried to
dominate the Middle East, a region of critical importance to the United
States.
These facts alone dictate immediate action to disarm Iraq. If Saddam
Hussein were to acquire a nuclear weapon, he would be able to muscle
surrounding states, as he attempted to do with Kuwait in 1990, with
relative impunity, for the threat of nuclear reprisal would deter all
but the most determined vindicators of international law and Middle
East stability.
Were Saddam Hussein to control not only his own mighty oil fields but
also
[[Page H7393]]
those of his neighbors, the havoc to the world economy could not be
overestimated, as would the danger to our long-standing ally, Israel.
Many people over the last 2 days have spoken eloquently of the need
for United Nations approval before any American action against Iraq.
President Bush was wise to recently address the U.N., and I am
confident that the United Nations will acknowledge the need to enforce
its own resolutions demanding the disarmament of Iraq; and recognize,
too, that only the threat of military force can make those demands
understood.
But if the United Nations itself has so little self-regard as to not
demand compliance by Iraq, then that body's impotence should not
forestall the United States from making the world's demands on its own.
While consistency is not always valued highly in Congress, my own
party would well remember that President Bill Clinton chose to take
action in Kosovo without any approval from the Security Council;
indeed, against the opposition of at least one permanent Security
Council member, but with the approval of most Democrats in the House of
Representatives.
Still others of my colleagues have suggested that we must wait for
further provocation by Iraq. Somehow, they argue, it is against the
American tradition to take preventative military action; or they argue
that Iraq can be deterred in the same manner as was the Soviet Union.
Grenada, Panama, and Haiti rebut the notion that the United States is a
stranger to unilateral preventative action, as does the commonsense
realization that times have changed, and it is not so much the
detonation of a nuclear bomb that threatens the United States but
Iraq's mere possession of such a weapon.
Deterrence works well when it must, but the assumption that all are
deterrable is, in the wake of September 11, on very shaky footing,
indeed.
There is, in the end, no choice about disarmament. The only
alternatives are between forced agreement or nonconsensual military
force. Paradoxically, it is the threat of force which we authorize in
this resolution that offers the best chance for a peaceful disarmament.
The authorization of force, which has in recent years taken the place
of formal declarations of war, is the most grave and momentous decision
anyone in Congress can make, but we will authorize force against Iraq
tomorrow, and we will be right to do so. We will be right not because
we desire war with Iraq, but because we desire to prevent it; right not
because we lead this cause, but because no one else will; and right not
because war is our first resort, but, unlike Iraq, it is always our
last.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica), Chair of the Subcommittee on
Aviation.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, in a perfect world, if given a simple choice, no
rational human being would advocate war over peace. No father and no
mother would ever want to send their daughter or son into harm's way.
No truly civilized people would ever want to sit idly by and let their
friends and allies be annihilated.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, these are principled beliefs, all of
which confront us at this difficult time. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker,
today we do not live in a perfect world. Tonight, however, as we debate
the question of giving our President and Commander-in-Chief Congress'
authorization to conduct war, we must remember the lessons of history.
More than 60 years ago, many closed their eyes, many covered their
ears, or chanted the same chorus for peace that we now hear. Mr.
Speaker, when will we learn that we cannot trust, we cannot pacify, and
we cannot negotiate with a mass murderer?
Mr. Speaker, humanity cannot afford ever to experience another
Holocaust as a cruel reminder. Israel is not an expendable commodity.
Tonight, just a few miles from here near our Nation's Capitol, a mad
killer lurks. Think of the terror tonight of those in range of that
single madman. Think also of the terror in Israel, never knowing true
security. I ask the Members, is that the kind of world we want our
children and grandchildren to live in? I say no, a thousand times no.
That is why tonight I will support this resolution. I rise in support
of the resolution and our President to ensure that we do not repeat
history, or that we do not have our children live in that kind of
world.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Illinois (Mr. Crane).
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to
me.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Joint Resolution 114
to provide authorization for the use of military force against Iraq.
While I hope and pray President Bush does not have to commit our troops
to such action, I believe that he must have the authority he needs to
protect U.S. national security interests.
The events of September 11 showed that we are not protected from an
attack on our homeland. There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein
possesses and continues to cultivate weapons of mass destruction. The
U.N. weapons inspectors were thrown out of Iraq 4 years ago for a
reason. A first strike made with weapons of mass destruction can result
in millions dead, and the U.S. must be prepared to act preemptively.
Some ask why we must act against this threat in particular. The
answer is that this threat is unique. I need not remind anyone that
Hussein has used weapons of mass destruction already against his own
people. In addition, he has tried to dominate the Middle East and has
struck other nations in the region, including our ally, Israel, without
warning.
Keeping this in mind, it seems to me that we, as guardians of
freedom, have an awesome responsibility to act to ensure that Saddam
Hussein cannot carry out a first strike against the United States or
our allies.
Mr. Speaker, while there is no doubt that unqualified support for
military intervention from the U.N. is preferable, we must be prepared
to defend ourselves alone. We must never allow the foreign policy of
our country to be dictated by those entities that may or may not have
U.S. interests at heart.
The resolution before us does not mandate military intervention in
Iraq. It does, however, give President Bush clear authority to invade
Iraq should he determine that Hussein is not complying with the
conditions we have laid before him. Chief among these is full and
unfettered weapons inspections. If he fails to comply, we will have no
choice but to take action. Our security demands it.
Mr. Speaker, the world community watching this debate ought not
conclude that respectful disagreements on the floor of this House
divide us. On the contrary, we find strength through an open airing of
all views. We never take this privilege for granted, and we need look
no further than to Iraq to understand why.
At the end of this debate, Congress will speak with one voice. I find
comfort in the knowledge that this unity represents a promise that we
will never back down from preserving our freedoms and protecting our
homeland from those who wish to destroy us.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Ohio (Mrs. Jones), who serves on the Committee on Financial Services
and whose career has been earmarked by respect for the rule of law.
Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for
that kind yielding of time to me.
Mr. Speaker, this is a quote: ``I'm concerned about living with my
conscience, and searching for that which is right and that which is
true, and I cannot live with the idea of being just a conformist
following a path that everybody else follows. And this has happened to
us. As I've said in one of my books, so often we live by the philosophy
`Everybody's doing it, it must be alright.' we tend to determine what
is right and wrong by taking a sort of Gallup poll of the majority
opinion, and I don't think this is the way to get at what is right.
``Arnold Toynbee talks about the creative minority and I think more
and more we must have in our world that creative minority that will
take a stand for that which conscience tells them is right, even though
it brings about criticism and misunderstanding and even abuse.''
That is excerpted from a 1967 interview of Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr.
Mr. Speaker, I stand here today as a part of a creative minority in
Congress
[[Page H7394]]
who oppose this apparently inevitable resolution granting the President
the authority to use force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. But I
will not be a silent minority.
I know who Saddam Hussein is. I know he has viciously killed hundreds
of thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq with chemical and biological
weapons. I know he has murdered members of his own cabinet; in fact,
his own family. I remember vividly his aggressions in Iran and Kuwait
and the SCUD missiles he launched into Israel in the Gulf War. I know
the contempt he has shown toward the U.N. and its weapons inspectors as
they attempted to enforce post-Gulf War resolutions; and I know that
the world, and particularly the Gulf region, would be a better and
safer place without Saddam Hussein in power and those of his ilk in
power.
But I also know that the resolution before us is a product of haste
and hubris, rather than introspection and humility. I have seen
President Bush confront the Iraq question with arrogance and
condescension, initially bullying this Congress, our international
allies, and the American people with accusations and threats and tales
of terror eliciting fear in their hearts and minds.
President Bush has told us that war is not inevitable, but does
anyone really believe that? For months, this administration has marched
inexorably towards an attack on Iraq, changing its rationale to suit
the circumstances. I have no doubt that, regardless of what we do here
or what Saddam does there, we will go to war. I pray I am wrong.
The CIA today said Saddam is unlikely to initiate a chemical or
biological attack against the United States and presented the alarming
possibility that an attack on Iraq could provoke him into taking the
very actions this administration claims an invasion would prevent.
I know, too, who we are. America has never backed down from a just
war. From the Revolutionary era to the Civil War, across Europe, Asia,
and Africa, in two world wars, just a dozen years ago in the Persian
Gulf, and countless missions to faraway places like Bosnia, Kosovo,
Liberia, and Afghanistan, America fought. We fought with righteousness,
determination, and vision. We fought because principles and freedoms
were threatened. We fought because fighting was our last choice.
America has always fought with a vision to the future and has been
merciful and generous in our victories.
But the White House has not offered any vision for post-Saddam Iraq.
As a Nation founded on moral principles, we have a moral obligation to
prepare a plan for rebuilding Iraq before we declare war. Iraq, like
Afghanistan and many of the other nations in the Gulf region, is made
up of many ethnic groups that will compete for power in the vacuum that
is created by Saddam Hussein's ouster. But as important as the tactical
plans to overthrow Saddam Hussein are, we must address how we intend to
help the Iraqi people institute a democratic government.
I ask the President, can he not answer a few simple questions: Have
we completed the war on terrorism? What happened to Osama bin Laden? Do
we know how long a war in Iraq would last? Has there been any
assessment for the American people of how much a war in Iraq will cost
our economy? Does he have any idea of the human loss we should expect
in a war with Iraq?
Instead of answers, he gives us bombast. Yes, we have all heard the
rhetoric: Saddam is evil, Saddam hates America, Saddam must be stopped,
and you are either with us or against us. If you are not with us, we
don't need you.
{time} 1900
But when the rhetoric is peeled away, truth emerges.
Mr. Speaker, I cannot go on but I say to all of my colleagues, let us
be the creative minority. Vote against allowing force against Iraq.
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gilchrest). Members are reminded to
address their remarks to the Chair and not to the President.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the time for
debate on this resolution be extended for 2 hours to be equally divided
between the majority and minority.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair grants an additional hour to be
controlled by the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa) and by the
gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff).
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio
(Mr. Portman).
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from California (Mr.
Issa) for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, as Members of Congress we face no more important issues
than those of war and peace, and for that reason I agree wholeheartedly
with my colleague from Ohio (Mrs. Jones) who just spoke that this must
be a vote of Congress. For that reason this extended debate on the
House floor is very appropriate and the views expressed by Members of
Congress are deserving of respect. Having read it closely, my view is
that the carefully crafted resolution before us is the right approach.
On Monday in my hometown of Cincinnati, the President of the United
States clearly explained to the country what is at stake. He not only
made the case that inaction is not an option, but that given the
dangers and defiance of the Iraqi regime, the threat of military action
must be an available option. Time and time again, Saddam Hussein has
proven to be a threat to the peace and security of the region. That is
why the international community through the United Nations has
repeatedly called on the Iraqi regime to keep its word and open all
facilities to weapons inspections. Yet repeatedly Iraq has refused,
defying the United Nations. There is no reason to believe that without
the threat of force, the disarmament the Iraqi regime agreed to as part
of the disarmament after the Gulf War more than 10 years ago will ever
occur.
And there is other gathering danger and risk to America and all
freedom-loving people. The horror of September 11, Mr. Speaker,
awakened us to that reality. We know that the Iraqi regime is producing
and stockpiling chemical and biological weapons. We know they are in
the process of obtaining a nuclear weapon. We know that this regime has
a consistent record of aggression of supporting terrorist activities.
Once the Iraqi regime possesses a nuclear weapon, it, or the technology
that creates it, could easily be passed along to a terrorist
organization. Already chemical and biological weapons could be
provided. We must not permit this to happen.
The resolution will authorize military action but only if it is
necessary. I would hope that every Member in this Chamber would pray
that it would not be necessary. But the choice is clear, and it is a
choice for the Iraqi regime to make. If the regime refuses to disarm,
our military and our coalition partners will be compelled to make a
stand for freedom and security against tyranny and terrorism. And if we
take this course, it will not be unilateral as others on this floor
have said. The United States will not be alone.
I commend the President for his diplomatic initiatives, for
continuing to try to work through the United Nations, and for an
impressive array of coalition partners already assembled. I do not take
lightly the fact that the course laid out by this resolution may put at
risk the lives of young men and women in uniform. But I believe not
authorizing the possible use of force would put even more innocent
Americans at risk.
This is a solemn debate and a tough vote of conscience. Mine will be
a vote for an approach that I believe faces up to the very real dangers
we face and maximizes the chance that these dangers can be addressed
with a minimum loss of life. I will strongly support our President, Mr.
Speaker, and I support the resolution.
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield 30 minutes
to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) and that he be able
to control and yield that time to others.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner).
[[Page H7395]]
(Mr. TANNER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. TANNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
September 11, 2001, is a day that will rank with December 7, 1941, as
a day of infamy in the history of the United States. That one event, 9-
11, changed the world we live in forever. I serve as a delegate to the
NATO Parliamentary Assembly from the Congress and never have I seen the
outpouring of good will and support from our NATO allies as we
experienced in the aftermath of 9-11.
For the first time in the 50-plus-year history of the mightiest
military alliance in modern times, article 5 of the NATO charter was
invoked stating in essence that when one member nation comes under
attack, all consider themselves under attack and each pledges to the
other member nations all military, diplomatic, and territorial assets
they individually and collectively possess.
This past summer, less than a year from 9-11, the President and Vice
President began to talk about a regime change in Iraq. The philosophy
was this: Saddam Hussein is a despot and a threat to develop and
perfect weapons of mass destruction including nuclear capabilities;
and, therefore, he must be removed. Further, we, the United States,
were going to effectuate that change with or without our allies, save
the British. Suddenly the good will and support for America began to
erode, particularly among our European allies and even here at home.
In fact, some with good reason, in my view, think an election in
Germany turned on this one issue. The United States, led by President
Bush and Vice President Cheney's rhetoric, was boxing herself into a
very dangerous and potentially disastrous position. Should that policy
have continued, I would have voted ``no'' on this resolution.
Why do I say that? The best offense we have available to us to
protect our country and our citizens is accurate, timely intelligence
information so that we know what al Qaeda or others are planning, how
they are planning it, when they are planning to attack us again so that
we can stop it. In this war of terrorism, all of the United States
military might and every weapon our country possesses is of little or
no value in the defense of our homeland without these intelligence
resources.
This unilateral approach by the administration threatened to
jeopardize cooperation from those around the world who may be in a
position to give us such intelligence information. World support, world
opinion and the good will of every nation, no matter how small or
militarily insignificant, has never been more important to us. A
whisper in one ear from Kabul to Bagdad to the Philippines to Germany
or even to Oregon can be more important in this war than all of the
military might on Earth, for it may give us the warning we need to stop
another event in this country as occurred on 9-11.
Thankfully, the President's appearance at the United Nations last
month and his speech in Cincinnati Monday night sent a signal to our
allies and to many of our own citizens who do not and did not support
the ``lone cowboy'' approach, that the administration finally
recognized the importance of international cooperation and the role of
all civilized people as expressed by the United Nations in this war
against humanity. Again, I refer not to the military resources offered
by our global allies, but to the intelligence information which is
vital or perhaps more vital to our national defense.
The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) has an amendment which
I believe does no harm to the substance of the resolution and in my
view is much preferable and more compatible with our constitutional
powers as Congress. I hope every Member will seriously consider its
adoption. But should that fail, I believe that passage of this
resolution is in the best interest of our country at this time. Such
action on our part will hopefully spur movement in the international
arena to enforce the United Nations resolutions when violated, with
civilization as the prosecutor and humanity as the victor.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I join my many esteemed colleagues today in support of
the resolution authorizing the President to use force against Iraq.
This is a historic moment in our country, and it should not be taken
lightly. But it is not the first historic moment when it comes to
Saddam Hussein's regime. This is hopefully the last chapter in a long
saga of our dealings with Saddam Hussein.
More than 20 years ago he began to endanger his neighbors. More than
12 years ago he invaded Kuwait. His cruel regime has had a long history
of the kind of practices that are not tolerated anywhere on this globe,
and yet they persist.
Mr. Speaker, Saddam Hussein is in fact writing the last chapter as we
speak in a 12-year war. We are not considering action which would be
preemptive or a strike to begin a war. We are, in fact, dealing with an
absence of peace which has cost America lives and time and effort for
more than a decade. Over the past 10 years he has made a mockery of the
United Nations and the multi-national diplomacy that we have in fact
participated in. He has systematically undermined the United Nations
resolutions that were designed to disarm and reform his regime. He
threw out weapons inspectors in 1998 and has rebuilt his weapons of
mass destruction; and there is no question he intends to target
America. In fact, in 1993 he targeted President George Herbert Bush for
assassination.
Each of those events was more than sufficient for us to do what we
now must do. But the United States was patient. The United Nations was
patient. We have all been patient for more than a decade. I believe
that we need not look for the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's
back; but in fact we need to simply ask, Why did we wait so long? Why
did we tolerate this dictator so long? Even why in 1998 when the last
administration rightfully so called for a regime change did we not act?
I hope that this body in its consideration of this resolution does
not ask why should we act today, but in fact should ask why should we
not act and why did we take so long?
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), who serves as the ranking member on the
Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims on the House
Committee on the Judiciary, as well as a member of the Subcommittee on
Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, who recently returned from
Afghanistan where she conducted a fact-finding mission.
(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise
and extend her remarks.)
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished
member of the Committee on International Relations for his kindness in
yielding me time.
As many of us who have come to this floor, I come with a heavy heart
but a respect for my colleagues and the words that they have offered
today.
