[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 119 (Wednesday, September 3, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H7816-H7822]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               IRAQ WATCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, the House is back in session this week. And 
on the first evening back in session, we are resuming the Iraq Watch.
  This is an effort that has been going on since late in the spring, 
primarily by four of us here on the floor of the House, the gentleman 
from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. 
Abercrombie), and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), to raise 
questions about our policies in Iraq, to suggest corrections in those 
policies, to ask questions about the diplomacies leading up to military 
action, to ask questions about the intelligence relating to weapons of 
mass destruction, the use of that intelligence, the presence and 
whereabouts and the custody of those weapons of mass destruction, 
fundamentally questions about whether we are winning the peace and what 
exit strategy we have and when we will turn Iraq back to the Iraqis.

                              {time}  2000

  I know my colleagues have a lot of things to say tonight because a 
lot has been happening since we were last in session, and much of it 
bad, in Iraq, and we all have our own focus we would like to put on the 
debate this evening.
  I am going to open up and ask some questions focused on the 
fundamental issue of credibility, and I am then going to turn to the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) who has a conflicting time 
commitment, if my colleagues will agree, for the points that he would 
like to make in just a few minutes.
  There are so many unanswered questions about credibility relating to 
our actions in Iraq. Why did the White House press the CIA to approve 
misleading language in the State of the Union, suggesting that Hussein 
was uranium shopping throughout Africa, when the White House knew that 
that information was not accurate? Why did the administration hype 
alleged strong ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, although those 
ties have never been established? Why did the White House exaggerate 
the threat of the weapons of mass destruction themselves and hype both 
the nature of those weapons and the urgency of the danger caused by 
those weapons?
  The real threat that I see posed by Hussein, who was clearly a 
murderous tyrant who used weapons of mass destruction in the past 
against innocent civilians, the real threat was his potential to 
restart those weapons of mass destruction programs, including the 
ability and perhaps the desire on his part to restart or even purchase 
nuclear weapons if the international community lost its focus, if the 
focus and pressure for resumption of international inspections were to 
have been set aside, or if sanctions were lifted or if we simply lost 
interest. That was the threat from Saddam Hussein.
  Why did President Bush not stick to that? Why did he exaggerate the 
threat caused by weapons of mass destruction and these other alleged 
ties that have not come to pass? We know now that these claims by the 
administration were exaggerated.
  Last fall, in the lead-up to the congressional vote, the 
administration publicly and privately stated with complete certainty 
that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that he was seeking more; 
that his chemical and biological and nuclear programs were well 
underway; that there were ties between al Qaeda and Hussein; that he 
had these weapons, he was trying to get more and he was likely to give 
them away to terrorists. Now we know from declassified intelligence 
documents that at this very same time the administration was being told 
by our intelligence agencies that there was a great deal of uncertainty 
about the status of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
  The Defense Intelligence Agency report of September 2002 and the 
national intelligence estimate of October 2002 raised serious doubts 
about this, used phrases like no credible evidence of an Iraqi chemical 
weapon program. Yet the administration publicly and privately said it 
is a sure thing, we count on it, we have got to stop it.
  Does this matter? Maybe this is the question that we need to address. 
Does this pattern of deception matter? Do the ends not justify the 
means? Should we not all be rejoicing that Saddam Hussein is out of 
power?
  I think this pattern of deception does matter because the 
administration's credibility is shot as a result of this, and when the 
administration's credibility is shot, our national credibility is 
threatened. It matters when a government uses deception to try to 
achieve its goals because that deception can become a habit. It can be 
habit forming and we reach a point where the government loses its 
credibility and its moral stature.
  The administration oversold the need for war. They oversold the 
prospects of winning the peace. They oversimplified the challenge of 
bringing liberty and democracy to Iraq, all the while insisting that we 
could do this on our own unilaterally, without the help of our 
traditional alliance, the Western alliances, and in the international 
community, willingly proclaiming all this time that the U.S. and 
Britain should be known as the occupying powers, the occupying powers 
in Iraq, and ignoring the international institutions and the assets 
they can bring to bear to help a people become a free people and 
develop democratic institutions. It is time for the administration to 
level with the American people, to stop this pattern of deception that 
undermines the work we are trying to achieve.
  The President should answer seven questions. The first is he should 
tell us how long the military occupation is going to take, how long 
will it last.
  Secondly, how much will the military occupation cost? The current 
estimates are $1 billion a week, $4 billion a month, to maintain our 
military occupation.
  Thirdly, how long is the reconstruction going to take?
  Fourthly, how much will that cost? Most estimates I have seen, $20 
billion a year for at least 5 years. That is $100 billion to 
reconstruct Iraq.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOEFFEL. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

[[Page H7817]]

