[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 53 (Wednesday, April 2, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H2683-H2689]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE WAR IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I think it is time to tell the American 
people, ``steady on.'' This operation in Iraq is proceeding according 
to plan. Our troops are well equipped, well trained, well led. Don 
Rumsfeld, our Secretary of Defense, is doing a great job. General Tommy 
Franks, who is the CINC commander and in charge of the operation, is 
doing a great job.

                              {time}  1915

  This plan was well thought out, and it is being well executed. And as 
I looked at the map and looked at the bridges which we overran so 
quickly with a fast armor attack in which the defenders, the Iraqi 
defenders, did not have a chance to blow, I look at the oil wells that 
they did not have a chance to fire up, to put aflame as they did in 
1991 when we came into an Iraq that was literally carpeted with fires 
because the Iraqi defenders had a chance to ignite their oil fields, 
when I look at the other key infrastructure that has not been destroyed 
and was not laid down in the wake of the retreating Iraqis as a barrier 
to the American forces, one thing comes to mind, a lightning armor 
strike as fast as we moved it up those narrow causeways coming up 
through the center of Iraq has paid off.
  And if we had waited, if we had held back, if we had choked those 
roads with more men and material and we had given them time to blow key 
bridges, we would have had engineers working in an exposed manner, 
being subjected to sniping, to potshotting; and we would have taken, in 
my judgment, Madam Speaker, more casualties. This operation is being 
conducted very effectively right now, and the Iraqi military is feeling 
that effectiveness.
  Beyond that as we are ringing now the Baghdad area and hammering the 
remaining Iraqi divisions with heavy air power, it is very clear that 
even if we had heavy units ringing Baghdad, if we had another two, 
three, four, five divisions, we still would not have gone in until we 
attrited or brought down the strength of the Iraqi divisions with air 
power. So the number of heavy divisions that we had in that staging 
area at this time would not have been relevant. So once again in 
reflecting on that and going through the many hearings and briefings 
that we have had on the facts as they emerge on a day-by-day basis, 
Madam Speaker, I once again am impressed with the great leadership of 
our Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld; the leadership of the President 
of the United States, George Bush; and the great operational leadership 
in theater of General Tommy Franks.
  Madam Speaker, it is clear now that there is another war being 
fought, and that is the war for hearts and minds; and incidentally I am 
proud that the gentlewoman of New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson), a member of the 
Committee on Armed Services and a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces, has 
put together this Special Order because this is kind of a time to talk 
about that other effort that is being undertaken, and that is what I 
would call the ambassadorial effort, the effort that is undertaken by 
all men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, and those 
people are proving to Iraqis who may have been subjected to lots of 
propaganda coming from Baghdad about how Americans were going to rough 
them up and be mean to them and ill treat them and they now have 
American GIs doing what American GIs have always done, and that is hand 
out candy to kids, be kinder than usual, giving away their rations and 
doing all those other things that young Americans are taught to do 
because of their moms and their dads and the communities that they are 
brought up in.
  And, Madam Speaker, I think this is a historic time. I think it is a 
little bit like the days right after the close of World War II when all 
of Japan lay prostrate before the American military machine; and 
Japan's military leaders, because they were brutal and because they 
were cruel and because they were inhumane and especially looking at the 
things that they did to Chinese civilians when they took Nanking and 
looking to the beheadings and the mutilations that they undertook 
against American forces and the executions, they told their people to 
expect the same thing from the Americans.
  And yet when those GIs walked down the streets of Tokyo, completely 
unopposed, in total power, they handed out candy bars to the kids; and 
we had almost no incidents, Madam Speaker, of brutality, of GIs acting 
out bad behavior. They were good ambassadors for this country and for 
our values. And they are doing the same thing right now, those 
grandchildren of those great GIs who persevered and won us our freedom 
in World War II. They are doing the same thing in Iraq because they are 
great people, and we are seeing now incident after incident of 
Americans proving that they have great values and that this thing that 
we call democracy over here is a good way to foster those values and 
maybe, when we get this country stitched back together, a good thing 
for the Iraqis to emulate.
  I yield now to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson), my 
great colleague on the Committee on Armed Services, who has some very 
good evidence of those good ambassadors; and I yield to the 
gentlewoman.
  Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
California for yielding, and I also thank him for his leadership in the 
Committee on Armed Services at a time like this. I found his leadership 
to be refreshingly direct and full of good humor and also making sure 
that every Member of this body on both sides of the aisle have access 
to information, the kind of information that we need to make decisions.
  I came to this whole thing very much a skeptic. I know about these 
things. I

