[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 17 (Thursday, January 30, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1767-S1770]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE SITUATION IN IRAQ

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, as I understood the President in his 
State of the Union speech earlier this week, it is his intention to 
begin military action against Iraq sometime in the near future. That 
stated intention of the President causes me some grave concern, and I 
wanted to come to the Senate floor today and express that concern.
  Let me begin by stating the propositions with which we all agree. 
First, I think we all agree Saddam Hussein is a brutal despot who has 
terrorized his own people and has threatened his neighboring States for 
many years. Second, whether or not Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass 
destruction in a readily usable form at this time, we must assume that 
given the opportunity he will obtain those weapons. Third, it is very 
much in our interest as a Nation, and in the interest of our allies, 
that Saddam Hussein be prevented from acquiring or maintaining those 
weapons.
  But the question before the country today is narrower than these 
propositions. The question before the country is whether we should cut 
short the inspection process that is currently underway. The U.N. 
inspection process is a process that we rightly insisted upon in our 
earlier deliberations with the Security Council. So the question is 
whether we should cut short that inspection process and begin a 
military action to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.
  The President has moved aggressively to prepare this Nation for war. 
The total number of personnel who have been either ordered to deploy, 
or who have been put on alert to do so, is roughly 148,000. There are 
roughly 23,000 marines en route to the Persian Gulf aboard three major 
task forces. There are roughly 25,000 sailors and aviators attached to 
the various carrier battle groups and amphibious task forces that are 
either en route to the region, on standby, or are on surge status. 
These forces include some 175 aircraft of all types and over 1,000 VLS 
launch tubes carrying nearly 500 cruise missiles.
  So steps have been taken to prepare us militarily for war. Today, we 
are, simply put, on the brink of war. But while these military 
preparations have occurred, there has also been a parallel effort going 
on through the U.N. to ascertain what weapons of mass destruction 
Saddam Hussein holds, where those weapons are located, and what threat 
those weapons pose to his neighbors and to other free nations.
  We have come to a difficult decision point. The Pentagon is advising 
the President that military preparations are nearly complete. The 
President must decide whether this country should proceed militarily in 
the next few weeks or whether we should continue to support the efforts 
of U.N. inspectors to carry out the instructions that were given them 
by the U.N. Security Council, on which we sit.
  In my view, the President should allow the U.N. inspectors to 
continue their work. If they are denied access to sites they wish to 
inspect, then the use of military force will be justified. If they find 
substantial evidence of a weapons program that threatens Iraq's 
neighbors, then we should join with those neighbors in eliminating that 
threat. But up until this date, up until today, neither of these 
circumstances prevails. The inspectors themselves have so stated, and 
they have asked for additional time to complete their work.
  The decision the President makes on going to war with Iraq will be 
the first test of the new National Security Strategy that was issued by 
the White House in September of last year. In that document, the 
President acknowledges that the legitimacy of preemptive military 
action depends ``on the existence of an imminent threat.''
  Right after that statement appears in this document, however, the 
document speaks of ``adapting the concept of imminent threat.'' How 
much adaptation of that concept is wise? How much adaptation of that 
concept makes sense for ourselves and our allies as a precedent for the 
future?
  This National Security Strategy document that the administration 
issued in September of last year goes on to talk about our willingness 
as a nation to take military action to preempt emerging threats. Here 
the President is contemplating, in the circumstance before us today, 
military action not to meet a specific identified military threat but 
to depose a hostile government, even though no imminent military threat 
has been identified.
  In his State of the Union Address, the President framed the issue as 
being whether ``war is forced upon us.'' He stated that, ``If war is 
forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the U.S. 
military--and we will prevail.'' I, and I am sure most Americans, agree 
with that statement. But in my view, as of this date, war has not been 
forced upon us. It is not credible for us to assert as a nation that 
war has been forced upon us.
  The U.N. inspection process proceeds. If there is evidence of an 
imminent threat that requires us to take preemptive military action, I 
have not seen