  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, while we were back in our districts 
working this past month, I am sure the gentleman noticed the 
announcement put out by the Congressional Budget Office in terms of the 
deficit that is accruing day by day on the future of the American 
taxpayers. If my colleague knows the number, I would like to hear it.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. A $450 billion deficit.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I have to say that my colleague is wrong, 
my dear friend from Philadelphia. The CBO, the Congressional Budget 
Office, predicts the deficit for the next fiscal year will be $480 
billion, $480 billion. And in the course of the past several years, 
just this past year, 1.4 million Americans fell below the poverty line. 
And my colleague is speaking tonight in terms of just simply for the 
reconstruction of Iraq, rebuilding Iraq, if you will, $20 billion a 
year for 5 years.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, the fiscal picture is bleak. It is 
daunting. One of the things the President has to tell us is how we are 
going to finance his reconstruction plans in Iraq, because I do not 
know how we are going to pay for it. The gentleman is absolutely right 
to bring that up, and I can see the gentleman from Illinois is anxious 
to make a point.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOEFFEL. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, I am anxious to make a point. I am glad my 
colleague started on this, asking the administration to come forward 
with what is our exit strategy, how long will the American troops be 
there and what will be the total cost to the American taxpayer.
  My colleague knows that since 2001, about 3 million Americans have 
lost their jobs, 5 million more Americans have lost their health 
insurance, to the record heights of people working without health 
insurance. Nearly $1 trillion worth of corporate assets have been 
foreclosed on, and more than 1 million Americans have walked out of the 
middle class to poverty in this country. Yet at the same time, the 
United States Government has pledged $8 billion dollars to pay Iraqi 
Government salaries for people who do not show up for work in Iraq, $7 
billion for repairs to public works and services, $5 billion in 
humanitarian aid and $3 billion to settle 1 million Iraqi refugees next 
year alone. That is some of the costs the American taxpayer is being 
asked to foot while we have record-high unemployment, record 
foreclosures, losses of health insurance, no plan for middle-class 
families to afford their college education.
  I come from Chicago. We think we know something about no-show jobs. 
The notion there would be close to 100,000 Iraqis getting a salary with 
no-show jobs can make a workman in Chicago a little jealous; but let 
alone that over the summer, while we were also gone, America 
experienced an unprecedented blackout where the infrastructure and 
America's electrical grid was short and not capable of handling the 
type of economy we have. At the same time, the head of Iraq's 
reconstruction, American counsel Paul Bremer announced that he would 
like $2 billion to rebuild the Iraqi electric grid. Yet here in the 
United States we were the ones with the blackout, and we cannot get a 
single dollar from the administration to help rebuild our electric grid 
which is an important piece of our economic infrastructure to allow the 
economy to grow. As many people said, we have a world-class economy 
sitting on top of a Third World economic grid. Yet Iraq, $2 billion to 
the electric grid; America, a blackout.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, what was the cost to our economy of the 
blackout that I think was of a 12- to maybe 24-hour duration, what was 
the cost?
  Mr. EMANUEL. Billions of dollars.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Billions of dollars, and yet we cannot find the money 
here to invest in America.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, one thing I want to run the statistics by 
is the people who remember, because I think it is often in this 
administration where the right hand misses what the left hand is doing.
  In the area of health care, there is a proposal for 13 million 
Iraqis, half the population, to get universal health care. Yet America 
now has record-high uninsured in this country, with no plan on the 
table. A hospital and clinic in Baghdad is operating and one in every 
city will be up and running.
  In education, there are proposals on the table to rebuild 1,200 
schools in Iraq. Yet the administration fights and it does not have a 
single dollar for rebuilding and modernizing America's schools.
  There are 25,000 units of affordable housing in Iraq, yet only 5,000 
proposed here for the United States.
  In the area of infrastructure we have a 10 percent cut in the Corps 
of Engineers proposed by the administration; yet the deepwater port of 
Umm Qsar in Iraq will be built from top to bottom.
  We have a plan for Iraq's reconstruction and its economic growth in 
the future, and yet the entire proposal here for the United States is 
blackouts, cuts in education, cuts in health care, cuts in 
infrastructure and cuts in housing. My point is the American people, 
ever since World War II, have been unbelievably generous and they will 
continue to be. Yet we cannot offer the Iraqi people a future that is 
brighter than the one we are proposing for our own children.
  I do want to add one point away from the financing to the issue of 
the loss of lives of Americans in Iraq. Some people have gone to Iraq 
and come back and said, what we need is more American troops. The fact 
is, we need more American allies, not more American troops.
  Second is, there have been four major battles since the post-Cold 
War: Gulf War 1, Bosnia, Kosovo and Gulf War 2. In every war except for 
this war, the democratic nations of the world have spoken with one 
voice against tyranny, and the loss of life by Americans has been 
minimal. There is only one war where the democratic nations of the 
world were divided and the loss of life by Americans has surpassed all 
other wars.
  Foreign policy based on ``my way or the highway'' has not served our 
men and women correctly. They deserve better. Their families are facing 
losses. They are doing their job under tremendous stress, unbelievably 
well, and we should have a foreign policy that brings people together 
to speak for democratic values in one voice, and yet we are not doing 
that. The American servicemen and -women are bearing a burden that is 
not being shared, and the American taxpayer is paying a price that is 
not being shared. The consequence both here at home and overseas in 
Iraq is devastating to Americans, and we deserve to give the American 
people and our American men and women in uniform a better national 
agenda and an international posture than the one they have been 
getting.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOEFFEL. I yield to the gentleman from Hawaii.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, not only was that well stated, not only 
was the logistics of the politics well stated, but the sentiments 
expressed by yourself and by the previous speakers take us then to the 
question of what are we to do? The difficulty I think that has been 
faced by those of us who had reservations, if not outright opposition, 
to the attack on Baghdad, which is what the initial military activity 
was, because we feared that a war in Iraq would then erupt, one for 
which we were not prepared, I think the difficulties associated with 
the thrust of their remarks made to this point is that the American 
people said, well, where is this opposition, what does it mean, why are 
we not coming forward with it?