[[Page H2684]]

think anybody who has ever worn the uniform is always very cautious 
about using military force because we know the consequences of war and 
we often know many of the participants.
  When we came to this House in October to decide whether we would 
authorize the President to use force, I think all of us came to that 
decision, a serious and sober decision, having been gathering 
information for several months. And I came to the decision that, yes, 
we did need to give him that authority, that we could not allow Saddam 
Hussein to have chemical or biological weapons or the ability to 
deliver them against Americans; and I also came to the decision that 
Saddam Hussein had the intent to use those weapons against Americans.
  Over the last 2 weeks we have seen the cruel brutality of this 
regime. Day and night air power is degrading Iraq's command and control 
and its armored divisions with powerful, sustained, and precise 
engagements. And to prevent the regular army from surrendering or 
defecting, Iraqi death squads now depend on executions to maintain a 
climate of fear. They kill people, civilians, women, children, the 
elderly trying to cross bridges just to get food and water. That is the 
regime we are facing.
  Most folks probably do not know this, but as Members of Congress, we 
are not told in advance exactly what the war plan is because we have no 
need to know, and the security of the operation is more important. We 
do not direct the Army or the Navy. We do not instruct the diplomats. 
Our role is different. But we do get briefings as things are going on, 
and we have been briefed daily; and I commend the Defense Department 
and the military for coming up here every day and answering questions 
from every Member of Congress that has them in a classified way about 
exactly what is going on so that we can put in some kind of context the 
soda straw views that all of us are getting on our televisions 24 hours 
a day.
  I am very much a skeptic about military plans too. I was one of the 
Members of this House that opposed U.S. action in Kosovo, and I opposed 
it for the reason of principle. So I believe when we go into combat we 
must first have a very clear political objective, and in this case we 
do. Our objective is to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, to rid 
Iraq of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and then to put in 
place in Iraq a unified Iraq, a government that is responsive to its 
people. That is a clear political objective. I think people can 
understand that.
  Second, we need a military plan that is tied to that objective. That 
was our failure in Kosovo, by the way. It was a largely humanitarian 
mission, and we had a plan that included only air strikes against a 
door-to-door campaign of ethnic cleansing. We failed in that military 
plan.
  I have been looking day by day at this military plan as it has 
unfolded, not only what we see on television but what we are briefed on 
in detail in the gentleman's committee; and I have been very impressed. 
We were reassured before this started that we would use overwhelming 
force, the full force and might of the United States military, so that 
we could secure our objectives and bring our men and women home again. 
And that is what they have brought us, overwhelming military force, the 
full force and might of the American military.
  At the same time this plan is being executed, we are also seeing not 
only the greatness of the American military but the goodness of the 
American military. The commander of the United States Marines in 
Southwest Asia the night before the launch of the ground attacks said 
to his troops we are going to show the world, we are going to show the 
world that they have no better friend and no worse enemy than a United 
States Marine. They have been showing the world. There is no better 
friend and no worse enemy than a member of the United States military.

  This picture beside me was taken this weekend. It is of Annette 
Gonzalez; and she came to downtown Albuquerque in the plaza in 
Albuquerque, New Mexico, and she was a very quiet woman, but she 
brought a picture of her son. He is a sergeant in the United States 
Marine Corps, a staff sergeant. His name is Anthony. And before she 
knew it, Annette was surrounded by people on the plaza there in 
Albuquerque who gave her comforting messages, who told her that she 
would be in their prayers, who thanked her for her son's service; and 
she gets pretty choked up when she talks about Anthony. She says she is 
very proud to be a Marine mom, but nowadays it is very hard.
  The last time that the family heard from Anthony was about 3 weeks 
ago when he called his wife to tell her that he loved her. Anthony grew 
up in Las Lunas. He wrestled there and he played football, and he 
joined the Marines in 1993 shortly after he graduated from Las Lunas 
High School. He is a proud father, and he is considering becoming a 
preacher so he can help his fellow Marines learn about God. And that 
brought his picture of his full dress uniform to Friday's rally in 
support of our troops in New Mexico because she wants people to know 
that there are real people serving in Iraq. There are husbands and 
wives and sons and daughters proudly serving their country, and Annette 
is very proud of her son. They need and deserve our support and our 
prayers, and they have it.
  Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for that wonderful 
story, and I think that really reinforces the idea that the best 
ambassadors we have are not folks that stay in consulates and 
embassies. Of course we have Marines in consulates and embassies also, 
but they are the folks in uniform. And the gentlewoman mentioned Kosovo 
and of course the Bosnia operation preceded Kosovo, but I am reminded 
of a story that is another true story about another Marine, and that is 
General Randy West, now retired, who was undertaking a recon operation 
in Bosnia and came with his unit, with his force, to a bridge where a 
massacre had taken place, and Randy noticed among all the bodies there 
was a blanket laying on the frozen ground. It was the dead of 
wintertime. There was a little lump under that blanket, and he peeled 
it back, and it was a little baby boy. And he wrapped the baby up and 
sent it back to a hospital in the rear, and a couple of months later 
Randy was asking the governmental officials what had happened to this 
little boy that his recon element had shipped back to the hospital, and 
the official told him that the baby was still in the hospital, that he 
had not been claimed because the mom was Bosnian and the dad was 
Serbian and that the baby was still there but without anybody to come 
and claim the baby.

