[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 45 (Thursday, March 20, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H2226-H2227]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      OUR DUTY TO PROTECT AMERICA

  Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to address the 
House for 1 minute.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Without objection, the 
gentleman from Illinois is recognized?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, we will be considering a very important 
resolution before us this evening. I rise in strong support of that 
resolution, and I expect that all of my colleagues would vote for it.
  Our men and women in uniform are now engaged in an important conflict

[[Page H2227]]

in the country of Iraq. We are engaged with 30-some other nations, and 
it involves certainly a tyrant who has defined himself over the last 20 
years.
  Like my colleagues, I remember the day of September 11, 2001. I 
remember standing in the front of my office waiting to get a call from 
the Vice President and looking and watching an unfamiliar phenomenon, a 
roll of black smoke going across the mall that I can look down from my 
window and see. And I asked one of my staff, I said, find out; that 
black smoke is not supposed to be there. A minute and a half later they 
came in and said, well, the third plane had gone into the Pentagon.
  Little beknownst to me and the rest of us at that time, there was a 
fourth plane involved, and 9 or 10 or 11 brave young men and women 
brought that plane down into an empty field in southern Pennsylvania. 
We know now that if it had not been for the actions of those people, 
that plane would have been in the west front of the Capitol.
  That being said, many of us visited right after the World Trade 
Center. We had walked the halls of the Pentagon and visited those folks 
who helped pull their comrades out, some to safety, some beyond help. 
We talked to the families who lost their folks in the Pentagon, the 
World Trade Towers; we passed some extraordinary legislation.
  But this country suffered a huge loss that day. I think I speak for 
all of us when I say that that is something that we do not want to see 
visited upon this Nation again. We know that in Iraq Saddam Hussein has 
weapons of mass destruction. We know that he has a nexus to al Qaeda, 
and we know that that training has been going on over an extended 
period of time. I believe that it is our duty, this Nation's duty, to 
protect our Nation and to make sure that that is not visited upon this 
Nation ever again.
  The men and women whom we are about to salute and wish well tonight 
and send our best thoughts and prayers to are doing a job that nobody 
wants to do. Nobody wishes this to have to happen. But in the tradition 
of this Nation, in the tradition of keeping this country free, and in 
the tradition of trying to stabilize the Middle East, we are doing this 
job. We are doing it with 30 other nations who have decided this is the 
right thing to do.
  Mr. Speaker, as we go through this very sober debate tonight, I would 
ask for your positive consideration and positive vote.

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