                              {time}  2015

  We were drowned, literally, in the rhetorical excesses and visual 
stimulus of embedded media, following along with and literally with the 
troops. We were regaled with admonitions to support the troops by 
virtue of not questioning the policies that sent those troops in in the 
first place, and not analyzing the context and circumstances under 
which those troops were placed in harm's way. And I do not think we can 
avoid that any longer.
  How are we to deal with the analysis of the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) regarding the circumstances under which we 
entered and what has taken place? How are we to deal with the questions 
raised by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) about the 
deficits, about

[[Page H7818]]

the costs that are associated, the literal costs? How are we to deal 
with the elegant formulation by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Emanuel) of the juxtaposition between that which is required for us in 
the United States to deal with our basic needs and that which is 
required for the Iraqi people under the circumstances over which we 
now, ostensibly, have control and obligation? What are we to do?
  The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) and I, earlier this 
evening, engaged in a discussion with one another about, well, how 
should we address this question? And I think, if my colleague will 
allow me just a moment or two more, I want to posit what I think needs 
to be done or at least what needs to be done in terms of a dialogue.
  We established a governing cabinet which, according to The New York 
Times yesterday, is the Iraqi Governing Council. It says we have right 
now, and by we I am talking about the so-called coalition, because that 
is all it is. There may be some attendance on the periphery, but we 
have Great Britain, and we have the United States. Great Britain is now 
going through the throes of its own investigations and self-analysis. 
Who knows how long the Prime Minister will even be in office, let alone 
the support there. But it says we now have an Iraqi Governing Council, 
I am quoting The New York Times from yesterday, ``appointed a 25-member 
cabinet today to begin taking over day-to-day control of the 
government. The Iraqi ministers appointed today are to take over 
important portfolios in foreign affairs, finance, internal security and 
oil.''
  Now, my suggestion is if that is in fact the case, and if one accepts 
the premise for discussion sake that the motives for going into Iraq 
were sound, even if the process and the planning was inadequate at 
best, then this has been achieved. There was an attack on Baghdad. 
There was an occupation that took place. We now have a 25-member 
governing council to take over all of these areas. When are we going to 
bring the troops home?
  The same paper announces, the same news media announces yesterday 
that two U.S. military officers have died, another wounded when their 
Humvee hit a bomb along a highway in southern Baghdad. The military 
police brigade was traveling along a main supply route at 3:19 p.m. in 
the afternoon when their vehicle hit ``an improvised explosive 
device.''
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for just a 
moment. As he refers to that particular incident, I want to take a 
moment to express my most profound condolences to a particular family, 
the Caldwell family of Quincy, Massachusetts, which is my hometown, the 
birthplace of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. The Caldwell family 
lost their son, their brother, in that particular incident. The war has 
come home to Quincy and to the United States.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, as we stand here speaking, airplanes 
are coming in every day and every night discharging the wounded. When 
we can manage to get people acknowledged in the newspaper or on the 
television as having been killed in Iraq, and I say when we manage to 
get them acknowledged because more and more this is fading from the 
front page, this is fading from the A section of the newspaper. We have 
to pay attention to ex-steroid users running for governor out in 
California. We are competing with that right now. The clown show is 
taking place on C-SPAN II right now. Maybe tonight we can forgive the 
fact that the media once again are not here to record what might be 
said or not said here with respect to Iraq and its implications because 
they are watching the clown show. It is no clown show at Bethesda Naval 
Hospital. It is no clown show at Walter Reed Hospital, where now the 
grievously wounded are in the thousands.
  I suppose one could make an argument if it was in the dozens that it 
might be more acceptable. But it is not. We have the spectacle of the 
President of the United States now backtracking from the show that he 
put on on the aircraft carrier, that shameless display of arrogance and 
hubris. Oh, that was the end of major combat operations. So the family 
to which my colleague referred, are they supposed to take some comfort 
with the idea that their son died in a minor confrontation, a minor 
incident? There is nothing minor about the deaths and grievous wounding 
of American men and women in combat in Iraq.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, if my colleague will yield for one last 
comment. In Bosnia, the United States troops share a burden with other 
Democratic nations under the command of a United States general. They 
are not serving under anybody else's command. There has not been any 
major deaths post combat. That is true also in Kosovo.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. None. Zero.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Right. This is the only war post combat, after the 
President has declared hostilities have ceased, that there have been 
more deaths in the aftermath of the war than during the war.
  Again, I think it comes back to the fact that Saddam Hussein is a 
tyrant. That is not an arguable fact. The arguable fact was are we 
going to do this alone, or should we have done the hard work that was 
done by the first Bush Presidency, of calling up allies, calling up 
friends, having the Democratic nations of the world and others speak as 
one voice about ridding the world of an aggressive act.
  But in this war, because we refused to do the hard work of listening 
and persuading and talking, deciding to go alone, deciding to make 
other political points, more Americans have died after the hostilities 
have ceased than prior. It is a policy that does not do justice to the 
sacrifice on the ground by our men and women. It is the only war post 
the Cold War in which, as I always say, the Democratic nations were 
divided, not united. And because of that, and because of the result 
that we do not have other American allies but we have mainly American 
men and women there, more Americans, such as the family from the 
gentleman's district who he just spoke about, touching all of us about 
how it has come home, this war.
  There has not been an exit strategy provided for. We have not talked 
about what it takes to bring allies to bear, about burden sharing. We 
can do better. The American people and the American servicemen and 
women deserve better.
  And then there is a whole discussion about the reconstruction of 
Iraq. At a time when the American people are paying astronomical taxes, 
property taxes, seeing service cuts at their schools, having their 
health care costs explode, having the cost of a college education for 
their kids explode, with no plan provided for that, and yet there are 
some in this Chamber and across the hall whose recommendation to the 
American people is we will stay the course. We will put more American 
troops, more American hard-earned dollars to work in Iraq while here at 
home that is not the recipe that the American people deserve. They 
deserve a plan for here as much as for Iraq. They deserve a policy that 
says we will bring Democratic nations together, not divide them.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, just quickly, I wish to ask the gentleman 
from Illinois if in his review of our military history, and I know his 
statements are accurate and insightful, has he ever come across an 
example where an American President has taunted the enemy to ``bring it 
on''? Has my colleague ever seen an example where after victory is 
declared, while Americans are continuing to die post declaration of 
victory due to a guerilla war, that the President of the United States 
taunted the opponents to ``bring it on'' and subsequent to that taunt 
another 60 or 70 Americans have been assassinated in this guerilla 
opposition in Iraq?
  And my question to all three of my colleagues, and the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) talked about the war coming home to 
Quincy, what does the President say to those families? It is a tough 
enough job for the Commander in Chief in good faith to deal with any 
death to any American serviceman or woman, but what does he say to the 
families when he said on that day we have enough force in Iraq to 
protect our own troops so bring them on? What does he say to those that 
have died since?
  Mr. EMANUEL. Well, Mr. Speaker, having worked in the White House, I 
want to be clear, I do not think anybody here is saying the President, 
and I am sure the President, the First

