[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 26 (Wednesday, February 12, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H418]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              MAKING AMERICAN PEOPLE SAFER IN THEIR HOMES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, Americans are nervous. The United States is 
on Orange Alert. The reports are that stores have sold out of duct 
tape, plastic sheeting, bottled water, minimal supplies for people to 
defend themselves against the unthinkable, chemical or biological 
attack, and to make themselves safe in their homes. Americans do not 
feel safe in their homes or here in the United States of America.
  We are told by intelligence sources and the FBI that there are 
hundreds of al Qaeda operatives at large in the United States of 
America who they are either tracking or cannot find. Yesterday Osama 
bin Laden, their fanatical leader, gave a speech urging them to attack, 
suicide attacks against the United States of America.
  Osama bin Laden. My colleagues remember him. Remember, the President 
wanted, dead or alive; we will get him; we will bring him to justice. 
The President is not allowed to mention his name anymore. It has been 
more than 10 months since the President has mentioned the name Osama 
bin Laden because his administration has failed miserably in finding 
and bringing him to justice. In all probability, he has been given safe 
haven by the intelligence services in Pakistan, and he, according to 
our intelligence services and his operatives, according to our FBI and 
others, presents the greatest threat to the security of Americans and 
the most immediate threat to the security of Americans.
  There are other threats that are out there that are making people 
nervous. We have here a poster from a rally in Pyongyang a week ago 
Saturday. Now, Kim Jong-il, psychopathic leader and oppressor of the 
people of North Korea, he has thrown out the U.N. inspectors, thrown 
them out, and he is actively pursuing more, not a, more nuclear 
weapons. He already has them. He is actively building more missiles of 
longer range.
  We were told today by Mr. Tenet he may have already achieved a 
missile that can reach the western United States and target my home 
State in addition to Alaska and Hawaii.
  He has threatened preemptive strikes against the United States of 
America or, minimally, against our 36,000 troops who are trying to 
safeguard the people of South Korea from this fanatic. This is a poster 
from a rally a week ago Saturday, and it says here, Merciless 
Punishment to the American Empire, and it depicts the United States 
Capitol being blown up by a North Korean soldier.
  But this is a back-burner issue with the Bush administration. It 
pales in the face of the real threat to America. Osama bin Laden? No. 
Saddam Hussein, who is in a box, without nuclear weapons, without the 
capability of delivering whatever chemical-biological weapons he might 
have had hidden and he is shuffling around his country, trying to keep 
them away from the inspectors who are on the ground in Iraq, unlike the 
inspectors who were thrown out of North Korea.
  But the Bush administration says, Do not worry, we will get around to 
this someday, sometime, maybe later, through diplomacy. This could be 
settled through diplomacy, a maniac who has nuclear weapons and is 
encouraging rallies, showing the United States Capitol being blown up, 
someone who has the capability of actually doing that; we can solve 
that diplomatically, but somehow we cannot work through the U.N. and 
the inspectors in Iraq.
  We have got Saddam Hussein in a box. Get more inspectors in there. 
Get the overflights going. Keep him in that box, work with our allies. 
Keep him in that box. Sooner or later, the inspectors will find and 
destroy his weapons just as they did in the 1990s. Yeah, he is playing 
games. Yeah, he is hiding stuff. He did that then. We found it. We 
destroyed it. We can do that again.
  Is the United States so diminished in the eyes of this administration 
and others that we cannot contain a threat like Saddam Hussein and deal 
with extraordinary threats like this up front, and find and apprehend 
and bring to justice Osama bin Laden and his operatives? I think not.
  I think the American people have real doubts about this rush to war 
and real doubts about the priorities that this administration is 
putting on the threats to our Nation and our country.
  I hope the administration begins to deal more seriously with this 
problem and gets out there and finds Osama bin Laden, and I will 
support those efforts, and then continue to contain and defang Saddam 
Hussein. That would make the American people safer in their homes.

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