[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 143 (Tuesday, October 14, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12482-S12485]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IRAQ AND THE DEFICIT
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, we have come back from the break. Most
Members, I imagine, have had the same kind of experience I have had in
meeting with my constituents. We have discovered the question of what
we should be doing in Iraq is foremost on our constituents' minds.
Second, we have discovered--at least I have--that there is great
concern about the size of the deficit. Those two issues were joined in
debate in the Senate before we left for the break. I think it
appropriate we talk about them together now that the break is over.
Let me first turn to the question of the deficit and the debate that
took place in this Chamber with respect to the $87 billion that has
been requested by the President to pay for the war activities and the
reconstruction of Iraq. We were told in this Chamber we had to raise
taxes by $87 billion to pay for this, and that if we did not, we would
see the deficit go up by $87 billion. We defeated that amendment, but
there were those with whom I met during the break who still had that
view.
The interesting thing we discovered during the break was that the
projections for the size of the deficit changed. This is no surprise to
anyone who has spent time paying attention to the deficit. As I have
said in this Chamber over and over and as I will repeat over and over,
the one thing I know with respect to the deficit projections, or
surplus projections when those were the order of the day, is that they
are wrong. I do not know if they are wrong on the high side or wrong on
the low side but I do know they are wrong.
The other thing I know is that the further out they go, the more
likely they are to be wrong. That is, a 10-year projection is
absolutely certain to be wrong; a 5-year projection has a 99.94 percent
chance of being wrong; a 3-year projection might be a little bit
closer; and so on with a 2-year projection. The only ones that come
really close to being accurate are the very near term projections.
The interesting thing that happened during the break was that the
near-term projections of the size of this year's deficit changed. They
went down. In other words, we found out during the last week that those
who spend their time looking at the size of the deficit have now looked
at the numbers, now looked at the revenues coming into the Federal
Government, and now project the current deficit will be roughly $85
billion less than was projected when we had the debate.
If we had had those numbers during the debate, obviously I would have
referred to them to point out that it is not necessarily the size of
the tax rate that determines the amount of tax revenue. That is a
truth, again, that we repeat over and over but that gets forgotten over
and over. What determines the amount of tax revenue is the amount of
economic activity that takes place in the economy as a whole tied to
the tax rate, not the tax rate itself. If you set the tax rate too
high, you guarantee the economic activity will slow and the tax take
will go down.
We cut the tax rate at the beginning of this administration, we cut
it again last year, and we are now seeing economic activity pick up to
the point that tax revenues have gone up. As I say, according to those
who are now projecting this year's deficit, the tax revenues have
surprised us to the point that we are now going to have roughly $85
billion more in revenue than was projected just a month ago.
That is a coincidental number because it comes very close to the $87
billion we are asking for. I will not suggest in any sense that we
should tie those two together. The closeness is purely coincidental.
Nonetheless, it demonstrates that those who want to use the deficit as
the reason for support of their opposition to what we are doing in Iraq
are going to have to find another excuse because the economy is
responding to the tax treatment that came out of this Congress. In that
response we are getting more tax revenue, and it is going to be less of
a financial burden on this country than we thought it would be even as
recently as a month ago.
All right. Let me turn now to the other argument we hear, over and
over and over, in a constant drumbeat, with respect to Iraq; that is,
the argument that this administration somehow misled the American
people, misled the world by claiming Saddam Hussein was a threat. Then
you get into the details of that claim, and they say he had no weapons
of mass destruction, his economy was in ruins, he did not have the
ability to threaten his neighbors, he was no threat or, if we can go
back to a phrase I have seen some columnists use: Saddam Hussein was no
Hitler.
I want to address that this morning. I would hope in this Chamber, of
all places, we would have a sense of history, we would understand what
really went on in times past, and what really is going on in a
historical framework in our present time.
Let me take that phrase, ``Saddam Hussein was no Hitler,'' and use it
as the framework for this kind of examination. If we go back in history
to the time of Hitler, we can discover a time when I think it could be
said accurately that Hitler was no Hitler. Let me explain what I mean
by that.