[[Page H7819]]

Lady, and the entire administration feels for every one of these 
families. Having worked in the White House, I think we all know there 
are things either a President or even ourselves have said that we wish 
we had never said.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I do not think anybody doubts that at all.
  Mr. EMANUEL. But when the President said ``bring it on,'' it was 
close to putting, unfortunately I think given the guerilla warfare and 
the terrorists that have now come into Iraq, I think it has put a 
target on the American service people that existed before but only 
heightened given the war psychology and world opinion that terrorists 
are playing against this administration. I do not know of another time 
a President has ever done that or an administration has done that.
  I want to add one other thing. I think Mr. Bremer said that in a few 
weeks from now Iraq will run out of money, and they will have to come 
to the United States for more financial assistance for all the 
reconstruction they are planning. I plan on reintroducing my American 
parity bill that says whatever we plan on spending in Iraq for housing, 
health care, infrastructure, economic growth, salaries, for no-show 
jobs, we have to do the same here at home.
  They should not have a better housing plan than what we plan for here 
at home. They should not have a better education plan in Iraq than we 
have for modernizing our schools. They should not have a better health 
care plan for half the population when we have nothing for our 
population. So I will be introducing that bill as an amendment to the 
Iraq reconstruction supplemental, that we should have an American 
parity act.
  I am going to vote to help Iraq, but I am not voting for 
deconstruction in the United States.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, my friend knows that he will have three 
colleagues that will be cosponsoring that particular amendment with 
him. And I daresay that when my colleague alluded earlier to the 
proposal to provide universal health care coverage for half of the 
Iraqi population as well as 100 percent maternity coverage for Iraqi 
women, maybe, just maybe, we could convince our colleagues in the House 
to restore the $95 billion that they cut from the Medicaid.
  Mr. EMANUEL. One out of four children in America are covered by 
Medicaid for the maternal care. So the cuts in Medicaid affect directly 
the newborn children and the health care coverage, where we are talking 
about universal coverage in Iraq.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I wish to add an addendum to the last 
point the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) made when he talked 
about the no-show jobs. The problem we have in the United States now is 
people are showing up and there are no jobs. They want to have a job.
  We have lost two-plus million jobs, manufacturing jobs, in this 
country. There are plenty of people who want to show up for work, but 
the work is not there because it is being out sourced overseas. Because 
we are providing an opportunity for the Vice President's cronies in 
Halliburton and all these other construction companies to send 
mercenaries overseas to make the big dollars off of the taxpayer dollar 
here.

