[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 49 (Thursday, April 8, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3963-S3964]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               TERRORISM

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, there is no question the terrorists 
are at war with us. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly apparent 
in Washington we are at war with each other.
  The September 11 Commission is holding hearings right now. It has an 
admirable goal of investigating the reasons that our immigration, 
intelligence, law enforcement, military, and legal systems failed to 
prevent 19 Islamic radicals from hijacking planes and using them as 
weapons of terror so we can prevent such lapses in the future.
  Already the Bush administration and Congress have acted to reform 
numerous agencies and procedures to deter and to prevent future 
terrorist attacks on our country. What have we done? We have responded 
to terrorism vigorously by attacking the terrorists where they live and 
confronting the regimes that support them, rather than by lobbing a few 
cruise missiles at an empty desert tent.
  We created the Department of Homeland Security to put all domestic 
security agencies under one roof. We overwhelmingly passed the USA 
PATRIOT Act which provides law enforcement agencies the tools they need 
to monitor, apprehend, and convict terrorists. We have cracked down on 
terrorists' financing at home and abroad by shuttering sham charities 
that fund terror and by freezing terrorists' assets. We have 
streamlined and reformed the intelligence agencies and are working to 
improve coordination among the many agencies responsible for protecting 
America.
  Hopefully, the Commission will identify additional methods to improve 
U.S. security, but forgive me for not being terribly optimistic. I fear 
the Commission has lost sight of its goal and has become a political 
casualty of the electoral hunting season.

  Sadly, the Commission's public hearings have allowed those with 
political axes to grind, such as Richard Clarke, to play shamelessly to 
the partisan gallery of liberal special interests seeking to bring down 
the President. These special interest groups have undeniably exploited 
the Commission for political gain. Moveon.org, for example, the ultra 
liberal organization that opposed America's liberation of both Iraq and 
Afghanistan--Moveon.org opposed the liberation of Afghanistan as well 
as Iraq--is funding TV ads that use Clarke's voice to accuse President 
Bush of not doing enough to stop terrorism. Moveon.org will launch a 
$200,000 ad campaign that restates this claim during CNN's coverage of 
Dr. Rice's testimony before the Commission this morning.
  Clarke himself, publicly and under oath, has said he believes that 
even had the President implemented every single one of the suggestions 
he made to the President when he came into office, we would still not 
have been able to prevent the September 11 attacks. Let's take a look 
at that again. Mr. Clarke himself has said that even if President Bush 
had done everything he recommended to the President, we could not have 
prevented the September 11 attacks.
  Before deciding to profit from his revisionist history, Clarke argues 
persuasively that President Bush's policy to combat terrorism was more 
aggressive than that of his predecessor. Clarke noted that President 
Bush expressed frustration with the previous policy of ``swatting at 
flies'' and that the President authorized a fivefold increase for 
covert operations against terrorists in Afghanistan.
  The Washington blame game has distracted us from the important task 
at hand: Winning the war against the terrorists. The only entity 
responsible for September 11 was al-Qaida. We need a real debate in 
America about how to prosecute the war against terrorism because there 
are two fundamentally different schools of thought about how to win 
this war, two fundamentally different philosophies about how to win 
this war.
  On the one hand, there are the President's critics who define 
terrorism so narrowly as to include only the terrorists directly 
responsible for September 11, and not the many other terrorist groups 
currently plotting attacks against America and her allies. They believe 
this war can be fought under the auspices of the U.N., if only America 
would yield to the French or the Russians or the Chinese. They are 
unwilling to act alone when others refuse to confront by force those 
who choose death over life and violence over peace.
  On the other hand, there are those who believe that al-Qaida is 
merely one head of the hydra and that to kill the beast of terrorism 
you must drain the swamp in which the beast lives and the terrorists 
thrive. We have done that in Afghanistan, we are doing that in Iraq, 
and we must do it everywhere terrorism thrives.