                              {time}  1930

  So Randy was telling me this story as we were walking up to his house 
in the Blue Ridge Mountains a couple of months ago, and as we got to 
the door, I said well, Randy, what happened to that little baby boy? 
And Randy opened the door, and there stood a young man, a couple of 
years old, and Randy said, ``I want you to meet Randy West, Jr.,'' now 
his son. And that kind of heart and those types of values is something 
that permeates the United States military.
  Madam Speaker, interestingly, and I would say to my colleague, the 
Vietnam experience was largely reflected, and I would say in an 
aberrational way, to the American public through the prism of some 
folks who probably would have to work hard to qualify for the title of 
drug-crazed hippies. Of course I am referring to some of the folks in 
Hollywood who saw Vietnam through the prism of their own experience. 
And generally, that experience was one of not participating in the 
Armed Forces and not having any idea of what went on in Vietnam.
  So we had these nitwit movies like Full Metal Jacket and Platoon and 
all of these other things where every other GI was setting fire to a 
hut or madly spraying the countryside with his M-16, which, of course, 
were totally false and erroneous images. And in reality, most of the 
GIs, a great, great majority of GIs who were in Vietnam were also 
wonderful ambassadors. They were good people. They treated the people 
well. That is why after we left that country, half the nation tried to 
swim after us.
  Now, they did not try to rush to the North where they could 
consolidate with the North Vietnamese Communists who offered them, of 
course, a worker's paradise, and they did not try to rush out to join 
up with the Hollywood directors who felt this great kinship for the 
folks from the North, but

[[Page H2685]]

they tried to follow the GIs, because they knew the GIs were basically 
really good people.
  That has been the story of this country. We see it in every town, 
every city of any size. We see the Korean community, much of which came 
over to the United States after getting to know the American military 
community, and we see the German community, and many other communities 
that got to know Americans and, because of that, wanted to be in our 
home within the boundaries of this great country.
  So these folks are making relationships right now. They are meeting 
people. They are working with people. They are smiling, they are just 
being GIs. You cannot fake it. You cannot fake that sense of humor.
  I know when I was in Afghanistan here a few months ago with a good 
CODEL of folks, Pete Geren, our great former colleague from Texas was 
with us, and Pete pulled me off to the side as we were going down 
through the row of tents and he said, we have to take a picture over 
here. I said, what is it? He said, I have to show you a picture. And 
this was in the middle of a windstorm and stuff was blowing all over 
the place. There was not a speck of grass. One of the tents had a sign 
in front of it that said ``yard of the month,'' and Pete had to get a 
picture of that sign, ``yard of the month,'' and that little windswept 
front of that tent that I think had a couple of cactus in a tin can 
prominently displayed.
  So GIs still have that great sense of humor. They also have a sense 
of goodness about them.
  Madam Speaker, Tom Brokaw wrote the book about the greatest 
generation, and since 50 years or so have passed since we won World War 
II, I think he felt he could now feel close to the people who probably 
had a lot of values that he probably would not agree with. But I think 
this generation that is over in Iraq right now in that theater is every 
bit as great a generation as the generation of World War II, the 
generation of Korea, and the generation of Vietnam.
  I yield to the gentlewoman.
  Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I 
told the gentleman I was a skeptic about plans, and I am. I will share 
some of the things I think are right about what we have seen so far, 
what the military has accomplished under the leadership of General 
Franks in southwest Asia. First, the tactical surprise. I do not think 
the enemy, and I do not think a lot of Americans, expected him to jump 
off with a ground assault. We did not do that 12 years ago. We waited 
for 38 days of punishing air strikes. But instead, they did something 
that I think was smart and took advantage of the situation, a 
completely different situation on the ground, a completely different 
political objective and military plan to achieve that objective. But 
they got tactical surprise.
  As a result, that force that came out of Kuwait not only seized the 
oil fields intact after they saw seven of them burning, they jumped off 
early to try to keep the rest of the oil fields intact to benefit the 
Iraqi people and rebuild Iraq, but they also seized the bridges up and 
down the Tigris and the Euphrates to allow our forces to advance 
instead, as the gentleman said, to build them as they go. So they had 
tactical surprise. They were rapid, very nimble.
  We think about how hard it is to plan, to move forward a large mass 
of people and vehicles at the same time. Think about doing that and 
then all of a sudden telling them we are going to do that 12 hours 
early or 24 hours early. That could be a real mess. And they did it.
  I think we have done a much better job in western Iraq than we did 12 
years ago with the problem of Scuds and dealing with Scuds. Special 
Operations forces have been much more integrated with the ground and 
the air operation than we saw 12 years ago. And, as a result, they 
managed to control not only all of western Iraq where the Scuds were 
launching from 12 years ago, but to team up with the Kurds in the north 
and manage the problems in the north and seize key areas in the south 
and in the Persian Gulf.
  It was the Polish special forces that were some of the first to fire 
and the first to act in the Persian Gulf in seizing oil platforms, and 
British and American special forces moving forward to seize key sites 
in southern Iraq. So we have seen that integration of Special 
Operations Forces into the plan.
  Precision air. Madam Speaker, air power was decisive in the first 
Persian Gulf War, and I think even more so in this one, because we have 
gone from about 10 percent of our munitions being precision guided to 
90 percent of our munitions being precision guided. And they are 
pounding the tar out of the Republican Guard divisions from the air. 
They have been integrated with the ground forces, so that the marine on 
the ground knows that if he needs air power, he gets it now, and he is 
not sitting in some queue or waiting for some A-10 to fuel up in Kuwait 
and fly for an hour and a half to get to him, while he has to sit there 
and take it until he gets there. He gets air there, now.
  We have precision, very good real-time intelligence and the 
integration of space to the battlefield and to the soldier on the 
battlefield so that that real-time intelligence is actionable. All of 
us have seen the pictures of the Predators and the Global Hawks. We are 
also getting information on that first night of the war, the Central 
Intelligence Agency, working very closely with our military, both here 
in Washington and in the field, so that if there is a piece of 
information, the military can act, whether it is to rescue a prisoner 
of war as was done so effectively yesterday, or to target a critical 
target, as was done on the first night of the war. We are seeing unit-
level communications much better than it was 12 years ago.
  And we are seeing a joint operation. If we look back to Vietnam, we 
really did not operate as a joint military. The Navy had its route 
packages to fly, the Air Force had theirs, the Army was doing something 
different on the ground; there was no kind of integrated military 
operation. How much the American military has changed in the 
intervening years is astounding, and it is even more integrated today 
than it was 12 years ago.
  Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield on that 
point, if we go back to precision munitions, it is important for the 
American people to understand what that means. That means that instead 
of having to carpet bomb a bridge to knock it down, we can hit one 
strut on that bridge, if you hit the right one and you know where you 
have to go, with one precision munition that goes in and hits that 
particular strut and brings that entire bridge down. Now, that not only 
gives you your military goal, which was to knock the bridge down with 
only one bomb instead of maybe hundreds of bombs, but it also means 
that the village nearby is not going to be damaged, it means that the 
car halfway up the road is not going to be damaged, although I remember 
Norman Schwarzkopf talking about the world's luckiest taxicab driver. 
When that one precision munition went into a bridge in 1991, just about 
a split second after the taxicab had gotten on to firm footing, that 
bridge went down. But those precision munitions give us a chance to be 
more humane and not to hurt people, and that is what we strive for in 
these operations, and we have done it very successfully.
  As the gentlewoman said, most of our munitions now are precision 
munitions, and that enables us to use these big platforms, whether they 
are the fast-movers, the F-15s, F-15Es, F-16, our stealth aircraft, 
117s or even the large heavy bombers, we are able to use those 
platforms to bring an enormous amount of firepower into a very tight 
area.
  Madam Speaker, I saw the after-action photos that were taken after 
the Kosovo operation where we were trying to destroy the revetments for 
the Serbian Air Force. We did not want their planes to escape and come 
up and challenge ours. And B-2 bombers had flown all the way from 
Whiteman Air Base in Missouri to those targets; it hit the targets and 
returned home, and those craters and those revetments were as precisely 
placed as if somebody had walked out on the tarmac with an explosive 
and placed it by hand and then finally detonated it. That is the 
American technology that allows us to use less assets and to turn these 
platforms really into very precise military equipment that spare 
civilians and do not cause collateral damage.
  Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would 
yield,