                              {time}  2030

  I want to see people at work in the United States. When we have a 
prosperous United States, we can start worrying about carrying the 
burden for the rest of the world.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Those that will be employed by Halliburton in Iraq will 
be Iraqis. They will not be Americans. The low-wage jobs and the 
medium-wage jobs will be Iraqis. Meanwhile, as earlier stated, in this 
country we have lost 3 million jobs. And ironically, of course, the 
unemployment rate is going down by two-tenths of a point from 6.4 to 
6.2 percent because we are not counting people anymore.
  We now have a new category called the discouraged worker because he 
or she has been looking for a job, whether it be in Ohio, Massachusetts 
or Hawaii or Pennsylvania, and as has been indicated, those 
manufacturing jobs are leaving this country daily. They cannot find a 
job. They are discouraged and their unemployment has been exhausted, so 
they no longer count as American workers. They are discouraged workers.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, as President Bush is so fond of saying, 
help is on the way. Let me read from the Wall Street Journal of 
yesterday:
  A consortium of 13 international banks, lead by J.P. Morgan Chase and 
company, was chosen to lead the newly created Trade Bank of Iraq. I 
thought it was going to be the United States was going to get some 
help. No, we have J.P. Morgan and 13 international banks, and they are 
going to put together something called the Trade Bank of Iraq.
  The coalition authority that I just referred to, the 25-member 
coalition authority which is now in charge of finance, according to the 
New York Times, in Iraq created the Trade Bank to allow Iraqi 
ministries to begin making ``big ticket purchases abroad.''
  This is all a corporate scam and the country has to wake up to the 
fact that we are utilizing our young men and women in harm's way in the 
military uniform of the United States to carry out the corporate 
interests of this administration, and that Iraq, if not before now, is 
a quicksand of corporate endeavor on behalf of profit-taking by 
corporations utilizing the all-volunteer force of the United States, 
and we have to take seriously whether or not we are going to allow it 
to continue.
  My view is, and I put it forward for consideration, that if we are 
going to deal with this situation straightforwardly, we have to talk 
about letting this 25-member authority take over. They say they are in 
charge of finance, they are in charge of security, they are in charge 
of trade, they are in charge of banking, in charge of oil, let them be 
in charge. Bring the American troops on out of there and let that Iraqi 
authority set the terms and conditions under which the United Nations 
will come in and help put this together.
  I am perfectly willing to vote funds because we caused this problem, 
funds that will enable the Iraqi people to get back on their feet, 
provided it is done in an international context at the behest of and 
request of the Iraqi authority which we supposedly have not only set up 
but now have in charge of these various ministries.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, let me just segue into an observation that 
was made by the general who successfully commanded the coalition, the 
true coalition of the willing in Gulf War I, and that is General 
Schwarzkopf, and he was recently interviewed. It was on one of the 
Sunday morning magazines and he was talking about the troops and his 
concern for the morale of the troops and the suggestion that more 
troops are needed to provide stability and security before this 
particular White House can rebuild Iraq.
  I am just going to quote some excerpts from his statement. This is 
General Schwarzkopf. ``I do not think, based on the information we are 
hearing ahead of time, that anybody thought Iraq was going to be 
anywhere near as tough an egg to crack as it has become. We did not 
have a rotation policy at that time.'' He was talking about rotating 
American military personnel in and out. ``We were just going to go in, 
the people were going to throw flowers at our feet, and everybody was 
going to welcome democracy and we were all going to go back home. But I 
think we really became very surprised by the amount of resistance we 
have run into since. The number of deaths that has been inflicted on 
our troops, and it happens every day, and that has a very, very eroding 
effect on the morale. Believe me, when someone is shooting at you and 
you cannot shoot back, I know from experience because I have been 
through that.'' That is General Schwarzkopf.
  What are we doing? What are we inflicting on the American military?
  We have all sponsored a resolution urging the President of the United 
States to seek a new United Nations resolution making the United 
Nations part of the solution, under the command of the U.S. military 
when it comes to the security issue, but making them part of this 
enormous effort of nation-building because that is what this 
administration is about; it is about nation-building. And the costs, 
and we hear it again and again. We talk about $4 billion a month.
  As Members know, and we have been joined by the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Inslee), that $4 billion a month, that $50 billion a 
year is just

