[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 27 (Thursday, February 13, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2413-S2414]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, the Senate has been dealing with some 
important matters these days, with a judicial nomination to the second 
highest court in the country, and shortly to bring up an appropriations 
bill that will determine spending across this country with hundreds of 
billions of dollars for the rest of this fiscal year.
  But there is something else going on in this country which is of 
overwhelming importance which really should supersede all of this, and 
that is the imminent prospect of a war against Iraq.
  At the same time we are talking about these other matters, this 
country is under a condition code orange, the second highest level of 
security we have. Our citizens have been told in the last few days to 
go out and get duct tape and sheets of plastic and water.
  Today at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, of which I am a 
member, the Secretary of Defense called the time that we are in now 
``the most dangerous security environment that the world has ever 
known.'' It is for those reasons I wrote the majority leader and urged 
we not take a recess as planned next week, that we stay in

[[Page S2414]]

Washington, stay in session, because I think this is a matter of such 
urgency and such paramount importance to our country and to the world 
that we should be continuing to focus on that matter.
  The ominous forewarnings of this last couple of days affirm to me 
what Robert Kennedy said after the Cuban missile crisis. He said:

       No action is taken against an adversary in a vacuum. The 
     escalation on one side brings a counterresponse. A government 
     of people will fail to understand this only at their great 
     peril.

  For the last 55 years the leaders of this country have understood 
that principle. They, too, faced dangerous dictators who possessed 
weapons of mass destruction, who headed countries that were hostile to 
the United States, the former Soviet Union, China, North Korea. But 
they didn't attack another country to eliminate those threats, even 
though they persisted, even though we disagreed with those countries, 
what their leaders did to their own people, the threats they were 
around the world. The principal reason was we understood the doctrine 
of mutual assured destruction. We understood their destruction against 
the United States would be an intolerable cost for our destruction of 
them and for the objectives we might accomplish militarily.
  I believe these forewarnings we have received the last few days 
should cause us to ask this administration why would they expect Iraq 
to be any different. If the United States intervenes and begins to 
destroy that country and its cities, cause civilian casualties, why 
would we not expect Iraq to retaliate with every destructive force it 
has available to it within our own borders, against our own cities and 
our own citizens?
  Why wouldn't we expect Osama bin Laden to do his worst to exploit 
this situation, to twist facts to be seen by the rest of the world 
other than as they are, but in ways that would be destructive to United 
States standing around the world and to our own national security now 
and in the days and months ahead?
  Why does this administration believe it should disregard the lessons 
that other Presidents, Republican and Democrat, have recognized and 
observed and proven to be as valid then as they are today? What is 
different about this situation?
  At the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing this morning I asked 
the Secretary of Defense his assessment of our ability to protect our 
citizens from retaliatory attacks against them if we were to invade 
Iraq. I asked that question twice. How do you assess, Mr. Secretary, 
our ability to protect our citizens in their homes and their schools 
and our cities from an enemy attack? Neither time did I receive a 
direct answer to that question. Neither time. I have the highest regard 
for the Secretary of Defense. He has an enormous responsibility. He 
brings tremendous experience and ability and a heroic dedication to our 
country to this task. But if all this administration can offer the 
American people, when our national security alert is raised to the 
second highest level, is duct tape, sheets of plastic and water, there 
is something very seriously wrong, if this administration intends to 
start a war, not against the most urgent threat to this country, not 
the threat that endangered us before, attacked us before and endangers 
us now, according to many of their own officials, al-Qaida, Osama bin 
Laden, the tape that was released this week that issues that threat 
against us and our citizens once again, not an attack against al-Qaida 
but against Iraq, against a country that, no question, is ruled by an 
evil man, a dangerous dictator, a man who almost certainly, as the 
Secretary of State has demonstrated, the President in the State of the 
Union, possesses biological and chemical weapons and has for the last 
12 years, ever since the first President Bush made a strategic decision 
at the conclusion of the gulf war to leave him in power, which may have 
been the right decision given the other options that were available.

  Yes, an evil dictator, but one who has been constrained in key 
respects by active, ongoing efforts of diplomacy with our allies and 
containment by international forces by both former President Bush and 
by President Clinton. Contained, constrained, not perfectly, not 
easily, certainly not voluntarily on his part, but effectively, more 
effectively than has been acknowledged in recent months. He is weaker, 
according to reports I have seen, militarily in most respects than he 
was before the gulf war. He does, by all accounts that we can obtain, 
not possess nuclear warhead capabilities at this time, which I agree 
with the President would be intolerable for this country to permit. He 
has not attacked his neighbors--not because he wouldn't like to, 
probably, but because he has not had the capability to do so under 
these containment policies for the last 12 years. And as far as I have 
been informed in various briefings, he was not actively threatening our 
country or his neighbors or anyone else when he was dusted off the 
shelf by this administration right after Labor Day.
  The President has properly refocused the world spotlight on this man 
and his intent. The President has drawn a line very clearly, which I 
support, that it would be intolerable for this Nation to permit that 
dictator to possess nuclear weapons or the missile capabilities to 
deliver those warheads or any warheads against this country or against 
neighbors in the region surrounding him.
  Certainly after September 11 and Operation Enduring Freedom, no one 
in this world could question the steely resolve of our President and 
his willingness, if necessary, to use military force. After Operation 
Enduring Freedom, no one could raise a doubt about the might of the 
United States Armed Forces and the strength we can bring to bear 
anywhere in the world as a last resort, as truly a last resort.
  But there is another lesson from September 11, which is that no 
matter how great our military might, we are not invulnerable. We are 
too big a country. We have too wide an expanse. We have too many 
possible targets for terrorists. And we saw on September 11 tragically, 
horribly, the damage and the destruction and the cost of human life and 
the untold human suffering and misery of families that a very small 
number of fanatical men could cause.
  I don't think we should back down or be deterred by any threat. I 
think we should do what we must to defend this country, and the 
principles we have established in the last half century of dealing with 
these threats have been ones that have prevented war, preserved our 
peace, and strengthened this country economically and socially in its 
position of leadership in the world.
  It would be a very dangerous precedent if we were to do, except as a 
very last resort, what no President in this country has done before, 
which is to start a war, which is to launch a preemptive attack against 
another country based on what it might in the future do to us. And I 
think we should consider what that precedent would mean if other 
nations were to follow that example. If we set a precedent in this 
``new world order,'' as it has been called, that a preemptive attack 
against a possible future threat is the way to resolve crises or 
standoffs, what will happen when other countries adopt that path?

  We have seen now--and we have been forewarned--that the nuclear 
proliferation that we are seeing other countries undertake is the worst 
nightmare that many predicted years ago, decades ago if we didn't--the 
superpowers--bring to a halt the nuclear arms race and remove them from 
the shelves of the nations of the world. Now we are told that half a 
dozen countries--and more to come soon--will have them. That should be 
and must be a warning to us. What happens if we lead down a path on 
which we don't want other nations to follow?
  If we set a precedent of preemptive attack, that path is one that the 
world will follow at its peril. I urge the President to take that into 
the most careful consideration as he makes this fateful decision.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
Arizona is to be recognized for up to 60 minutes.

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