[[Page H2686]]

on the Monday after the war started, I went to Holloman Air Force Base, 
and for those who are from New Mexico or who watch these things, on the 
opening night of the war, everyone who knew that those were the F-117s 
knew that the only base in America where we have the F-117 is in 
Alamogordo, New Mexico, at Holloman Air Force Base. I went there the 
Monday after it all started, and I met and had lunch with a lot of the 
spouses whose husbands, in this case, all of them were women, the 
spouses, and their husbands are deployed overseas. The squadron 
commander's wife has a wonderful sense of humor, which I think always 
helps in these kinds of situations. Apparently the wives were all 
talking about the morning after the whole thing started and they were 
trying to decide which two husbands were on that first mission, a very 
dangerous mission as it happens, because they went in without the usual 
cover that you would have in front of you. And she said that she looked 
at one of her friends and said, if they hit the target, it was my 
husband; if they missed, it was yours.
  The families are so strong at home, and you can see it and feel it 
when you are talking to them. They support each other. And that is so 
true of the Air Force. One of the things that I thought was wonderful 
there is the wing commander, who is not deployed, every day when all of 
the 117s are back, he gets a phone call that everybody is home from 
their missions. And then the wing commander calls the squadron 
commander's wife, and then she calls all the flight commanders' wives, 
and they have a telephone tree. And by go-to-bed time in New Mexico, 
every spouse and every parent who has somebody flying the 117s in 
southwest Asia is reassured. And every child knows that dad is okay, 
that today dad is okay. And they sleep a lot better.
  Now, that probably violates some rule or regulation, and Colonel Hunt 
may get in trouble for it for me mentioning it here, but please do not. 
He is using his judgment to do the right thing. His guys are halfway 
around the world flying and fighting a war, and I know in his heart he 
would dearly love, like any fighter pilot, to be with them. But he 
knows the best thing he can do is to make sure their families are taken 
care of so that they can focus on doing the job that they are doing and 
doing so well.
  By the way, they hit the target, and they now know whose husbands 
were on the raid, and we are all very proud of them.
  Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Kingston).