[[Page H7820]]

for a military presence. It does not involve rebuilding Iraq. It does 
not involve nation-building. This White House, this administration, 
upon coming to office, derided nation-building, and yet they have 
embraced nation-building in a magnitude that is mind-boggling; and some 
within the administration, some within the administration, not 
Secretary Powell, because I understand he is attempting to negotiate a 
new U.N. resolution, but some want to go it alone. We cannot afford it 
either in terms of American lives or American dollars. We are going to 
go broke.
  The gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) mentioned Gulf War I 
under the leadership of the father of the current President. He did 
create a true coalition. The cost of that war to the American people, 
the total cost, was a little over $4 billion. That is the cost of just 
sustaining our military presence in Iraq now for a month, and we are 
going to be there for years.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, not only is the administration engaging in 
a unilateral nation-building, but I would submit it is a stealth 
nation-building because they do not want to tell us the cost, the 
length, how many troops might be needed, how many more civilians of all 
manner might be needed. I think we need to ask the President three 
fundamental questions. The first is what is in store in Iraq, what is 
it going to cost and how long is it going to take?
  Secondly, what is he doing to build the international support that he 
has finally acknowledged that we need, as the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) has just referred to. What can we expect 
him to do to reach out to the international community to get their 
assets and their troops, if necessary, and their civilian 
reconstruction experts into the mix. And as the gentleman from Hawaii 
(Mr. Abercrombie) has been saying all night and in private conversation 
as well, the third question is how soon do we put the Iraqis back in 
charge, and what is the administration prepared to do to put the Iraqis 
back in charge?
  I would respectfully say to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. 
Abercrombie) that the Iraqi governing coalition is not ready to run 
those ministries that have been identified, and I think the gentleman 
knows that, too. They are not ready. We need the President to tell us 
when, and I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I do not wish to dispute who is ready and who is 
not. All we can account for is ourselves. We were not ready, and now 
these poor people have to bear the brunt of our failure to be ready. I 
understand that. But the question here that I have raised here is what 
in fact is the role of the United States and these troops? How do we 
make it work? Let me put it this way, that is not an argument.
  In my dreams I keep thinking Thomas Edward Lawrence, where are you, 
come back. Lawrence, come back and tell us what it is we are 
forgetting.
  What do we think we can do when people made an argument back in World 
War I that the Arabs were not ready. This was a Western concept. This 
is people coming in from the outside telling somebody else that they 
were not ready. They were not ready to have the French divide up and 
the English divide up Iraq for their political purposes, but they were 
certainly ready to do whatever it was that they felt was necessary.
  I am sure that the colonial armies under George Washington were not 
ready. Cornwallis was wandering all over, wandering through Maryland 
and New Jersey, wandering through upstate New York; and back in England 
they said, We have got to get out. It does not matter whether they are 
ready or not. We are going to be adrift with our people being picked 
off one by one in the American Revolutionary War. We are facing the 
same kind of situation in terms of the material prospect for the 
military of the United States in Iraq today. It is not up to us to 
decide whether or not they are ready.
  Let me tell what one of the members of the governing council said 
yesterday. Abdel Aziz Hakim, the brother of Ayatollah Hakim who was 
killed in the car bomb, a member of the United States appointed 
governing council to which I have referred this evening told mourners, 
and I quote, and this is from The Washington Post of yesterday, ``The 
occupation force is primarily responsible for the pure blood that was 
spilled in holy Najaf, the blood of Hakim and the faithful group that 
was present near the mosque. Iraq must not remain occupied and the 
occupation must leave so we can build Iraq as God wants us to do.''
  My point is we are dealing with a situation in which we do not have 
the prerogative of decisionmaking other than what we do about ourselves 
and for ourselves. We cannot decide for others. If the argument was, 
and again I do not want to dispute that because we have Members on this 
floor who voted for the resolution, who did not vote for the resolution 
who had different ideas what that resolution meant or did not mean, 
that is not an issue. I have no intention of pointing fingers and 
extracting some kind of admissions about what might have been the true 
faith at the time.
  What I am saying is we now face a situation in which we have to make 
a determination whether our continued presence is a positive or 
negative force and what should constitute our continued presence.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Those questions are not being posed. And that same 
story that was quoted yesterday that the gentleman quoted from, the 
funeral of that particular Ayatollah who was a moderate leader among 
the Shiite community in southern Iraq, where some would suggest there 
has been stability and some limited progress has been made, things are 
beginning, they are in the process of falling apart.