{time} 1915
As I stand here, I sometimes feel the world is on our shoulders, but
I also think that my vote is a vote for life or death--I have chosen
life and so I take the path of opposition to this resolution in order
to avoid the tragic path that led former Secretary of Defense Robert
MacNamara to admit, in his painful mea culpa regarding the Vietnam War,
we were wrong, terribly wrong.
He saw the lost lives of our young men and women, some 58,000 who
came home in body bags; and after years of guilt stemming from his role
in prosecuting the war in Vietnam, MacNamara was moved to expose his
soul on paper with his book, ``In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons
of Vietnam.'' He noted the words of an ancient Greek philosopher that
``the reward of suffering is experience,'' and concluded solemnly, let
this be the lasting legacy of Vietnam; that we never send our young men
and women into war without thoughtful, provocative analysis and an
offer of diplomacy.
I stand in opposition for another reason, and that is because I hold
the Constitution very dear. I might suggest to my colleagues that when
our Founding Fathers decided to write the Constitution over 4 months of
the hot summer of 1787, they talked about the distribution of authority
between legislative,
[[Page H7396]]
executive and judicial branches, and they said it was a bold attempt to
create an energetic central government at the same time that the
sovereignty of the people would be preserved.
Frankly, the people of the United States should make the
determination through this House of a declaration of war. And as the
Constitution was written, it said, ``We the people of the United
States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
provide for the common defense, establish the Constitution of the
United States of America.'' For that reason, I believe that this
Nation, that suffered a war in Vietnam, should understand the
importance of having the Congress of the United States declare war.
The reason I say that is we continue to suffer today as countless
veterans of that generation from Vietnam have never recovered from the
physical and mental horrors of their experiences, many reliving the
nightmares, plagued by demons as they sleep homeless on our streets at
night. What a price we continue to pay for that mistake. Can we afford
to make it again?
Mr. Speaker, I am opposed to this resolution because it so clearly
steers us towards a treacherous path of war while yielding sparse
efforts to guide us to the more navigable road to peace. As Benjamin
Franklin said in 1883, ``There never was a good war or a bad peace.''
Mr. Speaker, we have yet to give the power of diplomacy a chance and
the power of the moral rightness of the high ground the chance that
civilization deserves. Do we not deserve as well as the right to die
the right to live? We have had the experience of Vietnam to see the
alternatives. So if the unacceptable costs of war come upon us, why not
use diplomacy? It is time to use diplomacy now.
The resolution before us is unlikely to lead to peace now or in the
future because of the dangerous precedent that it would set. The notion
of taking a first strike against another sovereign nation risks
upsetting the already tenuous balance of powers around the world. In a
time when countless nations are armed with enough weaponry to destroy
their neighbors with the mere touch of a button, it can hardly be said
that our example of attacking another country in the absence of self-
defense is an acceptable way to go. The justification would sow the
seeds of peace if we decided to follow peace.
It is important to note that rather than the President's proposed
doctrine of first strike, we would do well to look to diplomacy first.
The first strike presumption of the President would represent an
unprecedented departure from a long-held United States policy of being
a nonaggressor. We would say to the world that it is acceptable to do a
first strike in fear instead of pursuing all possible avenues to a
diplomatic solution.
Imagine the world in chaos with India going after Pakistan, China
opting to fight Taiwan instead of negotiating, and North Korea going
after South Korea and erupting into an all-out war. Because actions
always speak louder than words, the United States' wise previous
admonitions to show restraint to the world would go to the winds, and
then, of course, would fall on deaf ears.
There is another equally important reason I must oppose this
resolution. It is because to vote for it would be to effectively
abdicate our constitutional responsibility as a Member of Congress to
declare war when conditions call for such action. The resolution before
us declares war singly by the President by allowing a first strike
without the knowledge of imminent danger and without the input of
Congress. It is by article 1, section 8 of the Constitution of the
United States that calls for us to declare war.
Saddam Hussein is evil. He is a despot. We know that. And I support
the undermining of his government by giving resistance to the United
States, to be able to address these by humanitarian aid, by military
support in terms of training, and also by providing support to the
resistance. Yet I think we can do other things. Diplomacy first,
unfettered robust United States weapons inspections, monitored review
by United Nations Security Council, Soviet Union model of ally-
supported isolation, support of democratization, and developing a more
stringent United States containment policy.
This resolution is wrong. We must not abdicate our responsibility.
And most importantly, Mr. Speaker, as I go to my seat, I stand here on
the side of saving the lives of the young men and women of this Nation.
As I stand on the House floor today with great respect for the
heartfelt positions of my colleagues, I must take the path of
opposition to this resolution in order to avoid following the tragic
path that led former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to admit in
his painful mea culpa regarding the Vietnam war, ``We were wrong,
terribly wrong.'' After years of guilt stemming from his role in
prosecuting the war in Vietnam, McNamara was moved to expose his soul
on paper with his book: ``In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of
Vietnam''. He noted the words of the ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus
who said ``The reward of suffering is experience,'' and concluded
solemnly, ``Let this be the lasting legacy of Vietnam.'' Therefore this
legacy should remind us that war is deadly and the Congress must not
abdicate its responsibility.
This Nation did suffer as result of that war, and we continue to
suffer today as countless veterans of that generation have never
recovered from the physical and mental horrors of their experiences,
many reliving the nightmares, plagued by demons as they sleep homeless
on our streets at night. What a price we continue to pay for that
mistake. Can we afford to make it again? I think not.
Mr. Speaker, I am opposed to this resolution because it so clearly
steers us toward a treacherous path of war, while yielding sparse
efforts to guide us to the more navigable road to peace. And as
Benjamin Franklin said in 1883, ``there never was a good war or a bad
peace''--but we have yet to give the power of diplomacy and the power
of the moral high ground the chance that civilization itself deserves.
We have had the experience of Vietnam to see the alternatives, so if
there were ever a time for diplomacy, it has got to be now.
The resolution before us is unlikely to lead to peace now or in the
future because of the dangerous precedent that it would set. The notion
of taking a first strike against another sovereign nation risks
upsetting the already tenuous balance of powers around the world. In a
time when countless nations are armed with enough weaponry to destroy
their neighbors with the mere touch of a button, it can hardly be said
that our example of attacking another country in the absence of a self
defense justification would sow the seeds of peace around the world.
Rather, the President's proposed doctrine of first strike, which would
represent an unprecedented departure from a long-held United States'
policy of being a non-aggressor, would say to the world that it is
acceptable to do a first strike in fear, instead of pursuing all
possible avenues to a diplomatic solution. Imagine the chaos in the
world if India and Pakistan abandoned all notions of restraint, if
China and Taiwan opted to fight instead of negotiate, and if North
Korea and South Korea erupted into all-out war. Because actions always
speak louder than words, the United States' wise previous admonitions
to show restraint in the aforementioned conflicts would fall upon deaf
ears as the nations would instead follow our dangerous lead.
There is another equally important reason that I must oppose this
resolution. It is because to vote for it would be to effectively
abdicate my Constitutional duty as a Member of Congress to delcare war
when conditions call for such action. The resolution before us does
authorize the President to declare war without the basis of imminent
threat. Congress may not choose to transfer its duties under the
Constitution to the President. The Constitution was not created for us
to be silent. It is a body of law that provides the roadmap of
democracy and national security in this country, and like any roadmap,
it is designed to be followed. Only Congress is authorized to declare
war, raise and support armies, provide and maintain a navy, and make
the rules for these armed forces. There is nothing vague or unclear
about the language in Article I, section 8, clauses 11-16 of our
Constitution. In it, we are told that Congress has the power:
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules
concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that
use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval
forces; and
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the
union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.
This system of checks and balances, which is essential to ensuring
that no individual or branch of government can wield absolute power,
cannot be effective if one individual is impermissibly vested with the
sole discretionary authority to carry out what 535 Members of Congress
have been duly elected by the people to do. It is through the process
of
[[Page H7397]]
deliberation and debate that the views and concerns of the
American people must be addressed within Congress before a decision to
launch our country into war is made. The reason that we are a
government of the people, for the people and by the people is because
there is a plurality of perspectives that are taken into account before
the most important decisions facing the country are made. Granting any
one individual, even the President of the United States, the unbridled
authority to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines
to be necessary and appropriate is not only unconstitutional, but is
also the height of irresponsibility.
Saddam Hussein is indeed an evil man. He has harmed his own people in
the past, and cannot be trusted in the future to live peacefully with
his neighbors in the region. I fully support efforts to disarm Iraq
pursuant to the resolutions passed in the aftermath of the gulf war,
and I do not rule out the possibility that military action might be
needed in the future to see that those efforts come to fruition. I
voted for the Iraqi Liberation Act in 1998 and still stand behind my
decision to support the objective of helping the people of Iraq change
their government. But that legislation contained an important caveat
that precluded the use of United States armed forces to remove the
government from power, and instead provided for various forms of
humanitarian assistance. That Act, now has the effect of law, and
unlike Iraq, we are a nation that respects the rule of law. And our
Constitution, the supreme law of the land, sets forth the duties and
responsibilities of Congress in clear, unambiguous language.
The indictment against Saddam Hussein is nothing new. He is a despot
of the worst kind, and I believe that when the United Nations Security
Council passes a resolution determining his present status and
outlining a plan for the future, that will provide further
documentation for Congress to act on a military option in Iraq. Right
now, however, we are moving too far too quickly with many alarmist
representations yet undocumented.
Some of us have begun to speculate about the cost that a war in Iraq
might be. And while our economy now suffers because of corporate abuse
and 2 years of a declining economy with high unemployment, I cannot
help but to shudder when I think of what the cost might be--not only in
dollars--but in human lives as well. My constituents, in flooding my
offices with calls and e-mails all vehemently opposed to going to war,
have expressed their concerns about the unacceptable costs of war. One
Houston resident wrote, ``This is a war that would cost more in money
and lives that I am willing to support committing, and than I believe
the threat warrants. Attacking Iraq is a distraction from, not a
continuation of the `war on terrorism'.'' I truly share this woman's
concerns. In World War II, we lost 250,000 brave Americans who
responded to the deadly attack on Pearl Harbor and the ensuing battles
across Europe and Asia. In the Korean war, nearly 34,000 Americans were
killed, and we suffered more than 58,000 casualties in Vietnam. The
possible conflict in Iraq that the President has been contemplating
for months now risks incalculable deaths because there is no way of
knowing what the international implications may be. Consistent talk of
regime change by force, a goal not shared by any of the allies in the
United Nations, only pours fuel on the fire when you consider the
tactics that a tyrant like Saddam Hussein might resort to if he
realized that had nothing to lose. If he does possess chemical,
biological or nuclear weapons, we can be assured that he would not
hesitate to use them if the ultimate goal is to destroy his regime,
instead of to disarm it. With that being the case, there can be little
doubt that neighboring countries would be dragged into the fray--
willingly or otherwise--creating an upheaval that would dwarf previous
altercations in the region or possibly in the world. The resolution, as
presently worded, opens the door to all of these possibilities and that
is why I cannot support it.
Because I do not support the resolution does not mean that I favor
inaction. To the contrary, I believe that immediate action is of the
highest order. To that end, I would propose a five-point plan of
action:
1. Diplomacy first;
2. Unfettered, robust United Nations weapons inspections to provide
full disarmament;
3. Monitoring and review by United Nations Security Council;
4. Soviet Union model of allied supported isolation--support of
democratization through governance training and support of resistance
elements; and
5. Developing a more stringent United States containment policy.
What I can and will support is an effort for diplomacy first, and
unfettered U.N. inspections. As the most powerful nation in the world,
we should be a powerful voice for diplomacy--and not just military
might. Since we are a just nation, we should wield our power
judiciously--restraining where possible for the greater good. Pursuing
peace means insisting upon the disarmament of Iraq. Pursuing peace
means insisting upon the immediate return of the U.N. weapons
inspectors. Pursuing peace and diplomacy means that the best answer to
every conflict and crisis is not always violence.
Passing this resolution, and the possible repercussions that it may
engender, will not enhance the moral authority of the United States in
the world today and it will not set the stage for peace nor ensure that
are providing for a more peaceful or stable world community.
Instead, as we ensure that Iraq does not possess illegal weapons, we
should make good on the promise to the people that we made in the
passage of the 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act. We should do all that we can
to assist the people of Iraq because as President Dwight Eisenhower
said, ``I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do
more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people
want peace so much that one of these days, governments had better get
out of the way and let them have it.'' I oppose this resolution--H.J.
Res. 114.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield such time as he may
consume to the distinguished gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg).
Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time, and I am pleased and privileged to join this serious debate.
I want to talk on a number of issues that I think are very, very
important to us as we confront the decision we must make and the vote
we must take tomorrow. I want to talk about the seriousness of this
issue. I want to talk about the question of preemption and why America
might even contemplate striking under these circumstances. I want to
address the concerns of those who say they simply do not want to go to
war and talk about why I do not want to go to war either, but sometimes
war is necessary. I want to talk about the issue of why now, because I
think that is a very pressing issue. And I want to talk, most
importantly, about how I believe this resolution is the most certain
way, indeed perhaps the only way, we have to avoid war.
Let me begin with the seriousness of this issue. Beyond a shadow of a
doubt, this will be the most solemn, most serious vote I believe I will
cast in my tenure in the United States Congress. I have been here for
some pretty serious votes. I have seen us balance a budget, I have seen
us impeach a President, but nothing comes close to the vote on a
resolution of force such as the one we will consider tomorrow. I
approach that vote with the grave appreciation of the fact that lives
are in the balance: lives of American soldiers, lives of innocent
Iraqis, lives of people throughout the world.
I also approach that vote with the grave knowledge that while my son
is 16 years old and would not likely serve in this war, I have many
constituents and many friends with sons and daughters who are 18 years
old or 19 or 20, and who may be called upon to go to war. This is,
indeed, I believe, the most serious issue this Congress can
contemplate, and it is one that has weighed on me for weeks.
Some of those amongst my constituents who are deeply worried about
this issue say why should we act and why should we act under these
circumstances? They argue that we should pursue deterrence. They argue
that we should pursue containment; and then they argue that if neither
deterrence nor containment work, we should wait until a first strike is
launched and then we should respond.
Well, I would respond by saying history has proven sadly over the
history of the Saddam Hussein regime that deterrence does not work.
This is a man who has proven by his conduct over and over again that he
cannot be deterred. This is a man who will not respond to the kind of
signals that the rest of the world sends in hopes that a world leader
would respond. Although we have attempted containment, this is a man
who has proven he will not respond to containment.
At the end of the Gulf War, he agreed to a number of things that we
are all now painfully aware of and that have been covered in this
debate. He agreed to end his efforts to procure chemical and biological
weapons. He agreed to end his efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. He
agreed to end his efforts to have and to develop long-term missiles and
other delivery systems. And yet none of those have worked.
At the end of the day, deterrence and containment simply have proven,
over a pattern of 11 years, not to work. His
[[Page H7398]]
deceit, his deception, his continued pattern of forging ahead show us
beyond a question of a doubt that he will not be deterred and he will
not be contained.
We know some things. We know that because of the nature of the
weapons that he has, and because of his willingness to use those
weapons and to use them perhaps secretly, we cannot wait. I listened to
the debate last night, and I was very impressed with it. One of my
colleagues in this institution came to the floor and made an
impassioned speech against this resolution and said, we absolutely
should wait, and he cited the Revolutionary War and the command to our
troops to wait until fired upon. I would suggest to my colleagues that
when we have an enemy who has chemical and biological weapons of the
nature of those that this enemy has, we simply cannot wait.
VX nerve gas kills by paralyzing the central nervous system and can
result in death in 10 minutes. Sarin nerve gas, cyclosarin nerve gas,
mustard gas. I am afraid the words ``chemical weapons'' have lost their
meaning; but they should not, because they are abhorrent weapons, and
he has them. There is no doubt.
Biological weapons. He has anthrax. He has botulism toxin. He has
aflatoxin and he has resin toxin. It would be bad enough if he simply
had those, but we know more. He has them and he has tried to develop
strains of them that are resistent to the best drugs we have, resistent
to our antibiotics. That is to say he has them, he could use them, and
not until they had been used could we discover that the best our
science has cannot match them.
Now, why can we not wait, given that type of history and that type of
chemical? Because the reality is we do not know when he will strike. He
could indeed strike and we would not know it for days or weeks, until
it began to manifest itself.
But let us talk also about the whole possibility of him using
terrorists. We talk a lot about him, and we get deceived by this
discussion of he does not have a long-range missile that can reach the
United States, because he does not have aircraft that can reach the
United States, we ought not to worry about those. We talk about the
issue that it could be months or a year before he could develop a
nuclear weapon. All of those are false pretexts. All of those are
serious mistakes.
The reality is that if he chooses to deliver those weapons through
any of the means that we know he possibly could. By handing them in a
backpack to a terrorist, we might never know that it was Saddam Hussein
that delivered the weapon. And if he chooses to use chemical or
biological weapons for such an attack, we might not know until
hundreds, indeed until thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, perhaps
millions of Americans were infected and fatally wounded and would die,
and we would not know until afterwards.
I would suggest that the old doctrine of wait until they fire is
simply no longer applicable under these circumstances.
Now, I have conscientious colleagues and I have constituents who come
to me and say, I am not ready for war; I do not want war. I want to
make it clear that no one wants war. Not a single Member of this body
would choose war. And this resolution, as the President said the other
night, does not mean that war is either imminent or unavoidable. The
President made it clear he does not want war. But I would urge my
colleagues that there are some certainties. One of those is that the
best way to prevent war is to be prepared for war.