The Hitler we think of when we look back in history now is the Hitler
who stood at the head of a major army of a major nation state waging
world war upon all of the other nations around him. Hitler did not
start out as that kind of a Hitler. He started out as a politician with
a relatively small following and a bitter message in a world of
turmoil.
When he became the chancellor of all of Germany, he was a minority
politician leading just one party of a series of parties. The primary
individuals in Germany at the time thought by making him chancellor
they could buy him off and use him and his party in a way that would
allow them to continue their power. They misjudged him. When he became
chancellor, he, of course, moved to consolidate his power rather than
to cooperate with anyone.
He then led Germany into a very risky military operation. He moved to
reclaim land that had been taken from Germany in the First World War
and ceded to France. If the French Army--arguably the largest on the
continent at the time--had confronted him in that move, it would have
meant the end of his political career; it would have made sure that
nazism, the Nazi party would have disappeared, and Hitler would have
been gone. But the French were afraid of a little bit of combat, they
were afraid of a little bit of confrontation, and they allowed Hitler
to take over that territory.
Well, without going into a complete history of the time, let's go
forward to the pivotal event that preceded the Second World War, the
Conference at Munich.
Here are the circumstances that led to that event: Hitler had designs
on Czechoslovakia. Hitler insisted that Czechoslovakia belonged to
Germany and announced he was going to take it, and take it by force.
The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, contacted Hitler and
said: Can we meet one more time before you act to take Czechoslovakia
by force? Hitler agreed, and they met in Munich, Germany.
Chamberlain was terrified that war might break out. Chamberlain was
afraid Great Britain was not ready for war. Chamberlain was anxious to
give Hitler whatever he could, and, ultimately, Chamberlain gave Hitler
Czechoslovakia. Without the British honoring the implied guarantee they
would prevent any invasion of Czechoslovakia, Hitler was free to take
over that country.
Now, again, if we look at it through the lens of Hitler at the top of
his power, we would say, well, he proposed to swallow Czechoslovakia by
his tremendous army. In fact, however, Hitler did not have a tremendous
army prior to Munich. He had one on paper, but he did not have one in
actuality. His generals were terrified as to what would happen to that
army if, indeed, it was
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ordered into the field against the combined forces of the British and
the Czechs.
Indeed, there is evidence that Hitler's generals were prepared to
depose him, to overthrow him, and to take Germany out from under him
if, in fact, the British stood firm in Czechoslovakia. But instead of
standing firm, the British Prime Minister said: Why do we care about
people who live so far away from us, with whom we have nothing to do?
And he gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler.
Now, it was not just that he swallowed a small country. If we look
back on the history of the time, Czechoslovakia had some of the finest
factories capable of producing war materiel of any country in Europe.
It had some of the finest machine shops and other skills. By taking
Czechoslovakia, Hitler obtained an absolutely vital strategic asset
that made it possible for Hitler to become Hitler.
May I draw some historic parallels. When Saddam Hussein took Kuwait,
he was taking a small, defenseless country that had enormous revenues
and that was strategically located. If he had been allowed to keep them
Saddam Hussein might very well have been on his road toward becoming
Hitler. However, the President of the United States at the time, the
first President Bush, was not Neville Chamberlain. The first President
Bush stood in the House of Representatives and told a joint session of
this Congress: This shall not stand.
There were those in this Chamber who opposed the first President Bush
in his decision to confront Saddam Hussein. Indeed, there were those
who, in their own words, said much the same as Chamberlain: What do we
have to do with these people so far away? Why should we be concerned
with something so far from our shores?
Fortunately, the majority of the Members of this Chamber at the time
supported the first President Bush in that decision and, if I may,
denied Saddam Hussein Kuwait in a way that Neville Chamberlain failed
to deny Hitler Czechoslovakia.
In the aftermath of that first denial of Saddam Hussein's ambitions,
inspectors went into Iraq and discovered Saddam Hussein had a serious
program of producing weapons of mass destruction. About that there can
be no doubt. Let us understand that. Let me underscore it one more
time. Saddam Hussein was engaged in a serious program of producing
weapons of mass destruction, and about that there can be no doubt.