[[Page S1768]]

that evidence. Many Americans and many of our allies also have been 
unpersuaded by the evidence they have seen.
  The more willing we are to assert the right to start a war to change 
the government of a sovereign state, the more we risk encouraging 
preemptive action by other nations against governments they wish to 
depose. And the less we need to identify an imminent threat before 
beginning a war, the more we undermine efforts to avoid unprovoked 
conflict in the future.
  The President was right to go to the United Nations and to insist 
that U.N. inspectors return to Iraq. His latest decision to send 
Secretary Powell to the Security Council to present evidence of the 
threat posed by Iraq is also proper, and I look forward to hearing what 
that evidence is. But unless that evidence demonstrates a threat that 
requires military action now, the wise course is for us to hold off on 
that military action and allow the U.N. inspectors to do their work.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise to share with my colleagues my 
very great concern over ties between Iraq's probable possession of 
biological and chemical weapons and the potentially catastrophic 
actions taken by the Reagan and Bush, Sr., administrations, including 
the active assistance of then ``special envoy'' and now Secretary of 
Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This arming of Saddam Hussein with weapons of 
mass destruction by the Reagan and Bush, Sr., administrations has now 
been disclosed from what were previously classified documents, as 
reported recently by the Washington Post.
  I ask unanimous consent that the Washington Post article be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2002]

   U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup; Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed 
                  Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds

                           (By Michael Dobbs)

       High on the Bush administration's list of justifications 
     for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of 
     chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his 
     contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials 
     rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a 
     period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally.
       Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward 
     Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. 
     Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting 
     with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way 
     for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified 
     documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time 
     when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an ``almost daily'' 
     basis in defiance of international conventions.
       The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the 
     years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait--which included large-
     scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a 
     Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of 
     chemical and biological precursors--is a topical example of 
     the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which 
     deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations 
     sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms 
     proliferators, all on the principle that the ``enemy of my 
     enemy is my friend.'' Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq 
     was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an 
     Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark 
     against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-
     American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even 
     Jordan--a Middle East version of the ``domino theory'' in 
     Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a 
     strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to 
     routinely refer to Iraqi forces as ``the good guys,'' in 
     contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as ``the bad 
     guys.''
       A review of thousands of declassified government documents 
     and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. 
     intelligence and logistical and support a crucial role in 
     shoring up Iraqi defenses against the ``human wave'' attacks 
     by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald 
     Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of 
     numerous items that had both military and civilian 
     applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly 
     biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.
       Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former 
     government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether 
     Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad 
     of technology for building weapons of mass destruction.
       ``It was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right 
     now,'' says Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA military analyst 
     and author of ``The Threatening Storm,'' which makes the case 
     for war with Iraq. ``My fellow [CIA] analysts and I were 
     warning at the time that Hussein was a very nasty character. 
     We were constantly fighting the State Department.''
       ``Fundamentally, the policy was justified,'' argues David 
     Newton, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an 
     anti-Hussein radio station in Prague. ``We were concerned 
     that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that 
     would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-
     term hope was that Hussein's government would become less 
     repressive and more responsible.''
       What makes present-day Hussein different from the Hussein 
     of the 1980s, say Middle East experts, is the mellowing of 
     the Iranian revolution and the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait 
     that transformed the Iraqi dictator, almost overnight, from 
     awkward ally into mortal enemy. In addition, the United 
     States itself has changed. As a result of the Sept. 11, 2001 
     terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S. 
     policymakers take a much more alarmist view of the threat 
     posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
       When the Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980, with an 
     Iraqi attack across the Shatt al Arab waterway that leads to 
     the Persian Gulf, the United States was a bystander. The 
     United States did not have diplomatic relations with either 
     Baghdad or Teheran. U.S. officials had almost as little 
     sympathy for Hussein's dictatorial brand of Arab nationalism 
     as for the Islamic fundamentalism espoused by Iran's 
     Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As long as the two countries 
     fought their way to a stalemate, nobody in Washington was 
     disposed to intervene.
       By the summer of 1982, however, the strategic picture had 
     changed dramatically. After its initial gains, Iraq was on 
     the defensive, and Iranian troops had advanced to within a 
     few miles of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. U.S. 
     intelligence information suggested the Iranians might achieve 
     a breakthrough on the Basra front, destabilizing Kuwait, the 
     Gulf states, and even Saudi Arabia, thereby threatening U.S. 
     oil supplies.
       ``You have to understand the geostrategic context, which 
     was very different from where we are now,'' said Howard 
     Teicher, a former National Security Council official, who 
     worked on Iraqi policy during the Reagan administration. 
     ``Realpolitik dictated that we act to prevent the situation 
     from getting worse.''
       To prevent an Iraqi collapse, the Reagan administration 
     supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups 
     to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi 
     Arabia. The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National 
     Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the 
     few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still 
     remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the 
     directive stated that the United States would do ``whatever 
     was necessary and legal'' to prevent Iraq from losing the war 
     with Iran.
       The presidential directive was issued amid a flurry of 
     reports that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons in 
     their attempts to hold back the Iranians. In principle, 
     Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a 
     practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice, 
     U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked 
     relatively low on the scale of administration priorities, 
     particularly compared with the all-important goal of 
     preventing an Iranian victory.
       Thus, on Nov. 1, 1983, a senior State Department official, 
     Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz 
     that intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were 
     resorting to ``almost daily use of CW'' against the Iranians. 
     But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to 
     a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, 
     culminating in several visits by the president's recently 
     appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. 
     Rumsfeld.
       Secret talking points prepared for the first Rumsfeld visit 
     to Baghdad enshrined some of the language from NSDD 114, 
     including the statement that the United States would regard 
     ``any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat 
     for the West.'' When Rumsfeld finally met with Hussein on 
     Dec. 20, he told the Iraqi leader that Washington was ready 
     for a resumption of full diplomatic relations, according to a 
     State Department report of the conversation. Iraqi leaders 
     later described themselves as ``extremely pleased'' with the 
     Rumsfeld visit, which had ``elevated U.S.-Iraqi relations to 
     a new level.''
       In a September interview with CNN, Rumsfeld said he 
     ``cautioned'' Hussein about the use of chemical weapons, a 
     claim at odds with declassified State Department notes of his 
     90-minute meeting with the Iraqi leader. A Pentagon 
     spokesman, Brian Whitman, now says that Rumsfeld raised the 
     issue not with Hussein, but with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq 
     Aziz. The State Department notes show that he mentioned it 
     largely in passing as one of several matters that 
     ``inhibited'' U.S. efforts to assist Iraq.
       Rumsfeld has also said he had ``nothing to do'' with 
     helping Iraq in its war against Iran. Although former U.S. 
     officials agree that Rumsfeld was not one of the architects 
     of the Reagan administration's tilt toward Iraq--he was a 
     private citizen when he was appointed Middle East envoy--the 
     documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to