{time} 1930
The best way to prevent such a war is to send clear and unmistakable
signals. He has unarmed aerial vehicles. That is to say, he has model
airplanes, and he has larger airplanes which can be operated by remote
control.
It has been pointed out that, given his lack of trust, an unmanned
aerial vehicle, an unmanned airplane, is the perfect weapon for this
leader, this insane leader, to use, because he does not have to trust a
pilot who might not follow orders. He has the operator of a remote-
controlled vehicle standing next to him. If, in fact, the pilot were to
choose to not drop his load, there would be little he could do in a
manned aircraft to that pilot. But in an unmanned aerial vehicle,
equipped with a chemical or biological weapon, he remains in control;
and it could easily be done.
He could bring that kind of weapon to our shores in a commercial ship
like the hundreds lined up right now off the coast of California and
launch them from there, and we would not know about the attack until
after it was done.
It seems to me that we cannot wait under these circumstances; and it
seems to me that he has proven beyond a doubt that deterrence and
containment, although we have tried them, simply will not work.
One colleague pointed out he has chemical and biological weapons; and
in time, because he is seeking them, he will have nuclear weapons. It
was also pointed out that if we want to rely upon a scheme of
inspections, and my constituents back home would hope that we could
rely on inspections. I would hope that also. But make no mistake about
it, there are two serious flaws.
An inspection regime that relies on inspecting a country where
hundreds of acres are off limits, cannot be gone into, the presidential
palaces that are there, an inspection regime that relies on that is not
an inspection regime at all. But an inspection regime where we know to
a moral certainty that he has mobile production facilities is an
inspection regime that will give us false hope.
I was in the Middle East when the first weapons inspectors were
kicked out of Iraq. I was on a CODEL with the gentleman from Illinois
(Mr. Hastert) and four or five other Members of Congress. They left
Baghdad and went by ground to Jordan and flew to Bahrain. We had an
opportunity to meet with them in Bahrain the first night they reached
there. One of my colleagues who was there is here tonight on the other
side of the aisle. We spent 2 to 2\1/2\ hours talking with weapons
inspectors who had just been kicked out of Baghdad.
They made some serious impressions upon me which I will never forget.
One was echoed in the President's speech last night, and that is the
Iraq people are not our enemy. In fact, weapons inspectors explained to
us that when individual Iraqis would learn that a given weapons
inspector was an American, they would say, America, great place. I have
a sister in San Francisco. I have a brother in Philadelphia.
The President said it right the other night. The Iraqi people are not
our enemies, but they delivered another message to us and made another
impression. That is, they explained to us carefully, six congressmen in
a hotel room in Bahrain, now 7 years ago, they said, make no mistake
about it, every time they got close to making a real discovery, every
time they were at the door of a facility that they were convinced was
producing chemical and biological weapons, there would be a stall,
there would be a delay. They would be forced to stand outside the gates
of that building for hours and hours while the inside was obviously
being cleaned up.
Indeed, they would sometimes, when they got savvy to this, the
inspectors would send somebody around to the back gate and watch the
equipment, watch the trucks roll out the back door.
There is no question but that an inspection regime where they are
determined to deceive you, where they are determined to deny you access
to some locations, and where they have mobile facilities is no
inspection regime at all.
I do not want war. No one wants war. But I am convinced that the risk
of waiting is indeed too high.
I do not believe, and I agree with one of my colleagues on the other
side of the aisle who said, I do not believe that Saddam Hussein will
ever submit to a legitimate inspection regime. But I know this much, he
will never submit to such an inspection regime until and unless it is
backed by credible threat of force. That is what we are talking about
here tonight.
We also on that trip went and visited our American troops enforcing
the no-fly zone, both the southern and the northern no-fly zone. The
American people deserve to know that we have been at a state of war
with this regime for 11 years. He has fired on our pilots over and over
and over again. He probably fired on them today. He has certainly fired
on them within the last
[[Page H7399]]
month. He has fired hundreds of times, and he has declared war against
us. He has declared a holy war against us.
We know some other facts. We know over time Saddam Hussein's weapons
regime will grow, and the threat will become worse. We do not want war,
but it would appear doing nothing is the one way to ensure war.
I believe to the depth of my soul that this resolution is a measured
and thoughtful proposal to achieve one thing, and that is the
disarmament of Iraq and the Saddam Hussein regime, hopefully by peace,
but if necessary by force.
I think we know that it has the potential of creating the coalition
we all want. If America sends a weak signal and says we are not sure of
our course, we are not sure of our path, how can we even hope to bring
into our ranks and to our side allies in a battle against an insane
leader such as Saddam Hussein?
I think we also know, those of us who intend to vote for this
resolution, it holds a second potential and that is it could lead the
United Nations, indeed, I am prayerful, as is the President, that it
will lead the United Nations to rise to its obligations, to make its
resolutions meaningful, to remove itself from the irrelevancy that it
currently has by not enforcing its resolutions, and to stand with
strength and to say once and for all to this vicious dictator, we will
not let you flaunt the rule of law and the requirements imposed by the
U.N.
It could indeed cause Saddam Hussein to come to his senses. I hope it
will.
I know failing to act involves too great a risk. Failing to act
exposes not just the people of his nation, whom he has terrorized and
butchered and tortured, to suffer longer.
We know the dimensions to which he will go. We know the threat. We
know he will in fact and has used violence of every dimension against
his own people, and we know for a moral certainty he will bring that
aggression against the rest of the world if not stopped.
No one is happy about this moment, but I believe it is the right
course and, for those who truly want peace, the only course.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record a column from the New Yorker
written by Jeffrey Goldberg. It is called ``The Great Terror.'' It is
an interview of the people who were the victims of Saddam Hussein's
attack on his own people. It documents his murder of some 50,000 to
200,000 Kurds.
[From the New Yorker, Mar. 25, 2002]
The Great Terror
(By Jeffrey Goldberg)
In northern Iraq, there is new evidence of Saddam Hussein's
genocidal war on the Kurds--and of his possible ties to Al
Qaeda.
In the late morning of March 16, 1988, an Iraqi Air Force
helicopter appeared over the city of Halabja, which is about
fifteen miles from the border with Iran. The Iran-Iraq War
was then in its eighth year, and Halabja was near the front
lines. At the time, the city was home to roughly eighty
thousand Kurds, who were well accustomed to the proximity of
violence to ordinary life. Like most of Iraqi Kurdistan,
Halabja was in perpetual revolt against the regime of Saddam
Hussein, and its inhabitants were supporters of the
peshmerga, the Kurdish fighters whose name means ``those who
face death.''
A young woman named Nasreen Abdel Qadir Muhammad was
outside her family's house, preparing food, when she saw the
helicopter. The Iranians and the peshmerga had just attacked
Iraqi military outposts around Halabja, forcing Saddam's
soldiers to retreat. Iranian Revolutionary Guards then
infiltrated the city, and the residents assumed that an Iraqi
counterattack was imminent. Nasreen and her family expected
to spend yet another day in their cellar, which was crude and
dark but solid enough to withstand artillery shelling, and
even napalm.
``At about ten o'clock, maybe closer to ten-thirty, I saw
the helicopter,'' Nasreen told me. ``It was not attacking,
though. There were men inside it, taking pictures. One had a
regular camera, and the other held what looked like a video
camera. They were coming very close. Then they went away.''
Nasreen thought that the sight was strange, but she was
preoccupied with lunch; she and her sister Rangeen were
preparing rice, bread, and beans for the thirty or forty
relatives who were taking shelter in the cellar. Rangeen was
fifteen at the time. Nasreen was just sixteen, but her father
had married her off several months earlier, to a cousin, a
thirty-year-old physician's assistant named Bakhtiar Abdul
Aziz. Halabja is a conservative place, and many more women
wear the veil than in the more cosmopolitan Kurdish cities to
the northwest and the Arab cities to the south.
The bombardment began shortly before eleven. The Iraqi
Army, positioned on the main road from the nearby town of
Sayid Sadiq, fired artillery shells into Halabja, and the Air
Force began dropping what is thought to have been napalm on
the town, especially the northern area. Nasreen and Rangeen
rushed to the cellar. Nasreen prayed that Bakhtiar, who was
then outside the city, would find shelter.
The attack had ebbed by about two o'clock, and Nasreen made
her way carefully upstairs to the kitchen, to get the food
for the family. ``At the end of the bombing, the sound
changed,'' she said. ``It wasn't so loud. It was like pieces
of metal just dropping without exploding. We didn't know why
it was so quiet.''
A short distance away, in a neighborhood still called the
Julakan, or Jewish quarter, even though Halabja's Jews left
for Israel in the nineteen-fifties, a middle-aged man
named Muhammad came up from his own cellar and saw an
unusual sight: ``A helicopter had come back to the town,
and the soldiers were throwing white pieces of paper out
the side.'' In retrospect, he understood that they were
measuring wind speed and direction. Nearby, a man named
Awat Omer, who was twenty at the time, was overwhelmed by
a smell of garlic and apples.
Nasreen gathered the food quickly, but she, too, noticed a
series of odd smells carried into the house by the wind. ``At
first, it smelled bad, like garbage,'' she said. ``And then
it was a good smell, like sweet apples. Then like eggs.''
Before she went downstairs, she happened to check on a caged
partridge that her father kept in the house. ``The bird was
dying,'' she said. ``It was on its side.'' She looked out the
window. ``It was very quiet, but the animals were dying. The
sheep and goats were dying.'' Nasreen ran to the cellar. ``I
told everybody there was something wrong. There was something
wrong with the air.''
The people in the cellar were panicked. They had fled
downstairs to escape the bombardment, and it was difficult to
abandon their shelter. Only splinters of light penetrated the
basement, but the dark provided a strange comfort. ``We
wanted to stay in hiding, even though we were getting sick,''
Nasreen said. She felt a sharp pain in her eyes, like
stabbing needles. ``My sister came close to my face and said,
`Your eyes are very red.' Then the children started throwing
up. They kept throwing up. They were in so much pain, and
crying so much. They were crying all the time. My mother was
crying. Then the old people started throwing up.''
Chemical weapons had been dropped on Halabja by the Iraqi
Air Force, which understood that any underground shelter
would become a gas chamber. ``My uncle said we should go
outside,'' Nasreen said. ``We knew there were chemicals in
the air. We were getting red eyes, and some of us had liquid
coming out of them. We decided to run.'' Nasreen and her
relatives stepped outside gingerly. ``Our cow was lying on
its side,'' she recalled. ``It was breathing very fast, as if
it had been running. The leaves were falling off the trees,
even though it was spring. The partridge was dead. There were
smoke clouds around, clinging to the ground. The gas was
heavier than the air, and it was finding the wells and going
down the wells.''
The family judged the direction of the wind, and decided to
run the opposite way. Running proved difficult. ``The
children couldn't walk, they were so sick,'' Nasreen said.
``They were exhausted from throwing up. We carried them in
our arms.''
Across the city, other families were making similar
decisions. Nouri Hama Ali, who lived in the northern part of
town, decided to lead his family in the direction of Anab, a
collective settlement on the outskirts of Halabja that housed
Kurds displaced when the Iraqi Army destroyed their villages.
``On the road to Anab, many of the women and children began
to die,'' Nouri told me. ``The chemical clouds were on the
ground. They were heavy. We could see them.'' People were
dying all around, he said. When a child could not go on, the
parents, becoming hysterical with fear, abandoned him. ``Many
children were left on the ground, by the side of the road.
Old people as well. They were running, then they would stop
breathing and die.''
Nasreen's family did not move quickly. ``We wanted to wash
ourselves off and find water to drink,'' she said. ``We
wanted to wash the faces of the children who were vomiting.
The children were crying for water. There was powder on the
ground, white. We couldn't decide whether to drink the water
or not, but some people drank the water from the well they
were so thirsty.''
They ran in a panic through the city, Nasreen recalled, in
the direction of Anab. The bombardment continued
intermittently, Air Force planes circling overhead. ``People
were showing different symptoms. One person touched some of
the powder, and her skin started bubbling.''
A truck came by, driven by a neighbor. People threw
themselves aboard. ``We saw people lying frozen on the
ground,'' Nasreen told me. ``There was a small baby on the
ground, away from her mother. I thought they were both
sleeping. But she had dropped the baby and then died. And I
think the baby tried to crawl away, but it died, too. It
looked like everyone was sleeping.''
At that moment, Nasreen believed that she and her family
would make it to high ground and live. Then the truck
stopped. ``The driver said he couldn't go on, and he wandered
away. He left his wife in the back of the truck. He told us
to flee if we could. The chemicals affected his brain,
because why else would someone abandon his family?''
[[Page H7400]]
As heavy clouds of gas smothered the city, people became
sick and confused. Awat Omer was trapped in his cellar with
his family; he said that his brother began laughing
uncontrollably and then stripped off his clothes, and soon
afterward he died. As night fell, the family's children grew
sicker--too sick to move.
Nasreen's husband could not be found, and she began to
think that all was lost. She led the children who were able
to walk up the road.
In another neichborhood, Muhammad Ahmed Fattah, who was
twenty, was overwhelmed by an oddly sweet odor of sulfur, and
he, too, realized that he must evacuate his family; there
were about a hundred and sixty people wedged into the cellar.
``I saw the bomb drop,'' Muhammad told me. ``It was about
thirty metres from the house. I shut the door to the cellar.
There was shouting and crying in the cellar, and then people
became short of breath.'' One of the first to be stricken by
the gas was Muhammad's brother Salah. ``His eyes were pink,''
Muhammad recalled. ``There was something coming out of his
eyes. He was so thirsty he was demanding water.'' Others in
the basement began suffering tremors.
March 16th was supposed to be Muhammad's wedding day.
``Every preparation was done,'' he said. His fiancee, a woman
named Bahar Jamal, was among the first in the cellar to die.
``She was crying very hard,'' Muhammad recalled. ``I tried to
calm her down. I told her it was just the usual artillery
shells, but it didn't smell the usual way weapons smelled.
She was smart, she knew what was happening. She died on the
stairs. Her father tried to help her, but it was too late.''
Death came quickly to others as well. A woman named Hamida
Mahmoud tried to save her two-year-old daughter by allowing
her to nurse from her breast. Hamida thought that the baby
wouldn't breathe in the gas if she was nursing, Muhammad
said, adding, ``The baby's name was Dashneh. She nursed for a
long time. Her mother died while she was nursing. But she
kept nursing.'' By the time Muhammad decided to go outside,
most of the people in the basement were unconscious; many
were dead, including his parents and three of his siblings.
Nasreen said that on the road to Anab all was confusion.
She and the children were running toward the hills, but they
were going blind. ``The children were crying, 'We can't see!
My eyes are bleeding!' `` In the chaos, the family got
separated. Nasreen's mother and father were both lost.
Nasreen and several of her cousins and siblings inadvertently
led the younger children in a circle, back into the city.
Someone--she doesn't know who--led them away from the city
again and up a hill, to a small mosque, where they sought
shelter. ``But we didn't stay in the mosque, because we
thought it would be a target,'' Nasreen said. They went to a
small house nearby, and Nasreen scrambled to find food and
water for the children. By then, it was night, and she was
exhausted.
Bakhtiar, Nasreen's husband, was frantic. Outside the city
when the attacks started, he had spent much of the day
searching for his wife and the rest of his family. He had
acquired from a clinic two syringes of atropine, a drug that
helps to counter the effects of nerve agents. He
injected himself with one of the syringes, and set out to
find Nasreen. He had no hope. ``My plan was to bury her,''
he said. ``At least I should bury my new wife.''
After hours of searching, Bakhtiar met some neighbors, who
remembered seeing Nasreen and the children moving toward the
mosque on the hill. ``I called out the name Nasreen,'' he
said. ``I heard crying, and I went inside the house. When I
got there, I found that Nasreen was alive but blind.
Everybody was blind.''
Nasreen had lost her sight about an hour or two before
Bakhtiar found her. She had been searching the house for
food, so that she could feed the children, when her eyesight
failed. ``I found some milk and I felt my way to them and
then I found their mouths and gave them milk,'' she said.
Bakhtiar organized the children. ``I wanted to bring them
to the well. I washed their heads. I took them two by two and
washed their heads. Some of them couldn't come. They couldn't
control their muscles. ``
Bakhtiar still had one syringe of atropine, but he did not
inject his wife; she was not the worst off in the group.
``There was a woman named Asme, who was my neighbor,''
Bakhtiar recalled. ``She was not able to breathe. She was
yelling and she was running into a wall, crashing her head
into a wall. I gave the atropine to this woman.'' Asme died
soon afterward. ``I could have used it for Nasreen,''
Bakhtiar said. ``I could have.''
After the Iraqi bombardment subsided, the Iranians managed
to retake Halabja, and they evacuated many of the sick,
including Nasreen and the others in her family, to hospitals
in Tehran.
Nasreen was blind for twenty days. ``I was thinking the
whole time, Where is my family? But I was blind. I couldn't
do anything. I asked my husband about my mother, but he said
he didn't know anything. He was looking in hospitals, he
said. He was avoiding the question.''
The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the equivalent of the Red
Cross, began compiling books of photographs, pictures of the
dead in Halabja. ``The Red Crescent has an album of the
people who were buried in Iran,'' Nasreen said. ``And we
found my mother in one of the albums.'' Her father, she
discovered, was alive but permanently blinded. Five of her
siblings, including Rangeen, had died.
