[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 155 (Thursday, October 30, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2160-E2161]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   EXPRESSING GRATITUDE TO MEMBERS OF U.S. ARMED FORCES DEPLOYED IN 
               OPERATION RESTORE HOPE IN SOMALIA IN 1993

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON-LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, October 28, 2003

  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Con. 
Res. 291 to offer my gratitude, for myself and on behalf of the 
constituents of the 18th Congressional District, to the soldiers who 
fell and who served our country in ``Operation Restore Hope.''
  ``Operation Restore Hope'' was a 1993 United Nations peacekeeping 
venture to restore order in the East African country of Somalia, 
characterized by its nomadic society. The Operation was launched with 
guarded optimism but went tragically awry on Oct. 3, 1993 when 18 U.S. 
soldiers were killed in a firefight with Somali gunmen. A decade later, 
the Bush Administration now contemplates taking military action against 
alleged terrorist groups in Somalia who might have been responsible for 
the tragedy.
  Man-made famine prompted the massive foreign intervention in Somalia. 
This famine was caused by a drought made murderous by a civil war that 
sent gunmen across the country's most fertile agricultural areas. At 
the famine's peak, more than 300 people starved to death each day in 
hard-hit towns like Baidoa and Baardheere because militia fighters 
first disrupted the lives of herdsmen and farmers, then stole the food 
aid sent to relieve their suffering. Throughout the worst of the 
crisis, gun-toting young militiamen looted most of the relief food as 
spoils of war or blocked its entry into the country through port cities 
by demanding extortionate amounts from aid ships waiting to dock. In 
order to break the famine in Somalia, we had to break the stranglehold 
of the gunmen and allow aid to flow unimpeded.

[[Page E2161]]

The 100 elite U.S. infantrymen, who tried to capture and defeat a 
Somali warlord in his home, suffered 70 percent casualties--a figure 
sadly compared to a 1965 massacre in Vietnam's la Drang Valley. So 
badly pinned down were the Americans in Mogadishu that they could not 
evacuate their wounded, including Ranger commander Lt. Col. Danny 
McKnight, for nine hours. The biggest problem in that situation was the 
thousands of young men floating around the country laying in wait for 
our American troops.
  Since then President George Bush ordered more than 25,000 U.S. troops 
to intervene in Somalia in December 1992 to help stop deaths from 
starvation, exacerbated by clan warfare, 30 Americans died in combat 
and 175 were wounded. There also were six non-combat deaths, and seven 
soldiers were killed and one missing off the Kenyan coast in a crash 
this month of an AC-130 Specter gunship. In addition, about 68 U.N. 
soldiers were killed and 262 wounded, according to U.N. figures, making 
this the bloodiest peacekeeping operation since the Congo crisis three 
decades ago.

  This situation is similar to that experienced by our troops today in 
Iraq. I visited the As-Sayliyah Central Command Base in Doha, Qatar on 
October 13, 2003 and heard the concerns of the troops from their own 
mouths. Leaders of the units keep a warm smile and upbeat attitude to 
keep their troops feeling positive despite the compound feeling of 
homesickness due to the failure of our government to timely relieve 
them and the feeling of vulnerability due to the lack of a sufficient 
number of trained MP's. I heard testimony about how a ground soldier 
watched his partner and the operator of a military vehicle get tossed 
out as the vehicle was thrown airborne by a land mine. ``Why did you 
hit this mine,'' I asked. ``It was just one of those mines that was 
missed in the sweep . . .,'' said the soldier. Because there isn't 
enough personnel or specialists to assign to technical tasks, unskilled 
or untrained technicians frequently get asked to do jobs that they have 
not mastered enough to guarantee the lives of those who must traverse 
the sands of Baghdad. He misses his wife and newborn baby dearly. 
Because there hasn't been a change in the personnel on the front lines 
in several months, many reservists and active duty servicemen and women 
have spent a longer time in Iraq than was promised by the 
Administration. May 1, 2003 was supposed to have been a day of hope and 
homecoming; instead, it was a sham. Some of these troops feel like 
``sitting ducks'' out in the foreign terrain. They don't speak Arabic. 
They don't know Tikrit like they know their hometowns. When I asked 
them if they have seen any troops of other coalition nations, they 
responded, ``what coalition troops?'' They need support and they need 
continuous relief.
  Many of the vulnerabilities that led to the death of the 18 soldiers 
in ``Operation Restore Hope'' affect our troops in ``Operation Iraqi 
Freedom.'' I value the service that our troops of ``Operation Restore 
Hope'' provided, and I am honored to support this important legislation 
to commemorate them.

                          ____________________