[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 65 (Tuesday, May 11, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H2780]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE WAR AGAINST THE TERRORISTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Chocola). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I have been watching television 
like all of my colleagues over the past few days and we are all very 
disappointed and disgruntled, upset, whatever one wants to call it, 
about the pictures that we have seen of prisoners in Iraq, and it is 
really tragic that those sorts of things happen in war. But we have had 
wars in the past where these things have happened. We had My Lai in 
Vietnam. We even had a problem in the Revolutionary War where other 
generals were calling for the resignation of George Washington because 
they had not won any victories because they had made so many mistakes. 
And of course they have Valley Forge. He crossed the Delaware, attacked 
the Hessians at Trenton, and he became a big hero, and we all know that 
he became the father of our country because of the successes of the 
Revolutionary War.
  There are tragedies in all wars, but what we must not lose sight of 
is we are in a world war against terrorists. Over 3,000 Americans lost 
their lives in the World Trade Center. We saw in Fallujah Americans 
being burned and dragged through the streets and hung up by terrorists. 
Just these last couple of days we saw an American, an innocent American 
civilian, who was just working over there, having his head cut off, and 
they said it was because of the pictures. The terrorists said it was 
because of the pictures that were shown about what happened in the 
prisons in Iraq. The fact of the matter is they have been perpetrating 
these terrorist acts on and on and on because they want to defeat us 
and our way of life. And we must not let that happen.
  And then I hear my colleagues criticizing the President and the 
Secretary of Defense over and over and over again saying, oh, my gosh, 
they are making mistakes; they should be doing this and that and the 
other thing. The fact of the matter is we do not need 535 would-be 
commander in chiefs. And that is what we see around here, people 
second-guessing everything that is going on.
  As a matter of fact, we are winning the war in Iraq. We are winning 
the war in Afghanistan. The terrorists are on the defensive. And we 
must not send any signals to them whatsoever that they have a chance to 
win this sort of thing. And that is what I am afraid many of my 
colleagues are doing.
  President Bush is doing a very good job. Donald Rumsfeld, as 
Secretary of Defense, is doing an outstanding job. And we need to stand 
with them and with our troops in the field and not be casting 
aspersions on every single thing that goes wrong over there. In war 
mistakes are made, and we are going to see more mistakes in this war. 
But we are winning it and we are going to win it as long as we have 
people like President Bush and Don Rumsfeld at the helm. And I hope my 
colleagues will think about that before they start shooting off their 
mouths in the future.

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