[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 14 (Monday, January 27, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H157-H159]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         IRAQ HAS NOT DISARMED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, 6,500 chemical bombs, which is roughly 
1,000 tons of deadly chemical; 2,000 chemical rockets, 8,500 liters of 
biological agent or medium, and that is enough to produce some 5,000 
liters of anthrax; these weapons are the weapons which Chief Weapons 
Inspector of the United Nations Hans Blix says the Iraqi Government has 
failed to produce for the inspecting teams. In other words, Iraq has 
not disarmed.
  Now, we have heard in the last several months lots of statements from 
the administration, and we have heard statements from proponents of the 
President's policy and from opponents of the President's policy. But 
these are the statements from the United Nations weapons inspector 
whose job was to go to Iraq, confront the Iraqi Government with their 
own statements, their own declarations and documents, some of which we 
had captured, others which they had produced during the 1990s, list the 
items line by line saying, here are weapons that you listed; where are 
they? And, in fact, Iraq has now failed to produce those weapons, 
meaning Iraq has failed to disarm.
  This is an exercise in disarmament. That is where the country which 
is being inspected is supposed to make a declaration as to what weapons 
they have, just like South Africa did with its nuclear program, and 
then offer up the locations of those stockpiled weapons and that 
machinery that produces the weapons for destruction by this 
international body. In fact, Iraq has done what we predicted it would 
do, and that is that it has hidden these weapons, which it heretofore 
had proclaimed it had. We know they have them, we know they have them 
buried somewhere, and they are failing to produce them. That is, they 
are failing to disarm, and those are the words of the Chief Weapons 
Inspector.
  Madam Speaker, let me just go to a couple of particulars once more. I 
am quoting Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix. He says, ``The document 
indicates,'' and he received the document from the Iraqi Air Force as 
to how many bombs they had had at one time, chemical bombs, because we 
know they use chemical bombs on their own people and on their 
neighbors, and he said, ``The document indicated that some 13,000 
chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 
1998, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during 
this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of some 6,500 bombs. The 
amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 
1,000 tons. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume 
that these quantities are now unaccounted for.''
  So, Madam Speaker, we know what they had, we know what they have. 
Incidentally, Chief Inspector Hans Blix goes through each one of these 
circumstances where they have failed to come forward and produce the 
weapons or show evidence that they were destroyed. And in these cases 
that I have cited, there is no evidence that they have destroyed any of 
this stuff. We know it is still there, and we know it is there in most 
cases not by evidence that we received through a third party, but by 
the statements of Iraq itself at a previous time.
  In turning to biological weapons, Mr. Blix said, and I quote, ``I 
mentioned the issue of anthrax to the Council on previous occasions, 
and I come back to it as an important one. Iraq has declared that it 
produced 8,500 liters of this biological warfare agent which it states 
it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.'' So Iraq claimed that 
they had gotten rid of this in secret, and he says, ``I find no 
convincing evidence for its destruction.''
  He goes on. He says, ``As I reported to the Council on the 19th of 
December last year, Iraq did not declare a significant quantity, some 
650 kilos, of bacterial growth media which was acknowledged as reported 
in Iraq's submission to the panel in February 1999. As a part of its 7 
December, 2002, declaration, Iraq resubmitted the Amorim Panel 
document, but the table showing this particular import of media,'' and 
this is the media from which you grow anthrax, extremely deadly 
anthrax, he said, ``The table showing this report was not included. The 
absence of this table would appear to be deliberate, as the pages of 
the resubmitted document were renumbered.'' Meaning that Iraq pulled 
out this 650 kilos of anthrax media, simply tore that page out of the 
report, renumbered the report, and handed it to the weapons inspectors. 
That 650 kilos, incidentally, is enough growth media to produce about 
5,000 liters of anthrax.
  So we know now that Saddam Hussein has maintained and kept both 
biological weapons and chemical weapons, and he has failed to turn them 
over. He has failed to disarm.
  Does he have a method to deliver these weapons? Yes, he does. They 
include the AS-2 and the AF-2 missiles, which are illegal missiles, 
because these missiles have been tested for ranges beyond 150 
kilometers that Saddam Hussein is limited to.

