[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 131 (Tuesday, September 23, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H8408]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           CHANGES NEEDED IN ADMINISTRATION'S POLICY IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this morning I went out to Walter Reed 
Hospital again. I went out 2 weeks ago. There are boys still coming 
home without legs, without eyes, all kinds of casualties. And one 
cannot help but listen to my colleague from Florida and think how well 
our troops are doing and what they are doing on behalf of all of us, 
but to continue to see what is going on at Walter Reed is very 
sobering.
  And everybody who is going to vote for money around here in the next 
week or so ought to go out to Walter Reed and walk around and talk to 
some of these people. Talk to the kid I talked to today who was riding 
in a Humvee that ran over one of these IEDs that implement some kind of 
explosive device that people just make up by tying a bunch of things 
together, and he loses a leg and is on a ventilator at Walter Reed. 
When you see that, you realize that we could do all of these 
humanitarian projects, and God knows they need them, there is plenty of 
stuff to do; but until we are able to bring security to that country, 
we are not going to be really dealing with what affects the Iraqis, nor 
protects our own people.
  Now, I came back from Walter Reed and I sat down in my office and I 
turned on the television, and there is the President talking at the 
United Nations. Just like the last talk: We know what is right. You 
people ought to get behind us. The same tone to the world that we heard 
before.
  The world believes that we all ought to do it together in the United 
Nations. We ought to make it that way, not the United States charging 
out and deciding we are going to do it, and you are either for us or 
against us. That kind of cowboy mentality did not work, and it has 
created the mess we have today. There was no hint in anything the 
President said of acknowledging the foolishness of going to Iraq alone. 
What he wanted them to do was to say, you are right, you did exactly 
the right thing, and we were really wrong. We should have endorsed what 
you were doing from the start. But the world is not going to do that.
  The President is going to have to change the tone in which he talks, 
and, Mr. Speaker, I do not know how we get him to do that.
  We are going to have an opportunity with a resolution for $87 
billion.
  Now, Mr. Bremmer was over in the Senate yesterday, and he said, we do 
not anticipate having to ask for any more. Now, this is the war 
department of Mr. Rumsfeld that did not anticipate that they would need 
water purification, did not anticipate the need for generators, did not 
anticipate anything in the way of reconstruction. That is why we are in 
the mess we are in today.

                              {time}  1300

  Everybody knew we were going to win the war. Our troops are the best 
in the world, but it is how we put it together afterward that is so 
missing, and the United States cannot do it by itself. We cannot write 
all the rules and regulations.
  Yesterday, the newspaper carried a story that says Iraq is now for 
sale. The United States has sort of put this thing through this council 
they have that will allow companies to come in and buy the companies in 
Iraq and take over. One Iraqi reacted by saying, well, now it is not 
going to be just the Americans here. The whole world's going to come 
and take advantage of us in this process.
  This war department headed by Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz, nobody 
has changed. They are still talking the same way. These are the people 
who told us that this would all be over in 3 months; that the Iraqi 
people would run out and throw their arms around our soldiers; that we 
would use all that oil money; we would rebuild the country with the oil 
money. None of it was true, and they knew some of it was not true when 
the President came here before us. We cannot have a war built on a 
faulty premise.
  Now we are going to have this week the opportunity to look at this 
$87 billion. We can just write another blank check for the President, 
rubber stamp it, give it to him; or we can require that he negotiate 
with the United Nations.

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