Nasreen would live, the doctors said, but she kept a secret
from Bakhtiar: ``When I was in the hospital, I started
menstruating. It wouldn't stop. I kept bleeding. We don't
talk about this in our society, but eventually a lot of women
in the hospital confessed they were also menstruating and
couldn't stop.'' Doctors gave her drugs that stopped the
bleeding, but they told her that she would be unable to bear
children.
Nasreen stayed in Iran for several months, but eventually
she and Bakhtiar returned to Kurdistan. She didn't believe
the doctors who told her that she would be infertile, and in
1991 she gave birth to a boy. ``We named him Arazoo,'' she
said. Arazoo means hope in Kurdish. ``He was healthy at
first, but he had a hole in his heart. He died at the age of
three months.''
I met Nasreen last month in Erbil, the largest city in
Iraqi Kurdistan. She is thirty now, a pretty woman with brown
eyes and high cheekbones, but her face is expressionless. She
doesn't seek pity; she would, however, like a doctor to help
her with a cough that she's had ever since the attack,
fourteen years ago. Like many of Saddam Hussein's victims,
she tells her story without emotion.
During my visit to Kurdistan, I talked with more than a
hundred victims of Saddam's campaign against the Kurds.
Saddam has been persecuting the Kurds ever since he took
power, more than twenty years ago. Several old women whose
husbands were killed by Saddam's security services expressed
a kind of animal hatred toward him, but most people, like
Nasreen, told stories of horrific cruelty with a dispassion
and a precision that underscored their credibility.
Credibility is important to the Kurds; after all this time,
they still feel that the world does not believe their story.
A week after I met Nasreen, I visited a small village
called Goktapa, situated in a green valley that is ringed by
snow-covered mountains. Goktapa came under poison-gas attack
six weeks after Halabja. The village consists of low mud-
brick houses along dirt paths. In Goktapa, an old man named
Ahmed Raza Sharif told me that on the day of the attack on
Goktapa, May 3, 1988, he was in the fields outside the
village. He saw the shells explode and smelled the sweet-
apple odor as poison filled the air. His son, Osman Ahmed,
who was sixteen at the time, was near the village mosque when
he was felled by the gas. He crawled down a hill and died
among the reeds on the banks of the Lesser Zab, the river
that flows by the village. His father knew that he was dead,
but he couldn't reach the body. As many as a hundred and
fifty people died in the attack; the survivors fled before
the advancing Iraqi Army, which levelled the village. Ahmed
Raza Sharif did not return for three years. When he did, he
said, he immediately began searching for his son's body. He
found it still lying in the reeds. ``I recognized his body
right away,'' he said.
The summer sun in Iraq is blisteringly hot, and a corpse
would be unidentifiable three years after death. I tried to
find a gentle way to express my doubts, but my translator
made it clear to Sharif that I didn't believe him.
We were standing in the mud yard of another old man,
Ibrahim Abdul Rahman. Twenty or thirty people, a dozen boys
among them, had gathered. Some of them seemed upset that I
appeared to doubt the story, but Ahmed hushed them. ``It's
true, he lost all the flesh on his body,'' he said. ``He was
just a skeleton. But the clothes were his, and they were
still on the skeleton, a belt and a shirt. In the pocket of
his shirt I found the key to our tractor. That's where he
always kept the key.''
Some of the men still seemed concerned that I would leave
Goktapa doubting their truthfulness. Ibrahim, the man in
whose yard we were standing, called out a series of orders to
the boys gathered around us. They dispersed, to houses and
storerooms, returning moments later holding jagged pieces of
metal, the remnants of the bombs that poisoned Goktapa.
Ceremoniously, the boys dropped the pieces of metal at my
feet. ``Here are the mercies of Uncle Saddam,'' Ibrahim said.
2. THE AFTERMATH
The story of Halabja did not end the night the Iraqi Air
Force planes returned to their bases. The Iranians invited
the foreign press to record the devastation. Photographs of
the victims, supine, bleached of color, littering the gutters
and alleys of the town, horrified the world. Saddam Hussein's
attacks on his own citizens mark the only time since the
Holocaust that poison gas has been used to exterminate women
and children.
Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, who led the campaigns
against the Kurds in the late eighties, was heard on a tape
captured by rebels, and later obtained by Human Rights Watch,
addressing members of Iraq's ruling Baath Party on the
subject of the Kurds. ``I will kill them all with chemical
weapons!'' he said. ``Who is going to say anything? The
international community? Fuck them! The international
community and those who listen to them.''
Attempts by Congress in 1988 to impose sanctions on Iraq
were stifled by the Reagan and Bush Administrations, and the
story of Saddam's surviving victims might have vanished
completely had it not been for the reporting of people
like Randal and the work of a British documentary
filmmaker named Gwynne Roberts, who, after hearing stories
[[Page H7401]]
about a sudden spike in the incidence of birth defects and
cancers, not only in Halabja but also in other parts of
Kurdistan, had made some disturbing films on the subject.
However, no Western government or United Nations agency
took up the cause.
In 1998, Roberts brought an Englishwoman named Christine
Gosden to Kurdistan. Gosden is a medical geneticist and a
professor at the medical school of the University of
Liverpool. She spent three weeks in the hospitals in
Kurdistan, and came away determined to help the Kurds. To the
best of my knowledge, Gosden is the only Western scientist
who has even begun making a systematic study of what took
place in northern Iraq.
Gosden told me that her father was a high-ranking officer
in the Royal Air Force, and that as a child she lived in
Germany, near Bergen-Belsen. ``It's tremendously influential
in your early years to live near a concentration camp,'' she
said. In Kurdistan, she heard echoes of the German campaign
to destroy the Jews. ``The Iraqi government was using
chemistry to reduce the population of Kurds,'' she said.
``The Holocaust is still having its effect. The Jews are
fewer in number now than they were in 1939. That's not
natural. Now, if you take out two hundred thousand men and
boys from Kurdistan''--an estimate of the number of Kurds who
were gassed or otherwise murdered in the campaign, most of
whom were men and boys--``you've affected the population
structure. There are a lot of widows who are not having
children.''
Richard Butler, an Australian diplomat who chaired the
United Nations weapons-inspection team in Iraq, describes
Gosden as ``a classic English, old-school-tie kind of
person.'' Butler has tracked her research since she began
studying the attacks, four years ago, and finds it credible.
``Occasionally, people say that this is Christine's
obsession, but obsession is not a bad thing,'' he added.
Before I went to Kurdistan, in January, I spent a day in
London with Gosden. We gossiped a bit, and she scolded me for
having visited a Washington shopping mall without appropriate
protective equipment. Whenever she goes to a mall, she brings
along a polyurethane bag, ``big enough to step into'' and a
bottle of bleach. ``I can detoxify myself immediately,'' she
said.
Gosden believes it is quite possible that the countries of
the West will soon experience chemical and biological-weapons
attacks far more serious and of greater lasting effect than
the anthrax incidents of last autumn and the nerve-agent
attack on the Tokyo subway system several years ago--that
what happened in Kurdistan was only the beginning. ``For
Saddam's scientists, the Kurds were a test population,'' she
said. ``They were the human guinea pigs. It was a way of
identifying the most effective chemical agents for use on
civilian populations, and the most effective means of
delivery.''
The charge is supported by others. An Iraqi defector,
Khidhir Hamza, who is the former director of Saddam's
nuclear-weapons program, told me earlier this year that
before the attack on Balabja military doctors had mapped the
city, and that afterward they entered it wearing protective
clothing, in order to study the dispersal of the dead.
``These were field tests, an experiment on a town,'' Hamza
told me. He said that he had direct knowledge of the Army's
procedures that day in Halabja. ``The doctors were given
sheets with grids on them, and they had to answer questions
such as `How far are the dead from the cannisters?' ''
Gosden said that she cannot understand why the West has not
been more eager to investigate the chemical attacks in
Kurdistan. ``It seems a matter of enlightened self-interest
that the West would want to study the long-term effects of
chemical weapons on civilians, on the DNA,'' she told
me. ``I've seen Europe's worst cancers, but, believe me, I
have never seen cancers like the ones I saw in
Kurdistan.''
According to an ongoing survey conducted by a team of
Kurdish physicians and organized by Gosden and a small
advocacy group called the Washington Kurdish Institute, more
than two hundred towns and villages across Kurdistan were
attacked by poison gas--far more than was previously
thought--in the course of seventeen months. The number of
victims is unknown, but doctors I met in Kurdistan believe
that up to ten per cent of the population of northern Iraq--
nearly four million people--has been exposed to chemical
weapons. ``Saddam Hussein poisoned northern Iraq,'' Gosden
said when I left for Halabja. ``The questions, then, are what
to do? And what comes next?''
3. Halabja's Doctors
The Kurdish people, it is often said, make up the largest
stateless nation in the world. They have been widely despised
by their neighbors for centuries. There are roughly twenty-
five million Kurds, most of them spread across four countries
in southwestern Asia: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The
Kurds are neither Arab, Persian, nor Turkish; they are a
distinct ethnic group, with their own culture and language.
Most Kurds are Muslim (the most famous Muslim hero of all,
Saladin, who defeated the Crusaders, was of Kurdish origin),
but there are Jewish and Christian Kurds, and also followers
of the Yezidi religion, which has its roots in Sufism and
Zoroastrianism. The Kurds are experienced mountain fighters,
who tend toward stubbornness and have frequent bouts of
destructive infighting
After centuries of domination by foreign powers, the Kurds
had their best chance at independence after the First World
War, when President Woodrow Wilson promised the Kurds, along
with other groups left drifting, and exposed by the collapse
of the Ottoman Empire, a large measure of autonomy. But the
machinations of the great powers, who were becoming
interested in Kurdistan's vast oil deposits, in Mosul and
Kirkuk, quickly did the Kurds out of a state.
In the nineteen-seventies, the Iraqi Kurds allied
themselves with the Shah of Iran in a territorial dispute
with Iraq. America, the Shah's patron, once again became the
Kurds' patron, too, supplying them with arms for a revolt
against Baghdad. But a secret deal between the Iraqis and the
Shah, arranged in 1975 by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,
cut off the Kurds and brought about their instant collapse;
for the Kurds, it was an ugly betrayal.
The Kurdish safe haven, in northern Iraq, was born of
another American betrayal. In 1991, after the United States
helped drive Iraq out of Kuwait, President George Bush
ignored an uprising that he himself had stoked, and Kurds and
Shiites in Iraq were slaughtered by the thousands. Thousands
more fled the country, the Kurds going to Turkey, and almost
immediately creating a humanitarian disaster. The Bush
Administration, faced with a televised catastrophe, declared
northern Iraq a no-fly zone and thus a safe haven, a tactic
that allowed the refugees to return home. And so, under the
protective shield of the United States and British Air
Forces, the unplanned Kurdish experiment in self-government
began. Although the Kurdish safe haven is only a virtual
state, it is an incipient democracy, a home of progressive
Islamic thought and pro-American feeling.
Today, Iraqi Kurdistan is split between two dominant
parties: the Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by Massoud
Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose General
Secretary is Jalal Talabani. The two parties have had an
often angry relationship, and in the mid-nineties they fought
a war that left about a thousand soldiers dead. The parties,
realizing that they could not rule together, decided to rule
apart, dividing Kurdistan into two zones. The internal
political divisions have not aided the Kurds' cause, but
neighboring states also have fomented disunity, fearing
that a unified Kurdish population would agitate for
independence.
Turkey, with a Kurdish population of between fifteen and
twenty million, has repressed the Kurds in the eastern part
of the country, politically and militarily, on and off since
the founding of the modern Turkish state. In 1924, the
government of Ataturk restricted the use of the Kurdish
language (a law not lifted until 1991) and expressions of
Kurdish culture; to this day, the Kurds are referred to in
nationalist circles as ``mountain Turks.''
Turkey is not eager to see Kurds anywhere draw attention to
themselves, which is why the authorities in Ankara refused to
let me cross the border into Iraqi Kurdistan. Iran, whose
Kurdish population numbers between six and eight million, was
not helpful, either, and my only option for gaining entrance
to Kurdistan was through its third neighbor, Syria. The
Kurdistan Democratic Party arranged for me to be met in
Damascus and taken to the eastern desert city of El Qamishli.
From there, I was driven in a Land Cruiser to the banks of
the Tigris River, where a small wooden boat, with a crew of
one and an outboard motor, was waiting. The engine sputtered;
when I learned that the forward lines of the Iraqi Army were
two miles downstream, I began to paddle, too. On the other
side of the river were representatives of the Kurdish
Democratic Party and the peshmerga, the Kurdish guerrillas,
who wore pantaloons and turbans and were armed with AK-47s.
``Welcome to Kurdistan'' read a sign at the water's edge
greeting visitors to a country that does not exist.
Halabja is a couple of hundred miles from the Syrian
border, and I spent a week crossing northern Iraq, making
stops in the cities of Dahuk and Erbil on the way. I was
handed over to representatives of the Patriotic Union, which
controls Halabja, at a demilitarized zone west of the town of
Koysinjaq. From there, it was a two-hour drive over steep
mountains to Sulaimaniya, a city of six hundred and fifty
thousand, which is the cultural capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
In Sulaimaniya, I met Fouad Baban, one of Kurdistan's leading
physicians, who promised to guide me through the scientific
and political thickets of Halabja.
Baban, a pulmonary and cardiac specialist who has survived
three terms in Iraqi prisons, is sixty years old, and a man
of impish good humor. He is the Kurdistan coordinator of the
Halabja Medical Institute, which was founded by Gosden,
Michael Amitay, the executive director of the Washington
Kurdish Institute, and a coalition of Kurdish doctors; for
the doctors, it is an act of bravery to be publicly
associated with a project whose scientific findings could be
used as evidence if Saddam Hussein faced a war-crimes
tribunal. Saddam's agents are everywhere in the Kurdish zone,
and his tanks sit forty miles from Baban's office.
Soon after I arrived in Sulaimanya, Baban and I headed out
in his Toyota Camry for Halabja. On a rough road, we crossed
the plains of Sharazoor, a region of black earth and honey-
colored wheat ringed by jagged, snow-topped mountains. We
were not travelling alone. The Mukhabarat, the Iraqi
intelligence service, is widely reported to have
[[Page H7402]]
placed a bounty on the heads of Western journalists caught in
Kurdistan (either ten thousand dollars or twenty thousand
dollars, depending on the source of the information). The
areas around the border with Iran are filled with Tehran's
spies, and members of Ansar al-Islam, an Islamist terror
group, were said to be decapitating people in the Halabja
area. So the Kurds had laid on a rather elaborate security
detail. A Land Cruiser carrying peshmerga guerrillas led the
way, and we were followed by another Land Cruiser, on whose
bed was mounted an anti-aircraft weapon manned by six
peshmerga, some of whom wore black balaclavas. We were just
south of the American-and British-enforced no-fly zone. I had
been told that, at the beginning of the safe-haven
experiment, the Americans had warned Saddam's forces to
stay away; a threat from the air, though unlikely, was, I
deduced, not out of the question.
``It seems very important to know the immediate and long-
term effects of chemical and biological weapons,'' Baban
said, beginning, my tutorial. ``Here is a civilian population
exposed to chemical and possibly biological weapons, and
people are developing many varieties of cancers and
congenital abnormalities. The Americans are vulnerable to
these weapons--they are cheap, and terrorists possess them.
So, after the anthrax attacks in the States, I think it is
urgent for scientific research to be done here.''
Experts now believe that Halabja and other places in
Kurdistan were struck by a combination of mustard gas and
nerve agents, including sarin (the agent used in the Tokyo
subway attack) and VX, a potent nerve agent. Baban's
suggestion that biological weapons may also have been used
surprised me. One possible biological weapon that Baban
mentioned was aflatoxin, which causes long-term liver damage.
A colleague of Baban's, a surgeon who practices in Dahuk,
in northwestern Kurdistan, and who is a member of the Halabja
Medical Institute team, told me more about the institute's
survey, which was conducted in the Dahuk region in 1999. The
surveyors began, he said, by asking elementary questions;
eleven years after the attacks, they did not even know which
villages had been attacked.
``The team went to almost every village,'' the surgeon
said. ``At first, we thought that the Dahuk governorate was
the least affected. We knew of only two villages that were
hit by the attacks. But we came up with twenty-nine in total.
This is eleven years after the fact.''
The surgeon is professorial in appearance, but he is deeply
angry. He doubles as a pediatric surgeon, because there are
no pediatric surgeons in Kurdistan. He has performed more
than a hundred operations for cleft palate on children born
since 1988. Most of the agents believed to have been dropped
on Halabja have short half-lives, but, as Baban told me,
``physicians are unsure how long these toxins will affect the
population. How can we know agent half-life if we don't know
the agent?'' He added, ``If we knew the toxins that were
used, we could follow them and see actions on spermatogenesis
and ovogenesis.''
Increased rates of infertility, he said, are having a
profound effect on Kurdish society, which places great
importance on large families. ``You have men divorcing their
wives because they could not give birth, and then marrying
again, and then their second wives can't give birth,
either,'' he said. ``Still, they don't blame their own
problem with spermatogenesis.''
Baban told me that the initial results of the Halabja
Medical Institute-sponsored survey show abnormally high rates
of many diseases. He said that he compared rates of colon
cancer in Halabja with those in the city of Chamchamal, which
was not attacked with chemical weapons. ``We are seeing rates
of colon cancer five times higher in Halabja than in
Chamchamal,'' he said.