                              {time}  1930

  He has also refurbished his missile infrastructure, that means his 
capability to develop and build missiles to carry these chemical and 
biological weapons to their targets. He has also acquired, very 
recently, some 300 rocket engines.
  So the point is, Mr. Speaker, that when the smoke all clears, at 
least with respect to the work that has been done so far, I think what 
has happened is pretty predictable, because we on the Committee on 
Armed Services in the House had in open session an Iraqi engineer who 
appeared before us who was part of Saddam Hussein's weapons development 
program. He said to us that even in the 1990s when we had inspectors on 
the ground and those inspectors were being shown the insides of big 
empty buildings, a few miles away Saddam Hussein's program was going at 
full steam and the inspectors did not know anything about it.
  So take this country, which is twice the size of the State of Idaho, 
and take this small contingent, roughly the size of a police force in a 
small American city, and spread them out over a piece of land twice the 
size of Idaho. And having given the other guys literally years to hide 
their weapons, it is no surprise that no weapons are found. In fact, if 
some of our inspectors walked into the middle of one of these big

[[Page H158]]

empty buildings and actually found a large quantity of biological 
weapons sitting there in the front of one of those big empty buildings 
that the maid had somehow forgotten to clean up the night before, the 
Iraqi bureaucrat who was in charge of that particular deception 
process, and they have a whole agency devoted to deception, would be 
two things: he would be considered to be the dumbest bureaucrat in Iraq 
and, shortly thereafter, the deadest.
  So the idea that somehow we are going to stumble upon a large number 
of weapons is not realistic. That is what we have been saying for a 
long time.
  The message to us is very clear: Iraq has not disarmed. They have no 
intention of disarming. The documented proof of their weapons systems 
that they have maintained, when matched against what they have 
produced, shows that they still have enormous chemical and biological 
weapons on hand, along with the means to deliver them.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HUNTER. I am happy to yield to my friend, the gentleman from New 
Jersey.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would 
just say to the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), I thank him for 
taking this time to bring this very important issue before the House 
and, indirectly, before the American people.
  We just returned from a break. I had plenty of time, ample time, back 
home to talk with my constituents, and in fact traveled around the 
country a bit to talk with others from other people's districts. The 
report that the gentleman makes reference to that is the Hans Blix 
report I think speaks volumes to the questions that I was asked as I 
made my way around my district and around other people's districts.
  The basic question was: How do we know, or how does the 
administration know and how will the Congress help to determine what 
our policy should be toward Iraq when the inspectors cannot find any 
weapons, any weapons of mass destruction? This report speaks volumes to 
this.
  However, before this report even came out, there were very strong 
indications here in the Congress in the hearings that the Committee on 
Armed Services held, both closed hearings and open hearings, where 
members of the administration, representatives of the Department of 
Defense, and representatives from our intelligence apparatus or 
institutions would come before us and would say, here is what we know.