                              {time}  1945

  Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, I want to say as the proud 
Representative from the part of Georgia that has not just Fort Stewart 
and Hunter, where the 3rd Infantry division is headquartered, but we 
also have Kings Bay Naval Base and Moody Air Force Base and Robbins Air 
Base, we are very proud of what the 3rd Infantry and all of our 
soldiers and all the branches of service are doing.
  I have had the opportunity to meet with the wives' groups at Fort 
Stewart. It is incredible, the strength these people have. As we often 
are sitting in our hearings in Washington, we can tell that most 
Members and most members of the public do not realize that many of 
these soldiers have already been in the theater area for 6 months. They 
are not on a 6-month rotation that some people seem to think, or a 3-
month rotation. Many said good-bye to their loved ones back in 
September or October, and they have no idea when they are going to be 
coming home.
  Our friend, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest), who is a 
Marine veteran and a veteran of Vietnam, raised that issue today among 
us, about how much time until these folks are getting off. We do not 
know the answer to that question, because war is imminent. Nobody is 
talking about, you have Saturday off.
  The reality is our soldiers have been fighting and training in the 
theater for many, many weeks and months at this point. It is key for 
them to have a good support group back home, and to have the families 
saying, Everything is okay, honey. Don't worry about us, just come home 
alive. That means so much to them.
  Today, I have an e-mail from one of our staffers, whose husband is 
deployed, about an Easter egg hunt that the families are putting 
together at Fort Stewart. Everybody is going to be joining in, and it 
is going to be an Easter egg hunt like we have never seen before. There 
will be lots of big and little kids looking for Easter eggs. We cannot 
have the soldier in the battle without the family support group back 
home.
  I will say also that our Reservists who have come to man these bases 
and posts while the actives are gone, they are doing a very vital thing 
for the war effort. It is amazing to see the unity of people coming 
together.
  I had mentioned to the chairman today, one of the distressing things 
is some of our weak-kneed supports from groups in the U.N. that we 
thought were going to be with us. I was wondering if it would be 
appropriate to bring up some of those thoughts.
  Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Let me say that we 
definitely have some thoughts about countries which heretofore the 
United States had relied on very strongly. I am thinking of France, a 
country that we saved twice, actually three times in this last century, 
in World War I, World War II, and of course the Cold War; and also 
Germany.
  I am reminded of that Berlin airlift which was a lifeline for free 
Germany, that enabled them to stand up to the Soviet Union with the 
help of 300,000 American troops over a long period of time, and finally 
marry up with the captive portion of Germany, East Germany, and become 
a community again. That was all done because of the strength and the 
friendship of the United States.
  So, of course, I think lots of Americans have thoughts about those 
countries. But I would ask the gentleman if we could shift back just 
briefly. I was thinking about the operation taking place right now in 
Iraq.
  In fact, I had my old company commander, Jim Yarrison, a great 
gentleman, a wise officer, here.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Is that the one up here last week?
  Mr. HUNTER. Yes. I think I introduced him to the gentleman.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, I had the honor of meeting the 
gentleman's former commanding officer. He said his years in the 
military did not wear him out nearly as much as being the gentleman's 
commanding officer.
  Mr. HUNTER. I did not do anything special in the military, in the 
173rd Airborne, but I served with some great guys; and Jimmy Yarrison 
was one of them. The day he came up, unbeknownst to him the 173rd 
Airborne, reconstituted in Italy, had jumped into Iraq.
  We were with another great former trooper from Vietnam, Tom Carhart, 
with the 101st Airborne. It was awfully good to see a great comrade of 
the 173rd Airborne when the Sky soldiers have gone into northern Iraq, 
they are stabilizing that front, they are giving some American spine to 
that community, the Kurdish community, and acting as a great 
stabilizing force in northern Iraq right now. So the Sky soldiers were 
famous folks in Vietnam, and they are proving their mettle in Iraq.
  That takes us to the point that the gentlewoman made when she went 
over the units that are in Iraq. When we look at the enormous firepower 
arrayed there, when we combine that with the great leadership they are 
moving under right now, and the fact that the 4th is now moving into 
place, it is clear to Saddam Hussein's forces, now isolated in a number 
of very poorly defended areas, that time is drawing short.
  I would ask the gentlewoman to give us a little description of her 
thoughts of that, of the present situation in Iraq.
  Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, the gentleman was talking 
about the pride our American people, and particularly our American 
veterans, have in our units. All of us get a lot of mail, and I love 
getting letters from people.
  I got a letter from a veteran of the 507th in the Vietnam era. It 
says here, ``Heather, my name is John Campbell. I served two tours in 
Vietnam. I was a member of the 507th Engineer Group. I was a crane 
operator and a dozer operator and cleared land mines, among

[[Page H2687]]

