[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 41 (Thursday, March 13, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H1894-H1898]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1815
                     CONTROLLING THE TYRANT IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Blackburn). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. 
Inslee) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I have come to the floor tonight to 
discuss our Nation's policy in Iraq and before I discuss that most 
important issue I would like to make a couple of preparatory comments.
  First, I would I want to express my respect, admiration and 
appreciation for the men and women of our Armed Services who are today 
deployed in the service of their country, who are already assisting the 
security and freedoms of our country today, regardless of the outcome 
of our national policy in Iraq. And I think it is important to note in 
any discussion of our national policy that the very reason we have the 
opportunity to discuss and debate these issues on the floor of the 
House of Representatives are the contributions past, present and future 
of the men and women of the America's armed forces. Because the very 
right of freedom of speech would not exist without the courage and 
dedication of our soldiers and sailors and Air Force personnel, Marines 
and Coast Guard and there are others.
  We would not have the ability and other Americans would not have the 
ability to protest, to question their government's policy but for the 
dedicated courage of these individuals. And I have a particular 
personal connection and admiration for them. In the last 2 weeks I have 
gone to two deployments of citizens and my neighbors to the Middle 
East. I went to the deployment in Bremerton, Washington of the 8th Navy 
Hospital Unit who left about 2\1/2\ weeks ago and watched them say 
good-bye to their husbands and wives and children for the service of 
this country. And I have them in mind when I am deciding what position 
to take in Iraq.
  I have the sailors of the U.S.S. Rodney Davis, a U.S.S. frigate that 
shipped off last weekend from Everett, Washington now bound for the 
Middle East and watched them say good-bye to their loved ones on that 
dock, and I have them in minds when I think about what our policy ought 
to be in Iraq.
  Regardless of what Americans think their policy should be in Iraq, I 
think we should stand absolutely unanimously as we did in Congress 
here, in the House last week when we passed a resolution respecting and 
pledging our support and our prayers, which the brave men and women 
have tonight and today, in the sands of the Middle East, and we have 
should not forget them in any stretch.
  Second, I want to say that I think that the U.S. Congress needs more 
discussion, not less, of America's policy in Iraq. And I think it is 
very disappointing to many Americans that there has been a pall of 
silence in the House about Iraq for the last several months. It is 
disappointing because while every democratically elected legislative 
body around the world or many of them have been debating this subject, 
the very citadel of democracy, the U.S. House of Representatives right 
here, the People's House, has been almost absolutely silent on this 
issue, and I think that is not in the best traditions of democracy.
  To that end, we have invited some of my Republican colleagues, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Delay), to lead an effort to debate what 
should be our policy here in the House of Representatives, and to date 
we have not convinced them to agree to that type of debate in the House 
and I think it is very unfortunate. I hope that some of my Republican 
colleagues will engage with us in that discussion in the near future, 
and we have hope the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) would reconsider 
and would allow debate to occur on the floor of the House in this 
regard.
  And the reason I say that is while this House did cast a vote, which 
I believe unwisely abrogated our constitutional authority to make the 
decision on war to the executive branch, a lot has happened since that 
decision months ago. This Chamber should be debating what the right 
course of action is in Iraq. We owe it to the soldiers and sailors of 
the 8th Hospital Unit in the Navy and the people of the U.S.S. Rodney 
Davis and all Americans to decide and debate this subject. And I think 
it is most unfortunate that the House has derogated its responsibility 
to make that decision and punted it over to the White House down on 
Pennsylvania Avenue. So I hope that we can inspire additional debate. I 
have come to discuss this today. I wish we had others to join us who 
has a different view about Iraq.
  Now to the substance of Iraq, I will pose about 8 or 10 questions 
that I think that we need to have answered before a war starts in Iraq.
  The first question I would pose is, is a policy of inaction in Iraq 
the right and acceptable policy for America and the international 
community? And I will answer that with a resounding no.
  Inaction is not an accepted policy when it comes to Iraq. And 
fortunately inaction is not what we have at this moment. We have a 
policy of keeping this thug, this tyrant, this diabolical dictator in a 
tight little box and that is where we ought to keep him, and we ought 
to continue and promote and make stronger our inspection protocol to 
find and root out and disarm this tyrant. And we have been having 
success in that regard in the last several weeks. And we ought to 
continue and enhance and strengthen our no-fly zone, which denies that 
dictator effective control of 70 percent of his country. And 
fortunately, and this is very difficult to the Iraqi innocent citizens 
under this tyrant's control, but we ought to continue this economic 
sanction policy as well to keep this tyrant in his box.

