Congressional Record, Volume 150 Issue 82 (Tuesday, June 15, 2004)

[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 82 (Tuesday, June 15, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H4153-H4159]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

THE WAR ON TERROR

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Garrett of New Jersey). Under the
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from
Arizona (Mr. Franks) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of
the majority leader.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to be here
tonight. I am especially gratified at the presence of the gentleman
from California (Mr. Hunter), the distinguished chairman of the
Committee on Armed Services. I truly believe that there is not a finer
American in the Congress than the gentleman from California (Mr.
Hunter).
Mr. Speaker, as we begin to discuss some of the new events that are
taking place in Iraq, I thought it might be good to review some of the
circumstances that brought us there in the first place. Mr. Speaker,
with all of the discussion lately regarding the search for weapons of
mass destruction, regarding the Abu Ghraib prison issue, sometimes I
think we forget what our basic reason was for going into Iraq.
After September 11, this country recognized that it had entered into
a different age, and the wars that we fought in the past and the Cold
War we had an enemy that we recognized for who they were. We recognized
that they had a capability that was incredibly dangerous to the freedom
of the United States of America. We knew their capability, Mr. Speaker;
but we did not always know their intentions. And, Mr. Speaker, I submit
that even the basis of our defense at the time in the Cold War was
predicated to a great degree on our enemies' sanity. We believed that
they had enough respect for their own lives and enough commitment to
live that somehow our own offensive capability would deter an attack
from an enemy like the Soviet Union.
And, Mr. Speaker, I am sure that we would all like to have a better
philosophy than mutually assured destruction, but indeed that
philosophy kept us safe for a very long time. But, again, it was
predicated on the sanity of our enemy.
Today, Mr. Speaker, we recognize a different enemy. It is an
asymmetric enemy that no longer fits the traditional mode at all. We
now know the intention of our enemy very well. If September 11 did not
teach us that, then I suppose it is a lesson that will escape us
forever. If the circumstances regarding the brutal murder of Nick Berg
does not teach us the mindset and intention of our enemy, then again I
suppose that lesson will evade us. If the words of Osama bin Laden when
he said that ``obtaining nuclear weapons is our religious duty,'' if
that does not help us understand the gravity of the enemy we face, then
perhaps again it is a lesson that will evade us to our great peril.
Mr. Speaker, today with terrorism we face an enemy that has the worst
possible intentions for America and the worst possible intentions for
freedom. It is fundamentally critical that we interdict their
capability. And, Mr. Speaker, of all the reasons for us to have gone
into Iraq to free that country, one of the greatest is to interdict the
entire process that leads to the terrorist organizations throughout the
world.
Terrorists understand that better than anyone. Even now terrorists
come into Iraq on a regular basis to try to not only discourage
Americans from maintaining their commitment to freedom but to do
everything that they can to win the battle there in Iraq because they
know that if there is a beachhead of freedom built in Iraq, if we truly
can find freedom come to this nation, that it could begin to spread
throughout the entire Middle East region, and, Mr. Speaker, perhaps it
has the ability to turn the whole of humanity in a better direction.

