[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 71 (Tuesday, May 13, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6037-S6039]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, last week, some of our colleagues came 
to the floor to discuss the President's recent appearance on the USS 
Abraham Lincoln and the propriety of that appearance. I, however, come 
to the floor today to discuss some of what the President said on the 
Lincoln, especially with regard to the fight against terrorism.
  Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the fight against global 
terrorism--an effort that is surely our highest national security 
priority. I want to spend a few minutes talking about the fight against 
terrorism today because it is not at all clear to me that we are as 
focused on this mission as we should be. I fear that our mission has 
become obscured and our approach unfocused. I also fear that this 
confused approach will undermine our goal rather than enhance our 
security.
  I had planned to make these remarks even before yesterday's terrible 
terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia. Early reports indicate that those 
deplorable

[[Page S6038]]

attacks killed several, including at least 10 Americans. Many more 
innocent people were wounded. Al-Qaida is strongly suspected to be 
responsible. Of course, my heart and all of our hearts go out to all of 
the families who are grieving today and to those who are left with the 
terrible uncertainty as they wait to hear news of loved ones.
  More information will surely be emerging shortly, but Secretary 
Powell has already pointed out one of the most important conclusions 
that can be drawn from this incident in Saudi Arabia, and that is that 
those forces who would have us live in fear have not been destroyed.
  I have no doubt that everyone in this Chamber was gratified to hear 
the recent better news about Pakistan's arrest of several members of an 
important al-Qaida cell, including a Yemeni man believed to be involved 
in the October 2000 attack on the U.S. warship Cole in Yemen. I look 
forward to more information about this development. But I also look 
forward to more information about another related matter.
  The President reminded us on the USS Lincoln that he has pledged that 
terrorists who attacked America ``would not escape the patient justice 
of the United States.'' I think the country expects nothing less. But 
how many people noticed when, according to reports, 10 men escaped from 
a prison in Yemen on April 11--10 men who apparently were being held on 
charges of involvement in the terrorist attack on the USS Cole that 
killed 17 American sailors, including one from my home State of 
Wisconsin?
  I want to know--is this so? If so, how did they escape? Did they have 
assistance? Critically, why are we not hearing more about this? This 
escape occurred, apparently, just as our brave troops were entering 
Baghdad--at least in part in the name of stopping the threat of 
terrorism. But no one seems to be discussing at all this potentially 
dangerous lapse in Yemen. Did the perpetrators of the murder of 17 
Americans on the USS Cole escape or not? And what does this mean? 
Americans pledge every day to never forget September 11, 2001. We 
pledge this to ourselves, to each other, and to the rest of the world, 
but I fear that the administration and the Congress are losing sight of 
our most important goals and priorities.

  September 11 is invoked in some surprising and, I think, largely 
unrelated contexts. Sometimes the very idea of terrorism is used by 
some on the right and some on the left as a politically convenient 
attack on whomever or whatever they do not agree with. Rhetoric about 
September 11 and the fight against terrorism seems to be everywhere, 
and our distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from West Virginia, 
raised this very same issue in his remarks last week.
  In many ways, the actual business of combating the terrorist 
organizations or organization responsible for the attacks on our 
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, for the attack on the USS Cole, for 
the horror of September 11, and now possibly for last night's attacks 
in Riyadh, seems to be lost in the shuffle.
  A few days ago, from the deck of the USS Lincoln, our President told 
the American people that ``the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war 
on terror that began on September 11, 2001.'' And polls indicate a 
majority of the American people believe the Saddam Hussein regime was 
involved in the September 11 attacks. But I have never--I have never--
not in hearings, not in classified briefings, I have never heard once 
our officials assert we have intelligence indicating this is the case.
  President Bush was, of course, right to praise our dedicated service 
men and women during that speech for they have performed their duties 
with skill and bravery and superb professionalism. I enthusiastically 
join the President in thanking them and in welcoming those who are now 
coming home.
  But I cannot and will not join in any attempt to blur what must be 
the necessary and principal focus on the international terrorist threat 
by too easily merging it with different issues, including the issue of 
Iraq.
  Last October, I was not able to support the resolution authorizing 
the President to use force in Iraq. I felt that in terms of the 
constantly shifting justifications for an invasion and in terms of the 
mission and the plan for the engagement's aftermath, I felt the 
administration had not made a sufficiently compelling case for Congress 
to grant war powers to the President.
  I had no problem granting such power to the President to make war on 
those who attacked this country on September 11, but Iraq was a 
different issue which, of course, is why it required its own resolution 
authorizing force. If, in fact, there was a connection in planning 
together for the 9/11 attack by Saddam Hussein and his agents and the 
perpetrators of 9/11 and al-Qaida, then I believe there was no need for 
additional authority and resolution.
  The administration had and continues to have all the authority 
required to go after the perpetrators of 9/11, but Iraq was and is a 
different issue. In fact, many of us feared it would be a distraction 
from the urgent task of fighting terrorism. I said on the floor in 
October, right after the President's famous speech in Cincinnati, the 
administration's arguments regarding Iraq did not add up to a coherent 
basis for a new major war in the middle of our current challenging 
fight against the terrorism of al-Qaida and related organizations.

