[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 73 (Thursday, May 15, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E971]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  CREDIT FOR THE RECENT WAR WITH IRAQ

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                           HON. STEVE ISRAEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 15, 2003

  Mr. ISRAEL. Mr. Speaker, in the wake of the recent war with Iraq, 
many Americans are analyzing the battles and asking what lessons the 
military and its leadership learned. The Boston Globe carried an 
analysis on Tuesday, May 13, by Lawrence J. Korb, who was Assistant 
Secretary of Defense in President Reagan's administration.
  In Mr. Korb's analysis, a great deal of credit for our success must 
go to President Clinton, who appointed many of the commanders, prepared 
and recruited the troops, and modernized the weapons and strategies 
used in the war.
  Mr. Speaker, I commend Mr. Korb's work to the entire House and ask 
that it appear in the Record at this time.

                 [From the Boston Globe, May 13, 2003]

               Thank Clinton for a Speedy Victory in Iraq

                         (By Lawrence J. Korb)

       While it is understandable that President George W. Bush 
     and his secretary of defense are receiving plaudits for the 
     relatively swift military victory in Iraq, the fact of the 
     matter is that most of the credit for the successful military 
     operation should go to the Clinton administration.
       As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted, the battle 
     plan that led to the American success was that of General 
     Tommy Franks, an Army officer appointed to head the Central 
     Command by the Clinton administration. More important, the 
     military forces that executed that plan so boldly and bravely 
     were for the most part recruited, trained, and equipped by 
     the Clinton administration.
       The first Bush defense budget went into effect on Oct. 1, 
     2002, and none of the funds in that budget have yet had an 
     impact on the quality of the men and women in the armed 
     services, their readiness for combat, or the weapons they 
     used to obliterate the Iraqi forces.
       Given the way that Bush and his surrogates disparaged 
     Clinton's approach to the military in his 2000 campaign, this 
     is ironic. The president and his advisers claimed that 
     Clinton had diminished the armed forces' fighting edge by 
     turning them into social workers and sending them too often 
     on ``useless'' nation-building exercises. These same people 
     also claimed that Clinton had so underfunded the military 
     that it was in a condition similar to that which existed on 
     the eve of Pearl Harbor.
       Throughout the summer and fall of 2000, Vice President Dick 
     Cheney summed up the Bush team's sentiment toward what 
     Clinton had done to the military: He went around the country 
     telling the military and the nation that help and additional 
     support were on the way for our troops.
       Anyone examining the facts would know that these claims 
     were bogus. The Clinton administration actually spent more 
     money on defense than had the outgoing administration of the 
     first President Bush. The smaller outlays during the first 
     Bush administration were developed and approved by Dick 
     Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who were then 
     serving as secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint 
     Chiefs of Staff respectively.
       Clinton's last secretary of defense, William Cohen, turned 
     over to Rumsfeld a defense budget that was higher in real 
     terms than what James Schlesinger had bequeathed to Rumsfeld 
     when he took over the Pentagon for the first time in 1975 at 
     the height of the Cold War.
       Not only did Clinton spend a large amount of money on the 
     military; most of it was spent wisely. In the first Persian 
     Gulf War, less than 10 percent of the bombs and missiles that 
     were dropped on Iraq were smart weapons. That number jumped 
     to 70 percent during this war because the Clinton 
     administration ordered large quantities of upgraded munitions 
     that made these ``dumb'' weapons smart. The Clinton 
     administration also invested heavily in the technology that 
     gave the on-scene commanders a much more vivid picture of the 
     battlefield than a decade ago.
       It was the Clinton administration that improved the 
     accuracy of the Tomahawk cruise missile and upgraded the 
     Patriot missile, which was so much more effective this time 
     than the original Patriot in the first Persian Gulf War. The 
     Clinton administration also kept the quality of our military 
     personnel high by closing the gap between military and 
     private sector compensation, a gap that the first Bush 
     administration had allowed to grow, and improving retirement 
     and health benefits for military retirees.
       So if this latest military effort warrants a victory parade 
     for the troops, let's insist that Clinton and his secretaries 
     of defense are invited. They deserve it. And if the Bush 
     administration wants to learn how to rebuild the nation of 
     Iraq, they might ask their predecessors how to go about it.

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