[[Page S3964]]

  Some critics, such as the junior Senator from Massachusetts, have 
argued that the war in Iraq is a distraction and that the global war on 
terrorism has actually been set back as a result of draining the swamp 
in Iraq. Senator Kerry's reversal on Iraq was wrong and his refusal to 
support $87 billion for U.S. troops for reconstruction in Iraq and 
Afghanistan stands as a stark rebuttal to President John F. Kennedy's 
call to ``pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support 
any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success 
of liberty.''

  This war is not an isolated fight against al-Qaida but a global 
competition with a shadowy evil that lurks on every continent. It is a 
fight against the very enemies of freedom. We must never ever shrink 
from that fight. Terrorists do not reside in Afghanistan alone. It 
would be dangerously irresponsible to focus single-mindedly on al-Qaida 
while neglecting the other real threats facing our Nation. There is no 
doubt that terrorists reside in Iraq. We see evidence of this fact 
every single day on television.
  Those who claim that Iraq is a distraction in the war against 
terrorism have very short memories, conveniently short memories. They 
have already forgotten that the Clinton administration State Department 
listed Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism--that is the Clinton 
administration: Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism--and that Saddam 
Hussein provided safe haven to international terrorists. We all know he 
made cash payments to families of suicide bombers among Palestinians.
  Now the terrorists are currently making a desperate stand to prevent 
the establishment of an oasis of freedom in the heart of the Middle 
East. If we fail to eradicate the terrorists in Iraq, we will fail to 
defeat terrorism anywhere.
  Waffling on our commitment to Iraq would convince the terrorists that 
America is little more than a paper tiger, and it would undermine our 
global efforts to deter other rogue states, such as Iraq and North 
Korea, from supporting terrorism.
  We must not allow Iraq to become another Somalia. Going home early is 
the surest way to embolden the terrorists and to ensure the failure of 
our efforts to bring peace and security to the Middle East.
  It was said the other day that Iraq is Bush's Vietnam. Nothing could 
be further from the truth. It may be Japan or Germany or Korea, but it 
is not Vietnam. We face lingering threats and challenges in those 
conflicts, but by staying the course we heralded in decades of freedom 
and prosperity in places such as Japan, Germany, and Korea. That is 
what will be done in Iraq.
  Victory in Iraq is now central to our war against terrorism, and not 
only because it is preferable to fighting terrorists in Iraq rather 
than in New York. A free Iraq represents a mortal blow to the 
terrorists' goal of a radicalized Middle East.
  Until you change the politics of the Middle East, Islamic 
fundamentalists are going to keep trying to kill Americans, and not 
even the best defenses will be able to prevent every conceivable attack 
against us here at home.
  Establishing a democratic and economic beachhead in the backyard of 
radical Islam is itself a major success in the war against terrorism. 
Indeed, that is precisely why foreign terrorists are so committed to 
preventing the Iraqis from building a democracy in the heart of the 
Middle East.
  The war against terrorism must be fought outside of Afghanistan, and 
it must continue after bin Laden is dead or behind bars; otherwise, we 
will find ourselves as vulnerable as we were on September 10. We cannot 
keep America safe by distinguishing between terrorists who have 
attacked us and terrorists who want to attack us.
  In conclusion, I close with a quote from Michael Kelly, who died a 
year ago in Iraq while covering the war from the tip of the spear as an 
embedded journalist with the Third Infantry Division. He wrote in 
February before our liberation of Iraq about our cause in Iraq and the 
challenges we would face. Here is what Michael Kelly had to say:

       There is risk; and if things go terribly wrong it is a risk 
     that could result in terrible suffering. But that is an 
     equation that is present in any just war, and in this case 
     any rational expectation has to consider the probable cost to 
     humanity to be low and the probable benefit to be tremendous. 
     To choose perpetuation of tyranny over rescue from tyranny, 
     where rescue may be achieved, is immoral.

  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  The Senator from Nevada.

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