  Of course, a majority of my colleagues in this Chamber voted in favor 
of authorizing the President to use force in Iraq. We did proceed, and 
the brave men and women of the United States military answered the call 
to service and performed brilliantly.
  It is certainly my understanding when the Senate voted to authorize 
the use of force, and it remains my understanding today, that most 
Senators were convinced by the most compelling argument that the 
administration put forward. That is the one relating to Iraq's failures 
to comply with its obligations to verifiably dismantle and destroy its 
weapons of mass destruction program.
  All of us recognize this as a serious issue, but now we are talking 
less and less about those weapons, it seems, and there is less and less 
clarity about this matter. So before returning to the principal issue 
of the fight against terrorism, let me spend a few minutes on the issue 
of WMD in Iraq.
  I raise this issue not in an attempt to revisit the debate about our 
wisdom in the approach in Iraq and not because I am searching for a 
smoking gun. I raise it because it does matter whether or not we find 
WMD. Most importantly, it matters because if those materials were in 
the country in the first place and we cannot find them now, that is a 
security problem. Where did they go? Whose hands are they in? These 
are, obviously, very serious questions, and accounting for these 
materials cannot be written off as some sort of distraction or 
legalistic irrelevance.
  Just yesterday the New York Times reported that the nuclear expert 
for the Army's Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha was unaware of any U.S. 
policy as to how to handle radioactive material that may be found in 
Iraq, material that could be used to make a dirty bomb. On Sunday, the 
Washington Post reported that the group directing the U.S. search for 
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is ``winding down operations'' 
after a host of fruitless missions.
  For months, I and others asked the administration: What is the plan 
for securing these weapons? We tried to understand how we would use the 
intelligence that was shared in the briefing room to quickly secure 
weapons of mass destruction and the means to make them. We asked the 
question for good reason. We were concerned that in the midst of the 
disorder and disarray likely to accompany military action and the fall 
of Saddam that WMD could be spirited out of the country or sold to the 
highest bidder, compounding the threat to the United States rather than 
eliminating it.
  We were right to ask about this issue, and today it appears we either 
had a problem with our intelligence or we had an inadequate plan. 
Either way, we are talking about a serious problem that should be 
examined carefully and one that should not be repeated.
  I also think the issue of weapons of mass destruction matters in 
terms of how the rest of the world and history will understand this 
undertaking in Iraq. Those perceptions and judgments do affect our 
security and global stability. We cannot afford to have the world 
believing the United States will

[[Page S6039]]

conjure up pretexts to wage wars and overthrow governments around the 
world at will. That is not who we are, and it is not in our interest to 
be perceived in that fashion.