  The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) has joined us and I yield to 
him.
  Mr. KIND. Madam Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Washington State 
for yielding to me.
  I just wanted to commend the gentleman for having this discussion 
this evening. I think it is perhaps the most important decision that 
the President is about to make on behalf of our Nation, and it is a 
decision that is going to affect our relationship with the Arab world 
and the rest of the international community for decades to come. But 
one of my concerns is for the past several months Congress has been 
AWOL on this issue, absent without leave. And I think there is still 
time for us to engage on this fundamentally important decision, and 
that is what will be the future course of events in dealing with Saddam 
Hussein and Iraq. And somehow, some way I think we need to come to 
grips with the new reality of the international order, and that is 
there are some bad people out there that pose security threats against 
the safety of our citizens, but it is imperative that we figure out a 
way of distinguishing between those individuals who are deterable and 
those who are undeterable.
  Certainly I would put Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda regime in the 
undeterable category. Those are the ones we need to focus on, we need 
to get after in order to enhance the security of our people in this 
country.
  I think there is still a debate going on in regards to Saddam Hussein 
and whether he, in fact, can be deterred. But what is most 
disconcerting in all this is that we have lost a lot of good will in 
the international community. The international coalition of support 
that the President said he would work hard to try to achieve last fall 
has not

[[Page H1895]]

come together and we are dealing with a different set of circumstances 
in an entirely different context today than when the first Iraq 
resolution came up last fall: The security threat that North Korea now 
poses against us, which I think is still the most imminent threat 
against our Nation's security today, even more than Saddam Hussein.
  The fact that we do not have this coalition of support to do it the 
right way, not the military operation which we can pretty well do on 
our own but the rebuilding afterwards. I am afraid we could win the war 
but lose the peace. And that is why international support is so 
crucial. But also the domestic implication. The President a couple 
weeks ago submitted a budget calling for the largest deficit in our 
Nation's history, and it does not include a dime for the cost of the 
military buildup in the Middle East or the possible military action or 
the rebuilding that will have to come afterwards. These are issues that 
all of us in this Congress should been engaged in in having a national 
discussion, however unpleasant that might be. That is what a great 
democracy needs to do.
  And that is why I earlier this week called on the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Hastert) and Majority Leader Frist to allow the United 
States to have a renewed discussion, to give our constituents back home 
an opportunity through their representatives to voice their opinions 
and their concerns in regard to this very important decision. And that 
is why, again, I want to just thank my friend from Washington State 
(Mr. Inslee) for trying to have a dialogue on this very important 
issue, because a lot of folks back home feel that they are wondering 
where Congress is in all of this. And instead of having these 
meaningful discussions, we are instead discussing about changing French 
fries to freedom fries. I mean, how trivial can you get?
  So as we move forward, and I still think there is time to engage the 
country but also the international community in regard to this 
important decision, hopefully we will have more of an opportunity for 
Congress to get back involved in this and get the policy right. And 
regardless of what decision the President makes, and if it is a 
decision to send the troops in, I would hope at a minimum there would 
be consensus in the country that we need to support our troops.
  I have been to a lot of deployment ceremonies for Guard and Reserve 
units in Wisconsin, and I had a chance to meet a lot of those who are 
being called up today, and let me tell you they are impressive 
individuals. Well-trained, well-motivated, very patriotic. They love 
and believe in their country, and we need to give them support in their 
mission. But it is our task as policymakers to make sure we get the 
policy right, and there is where the conversation should take place, 
and there is why we need to have these type of discussions.