There are other anomalies as well, Baban said. The rate of
miscarriage in Halabja, according to initial survey results,
is fourteen times the rate of miscarriage in Chamchamal;
rates of infertility among men and women in the affected
population are many times higher than normal. ``We're finding
Hiroshima levels of sterility,'' he said.
Then, there is the suspicion about snakes. ``Have you heard
about the snakes?'' he asked as we drove. I told him that I
had heard rumors. ``We don't know if a genetic mutation in
the snakes has made them more toxic,'' Baban went on, ``or if
the birds that eat the snakes were killed off in the attacks,
but there seem to be more snakebites, of greater toxicity, in
Halabja now than before.'' (I asked Richard Spertzel, a
scientist and a former member of the United Nations
Special Commission inspections team, if this was possible.
Yes, he said, but such a rise in snakebites was more
likely due to ``environmental imbalances'' than to
mutations.)
My conversation with Baban was suddenly interrupted by our
guerrilla escorts, who stopped the car and asked me to join
them in one of the Land Cruisers; we veered off across a
wheat field, without explanation. I was later told that we
had been passing a mountain area that had recently had
problems with Islamic terrorists.
We arrived in Halabja half an hour later. As you enter the
city, you see a small statue modelled on the most famous
photographic image of the Halabj massacre: an old man, prone
and lifeless, shielding his dead grandson with his body.
A torpor seems to afflict Halabja; even its bazaar is
listless and somewhat empty, in marked contrast to those of
other Kurdish cities, which are well stocked with imported
goods (history and circumstance have made the Kurds
enthusiastic smugglers) and are full of noise and activity.
``Everyone here is sick,'' a Halabja doctor told me. ``The
people who aren't sick are depressed.'' He practices at the
Martyrs'' Hospital, which is situated on the outskirts of the
city. The hospital has no heat and little advanced equipment;
like the city itself, it is in a dilapidated state.
The doctor is a thin, jumpy man in a tweed jacket, and he
smokes without pause. He and Baban took me on a tour of the
hospital. Afterward, we sat in a bare office, and a woman was
wheeled in. She looked seventy but said that she was fifty;
doctors told me she suffers from lung scarring so serious
that only a lung transplant could help, but there are no
transplant centers in Kurdistan. The woman, whose name is
Jayran Muhammad, lost eight relatives during the attack. Her
voice was almost inaudible. ``I was disturbed psychologically
for a long time,'' she told me as Baban translated. ``I
believed my children were alive.'' Baban told me that her
lungs would fail soon, that she could barely breathe. ``She
is waiting to die,'' he said. I met another woman, Chia
Hammassat, who was eight at the time of the attacks and has
been blind ever since. Her mother, she said, died of colon
cancer several years ago, and her brother suffers from
chronic shortness of breath. ``There is no hope to correct my
vision,'' she said, her voice flat. ``I was married, but I
couldn't fulfill the responsibilities of a wife because I'm
blind. My husband left me.''
Baban said that in Halabja ``there are more abnormal births
than normal ones,'' and other Kurdish doctors told me that
they regularly see children born with neural-tube defects and
undescended testes and without anal openings. They are
seeing--and they showed me--children born with six or seven
toes on each foot, children whose fingers and toes are fused,
and children who suffer from leukemia and liver cancer.
I met Sarkar, a shy and intelligent boy with a harelip, a
cleft palate, and a growth on his spine. Sarkar had a brother
born with the same set of malformations, the doctor told me,
but the brother choked to death, while still a baby, on a
grain of rice.
Meanwhile, more victims had gathered in the hallway; the
people of Halabja do not often have a chance to tell their
stories to foreigners. Some of them wanted to know if I was a
surgeon, who had come to repair their children's deformities,
and they were disappointed to learn that I was a journalist.
The doctor and I soon left the hospital for a walk through
the northern neighborhoods of Halabja, which were hardest hit
in the attack. We were trailed by peshmerga carrying AK-47s.
The doctor smoked as we talked, and I teased him about his
habit. ``Smoking has some good effect on the lungs,'' he
said, without irony. ``In the attacks, there was less effect
on smokers. Their lungs were better equipped for the mustard
gas, maybe.''
We walked through the alleyways of the Jewish quarter, past
a former synagogue in which eighty or so Halabjans died
during the attack. Underfed cows wandered the paths. The
doctor showed me several cellars where clusters of people
had died. We knocked on the gate of one house, and were
let in by an old woman with a wide smile and few teeth. In
the Kurdish tradition, she immediately invited us for
lunch.
She told us the recent history of the house. ``Everyone who
was in this house died,'' she said. ``The whole family. We
heard there were one hundred people.'' She led us to the
cellar, which was damp and close. Rusted yellow cans of
vegetable ghee littered the floor. The room seemed too small
to hold a hundred people, but the doctor said that the
estimate sounded accurate. I asked him if cellars like this
one had ever been decontaminated. He smiled. ``Nothing in
Kurdistan has been decontaminated,'' he said.
4. AL-ANFAL
The chemical attacks on Halabja and Goktapa and perhaps two
hundred other villages and towns were only a small part of
the cataclysm that Saddam's cousin, the man known as Ali
Chemical, arranged for the Kurds. The Kurds say that about
two hundred thousand were killed. (Human Rights Watch, which
in the early nineties published ``Iraq's Crime of Genocide,''
a definitive study of the attacks, gives a figure of between
fifty thousand and a hundred thousand.)
The campaign against the Kurds was dubbed al-Anfal by
Saddam, after a chapter in the Koran that allows conquering
Muslim armies to seize the spoils of their foes. It reads, in
part, ``Against them''--your enemies--``make ready your
strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of
war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah
and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know,
but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the
cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be
treated unjustly.''
The Anfal campaign was not an end in itself, like the
Holocaust, but a means to an end--an instance of a policy
that Samantha Power, who runs the Carr Center for Human
Rights, at Harvard, calls ``Instrumental genocide.'' Power
has just published ``A Problem from Hell,'' a study of
American responses to genocide. ``There are regimes that set
out to murder every citizen of a race,'' she said. ``Saddam
achieved what he had to do without exterminating every last
Kurd.'' What he had to do, Power and others say,
[[Page H7403]]
was to break the Kurds' morale and convince them that a
desire for independence was foolish.
Most of the Kurds who were murdered in the Anfal were not
killed by poison gas; rather, the genocide was carried out,
in large part, in the traditional manner, with roundups at
night, mass executions, and anonymous burials. The bodies of
most of the victims of the Anfal--mainly men and boys--have
never been found.
One day, I met one of the thousands of Kurdish women known
as Anfal widows: Salma Aziz Baban. She lives outside
Chamchamal, in a settlement made up almost entirely of
displaced families, in cinder-block houses. Her house was
nearly empty--no furniture, no heat, just a ragged carpet. We
sat on the carpet as she told me about her family. She comes
from the Kirkuk region, and in 1987 her village was uprooted
by the Army, and the inhabitants, with thousands of other
Kurds, were forced into a collective town. Then, one night in
April of 1988, soldiers went into the village and seized the
men and older boys. Baban's husband and her three oldest sons
were put on trucks. The mothers of the village began to plead
with the soldiers. ``We were screaming, `Do what you want to
us, do what you want!' '' Baban told me. ``They were so
scared, my sons. My sons were crying.'' She tried to bring
them coats for the journey. ``It was raining. I wanted them
to have coats. I begged the soldiers to let me give them
bread. They took them without coats.'' Baban remembered that
a high-ranking Iraqi officer named Bareq orchestrated the
separation; according to ``Iraq's Crime of Genocide,'' the
Human Rights Watch report, the man in charge of this phase
was a brigadier general named Bareq Abdullah al-Haj Hunta.
After the men were taken away, the women and children were
herded onto trucks. They were given little water or food, and
were crammed so tightly into the vehicles that they had to
defecate where they stood. Baban, her three daughters, and
her six-year-old son were taken to the Topzawa Army base and
then to the prison of Nugra Salman, the Pit of Salman, which
Human Rights Watch in 1995 described this way: ``It was an
old building, dating back to the days of the Iraqi monarchy
and perhaps earlier. It had been abandoned for years, used by
Arab nomads to shelter their herds. The bare walls were
scrawled with the diaries of political prisoners. On the door
of one cell, a guard had daubed `Khomeini eats shit.' Over
the main gate, someone else had written, 'Welcome to Hell.'
''
``We arrived at midnight,'' Baban told me. ``They put us in
a very big room, with more than two thousand people, women
and children, and they closed the door. Then the starvation
started.''
The prisoners were given almost nothing to eat, and a
single standpipe spat out brackish water for drinking. People
began to die from hunger and illness. When someone died, the
Iraqi guards would demand that the body be passed through a
window in the main door. ``The bodies couldn't stay in the
hall,'' Baban told me. In the first days at Nugra Salman,
``thirty people died, maybe more.'' Her six-year-old son,
Rebwar, fell ill. ``He had diarrhea,'' she said. ``He was
very sick. He knew he was dying. There was no medicine or
doctor. He started to cry so much.'' Baban's son died on her
lap. ``I was screaming and crying,'' she said. ``My daughters
were crying. We gave them the body. It was passed outside,
and the soldiers took it.''
Soon after Baban's son died, she pulled herself up and went
to the window, to see if the soldiers had taken her son to be
buried. ``There were twenty dogs outside the prison. A big
black dog was the leader,'' she said. The soldiers had dumped
the bodies of the dead outside the prison, in a field. ``I
looked outside and saw the legs and hands of my son in the
mouths of the dogs. The dogs were eating my son.'' She
stopped talking for a moment. ``Then I lost my mind.''
She described herself as catatonic; her daughters scraped
around for food and water. They kept her alive, she said,
until she could function again. ``This was during Ramadan. We
were kept in Nugra Salman for a few more months.''
In September, when the war with Iran was over, Saddam
issued a general amnesty to the Kurds, the people he believed
had betrayed him by siding with Tehran. The women, children,
and elderly in Nugra Salman were freed. But, in most cases,
they could not go home; the Iraqi Army had bulldozed some
four thousand villages, Baban's among them. She was finally
resettled in the Chamchamal district.
In the days after her release, she tried to learn the fate
of her husband and three older sons. But the men who
disappeared in the Anfal roundups have never been found. It
is said that they were killed and then buried in mass graves
in the desert along the Kuwaiti border, but little is
actually known. A great number of Anfal widows, I was told,
still believe that their sons and husbands and brothers are
locked away in Saddam's jails. ``We are thinking they are
alive,'' Baban said, referring to her husband and sons.
``Twenty-four hours a day, we are thinking maybe they are
alive. If they are alive, they are being tortured, I know
it.''
Baban said that she has not slept well since her sons were
taken from her. ``We are thinking, Please let us know they
are dead, I will sleep in peace,'' she said. ``My head is
filled with terrible thoughts. The day I die is the day I
will not remember that the dogs ate my son.''
Before I left, Baban asked me to write down the names of
her three older sons. They are Sherzad, who would be forty
now; Rizgar, who would be thirty-one; and Muhammad, who
would be thirty. She asked me to find her sons, or to ask
President Bush to find them. ``One would be sufficient,''
she said. ``If just one comes back, that would be
enough.''
5. WHAT THE KURDS FEAR
In a conversation not long ago with Richard Butler, the
former weapons inspector, I suggested a possible explanation
for the world's indifference to Saddam Hussein's use of
chemical weapons to commit genocide--that the people he had
killed were his own citizens, not those of another sovereign
state. (The main chemical-weapons treaty does not ban a
country's use of such weapons against its own people, perhaps
because at the time the convention was drafted no one could
imagine such a thing.) Butler reminded me, however, that Iraq
had used chemical weapons against another country--Iran--
during, the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. He offered a simpler
rationale. ``The problems are just too awful and too hard,''
he said. ``History is replete with such things. Go back to
the grand example of the Holocaust. It sounded too hard to do
anything about it.''
The Kurds have grown sanguine about the world's lack of
interest. ``I've learned not to be surprised by the
indifference of the civilized world,'' Barham Salih told me
one evening in Sulaimaniya. Salih is the Prime Minister of
the area of Kurdistan administered by the Patriotic Union,
and he spoke in such a way as to suggest that it would be
best if I, too, stopped acting surprised. ``Given the scale
of the tragedy--we're talking about large numbers of
victims--I suppose I'm surprised that the international
community has not come in to help the survivors,'' he
continued. ``It's politically indecent not to help. But, as a
Kurd, I live with the terrible hand history and geography
have dealt my people.''
Salih's home is not prime ministerial, but it has many
Western comforts. He had a satellite television and a
satellite telephone, yet the house was frigid; in a land of
cheap oil, the Kurds, who are cut off the Iraqi electric grid
by Saddam on a regular basis, survive on generator power and
kerosene heat.
Over dinner one night, Salih argued that the Kurds should
not be regarded with pity. ``I don't think one has to tap
into the Wilsonian streak in American foreign policy in order
to find a rationale for helping the Kurds,'' he said.
``Helping the Kurds would mean an opportunity to study the
problems caused by weapons of mass destruction.''
Salih, who is forty-one, often speaks bluntly, and is savvy
about Washington's enduring interest in ending the reign of
Saddam Hussein. Unwilling publicly to exhort the United
States to take military action, Salih is aware that the
peshmerga would be obvious allies of an American military
strike against Iraq; other Kurds have been making that
argument for years. It is not often noted in Washington
policy circles, but the Kurds already hold a vast swath of
territory inside the country--including two important dams
whose destruction could flood Baghdad--and have at least
seventy thousand men under arms. In addition, the two main
Kurdish parties are members of the Iraqi opposition group,
the Iraqi National Congress, which is headed by Ahmad
Chalabi, a London-based Shiite businessman; at the moment,
though, relations between Chalabi and the Kurdish leaders are
contentious.
Kurds I talked to throughout Kurdistan were enthusiastic
about the idea of joining, an American-led alliance against
Saddam Hussein, and serving as the northen-Iraqi equivalent
of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance. President Bush's State of
the Union Message, in which he denounced Iraq as the linchpin
of an ``axis of evil,'' had had an electric effect on every
Kurd I met who heard the speech. In the same speech,
President Bush made reference to Iraq's murder of ``thousands
of its own citizens--leaving the bodies of mothers huddled
over their dead children.'' General Simko Dizayee, the chief
of staff of the peshmerga, told me, ``Bush's speech filled
our hearts with hope.''
Prime Minister Salih expressed his views diplomatically.
``We support democratic transformation in Iraq,'' he said--
half smiling, because he knows that there is no chance of
that occurring unless Saddam is removed. But until America
commits itself to removing Saddam, he said, ``we're living on
the razor's edge. Before Washington even wakes up in the
morning, we could have ten thousand dead.'' This is the
Kurdish conundrum: the Iraqi military is weaker than the
American military, but the Iraqis are stronger than the
Kurds. Seven hundred Iraqi tanks face the Kurdish safe haven,
according to peshmerga commanders.
General Mustafa Said Qadir, the peshmerga leader, put it
this way: ``We have a problem. If the Americans attack Saddam
and don't get him, we're going to get gassed. If the
Americans decided to do it, we would be thankful. This is the
Kurdish dream. But it has to be done carefully.''
The Kurdish leadership worries, in short, that an American
mistake could cost the Kurds what they have created, however
inadvertently: a nearly independent state for themselves in
northern Iraq. ``We would like to be our own nation,'' Salih
told me. ``But we are realists. All we want is to be partners
of the Arabs of Iraq in building a secular, democratic,
federal country.'' Later, he added, ``We are proud of
ourselves. We have
[[Page H7404]]
inherited a devastated country. It's not easy what we are
trying to achieve. We had no democratic institutions, we
didn't have a legal culture, we did not have a strong
military. From that situation, this is a remarkable success
story.''
The Kurdish regional government, to be sure, is not a
Vermont town meeting. The leaders of the two parties, Massoud
Barzani and Jalal Talabani, are safe in their jobs. But there
is a free press here, and separation of mosque and state, and
schools are being built and pensions are being paid. In Erbil
and in Sulaimaniya, the Kurds have built playgrounds on the
ruins of Iraqi Army torture centers. ``If America is indeed
looking for Muslims who are eager to become democratic and
are eager to counter the effects of Islamic fundamentalism,
then it should be looking here,'' Salih said.
Massoud Barzani is the son of the late Mustafa Barzani, a
legendary guerrilla, who built the Democratic Party, and who
entered into the ill-fated alliance with Iran and America. I
met Barzani in his headquarters, above the town of
Salahuddin. He is a short man, pale and quiet; he wore the
red turban of the Barzani clan and a wide cummerbund across
his baggy trousers--the outfit of a peshmerga.
Like Salih, he chooses his words carefully when talking
about the possibility of helping America bring down Saddam.
``It is not enough to tell us the U.S. will respond at a
certain time and place of its choosing,'' Barzani said.
``We're in artillery range. Iraq's Army is weak, but it is
still strong enough to crush us. We don't make assumptions
about the American response.''
One day, I drove to the Kurdish front lines near Erbil, to
see the forward positions of the Iraqi Army. The border
between the Army-controlled territory and the Kurdish region
is porous; Baghdad allows some Kurds--nonpolitical Kurds--to
travel back and forth between zones.
My peshmerga escort took me to the roof of a building
overlooking the Kalak Bridge and, beyond it, the Iraqi lines.