[[Page S1769]]

     closer U.S.-Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts. 
     Washington was willing to resume diplomatic relations 
     immediately, but Hussein insisted on delaying such a step 
     until the following year.
       As part of its opening to Baghdad, the Reagan 
     administration removed Iraq from the State Department 
     terrorism list in February 1982, despite heated objections 
     from Congress. Without such a move, Teicher says, it would 
     have been ``impossible to take even the modest steps we were 
     contemplating'' to channel assistance to Baghdad. Iraq--along 
     with Syria, Libya and South Yemen--was one of four original 
     countries on the list, which was first drawn up in 1979.
       Some former U.S. officials say that removing Iraq from the 
     terrorism list provided an incentive to Hussein to expel the 
     Palestinian guerrilla leader Abu Nidal from Baghdad in 1983. 
     On the other hand, Iraq continued to play host to alleged 
     terrorists throughout the '80s. The most notable was Abu 
     Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, who found 
     refuge in Baghdad after being expelled from Tunis for 
     masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille 
     Lauro, which resulted in the killing of an elderly American 
     tourist.
       While Rumsfeld was talking to Hussein and Aziz in Baghdad, 
     Iraqi diplomats and weapons merchants were fanning out across 
     Western capitals for a diplomatic charm offensive-cum-arms 
     buying spree. In Washington, the key figure was the Iraqi 
     charg d'affaires, Nizar Hamdoon, a fluent English speaker who 
     impressed Reagan administration officials as one of the most 
     skillful lobbyists in town.
       ``He arrived with a blue shirt and a white tie, straight 
     out of the mafia,'' recalled Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East 
     specialist in the Reagan White House. ``Within six months, he 
     was hosting suave dinner parties at his residence, which he 
     parlayed into a formidable lobbying effort. He was 
     particularly effective with the American Jewish community.''
       One of Hamdoon's favorite props, says Kemp, was a green 
     Islamic scarf allegedly found on the body of an Iranian 
     soldier. The scarf was decorated with a map of the Middle 
     East showing a series of arrows pointing toward Jerusalem. 
     Hamdoon used to ``parade the scarf'' to conferences and 
     congressional hearings as proof that an Iranian victory over 
     Iraq would result in ``Israel becoming a victim along with 
     the Arabs.''
       According to a sworn court affidavit prepared by Teicher in 
     1995, the United States ``actively supported the Iraqi war 
     effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of 
     credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the 
     Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to 
     Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required.'' 
     Teicher said in the affidavit that former CIA director 
     William Casey used a Chilean company, Cardoen, to supply Iraq 
     with cluster bombs that could be used to disrupt the Iranian 
     human wave attacks. Teicher refuses to discuss the affidavit.
       At the same time the Reagan administration was facilitating 
     the supply of weapons and military components to Baghdad, it 
     was attempting to cut off supplies to Iran under ``Operation 
     Staunch.'' Those efforts were largely successful, despite the 
     glaring anomaly of the 1986 Iran-contra scandal when the 
     White House publicly admitted trading arms for hostages, in 
     violation of the policy that the United States was trying to 
     impose on the rest of the world.
       Although U.S. arms manufacturers were not as deeply 
     involved as German or British companies in selling weaponry 
     to Iraq, the Reagan administration effectively turned a blind 
     eye to the export of ``dual use'' items such as chemical 
     precursors and steel tubes that can have military and 
     civilian applications. According to several former officials, 
     the State and Commerce departments promoted trade in such 
     items as a way to boost U.S. exports and acquire political 
     leverage over Hussein.
       When United Nations weapons inspectors were allowed into 
     Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, they compiled long lists of 
     chemicals, missile components, and computers from American 
     suppliers, including such household names as Union Carbide 
     and Honeywell, which were being used for military purposes.