  So I thank my friend again for the opportunity to speak on this 
important issue, for the leadership he has shown on this important 
issue. And hopefully we will be able to work and engage together on 
this. That it is not just one individual here in this country making 
such a profound decision that will affect our position on the global 
scene for many years to come.
  Mr. INSLEE. I appreciate it. We will continue to get our efforts to 
get a dialogue going in the House. The gentleman has written the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert). I have written the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. DeLay). We will continue these efforts.
  Before the gentleman goes, I will note just a little problem we will 
be working on. I met with a group of reservists last weekend because we 
are having these longer deployments and longer call-ups and one of the 
things we need to work on is make sure they get adequate health care 
when they switch from one coverage to another as well as adequate 
travel reimbursement because, unfortunately, we will have longer 
deployments. I will be talking with the gentleman.
  I thank the gentleman for joining me and I thank him for his 
leadership on this work.
  Madam Speaker, we are talking about inaction is not an option when it 
comes to Iraq. And I point this out because I feel that in the debate, 
those who have supported a largely unilateral war, which is the 
situation we are in with very little international support, those who 
support that position have suggested that there is only two decisions 
here, war or passivity, war or inaction.
  I think it is very important to note that the course we are 
advocating is that we continue to squeeze down on this tyrant. And that 
it is important to realize that we ought to engage the power of the 
international community to isolate him and to continue this disarmament 
program, and I think just in the last few days we have continued to see 
success in the inspection process, and it is important to realize no 
inspection process is going to be totally effective in the first 24 
hours or the first 30 days. It took us years in the 1990s but the 
disarmament program and the inspection protocol, although it was not 
absolutely foolproof, in fact destroyed more weapons of Saddam Hussein 
than were destroyed in the Persian Gulf War. That is a significant fact 
that is sometimes forgotten. It ought to give us some degree of 
optimism about continuing the inspection protocol which is so 
important, which we ought to make stronger.
  By the way, when it comes to these inspections, if we have to double 
the number of inspectors, if we have to triple the number of 
inspectors, if they need to go up a factor of ten, it is cheap at twice 
the price. Because frankly this inspection protocol is costing us a few 
million dollars a year. A war will cost somewhere between 60- and $120 
billion a year to the United States taxpayers. And we ought to advocate 
with the United Nations to have a more rigorous inspection protocol and 
accomplish that.
  The second question I would ask and I think is important to answer in 
this debate, is the President's assertion, his implicit assertion, that 
Saddam Hussein was behind the horrendous attack on our Nation September 
11 supported by the evidence of our intelligence services? And I am 
afraid to say that that assertion is wholly unsupported by the 
evidence.

                              {time}  1830

  If Saddam Hussein were connected with the September 11 attack on this 
Nation, I would not hesitate for 5 seconds to vote for an action by the 
United States, even largely unilaterally, as we did in Afghanistan, 
because the Taliban was directly behind the attacks of the United 
States of America. It was responsible for thousands of deaths.
  I have listened closely for months now for some shred of meaningful 
evidence that Saddam Hussein had broken with his decade of failing and 
refusing to ally with the al Qaeda, and all of the sudden the September 
11 attack, and that has been wholly missing in this debate. I have gone 
to repeated classified briefings; and I obviously will not disclose 
what were in those briefings, but I have come away from a review of the 
entire record and not seen meaningful evidence of a connection between 
Saddam Hussein and September 11.
  Frankly, it is not too surprising, because anyone who has studied the 
Mideast understands that there is a dramatic difference between the 
thinking of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and the type of tyranny and 
oppression that Saddam Hussein has advocated, because al Qaeda has been 
a fundamentalist Islamic group, and they have called Saddam Hussein, as 
recently as several weeks ago, an apostate, who is a secular tyrant; 
and they have been oil and water, and it is a good thing that they have 
been.
  I serve on the Committee on Financial Services, and as recently as 
yesterday we had the Homeland Security Department, the Department of 
Justice, and the Department of Treasury; and we were looking at money 
laundering and issues about the financing of terrorism. I asked our 
three agencies whether there was any evidence that they would share 
with us that there was any financing by Saddam Hussein of the September 
11 attacks, and I asked them a very specific question, because this is 
fundamental to the President's argument. They did not present one shred 
of evidence that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and 
September 11, and this is very important in this debate.
  It is not important to know whether Saddam Hussein is a despicable, 
loathsome human being who has been a tyrant, who has tortured his 
citizens,