other things. Today I am in a wheelchair, in part because of combat-
related injuries.
  ``I am proud to have served my country, and today I am proud the men 
and women of our military have once again answered our Nation's call to 
service. I particularly feel a connection to the brave soldiers of the 
507th Maintenance Group from Fort Bliss. I am certain you have seen and 
read the news reports of the POWs from that group now in Iraq.
  ``I want to let them know that I and others from the Vietnam-era 
507th group support them. Enclosed is a banner I had made that says, 
'507th Engineer and Maintenance, Vietnam and Iraq, good luck.' I would 
appreciate your help in getting this banner and a message to their home 
base at Fort Bliss, Texas. I want to tell them, `Good luck and hang in 
there. We are praying for you to come home soon, and we know how rough 
it is. I wish I was there with you, but my wheelchair would probably 
get bogged down in the Iraqi desert sand.' ''
  Those kinds of connections and that support from the American people 
matter so much to our soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines who 
are serving all of us now in Southwest Asia.
  I find these letters encouraging, and also letters from troops who 
are over there now. I have a copy of another letter that is from a 
young Marine. I will not use his name, but his first name is Kent. He 
is with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment, 1st Marine Division, so he is 
kind of busy at the moment. He went to St. Pius High School and 
graduated from there in Albuquerque. His parents live in Albuquerque.
  He wrote a letter to them that I just thought typified the greatness 
and goodness of these young men and women we have serving in the 
military.
  It says, ``Hey, mom and dad,'' and this is written just before things 
started over there, when he was still sitting in the desert, ``Hey, mom 
and dad, still living the high life. If there was a worse area in the 
world, I don't think I want to see it. This place just keeps getting 
better and better, since it is right now raining. Well, I, for one, 
feel great and proud. I feel great and proud and I love what I'm doing. 
This place is terrible, the toilets are disgusting, the sleeping areas 
are all right, and I love it.
  ``I love it because I just got done talking to our wacky Iraqi, Jack. 
He is our local Iraqi defector who escaped to the U.S. after the Gulf 
War and now works as an interpreter and an intelligence source. We just 
had a long conversation over lunch about what we are doing here, Iraq 
in general, and all sorts of things. His family was tortured by the 
Saddam regime, and his father was killed. He said his story was way too 
common, and that is why he is doing what he is doing.
  ``I thought the most poignant thing he talked about was about the 
protesters and people wanting a peaceful resolution. He says that 
anyone wanting a peaceful resolution needs to be over here for a year 
or so. He said his dad, who was tortured and killed, wanted a peaceful 
resolution, too. It didn't quite happen.

  ``Anyway, he made me realize that this is where I need to be. I am, 
of course, coming home; but, you know, war and all. But damn, I feel 
like I am part of something great and truly going to help a lot of 
people. Is that too much of a cliche? Anyway, the point is, this place 
is awful and there really is no place I would rather be. Okay, that is 
all. I will write soon. Love you, Kent.''
  Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, if the gentlewoman will yield, it is 
unbelievable when we talk to the soldiers who have that sense of 
mission, who have had the opportunity to talk face-to-face to the 
Iraqis who have been oppressed.
  There is a group in Washington, D.C., a women's Iraqi advocacy group. 
They talk about being arrested and having their family members killed, 
and having cousins and brothers disappear. They say over and over again 
that the only thing that is going to liberate them from this oppression 
is an outside intervention by a country such as America that has a 
moral high ground.
  It is unbelievable when we hear the Hollywood crowd, the blame-
America-first people, who have done so well by the United States' 
system of capitalism and government. Yet, they are the first ones to 
jump up and down and blame things on America.
  What I would say to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson) and 
the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), I hear a lot of people say, 
I do not support the mission, but I support the troops. Tell that to 
the young soldier who wrote that letter. We cannot do it, we have to 
say, love me, love my mission. If we are going to support the soldiers, 
tell them we agree the mission is very important and what they are 
doing is the right thing.
  Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I am looking at the picture behind the 
gentlewoman from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson) of the G.I. with the baby. 
Before this campaign is over, we will have passed out lots of vitamins; 
given lots of inoculations; lots of milk, probably in powdered form; 
and lots of food for the people of Iraq. They are going to know the 
friendship of the American people.
  That takes us back to our contribution as Members of Congress. What 
we can do now is get our folks in uniform the tools they need to get 
the job done. I looked at the supplemental appropriations bill coming 
up and the $62 billion for DOD, for the Armed Forces. We have to 
replenish that ammunition, those spare parts, all those things.
  I looked at that fairly carefully and looked at what the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Lewis), our chairman of the Subcommittee on 
Defense of the Committee on Appropriations, has done; and what the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the chairman of the full committee, 
and all the members have done, Democrat and Republican. They have put 
in a good supply of what it is going to take to get the job done.
  Of course, along with that there is going to be lots of humanitarian 
aid. There is going to be, after this operation, water systems to 
maintain, transportation systems to maintain. We are going to have to 
be able to keep the wheels turning and get this country with a new 
birth of freedom rolling again. Of course, that will be the Americans.
  I am reminded, somebody said, war is terrible. I thought, yes, war is 
terrible. It is what gave us our independence, and it is what got rid 
of Nazism and fascism. War is terrible. But in the wake of war, only 
the Americans are generous and good and kind to the folks, even to the 
folks who ran the operations, the military operations against them.
  Once again, I am reminded of the country of Japan, which after it had 
engaged in a sneak attack at Pearl Harbor and killed 5,000 American 
service people in that surprise attack, mutilated people, executed 
people in World War II, killed 30 percent of our POWs while they were 
incarcerated, we took that country, and they expected us to be as 
brutal to them as they had been to us.
  America said, here is a Constitution. We have one requirement of you, 
you conquered people. They said, what is that? We said, be free, have 
access to our markets, sell anything you want in America. You do not 
have to buy anything from us; we will give you money. We will help you 
out when you need it, and we will provide for the next 50 years a 
defense umbrella to make sure that nobody engages in violence against 
this great nation of violence in World War II, the country of Japan.
  We did the same thing to Germany; and after the two Germanys came 
together, a united Germany.