Without binoculars, we could see Iraqi tanks on the hills in
front of us. A local official named Muhammad Najar joined us;
he told me that the Iraqi forces arrayed there were elements
of the Army's Jerusalem brigade, a reserve unit established
by Saddam with the stated purpose of liberating Jerusalem
from the Israelis. Other peshmerga joined us. It was a
brilliantly sunny day, and we were enjoying the weather. A
man named Azlz Khader, gazing at the plain before us, said,
``When I look across here, I imagine American tanks coming
down across this plain going to Baghdad.'' His friends smiled
and said, ``Inshallah''--God willing. Another man said, ``The
U.S. is the lord of the world.''
6. THE PRISONERS
A week later, I was at Shinwe, a mountain range outside
Halabja, with another group of peshmerga. My escorts and I
had driven most of the way up, and then slogged through fresh
snow. From one peak, we could see the village of Biyara,
which sits in a valley between Halabja and a wall of
mountains that mark the Iranian border. Saddam's tanks were
an hour's drive away to the south, and Iran filled the vista
before us. Biyara and nine other villages near it are
occupied by the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, or Supporters
of Islam. Shinwe, in fact, might be called the axis of the
axis of evil.
We were close enough to see trucks belonging to Ansar al-
Islam making their way from village to village. The commander
of the peshmerga forces surrounding Biyara, a veteran
guerrilla named Ramadan Dekone, said that Ansar al-Islam is
made up of Kurdish Islamists and an unknown number of so-
called Arab Afghans--Arabs, from southern Iraq and elsewhere,
who trained in the camps of Al Qaeda.
``They believe that people must be terrorized,'' Dekone
said, shaking his head. ``They believe that the Koran says
this is permissible.'' He pointed to an abandoned village in
the middle distance, a place called Kheli Hama. ``That is
where the massacre took place,'' he said. In late September,
forty-two of his men were killed by Ansar al-Islam, and now
Dekone and his forces seemed ready for revenge. I asked him
what he would do if he captured the men responsible for the
killing. ``I would take them to court,'' he said.
When I got to Sulaimaniya, I visited a prison run by the
intelligence service of the Patriotic Union. The prison is
attached to the intelligence-service headquarters. It appears
to be well kept and humane; the communal cells hold twenty or
so men each, and they have kerosene heat, and even satellite
television. For two days, the intelligence agency permitted
me to speak with any prisoner who agreed to be interviewed. I
was wary; the Kurds have an obvious interest in lining up on
the American side in the war against terror. But the
officials did not, as far as I know, compel anyone to speak
to me, and I did not get the sense that allegations made by
prisoners were shaped by their captors. The stories, which I
later checked with experts on the region, seemed at least
worth the attention of America and other countries in the
West.
The allegations include charges that Ansar al-Islam has
received funds directly from Al Qaeda; that the intelligence
service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with Al Qaeda
operatives, over Ansar al-Islam; that Saddam Hussein hosted a
senior leader of Al Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992; that a number
of Al Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly
brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam; and that
Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and
possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into
Afghanistan. If these charges are true, it would mean that
the relationship between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda is far
closer than previously thought.
When I asked the director of the twenty-four-hundred-man
Patriotic Union intelligence service why he was allowing me
to interview his prisoners, he told me that he hoped I would
carry this information to American intelligence officials.
``The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. haven't come out yet,'' he told
me. His deputy added, ``Americans are going to Somalia, the
Philippines, I don't know where else, to look for terrorists.
But this is the field, here.'' Anya Guilsher, a spokeswoman
for the C.I.A., told me last week that as a matter of policy
the agency would not comment on the activities of its
officers. James Woolsey, a former C.I.A. director and an
advocate of overthrowing the Iraqi regime, said, ``It would
be a real shame if the C.I.A.'s substantial institutional
hostility to Iraqi democratic resistance groups was
keeping it from learning about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda
in northern Iraq.''
The possibility that Saddam could supply weapons of mass
destruction to anti-American terror groups is a powerful
argument among advocates of ``regime change,'' as the removal
of Saddam is known in Washington. These critics of Saddam
argue that his chemical and biological capabilities, his
record of support for terrorist organizations, and the
cruelty of his regime make him a threat that reaches far
beyond the citizens of Iraq.
``He's the home address for anyone wanting to make or use
chemical or biological weapons,'' Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi
dissident, said. Makiya is the author of ``Republic of
Fear,'' a study of Saddam's regime. ``He's going to be the
person to worry about. He's got the labs and the knowhow.
He's hellbent on trying to find a way into the fight, without
announcing it.''
On the surface, a marriage of Saddam's secular Baath Party
regime with the fundamentalist Al Qaeda seems unlikely. His
relationship with secular Palestinian groups is well known;
both Abu Nidal and Abul Abbas, two prominent Palestinian
terrorists, are currently believed to be in Baghdad. But
about ten years ago Saddam underwent something of a
battlefield conversion to a fundamentalist brand of Islam.
``It was gradual, starting the moment he decided on the
invasion of Kuwait,'' in June of 1990, according to Amatzia
Baram, an Iraq expert at the University of Haifa. ``His
calculation was that he needed people in Iraq and the Arab
world--as well as God--to be on his side when he invaded.
After he invaded, the Islamic rhetorical style became
overwhelming,''--so overwhelming, Baram continued, that a
radical group in Jordan began calling Saddam ``the New Caliph
Marching from the East.'' This conversion, cynical though it
may be, has opened doors to Saddam in the fundamentalist
world. He is now a prime supporter of the Palestinian Islamic
Jihad and of Hamas, paying families of suicide bombers ten
thousand dollars in exchange for their sons' martyrdom. This
is part of Saddam's attempt to harness the power of Islamic
extremism and direct it against his enemies.
Kurdish culture, on the other hand, has traditionally been
immune to religious extremism. According to Kurdish
officials, Ansar al-Islam grew out of an idea spread by Ayman
al-Zawahiri, the former chief of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad
and now Osama bin Laden's deputy in Al Qaeda. ``There are two
schools of thought'' in Al Qaeda, Karim Sinjari, the Interior
Minister of Kurdistan's Democratic Party-controlled region,
told me. ``Osama bin Laden believes that the infidels should
be beaten in the head, meaning the United States. Zawahiri's
philosophy is that you should fight the infidel even in the
smallest village, that you should try to form Islamic armies
everywhere. The Kurdish fundamentalists were influenced by
Zawahiri'.''
Kurds were among those who travelled to Afghanistan from
all over the Muslim world, first to fight the Soviets, in the
early nineteen-eighties, then to join Al Qaeda. The members
of the groups that eventually became Ansar al-Islam spent a
great deal of time in Afghanistan, according to Kurdish
intelligence officials. One Kurd who went to Afghanistan was
Mala Krekar, an early leader of the Islamist movement in
Kurdistan; according to Sinjari, he now holds the title of
``emir'' of Ansar al-Islam.
In 1998, the first force of Islamist terrorists crossed the
Iranian border into Kurdistan, and immediately tried to seize
the town of Haj Omran. Kurdish officials said that the
terrorists were helped by Iran, which also has an interest in
undermining a secular Muslim government. ``The terrorists
blocked the road, they killed Kurdish Democratic Party
cadres, they threatened the villagers,'' Sinjari said. ``We
fought them and they fled.''
The terrorist groups splintered repeatedly. According to a
report in the Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat, which is
published in London, Ansar al-Islam came into being, on
September 1st of last year, with the merger of two factions:
Al Tawhid, which helped to arrange the assassination of
Kurdistan's most prominent Christian politician, and whose
operatives initiated an acid-tbrowing campaign against
unveiled women; and a faction called the Second Soran Unit,
which had been affiliated with one of the Kurdish Islamic
parties. In a statement
[[Page H7405]]
issued to mark the merger, the group, which originally called
itself Jund al-Islam, or Soldiers of Islam, declared its
intention to ``undertake Jiihad in this region'' in order to
carry out ``God's will.'' According to Kurdish officials, the
group had between five hundred and six hundred members,
including Arab Afghans and at least thirty Iraqi Kurds who
were trained in Afghanistan.
Kurdish officials say that the merger took place in a
ceremony overseen by three Arabs trained in bin Laden's camps
in Afghanistan, and that these men supplied Ansar al-Islam
with three hundred thousand dollars in seed money. Soon after
the merger, a unit of Ansar al-Islam called the Victory Squad
attacked and killed the peshmerga in Kheli Hama.
Among the Islamic fighters who were there that day was
Rekut Hiwa Hussein, a slender, boyish twenty-year-old who was
captured by the peshmerga after the massacre, and whom I met
in the prison in Sulaimaniya. He was exceedingly shy, never
looking up from his hands as he spoke. He was not handcuffed,
and had no marks on the visible parts of his body. We were
seated in an investigator's office inside the intelligence
complex. Like most buildings in Sulaimaniya, this one was
warmed by a single kerosene heater, and the room temperature
seemed barely above freezing. Rekut told me how he and his
comrades in Ansar al-Islam overcame the peshmerga.
``They thought there was a ceasefire, so we came into the
village and fired on them by surprise,'' he said. ``They
didn't know what happened. We used grenades and machine guns.
We killed a lot of them and then the others surrendered.''
The terrorists trussed their prisoners, ignoring pleas from
the few civilians remaining in the town to leave them alone.
``The villagers asked us not to slaughter them,'' Rekut said.
One of the leaders of Ansar al-Islam, a man named Abdullah
a`Shafi, became incensed. ``He said, `Who is saying this? Let
me kill them.' ''
Rekut said that the peshmerga were killed in ritual
fashion: ``We put cloths in their mouths. We then laid them
down like sheep, in a line. Then we cut their throats.''
After the men were killed, peshmerga commanders say, the
corpses were beheaded. Rekut denied this. ``Some of their
heads had been blown off by grenades, but we didn't behead
them,'' he said.
I asked Rekut why he had joined Ansar al-Islam. ``A friend
of mine Joined,'' he said quietly. ``I don't have a good
reason why I joined. ``A guard then took him by the elbow and
returned him to his cell.
The Kurdish intelligence officials I spoke to were careful
not to oversell their case; they said that they have no proof
that Ansar al-Islam was ever involved in international
terrorism or that Saddam's agents were involved in the
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But they
do have proof, they said, that Ansar al-Islam is shielding Al
Qaeda members, and that it is doing so with the approval of
Saddam's agents.
Kurdish officials said that, according, to their
intelligence, several men associated with Al Qaeda have been
smuggled over the Iranian border into an Ansar al-Islam
stronghold near Halabja. The Kurds believe that two of them,
who go by the names Abu Yasir and Abu Muzaham, are
highranking Al Qaeda members. ``We don't have any information
about them,'' one official told me. ``We know that they don't
want anybody to see them. They are sleeping in the same
room as Mala Krekar and Abdullah al-Shafi''--the nominal
leaders of Ansar al-Islam.
The real leader, these officials say, is an Iraqi who goes
by the name Abu Wa'el, and who, like the others, spent a
great deal of time in bin Laden's training camps. But he is
also, they say, a highranking officer of the Mukhabarat. One
senior official added, ``A man named Abu Agab is in charge of
the northern bureau of the Mukhabarat. And he is Abu Wa'el's
control officer.''
Abu Agab, the official said, is based in the city of
Kirkuk, which is predominantly Kurdish but is under the
control of Baghdad. According to intelligence officials, Abu
Agab and Abu Wa'el met last July 7th, in Germany. From there,
they say, Abu Wa'el travelled to Afghanistan and then, in
August, to Kurdistan, sneaking across the Iranian border.
The Kurdish officials told me that they learned a lot about
Abu Wa'el's movements from one of their prisoners, an Iraqi
intelligence officer named Qassem Hussein Muhammad, and they
invited me to speak with him. Qassem, the Kurds said, is a
Shiite from Basra, in southern Iraq, and a twenty-year
veteran of Iraqi intelligence.
Qassem, shamblinog, and bearded, was brought into the room,
and he genially agreed to be interviewed. One guard stayed in
the room, along with my translator. Qassem lit a cigarette,
and leaned back in his chair. I started by asking him if he
had been tortured by his captors. His eyes widened. ``By God,
no,'' he said. ``There is nothing like torture here.'' Then
he told me that his involvement in Islamic radicalism began
in 1992 in Baghdad, when he met Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Qassem said that he was one of seventeen bodyguards
assigned to protect Zawahiri, who stayed at Baghdad's Al
Rashid Hotel, but who, he said, moved around surreptitiously.
The guards had no idea why Zawahiri was in Baghdad, but one
day Qassem escorted him to one of Saddam's palaces for what
he later learned was a meeting with Saddam himself
Qassem's capture by the Kurds grew out of his last
assignment from the Mukhabarat. The Iraqi intelligence
service received word that Abu Wa'el had been captured by
American agents. ``I was sent by the Mukhabarat to Kurdistan
to find Abu Wa'el or, at least, information about him,''
Qassem told me. ``That's when I was captured, before I
reached Biyara.''
I asked him if he was sure that Abu Wa'el was on Saddam's
side. ``He's an employee of the Mukhabarat,'' Qassem said.
``He's the actual decision-maker in the group''--Ansar al-
Islam--``but he's an employee of the Mukhabarat.'' According
to the Kurdish intelligence officials, Abu Wa'el is not in
American hands; rather, he is still with Ansar al-Islam.
American officials declined to comment.
The Kurdish intelligence officials told me that they have
Al Qaeda members in custody, and they introduced me to
another prisoner, a young Iraqi Arab named Haqi Ismail, whom
they described as a middle- to high-ranking member of Al
Qaeda. He was, they said, captured by the peshmerga as he
tried to get into Kurdistan three weeks after the start of
the American attack on Afghanistan. Ismail, they said, comes
from a Mosul family with deep connections to the Mukhabarat;
his uncle is the top Mukhabarat official in the south of
Iraq. They said they believe that Haqi Ismail is a liaison
between Saddam's intelligence service and Al Qaeda.
Ismail wore slippers and a blanket around his shoulders. He
was ascetic in appearance and, at the same time,
ostentatiously smug. He appeared to be amused by the presence
of an American. He told the investigators that he would not
talk to the C.I.A. The Kurdish investigators laughed and said
they wished that I were from the C.I.A.
Ismail said that he was once a student at the University of
Mosul but grew tired of life in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
Luckily, he said, in 1999 he met an Afghan man who
persuaded him to seek work in Afghanistan. The Kurdish
investigators smiled as Ismail went on to say that he
found himself in Kandahar, then in Kabul, and then
somehow--here he was exceedingly vague--in an Al Qaeda
camp. When I asked him how enrollment in an Al Qaeda camp
squared with his wish to seek work in Afghanistan, he
replied, ``Being a soldier is a job.'' After his training,
he said, he took a post in the Taliban Foreign Ministry. I
asked him if he was an employee of Saddam's intelligence
service. ``I prefer not to talk about that,'' he replied.
Later, I asked, the Kurdish officials if they believed that
Saddam provides aid to Al Qaeda affiliated terror groups or
simply maintains channels of communication with them. It was
getting late, and the room was growing even colder. ``Come
back tomorrow,'' the senior official in the room said, ``and
we'll introduce you to someone who will answer that
question.''
7. THE AL QAEDA LINK
The man they introduced me to the next afternoon was a
twenty-nine-year-old Iranian Arab, a smuggler and bandit from
the city of Ahvaz. The intelligence officials told me that
his most recent employer was bin Laden. When they arrested
him, last year, they said, they found a roll of film in his
possession. They had the film developed, and the photographs,
which they showed me, depleted their prisoner murdering a man
with a knife, slicing his ear off and then plunging the knife
into the top of the man's head.
The Iranian had a thin face, thick black hair, and a
mustache; he wore an army jacket, sandals, and Western-style
sweatpants. Speaking in an almost casual tone, he told me
that he was born in 1973, that his real name was Muhammad
Mansour Shahab, and that he had been a smuggler most of his
adult life.
``I met a group of drug traffickers,'' he said. ``They gave
us drugs and we got them weapons,'' which they took from Iran
into Afghanistan. In 1996, he met an Arab Afghan. ``His name
was Othman,'' the man went on. ``He gave me drugs, and I got
him a hundred and fifty Kalashnikovs. Then he said to me,
`You should come visit Afghanistan.' So we went to
Afghanistan in 1996. We stayed for a while, I came back, did
a lot of smuggling jobs. My brother-in-law tried to send
weapons to Afghanistan, but the Iranians ambushed us. I
killed some of the Iranians.''
He soon returned with Othman to Afghanistan, where, he
said, Othman gave him the name Muhammad Jawad to use while he
was there. ``Othman said to me, `You will meet Sheikh Osama
soon.' We were in Kandahar. One night, they gave me a
sleeping pill. We got into a car and we drove for an hour and
a half into the mountains. We went to a tent they said was
Osama's tent.'' The man now called Jawad did not meet Osama
bin Laden that night. ``They said to me, `You're the guy who
killed the Iranian officer.' Then they said they needed
information about me, my real name. They told Othman to take
me back to Kandahar and hold me in jail for twenty-one days
while they investigated me.''
