[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 26 (Wednesday, February 12, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H430-H431]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  IN RECOGNITION OF RESCUE TASK FORCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, there is a movie that I saw recently which 
depicted three actors who became troubleshooters and helped to save a 
small town in Mexico. The name of the movie was ``The Three Amigos.'' 
As I recall, they had a slogan that wherever there was injustice or 
poverty, they would be there. In reality, in real life, there are two 
amigos who have organized a small task force that is called Rescue Task 
Force and where there are problems in the world, where people are sick 
or need medical help or they are victims of a crossfire in a real 
shooting war, the two amigos are there.
  In fact, they are with us today in these Chambers, Mr. Speaker. It is 
Gary Becks, who works on my staff, and Wendell Cutting, my chief of 
staff in my congressional district. Wendell is the cochairman of this 
task force and does it without any remuneration. They have gone to 
places like Albania. They were the first people into the Kosovo 
conflict. They went into the first refugee camp, a camp in which every 
single child had some type of an illness or a malady. They were the 
first people to distribute food and medicine. And they were the first 
people to go up into the very remote camps through what was basically a 
no-man's land where a number of nongovernmental organizations had taken 
rifle fire just a few days before.
  If you look at the outline of what Rescue Task Force does, you can 
look at the pictures and see Gary Becks dressing wounds in Afghanistan. 
You can see Wendell in the slums of Thailand teaching sanitation. You 
can see them both distributing help in Kosovo. You can see them 
establishing the first-ever dental clinic in the area of the 
Nicaraguan-Honduran border.
  Mr. Speaker, I am very proud of these two gentlemen and this 
organization, Rescue Task Force. They also started the program we call 
Hands Across the Border, where they have directed literally tons and 
millions of dollars' worth of medical supplies and food and toys for 
people who hurt, to quote the President, in Mexico. They have gone 
around the world.
  Interestingly, Mr. Speaker, a lot of us in this city are listening to 
people who are explaining to us why other nations in the world may not 
like us right now in this particular phase of our foreign policy in the 
Middle East and explaining that the United States needs to reach out 
and to educate people as to what we do and what we stand for. I would 
say, Mr. Speaker, that nobody reaches out as effectively nor is as good 
an ambassador as these folks, not only in Rescue Task Force but 
hundreds of American charitable organizations who bring food and 
medical supplies to Africa, to Afghanistan, to other vast areas of the 
world, very distant areas where it is obvious that they are not going 
to receive anything in return. In fact, if you looked at the situation 
in Afghanistan and you looked at the roster of nations that were 
supplying humanitarian help in Afghanistan, before the military 
operations, before we had to go in and find the al Qaeda, you will find 
the Americans leading the list, supplying most of the food, most of the 
medicine, and that is reflective of what Rescue Task Force does.
  I am very proud of Rescue Task Force, Mr. Speaker. I think it is 
representative of the goodness that this country has and the 
willingness of our people to reach out and give some of their resources 
to other people around the world with no intention to ever receive 
anything in return except the

[[Page H431]]

good feelings that come from their values, that come to anyone who 
reaches out to help someone in need.

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