[[Page H1896]]

who has started wars, who one can find no virtue in whatsoever. That is 
an accepted fact, and we should not be naive enough to think otherwise.
  When it comes to deciding whether America should go to war, it would 
be a huge mistake to go to war based on an illusion that this is the 
person responsible for September 11; and unfortunately, and it is 
unfortunate, I think, I saw a poll the other day that the President has 
convinced 42 percent of Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind 
September 11 when his own intelligence agencies know otherwise. That is 
unfortunate in this debate.
  The third question I would ask that is important to ask is what is 
the relative threat posed by Iraq relative to the threats posed by 
other nations and non-nations around the world, and that is an 
important question, because there are an unlimited number of threats to 
our personal security. It is unlimited, and there is a hierarchy of how 
imminent and how dangerous they are, and if we simply focus on Iraq and 
if we are willing to go to war in Iraq, to the detriment of our ability 
to deal with other threats that I believe are more imminent and 
potentially more lethal, it will be a bad decision by the United 
States. So if I can, for a moment, talk about some of these other 
threats.
  The President has indicated that Saddam Hussein has attempted to 
obtain fissionable materiel and nuclear weapons. This is true. It is 
clear that Saddam Hussein has tried for decades to obtain a nuclear 
device, and he has been spectacularly unsuccessful in his multiple-
decade efforts, but other countries have not been unsuccessful.
  North Korea, the country that the President of the United States told 
us is not creating a crisis, a country that has probably got 
fissionable materiel and is on the course to have several nuclear 
weapons in several months, that recently intercepted our reconnaissance 
aircraft, which has been involved in infiltration of various other 
countries, who is acting in a fanatical, totally unpredictable manner, 
who may have or will have shortly nuclear weapons that can reach Japan, 
who is developing missiles that can reach the western coast of the 
United States in a few years, that is an imminent threat to this 
country. Unfortunately, America's response to North Korea has been 
damaged, hindered and limited due to the President's concentration on 
Iraq, and I have to stand here to sadly say that if Saddam Hussein 
could, potentially, I do not know how with the inspection process, but 
with our inspection process under way, he is decades away from a 
nuclear weapon.
  North Korea is months away from nuclear weapons that are deliverable 
to other nations and potentially the Western United States in several 
years. That is the number one threat to the security of this Nation and 
the President, who only has 24 hours in the day, has been making a lot 
of calls about Iraq, and has not had time to make calls about North 
Korea; and we have to be aware of the presence of these other threats.

  Second threat, Iran. I was in Israel about a year and a half ago, and 
I met with the number three or five person in the Israeli defense 
force, and I asked him what he was most concerned about in threats in 
the region and to the security of Israel. Obviously, the intafada, 
creating the havoc and destruction, is first on his mind; but he told 
me, and he had a lot of concern in his voice when he told me this, that 
we had to really crack down on a country that started with the letter I 
in the Mideast, because they were very, very dangerous to the regional 
security of the area and to the security of Israel, and that country 
was Iran.
  Because he told me that, because of the assistance of Russia, Iran 
was making significant progress to nuclear weapons, and his statement 
to me almost a year and a half ago has been borne out by the 
intelligence photographs we saw last, I guess it was, Monday now in our 
newspapers about the cascade of centrifuges that Iran has developed to 
develop fissionable materiel in relatively short order for another 
nuclear power in the Mideast. That is a clear and present danger to the 
security of the Mideast and ultimately to the United States, but the 
United States has not been able to deal with that threat because it has 
been so focused on Iraq, and I think that is most unfortunate.
  While we are fighting a war in Iraq, if that breaks out, these other 
nuclear-armed countries, or very shortly will be, will be perfecting 
their weaponry under the cover of this war of Iraq. While we are 
fighting a country that is trying to make balsa wood airplanes, that we 
are now told was the reason to go to war, and I will come to that in a 
moment, we have got to be very cautious about focusing on one threat to 
the detriment of our ability to deal with others.
  Fourth question, are we making progress in disarmament of Iraq? I 
have been actually relatively pleasantly surprised at the rate of 
progress we have made. It seems like every week or two we have been 
able to make progress in the disarmament of Iraq, and the folks 
listening probably are more familiar than I am; but it is important to 
note that progress continues as it did in the 1990s.
  I think we cannot be naive. There is no way to guarantee absolute 100 
percent disarmament of Iraq unless it becomes under our military 
control. It would take years to conduct searches of every nook and 
cranny in Iraq; but what we can say, I think with a relative degree of 
assurance, is that we have stopped Iraq's efforts to the extent they 
existed, which were quite rudimentary, at least in the last year or 
two, toward a nuclear weapon.
  We have significantly impaired any ability to have a meaningful 
bioweapons hazard program, and we are on the way to assuring that the 
destruction of the delivery system or potential delivery system to the 
al-Samoud missile system, which I think now we have destroyed about 40 
percent of their missile system, we are making real progress. The 
question in my mind is why stop that progress now in favor of a war 
while we are continuing to make progress on this effort? I do not 
believe there is a good answer to that question.
  Fifth question, what would be needed in postwar Iraq? Here is where I 
think unfortunately the administration is wholly not up at least at the 
moment to the task of what they have said their goal is in Iraq. The 
President has offered a variety of statements as to what his goal is in 
Iraq. He has said that he has wanted to wage war or may want to wage 
war in Iraq in order to preserve the sanctity of the United Nations to 
make sure that the United Nations has credibility, and he has said that 
he is concerned about Iraq's threatening its neighbors. He said that it 
is for our own personal security, and he has said that he wants to free 
the Iraqi people from this tyrant; and I want to address that last goal 
of freeing Iraq from this tyrant.
  The reason I want to address that is, to me, that actually if there 
were a legitimate reason for a war in Iraq would be the one that would 
be most telling and most consistent with the facts and the evidence, 
and the reason is because there is no question but that innocent 
Iraqis, by the millions, have suffered at the hand of this tyrant. It 
is an appealing thought to believe that we could free them from that 
control of this despot. That is appealing.
  I have to say that in reviewing the plans, or lack of plans, and the 
commitment, or lack of commitment, of this administration, the ability 
of George Bush to bring democracy to Iraq, at best, is highly 
speculative; and I will tell my colleagues the reasons why.
  Number one, exhibit A, Afghanistan. I believed war in Afghanistan was 
necessary from a personal security standpoint due to the tie of the 
Taliban government to the September 11 attack; but we had a perfect 
opportunity to, in fact, try to establish a democracy, and this 
administration has blown it big time. To the extent that when it came 
time for this year's budget, to put money in to help the rebuilding of 
Afghanistan, to help restore democracy to keep out the return of the 
Taliban, do my colleagues know how much money they put in their budget? 
Zero dollars, zero dollars for democracy in Afghanistan.