                              {time}  2045

  A piece of that story that the gentleman did not read is extremely 
disturbing when it comes to our role. His brother's clarion call 
resounded with the crowd. I am quoting from that same story. Mourners 
who came from as far away as Basra and Baghdad beat themselves with 
chains in the traditional ritual for mourning religious martyrs and 
chanted ``death to America.''
  We have to be listening very, very carefully. There is a growing 
anger, not just in the so-called Suni triangle, not just in Tikrit, but 
all over Iraq in terms of the American presence. That is why I would 
suggest it is absolutely critical that we internationalize the 
presence.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. And the ones who will pay the price of that attitude 
should it become more pervasive, ``death to America,'' is not going to 
be us here. They are getting ready to celebrate. Come on. They are 
closing down the mall tomorrow. For those of you out there tuning in, 
they are closing down the mall tomorrow because the National Football 
League is getting underway. The Redskins are going to play. No traffic. 
People are taking days off. They are taking sick leave, whatever it is. 
They are closing down the mall, not because of a terrorist threat but 
because the Washington Redskins are going to start the National 
Football League and that is what we are going to concentrate on. And 
what do you think will be on the front page of The Washington Post on 
Friday morning? Whether or not the Redskins won the game. But will 
there be a story about two more kids getting wounded or killed over in 
Baghdad or Tikrit or some other godforsaken place that nobody knows 
anything about and cannot spell?
  Let me tell you what has happened, how much we care about this 
supporting the troops. If I hear that one more time from these 
hypocrites. The toughest thing we have ever done since 9/11, which is 
coming up in a couple of days, the biggest sacrifice we ever made is 
not the inconvenience of taking off your shoes walking through a 
testing device at the airport, we postponed the Super Bowl for 1 week. 
That is the big sacrifice. We are supposedly in a total war. The 
President tells me that I am in a war, a total war, over maybe 10 years 
and we are going to go and we are going to conduct this war with every 
fiber that we have. We are not doing anything of the kind. We are 
watching the football game on television.
  When I see those guys out on the field, I see there is a kid from 
Ohio State, he cannot decide whether he wants to go to class or not. He 
does not know whether it is worth it. I do not blame him. They are 
marketing him over there. They are making a million dollars out of him. 
We are worried about whether some professional basketball player took 
advantage of a

[[Page H7821]]

young woman and we are going to spend more money and time on that. They 
are all pretty healthy, it looks to me. Why are they not in uniform 
over there? Why do we not have a draft if we really mean that this is a 
war against terror and this is something that we have to fight right 
through to the end with all the resources of the United States?
  That is what I cannot bear. I cannot bear the idea that we sit here, 
435 of us that have been designated on the trust and faith of our 
constituents to try and make good judgments. We do not have a 
referendum in here in this country. This is not something where we just 
run out and take a vote on the fashion of the moment. We are supposed 
to be trying to use what brains that God gave us and what judgment we 
have been able to accrue over the experiences of our lifetime and, 
based on the faith and trust of our constituents, render responsible 
policies and obligations for this country. What I am saying is that 
these young men and women have volunteered for the armed services of 
the United States not because we expect them to throw their lives away 
on the political fashion of the moment, but because we expect to be 
able to provide them with the necessities of being able to carry 
through on the strategic interests of this Nation.
  I say that the strategic interests of this Nation now requires us to 
have an exit plan out of Iraq and to turn the question of Iraq and its 
governance over to the Iraqis as soon as possible so that they can make 
the necessary arrangements with the United Nations, of which we are a 
part, in order to aid and assist them.
  Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield, these are really hard 
discussions because we have been saying this now for months in the 
evenings with this group, that this effort needs to have more 
international support. We need to give our troops enough support so 
that they indeed can be secure. Since we last said that and then we 
went back to our districts for August, 40 more of our proud troops have 
died in Iraq, with the administration ignoring the obvious need to 
internationalize this effort. Over 100 people have been seriously 
injured, over 1,000 in the Iraq war, people coming back without limbs. 
But this administration cannot pay enough attention to common sense to 
put down their hubris and their arrogance for 10 minutes to come up 
with a policy that will keep our troops safe. The thing that is galling 
about it, and you do not have to be a Rhodes scholar and spend 40 hours 
a week thinking about foreign policy to know this.