                              {time}  2000

  And that is the mission of this country, and people know that, too. 
And one of the great stories that represents, I think, is one that my 
mom and dad told me is when they had been ON a trip to the Philippines. 
They related being in Manila at the American Embassy when an anti-
American demonstration was taking place and there were some organizers 
in this demonstration and they had some very carefully worded placards 
all with anti-American slogans on them. And they were paying people to 
march around with these slogans, ``Down with America.''
  Well, my mom and dad looked at this long line of people at the 
embassy waiting to get their visas to come to the United States, and 
they noticed that the anti-American demonstration organizers would 
regularly go over to

[[Page H2688]]

the line of visa seekers, pay them money. The visa seekers would ask 
the person in front of them in line to hold their place, and they would 
then go out and take their placard that said ``Down with America,'' and 
they would march around for half an hour or an hour or so, and they 
would go back, give the placard back to the organizer, receive their 
money in payment and go back and get in line to get a visa to go to the 
good old United States of America.
  Do people know what we are all about? Absolutely. And a little 
propaganda television from Saddam Hussein or any of the other people 
who want to paint us as evil folks cannot erase that and they cannot 
take that away. People are smart. And the people OF Iraq, when they do 
not have a gun to their head and when they know their families are 
safe, are going to turn in the right direction. That direction will be 
towards the United States of America.
  Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. There has been a lot of carping in the 
last few days about plans and a lot of criticism from folks who have 
not seen the plan and have not been briefed on the plan, do not know 
what the plan is but they are critical of it, and others who say, oh, 
well, you did not anticipate this in your plan. There is a quote I 
remember once from General Eisenhower. He said, ``Planning is 
indispensable because it gives you something from which to deviate.''
  Any commander worth his salt will plan well and then will react to 
what is going on on the battlefield. I would be concerned if our 
commanders were sticking slavishly to a plan and not reacting to the 
things that were going on around them. The point is not the plan. The 
plan allows people to think through the potential problems. You cannot 
anticipate all of them, but they have done pretty well. And when they 
have not anticipated, they have relied on the ingenuity of the American 
soldiers to sort it out and their good commanders to give them the 
resources they need to get the job done.

  And I know that there is a war, a battle in southwest Asia and we all 
know there is the battle of the Potomac as well. There are people with 
different agendas around this town who might be upset about the 
Crusader cancellation or the fact that there is a Marine as the SACEUR 
or that there is a Marine as the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff instead of somebody who is wearing a different shade of green. 
There is a lot of bitterness and game playing going on in this town. 
And, frankly, there are a whole lot of us here who do not much like it, 
and we do not even respect it.
  And I was glad that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is 
a pretty taciturn Kansan, was just about as blunt and direct as I have 
seen him yesterday and saying exactly what he thought about this kind 
of arm-chair quarterbacking by folks who had either long ago hung up 
the uniform or were still in it and calling themselves ``anonymous 
sources.'' No decent officer is an anonymous source. And I was very 
glad to see him put some of them right and defend exactly what his plan 
was in collective operations going on in southwest Asia.
  So here is to you, the gentleman from Kansas, and thanks for standing 
up for what you believe in.
  Mr. KINGSTON. It does seem that in Washington, D.C. you go from maybe 
major to lieutenant colonel to colonel to general to journalist. And it 
seems that after you have turned in your uniform, you get more 
information and you are briefed in more top secret stuff than when you 
were active. Because it is amazing, the ex-generals who now can tell 
people what the plan is; where I would kind of think that if you do 
have a plan, which obviously you may need to deviate from, but you sure 
do not share it with everybody and his brother, as much as these 
embedded journalists like to think that they are in the Army. The 
reality is there are certain things they do not need to know.
  I wanted to say a little bit, one thing about this open society we 
have, this open war where the camera is right next to the rifle, it has 
got some good and it has some bad. But one thing that is seen over and 
over again is the United States' efforts to minimize collateral damage. 
And here you have Saddam Hussein who hides behind school children, who 
hides behind mosques, who takes his palaces into the civilian areas so 
that he can cower behind them. And even with that we minimize 
collateral damage.
  But you know, it is really bad when you have groups like the U.N. who 
have a role to play on the treatment of our prisoners of war, and all 
Kofi Annan has done today is say he is worried about the collateral 
damage because a missile hit a marketplace in Baghdad. We do not even 
know if it was an American missile or not. Does he say, America is 
bending over backwards to minimize collateral damage? That is a good 
practice. And is it not too bad that Saddam Hussein is hiding behind 
civilians and children and women? Is it not too bad? And is it not too 
bad that the Iraqis put out white flags of surrender and then turn 
around and ambush and shoot troops? And is it not too bad that they 
parade American POWs out on worldwide television and even show executed 
prisoners of war on TV. Not one word from the U.N. on that, but let 
them come back one more time with one of these veiled criticisms of 
America.
  I think one thing you have mentioned is people can do all the anti-
American talk they want, when there is a problem in the world it goes 
to the United States of America to solve. And the biggest criticism we 
get is people do not like the way we try to solve problems. But can you 
imagine trying to turn to France, trying to turn to Germany, trying to 
turn to Russia, trying to turn to China to solve problems in the world 
today? What kind of world would we live in if Saddam Hussein could have 
continued to gain the U.N. and America blinked and backed down from the 
action that we are having right now?
  Mr. HUNTER. On that point, it is interesting that since the days of 
World War II people have asked in schools and colleges and in family 
settings, how could the world stand by while Adolf Hitler gassed people 
to death in these gas chambers in places like Dachau and Auschwitz, and 
literally killed millions of people in such a horrible way, gassed them 
to death? How could the world stand by?
  Well, the answer is, if you look at what happened to these Kurdish 
villages and you see the pictures, which we have all seen, of little 
Kurdish babies and their mothers lying on the ground after a heavy dose 
of poison gas by Chemical Ali, the gas-dispensing Minister of the 
Department of Defense of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, we see the answer.
  You know what is interesting, after those Kurdish villages were 
gassed and those people were killed in that despicable manner, there 
were no demonstrations in Berlin or London or in liberal places 
throughout the United States. In fact, nobody, nobody in the world did 
anything except one country, the United States of America.
  Now, we have missed some of these and one thing that I have regretted 
is seeing those bodies float down the Rwanda River after the massive 
massacres that took place in Africa where innocent people were killed 
in huge numbers and the United States, with all of our power, did 
nothing. And as a Member of Congress, I wish and I regret that I had 
done more, that I had taken an effort.
  There are massacres that take place around this world and there are 
evil deeds that are done to people by dictators. And sometimes those 
dictators are beyond the means and the reach of the United States of 
America. We saw that, I think by British estimate, some 20 million 
people were executed by the Communist Chinese and actions were not 
taken by this country.
  But in many cases we do act. This is one of those cases. So when 
those people asked the question about how you could stand by and watch 
Mr. Hitler commit the atrocities that he committed before and during 
World War II without taking action, the answer is that just recently 
thousands of people were gassed to death by an evil dictator, and no 
one in the world took action except the Americans and our allies.
  And I want to mention the British and those folks that sided with 
this coalition, and there were lots of them. But the real message for 
us is if the United States does not lead the free world, the free world 
will not have a leader.
  President Bush is manifesting that leadership right now in a very 
effective