  Their explanation was they forgot, and I think that was very candid. 
The President's administration forgot about the goal of democracy in 
Afghanistan; and today we are faced with the same problem we had after 
there were efforts to kick the Russians out, which is the return of the 
Taliban and the return to tyranny and return to the war lords because 
we have not made the investment that is required to get the job

[[Page H1897]]

done in Afghanistan; and if we want a template, unfortunately, and I 
think it is unfortunate, if we want a template of what the Bush 
administration would do in Iraq, look what they have done in 
Afghanistan, which is to basically say we are going to take care of 
about a 10-block area around Kabul so we can say we have got some 
vestiges of a country. That is a farrier and I have not seen anything 
better planned for Iraq.
  We have been asking on a bipartisan basis for the administration's 
plans on a postwar Iraq for months and months now; and we have been 
given, I do not know how to say this charitably. I am searching for a 
way to say it charitably. A joke perhaps is the best thing to say on 
what their plans are on a postwar Iraq.
  Here is a country, cobbled together after the British Empire left the 
Mideast, of three distinct ethnic groups that have never worked 
together except under the heels of a despot with the Kurds who the 
administration has already decided to sell out to Turkey for the 15th 
time to the Kurds, the Kurds who are now finally enjoying some degree 
of autonomy under our no-fly zone. We have got the Kurds some freedom 
today from Saddam Hussein because of our no-fly zone and think of the 
irony of it.
  The President may be on the cusp of a war, and he has agreed to turn 
them back to Turkey, and in fact, that is overstating a little bit, but 
he has allowed Turkey, under the secret deal he wants to make, to come 
into the Kurds' territory; and what an irony it is that the President 
says he wants to restore democracy in Iraq, and the first deal he cuts 
with Turkey is to allow them to come back in and again be dominant over 
the Kurds who are now free for the first time in decades.
  That is the type of shady dealing and efforts that have plagued us in 
our Mideast policy for years.