  Yesterday I went out, the fellow was working on a cable wire in front 
of our house, it was a hot day, it has been really hot in August in 
Seattle. I just went out and gave him a pop and we started talking. He 
says, ``I'm not an international expert. I can't figure out why George 
Bush wants just our kids to die in Iraq. I just can't figure that out. 
That doesn't make any sense to me.''
  I think when a cable guy on Holly Street in Bainbridge Island has 
that recognition, this administration ought to change its attitude to 
this effort, not want to be a bring-it-on mentality but an attitude of 
working with the international community. There is another thing I want 
to report to you about what people out on the street know about this 
issue. They know that we still have to get to the bottom of why the 
American people were not told the straight scoop before this war 
started. That is why we are cosponsors of a bill to have a bipartisan 
commission to get to the bottom of why Americans were deluded about the 
nature of the security threat in Iraq.
  I am not the only one who feels this. Two weeks ago in Shoreline, 
Washington, we just published a little notice, we were going to have a 
little meeting about Iraq intelligence. We were going to have it at 
noon on a Thursday on an 80-degree day in Seattle. We booked a room for 
200 people. We had indications more were going to show up. We booked a 
room for 400, then for 600. We had 1,100 people show up at noon in 
Shoreline, Washington, who were raving angry about why this 
administration did not tell America the truth about Iraq before they 
got us into this war. They had one request and demand of the U.S. 
Congress: Do a bipartisan commission to get to the bottom of what 
happened here.
  Let me tell you why this is important, and we had pretty good people 
talking about this. Ambassador Joe Wilson, the guy who blew the whistle 
on the administration's fraudulent use of the claim about uranium from 
Africa, he flew all the way from D.C.; retired Admiral Bill Center, 
distinguished Navy career, who talked about the fact that he certainly 
did not see the threat that the administration was saying existed; 
Brewster Denny of the University of Washington School of Public Policy. 
They agreed with everybody in the room who recognized that if we are 
going to internationalize this effort in Iraq, you cannot do that 
successfully unless we have a full accounting about who was responsible 
about selling the American people and the world a bill of goods about 
what happened in Iraq. And 1,100 people recognized that in Shoreline, 
Washington.
  This measure of accountability that we need is necessary to clear the 
decks to get the type of alliance we need in the international 
community that maybe, just maybe, the administration is starting to 
finally figure out, way, way late. We hope we are going to have some 
support on the other side of the aisle about going forward to get to 
the bottom of this in a bipartisan fashion.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. If we cannot get to the bottom of it in a bipartisan 
fashion, there is one way for people to make that clear and that is in 
the voting booth. If we cannot pass it in here, you are going to have 
to get the people in here who are willing to pass it.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Let me thank the gentleman from Washington for joining 
us and for his comments. And, the first time with Iraq Watch, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).
  Mr. STRICKLAND. I want to thank the gentleman. I sat here in my heart 
cheerleading as the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) was talking 
with us. Because the fact is we sit here in this Chamber, in the safety 
and security of this Chamber, and as we sit here and make decisions, 
young Americans are in danger. Every day I get up and I turn on the TV 
and usually the first thing I hear is that we have lost another 
American soldier or two American soldiers in Iraq. It does anger me. 
Because I think we have been irresponsible in the course we have taken, 
but we are continuing to accept in almost a casual way the fact that 
young Americans are being killed on a daily basis.
  I got a letter from a young soldier from Baghdad just the other day. 
In the letter, this young soldier said, I am so proud of the Army and 
we are working so hard to do the right thing over here. But, you know, 
my fellow soldiers are appalled at the President's bring-them-on 
rhetoric.
  The fact is this is a serious situation we find ourselves in. We all 
have different ideas, I guess, about how we should deal with this. But 
I think we should either put sufficient numbers of troops in there to 
provide a high level of security or we should go to the United Nations 
and we should seek their support and even cede some control over the 
decision-making, or we should bring our troops home, because just 
tolerating daily deaths is intolerable. I think it is intolerable for 
the American people, but it should be intolerable for this President 
and for those of us who serve in this House of Representatives. These 
young Americans are willing to fight and die for the benefit of this 
country, but they are not willing, I believe, to give their lives for 
purposes that are less than central, absolutely central to what is 
essential for this country's well-being.

  We need to rethink what we are doing. The President and this Congress 
needs to come together and to look at the seriousness of this situation 
and to change our course here.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. The difficulty I think here is that there has been a 
tendency, at least to this point, and I detect a change coming here, 
too, the tendency has been, if not the outright policy, is equate 
support for the troops with the political policies of those who have 
sent them over there. That to me is an abomination of the idea of 
patriotism. Serving as I do on the Committee on Armed Services, I am 
only too well aware of the caliber of the fighting man and woman in the 
United States Armed Forces today. The capacity that they have to carry 
out their mission is extraordinary. The morale that they do have 
associated with their own perception of what they are capable of, 
believe me, could not be higher.

[[Page H7822]]

The question is, are we up to the task? Are the politicians up to the 
task of representing that same kind of competency and professionalism, 
if you will, in providing what that mission should be?
  Mr. STRICKLAND. That is right. But we all know that talk is cheap. 
And the fact is that there are a lot of lofty words spoken in this 
Chamber, but we have a serious problem. There are moms and dads and 
sweethearts and husbands and wives, children, whose loved ones at this 
very moment are serving under the most difficult circumstances. They 
cannot be adequately protected. They are sitting ducks. We got excited 
in this town when there was a sniper loose and it took us weeks to 
identify that person, to find out who it was. Now there may be a sniper 
loose in the State of West Virginia and we are concerned about that. 
Baghdad is full of such snipers. Our soldiers are in fixed positions 
and they are being killed on a daily basis.
  I asked Ambassador Bremer, what are we going to do? What is the plan? 
How are we going to keep these deaths from occurring? The answer I got 
is that we probably are going to have to accept the fact that there are 
likely to be continuing casualties.
  That is not acceptable. We have got a responsibility to take a 
different course of action.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I know we are winding down, but before we do, I think 
we would be remiss if we did not note the deteriorating situation in 
Afghanistan. In the future, I would hope we would include Afghanistan, 
because those same brave young men and women are in Afghanistan. Two 
stories today, Associated Press. The Taliban are no longer on the run 
and have teamed up with al Qaeda once again, according to officials and 
former Taliban, who say the religious militia has reorganized and 
strengthened since their defeat at the hands of the U.S.-led coalition 
nearly 2 years ago.
  And now the administration is talking about doubling the aid from 
$900 million to almost $2 billion. I daresay that will be insufficient, 
but remember this, it is costing us $11 billion a year to maintain a 
military presence in Afghanistan.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. I thank my colleagues for being part of this tonight. 
Iraq Watch will be back next Tuesday night.

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