  Without going into the specifics of what we heard in those closed 
sessions, this report that the gentleman from California (Chairman 
Hunter) has gone to great lengths to describe, which we have heard 
about through the media all day, verifies much of the information that 
we learned during those sessions earlier this year, actually in the 
fall.
  Also, I think it is very interesting to point out that yesterday the 
Secretary of State in a speech in Switzerland said something that I 
think is extremely important on this same question of how do we know if 
we cannot find the weapons. The Secretary of State said simply this: we 
have known for a long time that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass 
destruction. After all, he used them in the war against Iran. After 
all, he used them against his own people, that is, chemical weapons, 
which the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) referred to here just 
a short time ago.
  Then the Secretary of State went on to say that the question is not 
and the job of the weapons inspectors is not to find the weapons; the 
job, as designated in Resolution 1441, is to seek the cooperation of 
the Iraqi Government in proving that they have destroyed their weapons. 
That is where the Iraqi Government has been lacking. The Iraqi 
Government has steadfastly denied having any weapons, but has failed to 
offer an iota of proof.
  For example, if chemical weapons have been destroyed, why can we not 
talk to the people who destroyed them? If there are no biological 
weapons, if those biological substances have been destroyed, where were 
they destroyed? Show us. Let us talk to the people that destroyed them.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I would tell the gentleman, we have 
documents that were produced by Iraq during the 1990s where they gave 
us the names of some 3,500 key people in the development of their 
chemical and biological weapons. Do Members know what has happened to 
those people? They have disappeared.
  We asked them during this round, according to Hans Blix, to produce 
those people. They only produced 400 of them. Of course, they do not 
let any of them talk without an Iraqi keeper or bureaucrat standing 
next to them. Also, they do not even produce the other 3,000 people. 
Those 3,000 people in Iraq who are associated with their chemical and 
biological weapons program have apparently disappeared from the face of 
the Earth. They tell us we may get another 80 to talk to at some point, 
but the 3,000 have disappeared.
  Mr. SAXTON. This seems to me to be just what Colin Powell, the 
Secretary of State, was talking about when he said that the question 
really is when, on the one hand, the Iraqi Government says there are no 
biological or chemical or nuclear weapons, why then on the other hand 
will they not show us evidence to prove that? And the answer seems to 
me, in light of the Blix report, quite simple: these weapons really 
exist, and therefore they cannot prove that they do not.
  So I think that the answer to the question that my constituents and 
people that I talked to in other parts of the country over the break, 
the answer to the question is quite evident. The answer is that these 
weapons do exist, just as we have maintained for years, and in 
particular in the last month.
  So both Secretary Powell and Hans Blix in different words came to the 
same conclusion. Hans Blix says on this subject, ``In the absence of 
evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these weapons exist.'' We 
have assumed, based on evidence that was gathered by the Committee on 
Armed Services during the fall of this year, that they continue to 
exist.
  Another question which I think is important, and I think this report 
bears on this question as well, my constituents and people around the 
country ask me: What do the French, the Germans, the Russians, and the 
Chinese know that we do not? They are part of the United Nations 
Security Council, as well. I say that the evidence that is pointed out 
in the Blix report should be taken very seriously and taken to heart by 
the French and the Germans and the Russians and Chinese, because they 
have as much at stake in this as we do.
  This report, which speaks volumes, is an extremely important 
document. I think one of the statements in the report by Hans Blix, who 
has had an opportunity, obviously, to review the 12,000 pages which the 
Iraqi Government forwarded in terms of its supposed accuracy as an 
accurate report on the condition of their weapons of mass destruction 
program, Hans Blix says, we have seen this all before. It is 
essentially 12,000 pages copied from the transmissions that were given 
to previous teams of arms inspectors, so the Iraqis have offered us 
nothing new here. In fact, they have shown us once again that they are, 
as Hans Blix said publicly today, not prepared to endorse the concept 
of disarmament.
  The Bush administration, the President himself, Secretary of Defense 
Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, have all 
maintained in different ways for months that we have to do something to 
engage this problem. The Blix report from an independent United 
Nations-appointed inspection team has now verified the contentious 
situation that actually exists within the Iraqi Government today.
  I am pleased and again I want to thank the gentleman from California 
for taking this time so that he and I together can share this 
information with our colleagues, and indirectly with the American 
people.
  Mr. HUNTER. I thank my distinguished colleague, and I thank him for 
all the work that he has done and for the work that he is going to do 
as chairman of this new subcommittee on the Committee on Armed 
Services, which is going to oversee a great deal of this activity.
  Let me just end by saying that we predicted that the tours that the 
U.N. weapons inspectors were given would not result in them walking 
into a big cavernous building and having a supply

[[Page H159]]

of chemical or biological weapons sitting there on the floor of that 
particular facility waiting for them to scoop it up.
  We predicted that the Iraqi Government, which has devoted entire 
agencies to hiding this stuff as effectively as they could, will have 
done just that, that is, to hide it in such a way that we would be more 
likely to be able to ask all of the drug dealers in Washington, D.C. to 
amass all of their illicit cocaine and marijuana and pile it in one big 
area where the authorities could come down and seize it on a given day.
  The burden was on Iraq to disarm. That is the key. It is not a game 
where we have certain rules and if they are able to beat us, if they 
are able to hide this stuff well enough, we do not find it. We know 
they have it because the 6,500 chemical bombs, the 2,000 chemical 
rockets, the precursors for 5,000 liters of anthrax, are weapons which 
exist according to Iraqi documentation, not our documentation but their 
documentation that they had produced earlier; also, those 3,000 people 
who are associated with the programs, those 3,000 technical people who 
now have disappeared off the face of the Earth.
  So they have it. They have it just as surely as Nazi Germany had a 
weapons program of massive proportions in the mid-1930s, even though 
they were giving reports to the Allies that the air force that we 
appeared to see in the skies was actually flying clubs that were 
organized for recreation; but we knew that they were in fact producing 
weapons. In this case, we know for a fact that Iraq is still heavily 
weaponized, with the ability to kill lots of its neighbors and lots of 
Americans and their allies.
  So this report is, I think, more dramatic in what it says they have 
not produced than what it says they have produced. I think it is 
becoming clearer and clearer that the inspections are not going to 
produce a situation in which the inspectors walk into a giant facility 
and, lo and behold, there are piles of weapons sitting there on the 
floor produced by the most ineffective Iraqi bureaucrat in history. 
They will not disarm.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I 
just would like to add that earlier today in a news report I saw or 
heard that the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, 
suggested that the inspectors need more time. Also, the Secretary of 
State today indicated that if there was going to be more time, it would 
not be much; but there is going to be more activity on the part of the 
inspectors.
  I would say this: I suspect that the people who are listening to this 
are not in a position to answer these questions. But if Saddam Hussein 
or his foreign minister or somebody was listening, I would say to them 
that we know that they had thousands of artillery shells that were 
capable of carrying chemical substances that would kill people to their 
targets. They say they have destroyed them.