The Al Qaeda men completed their investigation and called
him back to the mountains. ``They told me that Osama said I
should work with them,'' Jawad said. ``They told me to bring
my wife to Afghanistan.'' They made him swear on a Koran that
he would never betray them. Jawad said that he became one of
Al Qaeda's principal weapons smugglers. Iraqi opposition
sources told me that the Baghdad regime frequently smuggled
weapons to Al Qaeda by air through
[[Page H7406]]
Dubai to Pakistan and then overland into Afghanistan. But
Jawad told me that the Iraqis often used land routes through
Iran as well. Othman ordered him to establish a smuggling
route across the Iraq-Iran border. The smugglers would pose
as shepherds to find the best routes. ``We started to go into
Iraq with the sheep and cows,'' Jawad told me, and added that
they initiated this route by smuggling tape recorders from
Iraq to Iran. They opened a store, a front, in Ahvaz, to
sell electronics, ``just to establish relationships with
smugglers.''
One day in 1999, Othman got a message to Jawad, who was
then in Iran. He was to smuggle himself across the Iraqi
border at Fao, where a car would meet him and take him to a
village near Tikrit, the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's
clan. Jawad was then taken to a meeting at the house of a man
called Luay, whom he described as the son of Saddam's father-
in-law, Khayr Allah Talfah. (Professor Baram, who has long
followed Saddam's family, later told me he believes that
Luay, who is about forty years old, is close to Saddam's
inner circle.) At the meeting, with Othman present,
Mukhabarat officials instructed Jawad to go to Baghdad, where
he was to retrieve several cannisters filled with explosives.
Then, he said, he was to arrange to smuggle the explosives
into Iran, where they would be used to kill anti-Iraqi
activists. After this assignment was completed, Jawad said,
he was given a thousand Kalashnikov rifles by Iraqi
intelligence and told to smuggle them into Afghanistan.
A year later, there was a new development: Othman told
Jawad to smuggle several dozen refrigerator motors into
Afghanistan for the Iraqi Mukhabarat; a cannister filled with
liquid was attached to each motor. Jawad said that he asked
Othman for more information. ``I said, `Othman, what does
this contain?' He said, `My life and your life.' He said
they''--the Iraqi agents--''were going to kill us if we
didn't do this. That's all I'll say.
``I was given a book of dollars,'' Jawad went on, meaning
ten thousand dollars--a hundred American hundred-dollar
bills. ``I was told to arrange to smuggle the motors. Othman
told me to kill any of the smugglers who helped us once we
got there.'' Vehicles belonging to the Taliban were waiting
at the border, and Jawad said that he turned over the liquid-
filled refrigerator motors to the Taliban, and then killed
the smugglers who had helped him.
Jawad said that he had no idea what liquid was inside the
motors, but he assumed that it was some type of chemical or
biological weapon. I asked the Kurdish officials who remained
in the room if they believed that, as late as 2000, the
Mukhabarat was transferring chemical or biological weapons to
Al Qaeda. They spoke carefully. ``We have no idea what was in
the cannisters,'' the senior official said. ``This is
something that is worth an American investigation.''
When I asked Jawad to tell me why he worked for Al Qaeda,
he replied, ``Money.'' He would not say how much money he had
been paid, but he suggested that it was quite a bit. I had
one more question: How many years has Al Qaeda maintained a
relationship with Saddam Hussein's regime? ``There's been a
relationship between the Mukhabarat and the people of Al
Qaeda since 1992,'' he replied.
Carole O'Leary, a Middle Eastern expert at American
University, in Washington, and a specialist on the Kurds,
said it is likely that Saddam would seek an alliance with
Islamic terrorists to serve his own interests. ``I know that
there are Mukhabarat agents throughout Kurdistan,'' O'Leary
said, and went on, ``One way the Mukhabarat could destabilize
the Kurdish experiment in democracy is to link up with
Islamic radical groups. Their interests dovetail completely.
They both have much to fear from the democratic, secular
experiment of the Kurds in the safe haven, and they both
obviously share a hatred for America.''
8. THE PRESENT DANGER
A paradox of life in northern Iraq is that, while hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of children suffer from the effects of
chemical attacks, the child-mortality rate in the Kurdish
zone has improved over the past ten years. Prime Minister
Salih credits this to, of all things, sanctions placed on
the Iraqi regime by the United Nations after the Gulf War
because of Iraq's refusal to dismantle its
nonconventional-weapons program. He credits in particular
the program begun in 1997, known as oil-for-food, which
was meant to mitigate the effects of sanctions on
civilians by allowing the profits from Iraq oil sales to
buy food and medicine. Calling this program a ``fantastic
concept,'' Salih said, ``For the first time in our
history, Iraqi citizens--all citizens--are insured a
portion of the country's oil wealth. The north is a
testament to the success of the program. Oil is sold and
food is bought.''
I asked Salih to respond to the criticism, widely aired in
the West, that the sanctions have led to the death of
thousands of children. ``Sanctions don't kill Iraqi
children,'' he said. ``The regime kills children.''
This puzzled me. If it was true, then why were the victims
of the gas attacks still suffering from a lack of health
care? Across Kurdistan, in every hospital I visited, the
complaints were the same: no CT scans, no MRIS, no pediatric
surgery, no advanced diagnostic equipment, not even surgical
gloves. I asked Salih why the money designated by the U.N.
for the Kurds wasn't being used for advanced medical
treatment. The oil-for-food program has one enormous flaw, he
replied. When the program was introduced, the Kurds were
promised thirteen per cent of the country's oil revenue, but
because of the terms of the agreement between Baghdad and the
U.N.--a ``defect,'' Salih said--the government controls the
flow of food, medicine, and medical equipment to the very
people it slaughtered. Food does arrive, he conceded, and
basic medicines as well, but at Saddam's pace.
On this question of the work of the United Nations and its
agencies, the rival Kurdish parties agree. ``We've been
asking for a four-hundred-bed hospital for Sulaimaniya for
three years,'' said Nerchivan Barzani, the Prime Minister of
the region controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Party, and
Salih's counterpart. Sulaimanlya is in Salih's territory, but
in this case geography doesn't matter. ``It's our money,''
Barzani said. ``But we need the approval of the Iraqis. They
get to decide. The World Health Organization is taking its
orders from the Iraqis. It's crazy.''
Barzani and Salih accused the World Health Organization, in
particular, of rewarding with lucrative contracts only
companies favored by Saddam. ``Every time I interact with the
U.N.,'' Salih said, ``I think, My God, Jesse Helms is right.
If the U.N. can't help us, this poor, dispossessed Muslim
nation, then who is it for?''
Many Kurds believe that Iraq's friends in the U.N. system,
particularly members of the Arab bloc, have worked to keep
the Kurds' cause from being addressed. The Kurds face an
institutional disadvantage at the U.N., where, unlike the
Palestinians, they have not even been granted official
observer status. Salih grew acerbic: ``Compare us to other
liberation movements around the world. We are very mature. We
don't engage in terror. We don't condone extremist
nationalist notions that can only burden our people. Please
compare what we have achieved in the Kurdistan national-
authority areas to the Palestinian national authority of Mr.
Arafat. We have spent the last ten years building a secular,
democratic society, a civil society. What has he built?''
Last week, in New York, I met with Benon Sevan, the United
Nations undersecretary-general who oversees the oil-for-food
program. He quickly let me know that he was unmoved by the
demands of the Kurds. ``If they had a theme song, it would be
`Give Me, Give Me, Give Me,' '' Sevan said. ``I'm getting fed
up with their complaints. You can tell them that.'' He said
that under the oil-for-food program the ``three northern
govemorates''--U.N. officials avoid the word ``Kurdistan''--
have been allocated billions of dollars in goods and
services. ``I don't know if they've ever had it so good,'' he
said.
I mentioned the Kurds' complaint that they have been denied
access to advanced medical equipment, and he said, ``Nobody
prevents them from asking. They should go ask the World
Health Organization''--which reports to Sevan on matters
related to Iraq. When I told Sevan that the Kurds have
repeatedly asked the W.H.O., he said, ``I'm not going to pass
judgment on the W.H.O.'' As the interview ended, I asked
Sevan about the morality of allowing the Iraqi regime to
control the flow of food and medicine into Kurdistan.
``Nobody's innocent,'' he said. ``Please don't talk about
morals with me.''
When I went to Kurdistan in January to report on the 1988
genocide of the Kurds, I did not expect to be sidetracked by
a debate over U.N. sanctions. And I certainly didn't expect
to be sidetracked by crimes that Saddam is committing against
the Kurds now--in particular--``nationality correction,'' the
law that Saddam's security services are using to implement a
campaign of ethnic cleansing. Large-scale operations against
the Kurds in Kirkuk, a city southeast of Erbil, and in other
parts of Iraqi Kurdistan under Saddam's control, have
received scant press attention in the West; there have been
few news accounts and no Security Council condemnations
drafted in righteous anger.
Saddam's security services have been demanding that Kurds
``correct'' their nationality by signing papers to indicate
that their birth records are false--that they are in fact
Arab. Those who don't sign have their property seized. Many
have been evicted, often to Kurdish-controlled regions, to
make room for Arab families. According to both the Kurdistan
Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, more
than a hundred thousand Kurds have been expelled from the
Kirkuk area over the past two years.
Nationality correction is one technique that the Baghdad
regime is using in an over-all ``Arabization'' campaign,
whose aim is to replace the inhabitants of Kurdish cities,
especially the oil-rich Kirkuk, with Arabs from central and
southern Iraq, and even, according to persistent reports,
with Palestinians. Arabization is not new, Peter Galbraith, a
professor at the National Defense University and a former
senior adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
says. Galbraith has monitored Saddam's anti-Kurdish
activities since before the Gulf War. ``It's been going on
for twenty years,'' he told me. ``Maybe it's picked up speed,
but it is certainly nothing new. To my mind, it's part of a
larger process that has been under way for many years, and is
aimed at reducing the territory occupied by the Kurds and at
destroying rural Kurdistan.''
``This is the apotheosis of cultural genocide,'' said Saedi
Barzinji, the president of Salahaddin University, in Erbil,
who is a human-rights lawyer and Massoud Barzani's legal
adviser. Barzinji and other Kurdish leaders believe that
Saddam is trying to set up a buffer zone between Arab Iraq
and
[[Page H7407]]
Kurdistan, just in case the Kurds win their independence. To
help with this, Barzinji told me last month, Saddam is trying
to rewrite Kirkuk's history, to give it an ``Arab'' past. If
Kurds, Barzinji went on, ``don't change their ethnic origin,
they are given no food rations, no positions in government,
no right to register the names of their new babies. In the
last three to four weeks, hospitals have been ordered, the
maternity wards ordered, not to register any Kurdish name.''
New parents are ``obliged to choose an Arab name.'' Barzinji
said that the nationality-correction campaign extends even to
the dead. ``Saddam is razing the gravestones, erasing the
past, putting in new ones with Arab names,'' he said. ``He
wants to show that Kirkuk has always been Arab.''
Some of the Kurds crossing the demarcation line between
Saddam's forces and the Kurdish zone, it is said, are not
being expelled but are fleeing for economic reasons. But in
camps across Kurdistan I met refugees who told me stories of
visits from the secret police in the middle of the night.
Many of the refugees from Kirkuk live in tent camps built
on boggy fields. I visited one such camp at Beneslawa, not
far from Erbil, where the mud was so thick that it nearly
pulled off my shoes. The people at the camp--several hundred,
according to two estimates I heard--are ragged and sick. A
man named Howar told me that his suffering could not have
been avoided even if he had agreed to change his ethnic
identity.
``When you agree to change your nationality, the police
write on your identity documents `second-degree Arab,' which
they know means Kurd,'' he told me. ``So they always know
you're a Kurd.'' (In a twist characteristic of Saddam's
regime, Kurdish leaders told me, Kurds who agree to
``change'' their nationality are fined for having once
claimed falsely to be Kurdish.)
Another refugee, Shawqat Hamid Muhammad, said that her son
had gone to jail for two months for having a photograph of
Mustafa Barzani in his possession. She said that she and her
family had been in the Beneslawa camp for two months. ``The
police came and knocked on our door and told us we have to
leave Kirkuk,'' she said. ``We had to rent a truck to take
our things out. We were given one day to leave. We have no
idea who is in our house.'' Another refugee, a man named
Ibrahim Jamil, wandered over to listen to the conversation.
``The Arabs are winning Kirkuk,'' he said. ``Soon the only
people there will be Arabs, and Kurds who call themselves
Arabs. They say we should be Arab. But I'm a Kurd. It would
be easier for me to die than be an Arab. How can I not be a
Kurd?''
Peter Galbraith told me that in 1987 he witnessed the
destruction of Kurdish villages and cemeteries--``anything,
that was related to Kurdish identity,'' he said. ``This was
one of the factors that led me to conclude that it is a
policy of genocide, a crime of intent, destroying a group
whole or in part.''
9. IRAQ'S ARMS RACE
In a series of meetings in the summer and fall of 1995,
Charles Duelfer, the deputy executive chairman of the United
Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM--the now defunct arms-
inspection team--met in Baghdad with Iraqi government
delegations. The subject was the status of Iraq's
nonconventional-weapons programs, and Duelfer, an American
diplomat on loan to the United Nations, was close to a
breakthrough.
In early August, Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamel had
defected to Jordan, and had then spoken publicly about Iraq's
offensive biological, chemical, and nuclear capabilities.
(Kamel later returned to Iraq and was killed almost
immediately, on his father-in-law's orders.) The regime's
credibility was badly damaged by Kamel's revelations, and
during these meetings the Iraqi representatives decided to
tell Duelfer and his team more than they had ever revealed
before. ``This was the first time Iraq actually agreed to
discuss the Presidential origins of these programs,'' Duelfer
recalled. Among the most startling admissions made by the
Iraqi scientists was that they had weaponized the biological
agent aflatoxin.
Aflatoxin, which is produced from types of fungi that occur
in moldy grains, is the biological agent that some Kurdish
physicians suspect was mixed with chemical weapons and
dropped on Kurdistan. Christine Gosden, the English
geneticist, told me, ``There is absolutely no forensic
evidence whatsoever that aflatoxins have ever been used in
northern Iraq, but this may be because no systematic testing
has been carried out in the region, to my knowledge.''
Duelfer told me, ``We kept pressing the Iraqis to discuss
the concept of use for aflatoxin. We learned that the origin
of the biological-weapons program is in the security
services, not in the military--meaning that it really came
out of the assassinations program.'' The Iraqis, Duelfer
said, admitted something else: they had loaded aflatoxin into
two Scud-ready warheads, and also mixed aflatoxin with
tear gas. They wouldn't say why.
In an op-ed article that Duelfer wrote for the Los Angeles
Times last year about Iraqi programs to develop weapons of
mass destruction, he offered this hypothesis: ``If a regime
wished to conceal a biological attack, what better way than
this? Victims would suffer the short-term effects of inhaling
tear gas and would assume that this was the totality of the
attack: Subsequent cancers would not be linked to the prior
event.''
United Nations inspectors were alarmed to learn about the
aflatoxin program. Richard Spertzel, the chief biological-
weapons inspector for UNSCOM, put it this way: ``It is a
devilish weapon. Iraq was quite clearly aware of the long-
term carcinogenic effect of aflatoxin. Aflatoxin can only do
one thing--destroy people's livers. And I suspect that
children are more susceptible. From a moral standpoint,
aflatoxin is the cruellest weapon--it means watching children
die slowly of liver cancer.''
Spertzel believes that if aflatoxin were to be used as a
weapon it would not be delivered by a missile. ``Aflatoxin is
a little tricky,'' he said. ``I don't know if a single dose
at one point in time is going to give you the long-term
effects. Continuous, repeated exposure--through food--would
be more effective.'' When I asked Spertzel if other countries
have weaponized aflatoxin, he replied, ``I don't know any
other country that did it. I don't know any country that
would.''
It is unclear what biological and chemical weapons Saddam
possesses today. When he maneuvered UNSCOM out of his country
in 1998, weapons inspectors had found a sizable portion of
his arsenal but were vexed by what they couldn't find. His
scientists certainly have produced and weaponized anthrax,
and they have manufactured botulinum toxin, which causes
muscular paralysis and death. They've made Clostridium
perfringens, a bacterium that causes gas gangrene, a
condition in which the flesh rots. They have also made wheat-
cover smut, which can be used to poison crops, and ricin,
which, when absorbed into the lungs, causes hemorrhagic
pneumonia.
According to Gary Milhollin, the director of the Wisconsin
Project on Nuclear Arms Control, whose Iraq Watch project
monitors Saddam's weapons capabilities, inspectors could not
account for a great deal of weaponry believed to be in Iraq's
possession, including almost four tons of the nerve agent VX;
six hundred tons of ingredients for VX; as much as three
thousand tons of other poison-gas agents; and at least five
hundred and fifty artillery shells filled with mustard gas.
Nor did the inspectors find any stores of aflatoxin.
Saddam's motives are unclear, too. For the past decade, the
development of these weapons has caused nothing but trouble
for him; his international isolation grows not from his past
crimes but from his refusal to let weapons inspectors
dismantle his nonconventional-weapons programs. When I asked
the Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya why Saddam is so committed
to these programs, he said, ``I think this regime developed a
very specific ideology associated with power, and how to
extend that power, and these weapons play a very important
psychological and political part.'' Makiya added, ``They are
seen as essential to the security and longevity of the
regime.''
Certainly, the threat of another Halabja has kept Iraq's
citizens terrorized and compliant. Amatzia Baram, the Iraq
expert at the University of Haifa, told me that in 1999 Iraqi
troops in white biohazard suits suddenly surrounded the
Shiite holy city of Karbala, in southern Iraq, which has been
the scene of frequent uprisings against Saddam. (The Shiites
make up about sixty percent of Iraq's population, and the
regime is preoccupied with the threat of another rebellion.)