                              {time}  1845

  And to think that we can break these eggs and put them back into the 
democracy category with the lack of commitment of this administration 
is wholly speculative and most disappointing to the poor people of 
Iraq. And I think anyone who knows the history of these people knows 
how terrible their conditions have been.
  Frankly, if we had an administration that we believed we could have 
confidence would really commit to the democracy in Iraq, for the long-
term future, and who made the commitment financially and otherwise, I 
would be a lot more willing to look at the idea. But we do not have 
that right now in this administration.
  Talk about a financial commitment, we are talking about tens of 
millions, perhaps in the billions, of dollars in a postwar Iraq. And 
the President has not even factored in the cost of even the attack, 
much less the postwar cost into his budget, nor have my friends on the 
Republican side of the aisle. What type of commitment do we think we 
can make to the international community to in fact build democracy in 
Iraq when we basically have said we are not going to spend a dime to do 
it and we have been afraid, Congress and the administration, to build 
into our budget the cost that it would take to do this? No, perhaps 
building democracy in Iraq after a war could be a great vision, but we 
have certainly not seen the vision to make it happen.
  Six. What are the real goals of the administration in Iraq? Here is 
something I think that is very important in the discussion. The 
discussion we have heard, and it has changed over time, but when the 
President went to the United Nations at one time, he said his good deal 
was the disarmament of Iraq. The problem is, and the reason I believe 
we have had so much problem in winning and building an international 
coalition, unlike the success that the first President Bush enjoyed, is 
that President Bush, in the very first statement of his administration, 
said that was not our goal at all. He said our goal was simply to 
remove Saddam Hussein, period. No ifs, ands, buts. No disarmament. 
Saddam Hussein was going to have to go.
  When the President said, as he did most recently last week, that it 
is simply about removing Saddam Hussein, it did not matter what 
benchmarks he made, did not matter what inspections we had or what 
disarmament he would do, he was going to have to go, well, that would 
be attractive; but it has damaged our ability to build an international 
coalition to deal with this despot. And it is an unfortunate contrast 
to the skills that the first President Bush demonstrated in building an 
international coalition to deal with the threat in Iraq.
  When the first President Bush spoke with respect to our international 
partners, we were clear to them about our goals, we hewed to the 
commitments we made to our international partners, and we did not tell 
our international partners that we were going to do what we were going 
to do, and it did not matter what they thought. That is what the first 
President Bush did, and he was successful. This administration has 
violated all those fundamental precepts of human communication, which 
is respect for one another.
  The other goal is the President has said he wants to make sure the 
United Nations resolutions are honored. That is a legitimate goal. He 
has implicitly said he wants to show respect for the United Nations and 
build it up as a coalition, an international body that can deal with 
this. That is a laudable goal and an important one, but it certainly is 
shortchanged and has its legs cut out from underneath it when in the 
same breath the President says he wants to respect the United Nations, 
but then says he is going to ignore the United Nations if they do not 
do exactly as he wants them to do and he will start a war anyway.
  You do not instill trust in your colleagues, or in the United 
Nations, when right out of the box you say you are just coming to them 
for a rubber stamp and you are going to start a war anyway. It is not 
the way to build respect in the United Nations. It is one of the 
problems we are having now in trying to build an international 
coalition to deal with this problem.
  Seventh question. What has changed since Congress voted on this 
resolution? I thought it was unwise then for the U.S. Congress to 
derogate its constitutional duty to make a decision about war when it 
voted to essentially allow one person, one person in this country, to 
make the decision to go to war, rather than the elected officials here 
in Congress. When they drafted the Constitution, they said Congress had 
the power to declare war, so that one person would not have that 
awesome challenge and responsibility. Nonetheless, Congress did that, 
and my side of the vote did not prevail.
  It is important to have this discussion now because since that 
decision, other potential enemies of the United States have used our 
continued concentration and obsession, and I will not use the word 
obsession, I will strike that word, but our concentration on Iraq has 
allowed them to continue to develop their own nuclear weapons programs. 
And we have been totally ineffective in dealing with those other 
issues, and that calls for Congress to have a debate about what the 
current state of this situation is. And we should have one.
  The eighth question. Has the President really leveled with the 
American people about the ramifications of this war financially and 
otherwise? The sad fact is that he has not. He has refused to even 
discuss with the U.S. Congress what the costs are going to be. And at 
the same time that we are going to incur from $60 billion to $120 
billion in cost, the President, unlike any other wartime President in 
American history, and every other wartime President in American history 
has leveled with the American people, and they have told the American 
people what the war would cost in lives and treasury. They have been 
straight and said we need to pay this. And this President has not been 
straight with the American people about the cost of this war, either in 
lives or treasury, because he wants his tax cut above everything. Above 
everything. At the same time we are going to spend an additional $60 
billion to $120 billion, he continues to try to ram through these tax 
cuts, which is his number one ideological belief.
  Now, to me, when we have seen our soldiers and sailors off to harm's 
way in this war, and they are making this sacrifice, it does not seem 
to me to be right that the President of the United States says we might 
have a war overseas, but we are going to have a fiscal party at home. 
That is irresponsible, and it does not respect the tradition and the 
willingness of Americans to