                              {time}  1945

  If you have destroyed them, show us where they were destroyed, show 
us where the remnants of them are, and let us talk to the people who 
did it. Let us talk to the people who destroyed them. If you do not 
have chemical weapons, show us how you destroyed them. Show us the 
people, let us talk to the people that destroyed your chemical weapons. 
That is how we verify. If you do not have biological weapons, show us 
the disposition of what you had and let us talk to the scientists, let 
us talk to the personnel that destroyed it, because we know you had it, 
and we believe you still have it today. And if you are serious about 
making statements that you do not have it, that these weapons do not 
exist, then show us how they were destroyed.
  And with regard to their nuclear weapons program, we know that the 
Iraqis imported aluminum tubular material that is designed and built 
specifically for the production of nuclear material. If those no longer 
exist, show us how you destroyed them and let us talk to the scientists 
and let us talk to the personnel who destroyed them. We have not seen 
any of these things, and we have not talked to any of these people, or 
the inspectors have not, I should say.
  I heard today another statement that this process is not about 
finding weapons, it is about developing trust. It is about developing 
trust between the Iraqi Government and the rest of the governments of 
the world. This is how we develop trust, by verifying your statements 
so that we can trust. And so I hope that this process will move 
forward.
  The gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) and I are sometimes asked 
by people why we favor going to war. We do not favor going to war. We 
favor dismantling the weapons of mass destruction that the Iraqis have, 
and we have supported the process of inspections. We have supported the 
process of investigation. We have supported the process of questioning. 
We have supported the process of asking questions as to where these 
materials are, whether they have been destroyed. And it is only as a 
last resort that we would ever advocate using military force. The 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) has a son in the Marine Corps. 
The last thing in the world the gentleman wants to do is to see our 
country in another military conflict.
  Just last Friday I went to Paris Island where I proudly watched my 
nephew Curt graduate from basic training in the Marine Corps. The last 
thing I want to see is Curtis in Iraq or anyplace else fighting a war 
that can be averted by cooperation between people and cooperation 
between countries and the development of trust.
  So once again I give the floor to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Hunter). I hope that the Iraqis will in the next very short period of 
time cooperate with the United Nations and the leadership of various 
countries around the world.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I think it is 
clear one last time to point out that there are 6,500 chemical bombs 
that Iraq will not give up, it has not disarmed; a couple of thousand 
chemical rockets; and 8,500 liters of what is known as biological media 
for the production of anthrax that is capable of producing about 5,000 
liters of anthrax. So they have not disarmed. And facts are stubborn 
things. Those are the facts.
  Mr. Speaker, I would recognize the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Collins), who has a major infantry base in his district, the great Fort 
Benning, where I have spent lot of time low crawling.
  Mr. COLLINS. It is home for the infantry, chief of the infantry.
  Mr. Speaker, I have listened with strong interest here with the 
comments of the gentlemen about the numbers that came through the 
report today, and the gentleman here with his comments, too, and I am 
glad both of you all are on the Committee on Armed Services. They have 
put forth very good points here and made very good points of what is 
going on.
  This was a major conversation piece in my district. As I have pointed 
out, the President of the United States does not want to go to war. The 
purpose of all the deployment to the Middle East is to deal with this 
issue from strength, to send the message large, loud and clear to 
Saddam Hussein that the decision for war is his. The President has said 
that he will make the decision, Saddam will make the decision. The lack 
of coming forward with the information that they have previously given 
in verifying, as so well put by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Saxton), is evidence he is making a decision.
  His clock is ticking. Time is running out. He has to make a decision 
as to own up to the disarmament, how it has been done, who did it and 
verify, or we, as the United States, have no choice but to follow his 
decision, Saddam Hussein's decision.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank the two 
gentlemen for their comments and their remarks in support of the United 
States and our freedom.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his very eloquent 
point. Saddam Hussein has not disarmed. We know what he has. He has not 
brought it forward, and we will continue to march down the next several 
weeks to see if he brings those weapons out for destruction.

                          ____________________