President Clinton affirmed that to the Congress. Madeleine Albright
affirmed that to the Congress. The United Nations affirmed that to the
Security Council in the form of not one but a dozen resolutions.
Saddam Hussein, left unchecked in his first invasion of Kuwait, was
on his way to becoming Hitler. It was the first President Bush who made
the decision to stop it.
There is some uncertainty as to what happened to Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction program after those inspectors were removed
from Iraq in 1998. President Clinton believed the program was ongoing;
Secretary Albright believed the program was ongoing; Prime Minister
Blair of Great Britain believed the program was ongoing; and Inspector
Kay, who has been there, confirmed that the program was ongoing.
However, we have been unable to find caches of the weapons.
There are those who say: Well, since we can't find huge caches of
weapons of mass destruction, the fact that the program was ongoing is
immaterial; and, once again, when we went into Iraq the second time
with the second President Bush, he did not represent a threat to us--he
was not Hitler.
Again, history says if previous leaders had had the resolve of the
two Presidents Bush, Hitler would never have become Hitler himself.
One of the things we have discovered in Iraq that says Saddam Hussein
was, indeed, very much like Hitler is the mass graves. Estimates of
those numbers of Iraqis who have ended up in mass graves have run as
high as 500,000. Maybe there are still some to be discovered. There
were efforts to hide those graves, just as Hitler made efforts to hide
his concentration camps that became the instrument through which he
sought the final solution to the Jewish problem.
His final solution, of course, was to eradicate them all, to send
them to gas chambers, and then to bulldoze over the graves and pretend
they had never been there. Saddam Hussein was doing the same thing in
his own country to his own people, and we stopped it. By virtue of the
resolve of the second President Bush, we stopped it. We stopped Saddam
Hussein from reaching the kind of statistical plateau of horror that
Adolf Hitler made famous in the world.
Am I sorry we stopped it? Do I now have to hang my head in shame when
I meet my constituents who say the inspectors didn't find what you
thought they would find and, therefore, you made a mistake in voting
for this war?
Quite the contrary. As I examine the history of this situation, I am
filled with gratitude for the first President Bush who prevented Saddam
Hussein from taking over Kuwait and perhaps invading Saudi Arabia and
thus becoming Hitler. And I am grateful and proud of the fact that I
stood with the second President Bush, who moved into Iraq to make sure
the weapons program we all know was going on did not reach the point
where it could produce huge caches of weapons and that the slaughter,
the systematic destruction of the Iraqi people who disagreed with
Saddam Hussein, has been stopped. Are those consequences of which
Americans should be ashamed? Are those consequences from which we
should back away?
I believe, with Tony Blair, that history will look upon this action
and say we did the right thing. We all were in the Chamber when he made
the point that if we were wrong in assuming that the weapons of mass
destruction were there in great numbers, the consequences of our
actions, at being wrong, were the elimination of a brutal tyrant and
the freeing of 20 million people and the possibility of stability in
that region. He said history will forgive that error.
But, he said, if our critics were wrong, and the program, which we
know was in place and which has been confirmed to have been in place by
Inspector Kay, had gone forward and produced those weapons, Saddam
Hussein would have become Hitler and history would never forgive that
mistake.
I go back to Munich. At the time when Neville Chamberlain came back
to Great Britain, polls were overwhelmingly in his favor. He was
greeted with cheers everywhere he went. The one man in the House of
Commons who stood up and said ``we have suffered a defeat of the first
magnitude,'' whose name was Winston Churchill, got only a handful of
votes in his opposition to Chamberlain. But, as Tony Blair said in our
joint session, history has a harsh judgment of the mistake that Neville
Chamberlain made. Neville Chamberlain's mistake allowed Hitler to
become Hitler. George W. Bush made sure he would not make that same
mistake in Iraq and allow Saddam Hussein to become Hitler.