  Do not misunderstand me, I am not suggesting at all this was conjured 
up. There is no doubt that Iraq was not in compliance with Security 
Council Resolution 1441 when this conflict began, but I think we need 
to continue to focus on disarmament to keep from muddying the waters 
with regard to our intentions, and I believe we should accept credible 
and qualified international assistance in this regard. Yes, what the 
rest of the world thinks surely matters.
  Turning back to the paramount issue of the fight against terrorism, I 
believe we have to keep this truth about how we are perceived 
throughout the rest of the world in mind. Perhaps the most important 
form of American power projected over the last century has been the 
power of our ideas and our values. If we lose our capacity to lead in 
that sense, then all of us in Government will have presided over the 
greatest loss of power in American history, regardless of how much we 
spend on our mighty and admirable military forces. And we will have put 
ourselves at a great disadvantage, likely a decisive and crippling 
disadvantage, in the fight against terrorism, which is our first 
national priority, which is our first priority in terms of national 
security.
  I recognize many issues are interlinked, that our approach to one 
policy issue may affect the course of the campaign against terrorism. 
There can be no doubt about our primary responsibility and our most 
important security concern. We should be having a more focused dialog 
and exercising our oversight responsibilities in a more focused way.
  A tremendous number of questions came to the surface on September 11. 
How can we win a war against a shadowy network of nonstate actors? How 
can we define success? How will we know when we have been victorious? 
All of us, Democrats and Republicans, the Congress and the executive 
branch, waded through these questions recognizing that some answers 
would take time to take shape.
  So today many questions remain. Where are we in this fight against 
terrorism? Our colleague Senator Graham of Florida, one of the most 
respected Members of this body, suggested recently on the Today show 
that the war on terrorism has been ``essentially abandoned over the 
past year,'' and that it is ``a fundamental mis- 
characterization'' to describe the war in Iraq as part of the fight 
against global terrorism.'' Both issues should be the subject of 
intense focus in Congress. How are we finding our way in this new kind 
of conflict? How stable and robust is the multilateral coalition 
committed to combating terrorism of global reach?
  The task at hand is difficult enough without obscuring the issues. 
Recently when Secretary Powell testified before the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee, he noted that Americans have concluded that 
terrorism must be eradicated. But, he said:

       Some in Europe see it differently. Some see terrorism as a 
     regrettable but inevitable part of society and they want to 
     keep it at arm-length and as low key as possible.

  At this point, I am uncertain as to how to interpret this. Are our 
European partners really unconvinced of the need to fight terrorism? 
Which partners is he talking about? What steps are they unwilling to 
take to combat international terrorist organizations? These are real 
issues and the Secretary is quite right to raise them. But I am left 
uncertain. Are we conflating policy divergence on Iraq with divergence 
on international terrorism? Is that what we are talking about?
  The President has asserted that:

       Any person involved in committing or planning terrorist 
     attacks against the American people becomes an enemy of this 
     country, and a target of American justice. . . . Any person, 
     organization, or government that supports, protects, or 
     harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the 
     innocent, and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.

  But if it is our policy to eradicate terrorist networks of global 
reach, then what does it mean when U.S. forces sign a cease-fire 
agreement with a designated foreign terrorist organization, as they did 
on April 15 with the Iraq-based Iranian organization known as the 
People's Mujahedeen or more formally as the Mujahedeen Khalq, the MEK? 
Are we making peace with terrorist organizations? For what purpose; to 
what end? Is there a question about the way we apply the terrorist 
organization designation? Now we read that the organization is 
surrendering weapons to U.S. forces in a reversal of the April 15 
decision. What are the terms of this new agreement? The issues are 
difficult, but the elected representatives of the American people 
should be working on shaping the answers together, not picking up hints 
about ad-hoc decisions by scanning the wires.
  Few would argue with the fact that this administration is intensely 
secretive. And, in this atmosphere of tightly controlled information, 
too often the elected representatives of the American people are 
stifled in our ability to fulfill Congress's very important oversight 
role. With only vague information at our disposal, it is difficult to 
assess progress or the wisdom of our policy course. The absence of 
clarity and the absence of data are dangerous. I think it endangers the 
American people.
  The President was right when he said that we have not forgotten the 
victims of September 11. We have not, and we cannot. But in the same 
vein, we must not allow the mission that we accepted in the aftermath 
of that day to become an ever-shifting idea, one that we can never pin 
down in order to evaluate our performance and take stock of our needs. 
Let us hear less rhetoric and more about disturbing reports, such as 
the possible escape of the perpetrators of the dastardly attack on the 
USS Cole. That surely relates to the fight against terrorism. We 
certainly cannot permit the fight on terrorism, this most serious of 
issues, this horror that unites all Americans in resistance and 
resolve, to become a matter of rhetorical convenience. Our national 
security is at stake. We need clarity, we need focus, and we need 
candor. The American people deserve nothing less.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. I ask unanimous consent that during the period for morning 
business, the following Members be recognized to speak: Senator Enzi 
for 20 minutes, Senator Stabenow for 10 minutes, Senator Mikulski for 
10 minutes.
  I further ask consent that following those speakers, the Senate 
resume consideration of the energy bill.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. ENZI pertaining to the introduction of submission 
of S. 1044 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on 
Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. COLEMAN). Under the previous order, the 
Senator from Michigan is recognized.

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