{time} 1915

I truly believe that our choices are very simple: We either defeat
terrorists in Iraq on their own ground, or we continue to fight them
here.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is very important that we not only defeat
terrorists on the battlefield, but we have to understand that we need
to address the core rationale that spawned terrorism in the first
place, and that is a misguided religious hatred. If we fail to address
that and to win the battle of ideas, then we will be destined to fight
this battle over and over again.
Mr. Speaker, I think one of the things that gives me great hope along
those lines is the recent visit that I was privileged to have in Iraq,
privileged. I met with the Iraqi Governing Council. One of my great
concerns has been the kind of constitution that Iraq would finally end
up with.
You say, well, you know, isn't that just the new Iraqi government's
job to do that?
Mr. Speaker, it is important that the new Iraqi government maintains
the oversight of their constitution and builds the government for
themselves. But I really, truly believe that America has a tremendous
responsibility to help the newly freed, the newly liberated Nation of
Iraq, have the advantage of some of our experience.
It was not so long ago that young men in airplanes, with a misguided
religious fervor once again, flew their airplanes into ships, and
sometimes I wonder if we missed the connection there, that the same
misguided young men today are flying airplanes into buildings, and for
some of the same basic, twisted reasons.
When we fought with Japan, when we prevailed, we told Japan that they
should write their own constitution, and they did. They wrote three of
them. None of them had religious freedom or any truly basic bill of
rights in their constitution. So we recognized the importance of that,
and at that time we literally imposed that constitution.
We did not have to do that this time, Mr. Speaker. Now we have been
privileged to see an interim constitution in Iraq that has almost all
of the magnificent bill of rights that the U.S. Constitution has.
Let me just quote Alexander Hamilton to underscore the importance of
that. He said, ``If it be asked what is the most sacred duty and the
greatest source of our security in a republic, the answer would be an
inviolable respect for the Constitution and the laws, the first growing
out of the last. A sacred respect for the constitutional law is a vital
principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.''
Mr. Speaker, I have to say, I have been terribly concerned that
somehow once we liberated Iraq and withdrew, as we always do, we do not
continue to occupy a nation after we liberate it. I think it has been
said that the only piece of ground that the American soldier has ever
occupied for any length of time has been that little green patch of
grass under some Star of David or Cross of Calvary out on some foreign
battlefield cemetery.
Mr. Speaker, I pray that when we finally step away from Iraq that
they will have the kind of constitutional foundation that will give
them some of the same magnificent tools and hopes and dreams that
America has had, because I think it would be very arrogant on the part
of Americans to think we are smarter than everyone else. We have had a
wonderful blessing of a

[[Page H4154]]