Over the break, during the weekend, the Washington Post addressed
this issue in some depth. The Washington Post, as we all know, is a
paper that did not endorse George W. Bush for the Presidency and has
often, in its editorial pages, been fairly harsh in its criticism. But
the Washington Post is also a paper with editorial writers who were in
favor of moving ahead in Iraq. Perhaps they had the same historic
perspective I have tried to offer this morning, that we had to do
something to stop, prior to the time when Saddam Hussein became Hitler,
the possibility that he might. That is a doctrine that has now been
called ``preemptive war,'' about which everybody complains around the
world and says: That is just terrible. We should never establish the
precedent of attacking or using military force before the threat is
imminent.
Well, Neville Chamberlain would have been well served to have adopted
the doctrine back in the 1930s, and the world would have saved millions
of deaths if he had.
The Washington Post addressed this in an editorial that ran on
Sunday. It went from the top to the bottom of the page in two columns
called ``Iraq in Review.'' I ask unanimous consent that it be printed
in the Record following my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. BENNETT. It begins:
A reader asks: ``When are you going to admit you were
wrong?'' We've received a
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number of such inquiries (not all quite so polite) about our
position on the war in Iraq, particularly from readers who
were disappointed in our prewar stance.
They then go through all of the issues. There are certainly times
where they are critical of the administration, critical of the
administration in ways with which I might disagree. But they do make
the essential points about the issues that are in contention, the
essential point about the weapons of mass destruction.
They make the point that I have made here this morning, that
Inspector Kay has demonstrated that Saddam Hussein had a program of
developing weapons of mass destruction. Even if the caches of weapons
have not been found, if the program had been allowed to go forward, the
weapons would have come.
They talk about Saddam and al-Qaida. They make the point that while
there is no direct link between Saddam and al-Qaida--and they claim the
administration exaggerated, by implication, the links--that nonetheless
there was a threat from terrorism in Iraq, and they summarize it with
this sentence:
When combined with [Saddam Hussein's] continuing pursuit of
weapons of mass destruction, that seemed to pose exactly the
sort of threat that the Bush administration rightly focused
on as part of the war on terrorism.
Then they talk about continuing costs. I have already addressed that
this morning in my comment about the revision of the budget figures
that says that the resurging economy we now have is going to give us a
deficit that is going to be roughly $85 billion less than we were
talking about as recently as the time before the break.
In addition to their editorial in which the Washington Post says we
still stand by our support of the decision to move ahead in Iraq even
though things are not going as we had all hoped, they have five
military men talking about the war in op-ed pieces. I will not put
those in the Record or read them. My reading of the five is that three
of them say we have to stay there and go forward and get it done in
roughly the way the administration is asking us to. Two are saying, no,
this is a quagmire; we should pull out now and walk away.
How do I summarize my history lesson this morning? History comes in
chunks bigger than 2-week periods. History comes in chunks bigger than
a news site. The history of the last century and this one tells me the
two Presidents Bush, in confronting Saddam Hussein in the way they
did--the first in reversing Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the second
one moving in to preserve the lives of Iraqi citizens being slaughtered
by a man with Hitlerian impulses, if not full Hitlerian power--acted
properly.
I am proud to have supported the second President Bush in his
decision to do that. I say this to many who are saying now that it
didn't go the way you said it would, so therefore we have to walk away
from it: Take a little time to read history and understand that things
never go as people propose they will, but ultimately those who make the
right decisions, for the right reasons, even if they have to make
adjustments--sometimes serious changes in the way they pursue those
decisions--are those to whom history gives the banner of having done
the right thing.
Exhibit 1
[From the Washington Post, Oct. 12, 2003]
Iraq in Review
A reader asks: ``When are you going to admit you were
wrong?'' We've received a number of such inquiries (not all
quite so polite) about our position on the war in Iraq,
particularly from readers who were disappointed in our prewar
stance. Now they cite several postwar surprises, or
ostensible surprises: the absence of weapons of mass
destruction, the absence of a proven connection between
Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda and the continuing violence in
Iraq. In light of these developments, it's important for
supporters of military intervention to look back and, where
necessary, reevaluate--something the Bush administration so
far has resisted.