The men in the white suits did nothing; they just stood
there. ``But the message was clear,'' Baram said. ``What we
did to the Kurds in Halabja we can do to you.'' It's a very
effective psychological weapon. From the information I saw,
people were really panicky. They ran into their homes and
shut their windows. It worked extremely well.''
Saddam's weapons of mass destruction clearly are not meant
solely for domestic use. Several years ago in Baghdad,
Richard Butler, who was then the chairman of UNSCOM, fell
into conversation with Tariq Aziz, Saddam's confidant and
Iraq's deputy Prime Minister. Butler asked Aziz to explain
the rationale for Iraq's biological-weapons project, and he
recalled Aziz's answer: ``He said, `We made bioweapons in
order to deal with the Persians and the Jews.' ''
Iraqi dissidents agree that Iraq's programs to build
weapons of mass destruction are focussed on Israel. ``Israel
is the whole game,'' Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi
National Congress, told me. ``Saddam is always saying
publicly, `Who is going to fire the fortieth missile?' ''--a
reference to the thirty-nine Scud missiles he fired at Israel
during the Gulf War. ``He thinks he can kill one hundred
thousand Israelis in a day with biological weapons.'' Chalabi
added, ``This is the only way he can be Saladin''--the Muslim
hero who defeated the Crusaders. Students of Iraq and its
government generally agree that Saddam would like to project
himself as a leader of all the Arabs, and that the one sure
way to do that is by confronting Israel.
In the Gulf War, when Saddam attacked Israel, he was hoping
to provoke an Israeli response, which would drive America's
Arab friends out of the allied coalition. Today, the experts
say, Saddam's desire is to expel the Jews from history. In
October of 2000, at an Arab summit in Cairo, I heard the
vice-chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council, a man
named Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, deliver a speech on Saddam's
behalf, saying, ``Jihad alone is capable of liberating
Palestine and the rest of the Arab territories occupied by
dirty Jews in their distorted Zionist entity.''
Amatzia Baram said, ``Saddam can absolve himself of all
sins in the eyes of the Arab and Muslim worlds by bringing
Israel to its knees. He not only wants to be a hero in his
[[Page H7408]]
own press, which already recognizes him as a Saladin, but
wants to make sure that a thousand years from now children in
the fourth grade will know that he is the one who destroyed
Israel.''
It is no comfort to the Kurds that the Jews are now
Saddam's main preoccupation. The Kurds I spoke with, even
those who agree that Saddam is aiming, his remaining Scuds at
Israel, believe that he is saving some of his ``special
weapons''--a popular euphemism inside the Iraqi regime for a
return visit to Halabja. The day I visited the Kalak Bridge,
which divides the Kurds from the Iraqi Army's Jerusalem
brigade, I asked Muhammad Najar, the local official, why the
brigade was not facing west, toward its target. ``The road to
Jerusalem,'' he replied, ``goes through Kurdistan.''
A few weeks ago, after my return from Iraq, I stopped by
the Israeli Embassy in Washington to see the Ambassador,
David Ivry. In 1981, Ivry, who then led Israel's Air Force,
commanded Operation Opera, the strike against the Osirak
nuclear reactor near Baghdad. The action was ordered by Prime
Minister Menachem Begin, who believed that by hitting the
reactor shortly before it went online he could stop Iraq from
building an atomic bomb. After the attack, Israel was
condemned for what the Times called ``inexcusable and short-
sighted aggression.'' Today, though, Israel's action is
widely regarded as an act of muscular arms control. ``In
retrospect, the Israeli strike bought us a decade,'' Gary
Milhollin, of the Wisconsin Project, said. ``I think if the
Israelis had not hit the reactor the Iraqis would have had
bombs by 1990''--the year Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Today, a satellite photograph of the Osirak site hangs on a
wall in Ivry's office. The inscription reads, ``For General
David Ivry--With thanks and appreciation for the outstanding
job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981, which made
our job much easier in Desert Storm.'' It is signed ``Dick
Cheney.''
``Preemption is always a positive,'' Ivry said.
Saddam Hussein never gave up his hope of turning Iraq into
a nuclear power. After the Osirak attack, he rebuilt,
redoubled his efforts, and dispersed his facilities. Those
who have followed Saddam's progress believe that no single
strike today would eradicate his nuclear program. I talked
about this prospect last fall with August Hanning, the chief
of the B.N.D., the German intelligence agency, in Berlin. We
met in the new glass-and-steel Chancellery, overlookincg the
renovated Reichstag.
The Germans have a special interest in Saddam's intentions.
German industry is well represented in the ranks of foreign
companies that have aided Saddam's nonconventional-weapons
programs, and the German government has been publicly
regretful. Hanning told me that his agency had taken the lead
in exposing the companies that helped Iraq build a poison-gas
factory at Samarra. The Germans also feel, for the most
obvious reasons, a special responsibility to Israel's
security, and this, too, motivates their desire to expose
Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. Hanning is tall,
thin, and almost translucently white. He is sparing with
words, but he does not equivocate. ``It is our estimate that
Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years,'' he said.
There is some debate among arms-control experts about
exactly when Saddam will have nuclear capabilities. But there
is no disagreement that Iraq, if unchecked, will have them
soon, and a nuclear-armed Iraq would alter forever the
balance of power in the Middle East. ``The first thing that
occurs to any military planner is force protection,'' Charles
Duelfer told me. ``If your assessment of the threat is
chemical or biological, you can get individual protective
equipment and warning systems. If you think he's going to use
a nuclear weapon, where are you going to concentrate your
forces?''
There is little doubt what Saddam might do with an atomic
bomb or with his stocks of biological and chemical weapons.
When I talked about Saddam's past with the medical geneticist
Christine Gosden, she said, ``Please understand, the Kurds
were for practice.''
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to
the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Borski).
(Mr. BORSKI asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BORSKI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution.
We in Congress must stand behind the President in granting him the
authority to use military force against Iraq. The only chance to
prevent war is to be prepared to go to war. We will not rush to war,
but we cannot stand by while Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program
poses a growing threat to our national security. Over the past few
weeks, many have voiced a number of questions, including why we must
take action at this moment, how long our armed forces may be in Iraq,
and what the humanitarian, economic, and political costs of a military
response may be. These are all valid concerns and questions I have
considered. Ultimately, we must decide whether the threats we face
merit the risk of American lives. The consequences of this vote are
serious, and I have not had to make a more difficult decision in my 20
years in Congress. I believe that support for this resolution will send
a strong, decisive signal to Saddam Hussein that his continued
violation of U.N. Security Resolutions will not be tolerated.
This vote is evidence that the challenges we face today are unique in
the context of our history. We as a nation, could not have prevented
the horrific acts of September 11th and I witnessed the destruction
firsthand, at both the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon. Because
of the events of September 11th, we cannot wait to act on a threat to
our nation and to the American people, lest we allow ourselves to be
victims once again. We are faced with a situation in which the lessons
of history speak clearly of danger, and we face a threat unlike any
other in history. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has proven himself to
be a ruthless and unpredictable enemy, and even the slightest threat
posed by his regime is one that we are unable to ignore without great
risk to our national security. The world has come to know a long and
terrible list of grievances against Saddam Hussein, including the
brutal repression and torture of his political opponents, the use of
chemical weapons against his own people, and his tireless pursuit of
weapons of mass destruction. It is this record of brutality and
tendency toward violence that should focus our attention on Iraq.
Intelligence reports from both the United States and Great Britain
highlight Iraq's relentless drive to produce chemical, biological, and
nuclear weapons, and there is mounting evidence that Saddam Hussein is
only 1-5 years away from nuclear weapons capability. Knowing that
containment and deterrence are ineffective against the Iraqi regime, we
have no choice. Knowing that Saddam Hussein has consistently violated
United Nations resolutions we must act. We must act in a timely fashion
to avoid the possibility that Saddam Hussein will use these weapons or
that he would transfer these weapons to a terrorist organization such
as Al Qaeda, which would not hesitate to use them against us. We cannot
wait to protect ourselves until it is too late to do so. Now more than
ever we must be proactive to protect Americans, our country, and our
way of life.
In 1991, after the United States and United Nations had demonstrated
a willingness to peacefully resolve the crisis that followed the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait, and after Saddam Hussein refused to comply with
several U.N. Security Council Resolutions, I cast my vote in favor of
military action against Iraq. I voted for the resolution then because I
believed that my support would help demonstrate that Congress, the
President, and the American people stand together against Saddam
Hussein's defiance.
Since the Persian Gulf War, Saddam Hussein has repeatedly
demonstrated his disdain for the authority of international law by
defying U.N. Security Council Resolutions that were designed to ensure
that Iraq does not pose a threat to international peace and security.
Inspections and sanctions have both failed in the past to address the
threat posed by Iraq. We should work toward a viable U.N. Security
Council Resolution and build an international coalition to support
action to dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. If we do take
military action with such broad support, it will not set a precedent
for preemption, but will boldly state the necessity for any future
disputes to be resolved first through diplomatic channels.
I firmly believe that diplomatic efforts should precede any military
action before we commit our men and women to fight for peace and
justice. At a recent briefing, Secretary of State Colin Powell assured
me that every effort is being made to reach an agreement on a U.N.
Security Council Resolution, so that if we act, we will not act alone.
Military power must not be the basis of our strategy, but should be one
of many options we have at our disposal. It is my hope that we will do
all that we can to avoid armed conflict, but should we engage, we will
do so to promote peace and protect our national security.
Our unity in this vote will deliver a message to the international
community that we as Americans share the belief that the threat we face
is real, and that our cause is just. It is my hope that this vote is
the first step toward increased peace and stability in the Middle East
and a more secure future for the United States and for the world.
I believe that a strong vote in favor of this resolution will prompt
the American people, the United Nations, and the international
community to join in support of action to neutralize the threat that is
posed by Saddam Hussein and the proliferation of his program of weapons
of mass destruction.
Mr. Speaker, a few years ago, when my youngest daughter, Maggie, was
only 5 years old, she was here with my family for the swearing-in
ceremony for Members of the
[[Page H7409]]
House. Members were then casting their votes for our party leadership,
and I tried to test her by asking her if we were Republicans or
Democrats. ``We're Americans, aren't we Dad?'' was her reply. This is
how I believe we, as Members of Congress, should view this vote. All of
us want the best for the American people and I hope that partisanship
can be put aside for the moment, as each of us vote our conscience. We
have come together as a nation since September 11th, and we still must
remain unified in the face of any threat to our nation. I urge a vote
in favor of this resolution.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to
the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Costello).
(Mr. COSTELLO asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. COSTELLO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, I stand in opposition to this resolution.
Mr. Speaker, the most important and difficult decision a Member of
Congress must make is the decision to send our troops--our sons,
daughters, husbands and wives--in harm's way.
Each member must do as I have done--listen to the arguments on both
sides of the issue, assemble and review all available information and
then do what they believe is in the best interest of our nation.
Some people have questioned the President's motives and the timing of
this resolution. A few members of this body traveled to Baghdad to meet
with officials of the government of Iraq.
Frankly, I was appalled to see a Member of the Congress from my party
in Baghdad questioning the motives of President Bush. I do not question
the President's motives. I believe the President is doing what he
believes is in the best interest of our nation.
After much though and deliberation, I have decided to vote against
the resolution before us giving the President the discretion to send
our troops to war in Iraq. I do so for the following reasons:
First, I believe we have a moral obligation and a responsibility to
exhaust every possible resolution before sending our troops into harm's
way. I do not believe that we have attempted to assemble an
international coalition similar to the coalition that President George
Herbert Walker Bush brought together to undertake the mission of Desert
Shield and Desert Storm in 1990-1991.
Second, Iraq does not present a direct immediate threat to the United
States. I have attended numerous briefings from the Bush administration
on this topic, and I have yet to hear a good explanation as to why
Saddam Hussein is a greater threat to us today than he was six months
or a year ago. In fact, our intelligence agencies have concluded that
Saddam Hussein is unlikely to attack the United States unprovoked, but
there is a real change that Saddam Hussein will use weapons of mass
destruction in response to an invasion.
Last and more importantly, the President's decision to change our
military doctrine from containment to preemptive action could have
major ramifications to the United States and may lead to war between
other countries.
For the past 50 years, the United States has used our military troops
to contain aggression against the U.S. and our allies. We have been
able to persuade our allies to use restraint instead of their military
under the most difficult circumstances and times. During the Persian
Gulf war, the U.S. was able to persuade Israel to show great restraint
while Saddam Hussein was deploying scud missiles toward Israel. Since
the Persian Gulf war, the Israelis at the request of the United States
have shown restraint in dealing with Arafat and the PLO.
If the U.S military attacks a country in order to counter a perceived
future security risk, other countries may very well adopt the same
preemptive policy. Those countries are more likely to follow the U.S.
and less likely to show restraint, with serious potential consequences
for Israel and the Palestinians, India and Pakistan, Russia and
Chechnya, China and Taiwan, and the list goes on.
Secretary Colin Powell recently reminded us that other countries look
to the United States for our leadership and example. I agree! I only
hope that when looking to the United States that they do not adopt the
new preemptive military policy and use that same policy against their
enemies.
Mr. Speaker, this administration should follow the example of the
President's father prior to Desert Shield and during Desert Storm. We
should be putting together an international coalition to send in weapon
inspectors and if necessary take military action to disarm Saddam
Hussein. A ``go it alone'' attitude or policy could have devastating
consequences on our troops, the people of Israel and other parts of the
world.
Mr. Speaker, therefore, I will vote against this resolution and in
favor of the Spratt substitute.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Stupak), a distinguished member of the Committee on
Energy and Commerce.
(Mr. STUPAK asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, we are being asked to commit our young
servicemen and women to a possible war in Iraq. It is important for
everyone to understand the gravity of this vote and the legal, ethical
and moral grounds for such a grave commitment of U.S. lives and
resources.
To date, I have received nearly 900 communications opposed to the
United States acting unilaterally against Iraq and approximately 16
communications in support of the President's position. No matter what
the result of the vote on each proposed resolution, I am confident that
every Member will rally around our brave young servicemen and women if
or when they are committed to hostile action in Iraq or anywhere else
in the world.
Over the past few weeks, I have attended classified briefings on
Capitol Hill, at the Pentagon, and with the President. In reflecting
upon the views, opinions, and concerns expressed by my constituents,
and after a thorough review of international law, it is clear that war
with another country should only be declared if your country is
directly attacked; if another nation is an accomplice in the attack on
your country; if there is an immediate pending attack on your country;
and, finally, if there is defiance of international law in the
community.
To rush headlong into war without world support under any one of
these four conditions violates every principle and every ideal on which
this great Nation is founded and on which a free and democratic world
exists.
In review of these four principles, there is no question that Iraq
did not directly attack America. The evidence is also clear that Iraq
was not an accomplice with the al Qaeda attacks on America. If there
was any complicity by Iraq and Saddam Hussein, I am confident the
President would have addressed this complicity in his U.N. address or
in Monday's speech to the American people. In the classified briefings,
no one could document with any certainty Iraq's complicity in the
attacks on America.
There is no dispute that Iraq is not an immediate imminent military
threat to the United States at this time. Some people would argue
Saddam Hussein will give biological, chemical or nuclear weapons when
obtained to terrorist groups, but there has been no credible evidence
provided to House Members of these weapons being supplied to
terrorists.
Individuals may still argue that we must assume that Iraq must have
an accomplice with the al Qaeda attacks of September 11. If we wish to
make this assumption, and it is only an assumption, not fact, then the
President already has the authority to use ``all necessary and
appropriate force against Iraq.'' If Saddam Hussein and Iraq are
directly or indirectly responsible in any way with the attacks of
September 11, the President has the authorization to take whatever
means necessary to bring them to justice. The authority was given to
the President just 3 days after the cowardly attacks on our country.
The link between the September 11 attacks and Saddam Hussein is so
tangential even the President cannot justify military action against
Saddam Hussein and Iraq based on complicity.
The strongest claim for military action against Iraq is its continued
defiance of international law since the 1991
[[Page H7410]]
Gulf War cease-fire. It is on this principle that President Bush went
to the U.N. to seek their approval to use the U.S. military to enforce
U.N. resolutions against Iraq. The legal, ethical and moral
justification to get rid of Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq is
enforcement of international law, the U.N. resolutions.
The United States has never invoked a first strike invasion of
another nation based on a fear of what might happen tomorrow. Now is
not the time for a first strike policy based on fear, but let us strike
with the support of the U.N. Security Council resolutions, with a
multinational force to once and for all rid the world of Saddam
Hussein.
If we now allow the U.S. military to invade a nation or change a
regime because of fear, then the goals of terrorism have been
accomplished. If we allow the U.S. to become a first-strike nation in
the name of defeating terrorism because of the possibility of future
terrorist attacks, this opens the world to a Pandora's box of selected
conflicts around the world. The U.S. would lose its moral, ethical and
legal grounds and its stature to protest or to prevent, for example,
Russia from invading Georgia to hunt down Chechnya rebels, Pakistan
from invading India, or China from invading Taiwan.
In our world, terrorism would now be defined and determined by the
aggressor nation. The United States would lose its legal and moral
ability to protest, as it did in 1979, the Soviet army's invasion of
Afghanistan.
The situation in Iraq must be addressed, but we must not be seen as
moving forward unilaterally, and we must not alienate our allies who
support it and fought with us in the Persian Gulf War.
____________________