foundational Constitution that gave us a pillar to build a republic
upon, and it has absolutely astounded the world in the 225-plus years
that we have been here.
Mr. Speaker, I just hope with all of my heart that the Iraqi people
and the Iraqi constitution that they now have remains in place, and I
have some hope for that, because as I met with some of the Iraqi
National Council they seemed to have caught the fever of freedom. It is
like the quote from Leonardo da Vinci. He says, ``Once you have tasted
flight, you shall thereafter walk the Earth with your face turned
skyward, for there you have been and there you long to return.''
I truly believe that now the Iraqi people have tasted freedom they
will hold on to this constitution.
I am reminded of the quote from Daniel Webster in our own country
about our own Constitution, and I think it bears repeating tonight. He
said, ``Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the republic
for which it stands, for miracles do not cluster, and what has happened
once in 6,000 years may never happen again. So hold on to the
Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fall, there will
be anarchy throughout the world.''
Mr. Speaker, indeed, the American Constitution was a miracle, and it
brought forth the greatest country in the history of humanity, and I am
just hopeful enough to believe that there is going to be a new miracle
in the Middle East, and somehow the constitution that is now in place
in Iraq will be something that will germinate in the hearts of new
Iraqi leaders as they take over, and we will some day look back on this
situation and realize that with all of the critiques and all of the
things that come against our President now, that we faced those
critiques before. Ronald Reagan certainly faced them, and yet now we
see him as one of the greatest heroes in human modernity. So I am
hopeful this freedom and miracle will repeat itself.
Now I am just honored, Mr. Speaker, to yield to the distinguished
chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, the gentleman from
California (Mr. Hunter), who I truly believe to be one of the greatest
Americans in this body.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I
think if he thinks I am one of the greatest Americans he may be in
trouble. But I want to commend the gentleman for his great service on
the Committee on Armed Services and all the work he has done on behalf
of people in uniform everywhere.
It is interesting. This is an interesting time in that we have had
several weeks of remembering a great President, Ronald Reagan, and at
the same time the criticism of our present President, George Bush, has
mounted severely.
I was looking over some anti-President quotes, anti-Republican
President quotes, and I thought I was reading some things about
President Bush, because, of course, you have these various groups that
have been put together, knit together, to come forth in the nature of
Henny Penny announce to us that the ski is falling in, particularly
with respect to foreign policy, and that we have got to get this guy
out of here; and we look at the credentials of the people who have said
it, and a few of them have marginally worked in Republican
administrations, but most of them came right out of the team on the
other side.
It was interesting, I was looking at some statements about a
President, and I had a couple of statements I thought bore repeating,
because they looked to me like they had been applied to President Bush
by his critics.
Here is a quote by a gentleman who is running for President. He said,
``The biggest defense buildup since World War II has not given us a
better defense. Americans feel more threatened by the prospect of war,
not less so, and our national priorities have become more and more
distorted as the share of our country's resources devoted to human
needs diminishes.''
I thought that was John Kerry talking about George Bush, but it is
not. It is John Kerry talking about Ronald Reagan. In fact, it looks to
me like they simply xeroxed this statement and put this out on the
latest ``sky is falling in'' report about the present President.
Here is another quote: ``The administration has no rational plan for
our military.'' You heard that one before? There is no plan. ``Instead,
it acts on misinformed assumptions about the strength of the enemy and
a presumed window of vulnerability, which we now know not to exist.''
I thought, well, doggone it, that is Senator Kerry and he is talking
again about George Bush. No, that is Senator Kerry talking about Ronald
Reagan back in the 1980s. Of course, the same Senator Kerry now thinks
that Ronald Reagan was actually quite a guy, and he said over the last
several weeks that he brought us together and was a great President.
Now, here is another one. This one is a little bit personal. ``You
roll out the President one time a day, one exposure to all you media,
no big in-depth inquiries, put him in his brown jacket and his blue
jeans, put him on a ranch, let him cock his head, give you a smile, it
looks like America is okay.''
I thought, there is John Kerry talking about George Bush down on the
ranch in Texas. No, it is John Kerry talking about Ronald Reagan down
on the ranch in California 20 years ago.
``The President certainly was never in combat. He may have believed
he was,'' this is another quote, ``but he never was. The fact is he
sent Americans off to die.''
I thought maybe that was John Kerry talking about George Bush. We
have heard a lot about that issue over the last 3 or 4 months. No, that
was John Kerry talking about Ronald Reagan.
Here is another quote: ``I am proud that I stood against the
President, not with him, when his intelligence agencies were abusing
the Constitution of the United States and when he was running an
illegal war.''
Once gene, I thought this was John Kerry talking about President
Bush. It is not. Twenty years ago, this was John Kerry talking about
Ronald Reagan.
After his first major political battle in the Senate over the
President's foreign policy, John Kerry said, ``I think it was a silly
and rather immature approach.''
I thought, well, doggone it, that has to be John Kerry talking about
George Bush's approach to Iraq. No, that is not. That is John Kerry
talking about Ronald Reagan's approach to our Central American
countries during the contra wars, 20 years ago.
Incidentally, it is interesting, that ``silly and immature approach''
that Senator Kerry talked about 20 years ago ended up and resulted in
Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador and Nicaragua all today being fragile
democracies; and, interestingly, Salvadorans are standing side-by-side
with Americans fighting for freedom in Iraq today. They are some of our
best soldiers. In fact, their people have shown absolute bravery on the
battlefield. And one time they were on the verge of being assimilated
or taken over by a communist-backed insurgency, a Russian backed
insurgency back in the 1980s.
It is interesting, what John Kerry called ``a silly and immature
approach'' resulted in fragile democracies coming around or springing
up in all those countries, which, before the Reagan administration had
been military dictatorships.
Now, here is another one. Mr. Kerry spoke at great length about the
President's abuse of the Constitution and totalitarian inclinations.
This must be him talking about the PATRIOT Act. ``They are literally
willing to put the Constitution at risk because they believe there is
somehow a higher order of things,'' maybe that is about Abu Ghraib,
``and the ends do in fact justify the means. That is the most Marxist,
totalitarian doctrine I have ever heard in my life.'' This is a quote
from John Kerry. ``You have done the very thing that James Madison and
others feared when they were struggling to put the Constitution
together, which was to create an unaccountable system with runaway
power running off against the will of the American people.''
Once again, I thought that must be Mr. Kerry talking about George
Bush. No, that was Mr. Kerry talking about Ronald Reagan, whom he now
reveres.
Interestingly, just a year or so ago, he likened his own criticism of
Ronald Reagan to George Bush. He said this, and this is about the
President. He says, ``They have managed him the same way they managed
Ronald

[[Page H4155]]