We believe that there has been more progress in Iraq than
critics acknowledge, but also that the administration has
made serious mistakes. Before the war, we repeatedly urged
President Bush to plan postwar reconstruction more thoroughly
and to level with Congress and the American people about the
likely costs. We urged him to take the time to draw more
allies to the cause. Shortcomings in both cases have proved
highly damaging, as has the Pentagon's insistence on
monopolizing political control over Iraq.
Yet simply to blame the administration is not a full answer
to our readers. Taking the measure of the administration, of
Congress and of their likely ability to see this through was
a pre-war obligation, one of the factors in calculating risks
and benefits. Moreover, postwar troubles and surprises were
to be expected, even if they could not be precisely foretold.
It's fair to ask now whether those troubles and surprises are
so great as to prove the intervention unwise.
No matter how one answers that question, the critical
judgments now involve future policy. It is essential that the
United States do as much as possible to stabilize Iraq under
a peaceable, representative government. It seems to us that
opponents of the war ought to recognize, as some have, that
this mission could be critical to the fight against terrorism
and to the future of the Middle East. But insisting on doing
the right thing now does not excuse supporters of the war
from reexaming the judgments that led to this point.
Weapons of mass destruction. David Kay's 1,200-member
survey team has reported that Saddam Hussein's nuclear
program was ``rudimentary'' and that no large-scale
production of chemical weapons occurred in recent years. We
believed otherwise before the war, especially as regards
chemical weapons, as did most governments with intelligence
services. We have called on the Bush administration to
account for what increasingly look like failures in the
intelligence agencies' assessment of the Iraqi threat, as
well as misstatements in the public case made for the war.
The importance of this is hard to overstate: At issue is
whether Americans, and the world, can believe U.S.
intelligence on the activities of hostile, dangerous, but
hard-to-penetrate states like Iraq; and whether this
president can be trusted not to distort that intelligence in
pursuit of his own agenda.
But at issue also is whether the war should have been
fought. Don't we no know that Iraq posed no imminent threat
to the United States and that there was thus no need or legal
justification for an invasion? This question turns on the
phrase ``imminent threat,'' which was invoked before the war
by leading opponents of intervention, such as Sen. Carl M.
Levin (D-Mich). The Bush administration conveyed its own
sense of dramatic urgency, and that too is something it
should account for in light of what is now known. But we
argued that the threat from Saddam Hussein was not imminent
but cumulative: He had invaded his neighbors, used chemical
weapons and pursued biological and nuclear arms. He
threatened U.S. interests and security in a vital region and
would continue to do so as long as he was in power. A decade
of diplomacy, U.N. sanctions and no-fly-zone enforcement had
failed to end that threat. Instead the credibility of the
Security Council, along with constraints on the regime, had
steadily eroded.
The debate over intervention was fraught precisely because
many people understood that Saddam Hussein was not an
imminent danger. We argued nonetheless that the real risk lay
in allowing him to defy repeated U.N. disarmament orders,
including Resolution 1441, the ``final opportunity'' approved
by unanimous Security Council vote.
Though it pokes holes in U.S. intelligence and our
assumptions, Mr. Kay's report contains much to substantiate
this reasoning. Saddam Hussein, the report claims, never
abandoned his intention to produce biological, chemical and
nuclear arms--and he was aggressively defying Resolution
1441. He also was successfully deceiving U.N. inspectors.
They failed to discover multiple programs for developing
illegal long-range missiles as well as a clandestine network
of biological laboratories, among other things. From a legal
standpoint, the report shows that Iraq should have been
subject to the ``serious consequences'' specified by
Resolution 1441 in the event of noncompliance. More
important, it strongly suggests that in the absence of
intervention Iraq eventually would have shaken off the U.N.
inspectors and sanctions, allowing Saddam Hussein to
follow through on his intentions. He would have been able
to renew his attempt to dominate the region and its oil
supplies, while deterring the United States with the
threat of missiles topped with biological warheads. In
acting to enforce the U.N. resolution, the United States
eliminated a real, if not ``imminent,'' threat, while
ensuring that future Security Council ultimatums carry
some weight.