       A 1994 investigation by the Senate Banking Committee turned 
     up dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the 
     mid-'80s under license from the Commerce Department, 
     including various strains of anthrax, subsequently identified 
     by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological 
     warfare program. The Commerce Department also approved the 
     export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions 
     that they were being used for chemical warfare.
       The fact that Iraq was using chemical weapons was hardly a 
     secret. In February 1984, an Iraqi military spokesman 
     effectively acknowledged their use by issuing a chilling 
     warning to Iran. ``The invaders should know that for ever 
     harmful insect, there is an insecticide capable of 
     annihilating it . . . and Iraq possesses this annihilation 
     insecticide.''
       In late 1987, the Iraqi air force began using chemical 
     agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq 
     that had formed a loose alliance with Iran, according to 
     State Department reports. The attacks, which were part of a 
     ``scorched earth'' strategy to eliminate rebel-controlled 
     villages, provoked outrage on Capitol Hill and renewed 
     demands for sanctions against Iraq. The State Department and 
     White House were also outraged--but not to the point of doing 
     anything that might seriously damage relations with Baghdad.
       ``The U.S.-Iraqi relationship is . . . important to our 
     long-term political and economic objectives,'' 
     Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy wrote in a 
     September 1988 memorandum that addressed the chemical 
     weapons question. ``We believe that economic sanctions 
     will be useless or counterproductive to influence the 
     Iraqis.''
       Bush administration spokesmen have cited Hussein's use of 
     chemical weapons ``against his own people''--and particularly 
     the March 1988 attack on the Kurdish village of Halabjah--to 
     bolster their argument that his regime presents a ``grave and 
     gathering danger'' to the United States.
       The Iraqis continued to use chemical weapons against the 
     Iranians until the end of the Iran-Iraq war. A U.S. air force 
     intelligence officer, Rick Francona, reported finding 
     widespread use of Iraqi nerve gas when he toured the Al Faw 
     peninsula in southern Iraq in the summer of 1988, after its 
     recapture by the Iraqi army. The battlefield was littered 
     with atropine injectors used by panicky Iranian troops as an 
     antidote against Iraqi nerve gas attacks.
       Far from declining, the supply of U.S. military 
     intelligence to Iraq actually expanded in 1988, according to 
     a 1999 book by Francna, ``Ally to Adversary: an Eyewitness 
     Account of Iraq's Fall from Grace,'' Informed sources said 
     much of the battlefield intelligence was channeled to the 
     Iraqis by the CIA office in Baghdad.
       Altough U.S. export controls to Iraq were tightened up in 
     the late 1980s, thee were still many loopholes. In December 
     1988, Dow Chemical sold $1.5 million of pesticides to Iraq, 
     despite U.S. government concerns that they could be used as 
     chemical warfare agents. An Export-Import Bank official 
     reported in a memorandum that he could find ``no reason'' to 
     stop the sale, despite evidence that the pesticides were 
     ``highly toxic'' to humans and would cause death ``from 
     asphyxiation.''
       The U.S. policy of cultivating Hussein as a moderate and 
     reasonable Arab leader continued right up until he invaded 
     Kuwait in August 1990, documents show. When the then-U.S. 
     ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with Hussein on 
     July 25, 1990, a week before the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, she 
     assured him that Bush ``wanted better and deeper relations,'' 
     according to an Iraqi transcript of the conversation. 
     ``President Bush is an intelligent man,'' the ambassador told 
     Hussein, referring to the father of the current president. 
     ``He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq.''
       ``Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam,'' said 
     Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in 
     Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. 
     ``Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to 
     deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and 
     commercial relationships that would have the effect of 
     moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this 
     was a miscalculation.''

  Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, my concern today is not to lay blame for 
past decisions which now place every American family, every American 
community in very real jeopardy from these weapons of mass destruction 
and which now give rise to the clear possibility, if not great 
likelihood, of war in Iraq with its attendant costs in lives of 
combatants and innocent civilians alike. Rather, it is my concern that 
this Senate and this Nation clearly understand how we arrived at this 
point so that we might learn from our Nation's past tragic mistakes.
  As Mr. Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post writes:

       The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the 
     years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait--which included large-
     scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a 
     Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of 
     chemical and biological precursors--is a topical example of 
     the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which 
     deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations 
     sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms 
     proliferators. . . .

  The United States also provided billions of dollars in credits to 
help arm Iraq, ostensibly to assist with its war at that time against 
Iran.
  The review of declassified documents and interviews with former 
policymakers:

     reveals that the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George 
     H. W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that 
     had both military and civilian applications, including 
     poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as 
     anthrax and bubonic plague.

  Anthrax and bubonic plague from the United States to Iraq.

       The Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State 
     Department terrorism list in 1982 over the strong objections 
     of Congress. Despite this delisting, Iraq continued 
     throughout the 1980s to harbor terrorists, including even Abu 
     Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Front.
       The Reagan administration effectively turned a blind eye to 
     the export of dual use items such as chemical precursors and 
     steel

[[Page S1770]]

     tubes that can have military and civilian applications. . . . 
     When United Nations weapons inspectors were allowed into Iraq 
     after the 1991 Gulf war, they compiled long lists of 
     chemicals, missile components, and computers from American 
     suppliers.

  Mr. President, sadly, there is no new precedent in our Government 
using our citizens' tax dollars to finance the purchase of weaponry for 
antidemocratic, antihuman rights, and unstable foreign nations only to 
see their short-term friendship disappear and to have them become 
enemies to the United States and the Western World. What is truly 
shocking here, however, is that the very possession of chemical and 
biological weapons of mass destruction, which is the justification for 
a new war in Iraq and which places in jeopardy the safety of American 
families, American communities, and American military personnel, is, in 
large measure, the consequence of decisions made by the Reagan and Bush 
administrations.
  As we speak, tens of thousands of U.S. gulf war veterans continue to 
suffer from exposure to chemical agents over a decade ago. We in 
Congress debate whether and how to inoculate hundreds of thousands, if 
not millions, of Americans to protect them from biological weapons that 
their own Government helped create in Iraq.
  It is one thing that our Nation would have provided cluster bombs and 
conventional weaponry to Saddam Hussein--it no doubt seemed important 
and strategically helpful to the purpose of stabilizing the Middle East 
during the 1980's. But how can members of this Senate look members of 
our military in the eye--and I include my own son, a sergeant in the 
101st Airborne and a veteran of Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan--and 
acknowledge that these past administrations, albeit without 
congressional knowledge or consent, allowed Iraq to acquire the 
anthrax, and bubonic plague viruses?
  The circumstance our Nation now faces, from the threats of Iraqi 
weapons of mass destruction as well as the possibility that these 
weapons have or will fall into the hands of Al-Qaida or other non-state 
terrorist organizations, are to a great degree, circumstances of our 
own making. Obviously, no American administration has ever supported 
terrorism against our own people, though interfering with Iraq's use of 
these weapons against many of its own people was apparently not a 
matter of first concern to the U.S.
  The lesson should be clear--to the extent that the U.S. arms the 
world, it undertakes a risk that those weapons could be used against 
our own citizens. While helping proven democratic allies to defend 
themselves will always be a legitimate role for the U.S., it is hard to 
imagine a lesson driven home more profoundly than we find today that 
arming non-democracies is a much greater risk, and arming non-
democracies with weapons of chemical and biological warfare capability 
is an outrageous and utterly unacceptable risk to the U.S. and the 
world. It may be impossible for our Nation to avoid reaping what is has 
sown in the past, but this administration, this Congress and the 
American people must be united now in committing never again to be even 
a unwitting instrument of chemical, biological or nuclear terror in the 
world.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

                          ____________________