[[Page H2689]]

way. And right by his side is Donald Rumsfeld and, of course, the 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who has been mentioned, General Myers. And 
of course we have that great American, very sharp, very smart, very 
effective in strategy and tactics, General Tommy Franks, leading this 
operation in the theater. With that team and with the team of all of 
the folks that wear the uniform of the United States, we are going to 
win this contest.
  Once again, I want to thank this gentlewoman for bringing out not 
only the military operational effectiveness of this present campaign in 
Iraq, but also the campaign of goodwill that people in uniform are 
bringing to the people of that country, the good old GIs who by their 
values and by their demonstrations of kindness are winning a lot of 
folks over even as we speak.
  Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I thank the chairman. And maybe the way 
for me to at least close my participation in this 1-hour Special Order 
that we are having tonight is with another e-mail. I think it shows the 
goodness of the American military. It is one thing to be great. We have 
a great American military who can do things that no other military in 
the world can do, the overwhelming power. But we also have a very good 
American military. And sometimes I think it is more important to be 
good than to be great.
  This is an e-mail that was forwarded to me by a master gunnery 
sergeant. And master gunnery sergeants are not necessarily known for 
their soft-heartedness, although I think that is actually a myth. I 
think some of them are the softest-hearted guys. They are kind of like 
chocolate-covered marshmallows, tough on the outside but marshmallows 
on the inside.
  It says, few things move me to get misty but there are a few, and 
this one did. He saw this and described it this morning on CNN. And he 
wrote it down in an e-mail, what he saw. He said, Martin Savage of CNN, 
embedded with the 1st Marine battalion, was talking with four young 
marines near his foxhole this morning live on CNN. He had been telling 
the story of how well the Marines had been looking out for and taking 
care of him since the war started. And he went on to tell about the 
many hardships that the Marines had endured. And he told them that he 
cleared it with their commanders to call home, for each one of the four 
to call home. And he turned to the first marine next to him, a 19-year-
old kid and said, Who would you like to call? And he said, Well, sir, 
if you do not mind, I would like to allow my platoon sergeant to use my 
call. I would like to give my call to him to let him use it to call his 
pregnant wife back home who he had not been able to talk to for 3 
months.
  Savage was stunned. And the young man ran off to get his sergeant. 
And then he turned to the other three who were still there and he asked 
which one would like to call home first. And the marine closest to him 
responded, Sir, if it is all the same to you, we would like to call the 
parents of a buddy of ours, Lance Corporal Brian Buesing of Cedar Key, 
Florida. He was killed on the 23rd of March near Nasiriyah. We want to 
see how his parents are doing.
  At that, Martin Savage was close to tears and unable to speak, and 
all he could say before signing off was, Where do they get young men 
like this?
  I will tell you where we get them. We get them from Palestine, West 
Virginia and Saint Charles, Indiana; we get them from Sherwood, Oregon; 
Queens, New York; from Midland, Texas; from San Diego, California. We 
get them from Lee, Florida; from Adams, Colorado, and Mountainair, New 
Mexico.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for letting me join him here this 
evening.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman. The USA will 
prevail.

{time}  2015

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