Saddam and al Qaeda. Mr. Bush and other administration
officials, particularly Vice President Cheney, exaggerated
the connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda and
implied without foundation that Saddam Hussein may have had
something to do with the attacks of 9/11. Critics add that
since the invasion, terrorists seem to have flocked to Iraq,
where the occupation has had to cope with a series of car and
suicide bombings. The terrorism is worrisome, though the
principal group behind it appears to be Ansar al-Islam, which
was based in northern Iraq before the war and whose leader
spent time in Saddam Hussein's Baghdad.
For our part, we never saw a connection between Iraq and 9/
11 or major collaboration between Saddam and al Qaeda. But we
did perceive a broader threat, in the sense that Saddam
Hussein had frequently collaborated with other terrorist
organizations and could be reasonably expected to continue
doing so.
[[Page S12485]]
When combined with his continuing pursuit of weapons of mass
destruction, that seemed to pose exactly the sort of threat
that the Bush administration rightly focused on as part of
the war on terrorism.
Continuing costs. The difficulty of rebuilding Iraq is
huge. The steady stream of U.S. dead and wounded is
agonizing. The strain on the U.S. military, its reserves and
the families at home is growing. But these developments,
while troubling, are not altogether surprising--except maybe
to those who believed the Bush administration's shallow
prewar rhetoric. The calculation on intervention required a
weighing of risks: the risk of allowing Saddam Hussein to
remain in power, defying U.N. demands, versus all the well-
articulated risks of intervention. Before the war, these were
frequently said to include starvation, an outpouring of
refugees, a fracturing of Iraq, a descent into ethnic
conflict or simple chaos. We believed that reconstruction
would be long, costly and risky, and we judged nonetheless
that intervention would be less risky than allowing Saddam
Hussein to remain in power.
Were we wrong? The honest answer is: We don't yet know. But
at this stage we continue to believe that the war was
justified and necessary, and that the gains so far have
outweighed the costs. Each of the 326 American servicemen and
women who have died in Iraq represents an irretrievable loss
for family and friends. But the nation already has reaped
great benefit from their sacrifice. One of the most
aggressive and brutal dictators in the history of the Middle
East has been eliminated, along with his proven programs to
acquire deadly weapons. Millions of Iraqis have been freed
from fear, and an opportunity has opened to bring much-needed
political change to a region that is the source of the
greatest security threats to the United States. Polls show a
sometimes grateful, sometimes grudging willingness by most
Iraqis to go along with U.S. plans for reconstruction.
Many Americans understandably have been surprised by the
continuing casualties months after the president's appearance
on an aircraft carrier under the banner ``Mission
Accomplished.'' Mr. Bush's abrupt submission last month of a
large and poorly explained spending request to Congress also
has strengthened public support for the idea that the Iraq
mission must be failing. Yet the president's missteps have
merely obscured the facts that these costs were inevitable,
and that outside of the Sunni towns where support for Saddam
Hussein was strongest, there is no quagmire--only a slow,
slogging progress forward.
Continued progress is far from guaranteed. In our view, the
administration could improve the odds of success by forging a
broader international coalition. For that to happen, the
administration must drop its insistence on monopolizing power
over Iraq's political transition, as well as the contracts
for reconstruction. It must compromise with those well-
meaning allies who want Iraq to succeed but disagree with
U.S. tactics.
Success or failure in the effort to stabilize Iraq under a
reasonably representative government that poses no threat to
the world will provide the ultimate answer to the question of
whether the war should have been undertaken. Because we
continue to believe that U.S. security is at stake, we also
believe that the United States must be prepared to dedicate
troops and financial resources to that goal until it is
achieved, even if it takes years. In our judgment success is
possible, but much will depend on whether the administration
and Congress face the magnitude of the challenge and summon
the political courage and diplomatic skills necessary to meet
it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). The Senator from Ohio is
recognized.
____________________