[[Page H1898]]

sacrifice together when we do face a mutual security threat.
  Number nine. What does a war in Iraq do to our security on the 
downside? Because many of us believe, and I believe, that while a war 
in Iraq and the elimination of Saddam Hussein's rule could reduce a 
particular threat that he presents, it could create greater threats in 
many other ways. I believe that in balancing those threats there is as 
much potential increased harm to the United States, in threats to our 
security, as there is benefit. And there are multiple reasons for that. 
The most obvious reason is what is happening in Iraq today, where we 
have kicked Saddam Hussein out of a particular region in the northeast 
corner of the country and al Qaeda has moved in.
  It is a great irony. We have seen the sort of picture of what Iraq is 
going to look like in a post-Saddam Hussein world. Because in this 
corner of chaos, where there is no state, it is like a little 
Afghanistan about a decade ago. The fundamentalist Islamic movement has 
moved in and this group has now got about 700 fighters that are 
grouping in Iraq. Not under or allied with Saddam Hussein, but they are 
using the absence, this vacancy, this vacuum of state control to 
regroup and potentially plan attacks against the United States of 
America. By creating a chaotic situation in Iraq, we not only inspire 
the hatred which we have heard so many people talk about of young 
Muslim folks in the Mideast, but we will provide them a place to group, 
which is in a vacuum of what used to be Iraq.
  It has been said by many people that a war in Iraq could be sort of 
the great dream of Osama bin Laden. Because no Osama bin Laden is going 
to bring down the United States in his wildest imagination. His dream 
is to incite a war between the West and Muslim nations. And his dream 
can only be accomplished in one possible way, and that is if the United 
States acts in a way which will prove to folks in the Muslim nations 
that in their view that we intend a colonial empire in the Middle East, 
which I do not believe we do. But to them, having an occupied Mideast 
Muslim nation, occupied for potentially years, and we have been in 
Germany for over 50, the ramifications of the recruiting efforts of 
Osama bin Laden are obvious.
  I cannot think of a single thing that could potentially allow the 
regrouping of the al Qaeda network other than a war with Iraq, 
eventually. This is truly one battle we could win but lose the war. 
That is why war does not always buy more security. Sometimes it buys 
less, even if you win the first battle. And I think we should think 
about that.
  Tenth. What would a largely unilateral war do to America's moral 
leadership in the world? I will close on this point, because I think it 
could be the most important for the long-term future of our Nation.
  I believe America is a unique country that has a unique 
responsibility for moral leadership in the world. The world looks to us 
for leadership. It looks to us for an idea of what is acceptable 
conduct by nations and men. It looks to us to lead in the establishment 
of a rules-based society, because that is the genius of America. We 
have rules here and we follow rules here. Other countries do not. They 
do not have rules they follow in a lot of countries.
  Since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, an empire we contained in a 
way that certainly makes Saddam Hussein look like a petty little 
maggot, but we contained the Soviet Union for many, many decades, and 
we should think about that in regard to Saddam Hussein. But we have 
this moral leadership, and we wear the cloak of moral leadership in the 
world, and we are looked to all over the world for leadership. The 
Statue of Liberty is not just about immigration. That flame is about 
leading the world in a lot of ways, not just economically.
  It is my belief that should we go it alone, largely alone, which is 
the position we are in at the moment, if there is a lack of success 
developing an international coalition, which there has been a 
spectacular failure at this moment, if we act without United Nations 
sanctioning, we will have damaged our ability to fulfill the destiny of 
America to lead the world to a new civilization internationally, not 
just along the borders of our country. That is why it is so important 
for us to work with the international community to maintain what we 
have right now, which is the admiration of the world.
  Think about what has happened in the last 12 months, where in the 
weeks following September 11 the world embraced us. There were 
headlines around the world in various newspapers. We were all 
Americans. Think how far that has changed because of the reaction 
against the United States and this administration acting so cavalierly 
in certain regards. It is disappointing.
  But we can regain this. We can regain our position. We can continue 
to keep this tyrant in his box. We can build an international 
coalition. We can succeed in these inspections. We can continue our no-
fly zone. We should continue to work with the international community. 
And in the days ahead, we hope that the President will listen to the 
American people and the voices from around the world in doing that, 
because that is America's destiny.

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