Reagan. They send him out to the press for one event a day. They put
him in a brown jacket and jeans and get him to move some hay and drive
a truck, and all of a sudden he is the Marlboro Man.''
He goes on. ``We have seen governors come to Washington, and they
don't have the experience in foreign policy and they get in trouble
pretty quick. Look at Ronald Reagan, look at Jimmy Carter, and now,
obviously, George Bush.''
So let me see. We had the former leaders of the free world talking
about Ronald Reagan the other day, Brian Mulroney, Maggie Thatcher,
talking about the hundreds of millions of people who were freed by the
Reagan doctrine of peace through strength. Those days when Ronald
Reagan strode out, took leadership of the free world, and when the
Russians ringed Western Europe with SS-20 missiles in an attempt to
intimidate our allies, the President started to move ground-launched
Cruise missiles and Pershing missiles into place in Europe, and the
Russians picked up the phone and said, can we talk?
But, of course, before they picked up the phone and said can we talk,
there were massive demonstrations in Europe, and liberals like Mr.
Kerry talked about the idea that somehow we had lost our leadership of
the free world. They called Ronald Reagan a cowboy. They said we need
to talk more. We need to get concessions from the Soviet Union.
And what happened? He met their strength with American strength, and
in the end we had arms reductions, and in the end Ronald Reagan
negotiated not just arms limitations, he negotiated the surrender and
the disassembly of the Soviet empire.

{time} 1930

Very interesting that we have got now this same collection of people
coming together and saying, well, they may have gotten it wrong with
Ronald Reagan 20 years ago; but by golly, this time they think they
have got it right with George Bush. And you can Xerox these quotes from
Mr. Kerry that he used 20 years ago against President Reagan and put
them in his speeches today against George Bush, President Bush; and
there is not a bit of difference.
Now let us go back to the facts. The facts are that when this country
was attacked, this President did what we all needed him to do. He moved
aggressively against terrorists; and in moving aggressively, we hunted
these guys down in places where they never thought we could get to
them. The Tenth Mountain Division soldiers killed them in rifle pits at
10,000 feet elevation in the mountains of Afghanistan, in those rugged
areas on the Pakistani border.
We went into Iraq and took out a dictator, who I guess, except for
Adolph Hitler, was the only dictator in the history of the world who
used poison gas to kill his own people. And those thousands of Kurdish
mothers laying on those hillsides holding their little babies killed in
mid-stride by that poison gas, according to today's liberals, was not
enough of a justification for the United States to change the
leadership of Iraq.
What have we done in Iraq? Well, we have occupied Iraq, and it truly
is an occupation and occupations are tough. They are tough on both the
occupied country, and they are also tough on the occupying country. And
if you do not think that is so, look at what happened after World War
II when we were occupying Germany and other parts of Europe, and you
had the presence of outsiders, Americans are great people, but
outsiders wearing very thin on the German populace, just as we wore
thin on dozens of countries simply because we were there, we were
outsiders; they knew we were going to leave after a while.
We had lots of writings, lots of editorials talking about how the
people who had come in and had their tanks strewn with flowers when
they liberated those areas now becoming somewhat of a guest who had
been there, who had overstayed their invitation and should move out.
Well, we all know that, and we all know that the stray artillery
round that accidentally hit civilians, the truck that is going too fast
that hurts livestock, the very presence of having outsiders in your
country is always wearing thin. But what is the alternative? The
alternative was Saddam Hussein and those thousands of Kurdish mothers
laying on the hillside killed by poison gas in mid-stride. And I would
just say to my friend, those pictures, and I keep them in my office and
I look at them on a regular basis, those pictures are as compelling as
anything that ever happened at Auschwitz. They are compelling,
compelling pictures.
So maybe that question the school kids ask, they ask their daddies,
``Daddy, if Hitler hadn't threatened the rest of us, would we have
stopped him from killing the Jewish community?'' Well, that is a pretty
profound question. That is a pretty tough question, because generally
speaking, the desire or the will to go to war manifested in a
declaration of war by an assembled Congress and the President is
usually justified based on the threat that a particular adversary has
toward you, toward your country.
But I can tell you this, that at least partially the reason that we
went into Iraq was because of those dead Kurdish mothers strewn out
across that hillside killed in mid-stride by poison gas. It was those
thousands of people who were taken in buses to the killing fields where
the backhoes worked all night digging the trenches, where the firing
squads that kept, according to the farmers, bankers' hours. They showed
up at nine o'clock. Would wait patiently for the buses full of
civilians, women, old men, children; and they would disembark from the
buses and line up dutifully along their trenches, and then Saddam
Hussein's gunners would walk down the line and in a very workmanlike
way would put bullets in the backs of their skulls, and they would be
bulldozed into the trenches and filled up.
One day the farmer said that the ammo people, the executioners, ran
out of ammo, and so they just bulldozed them in anyway. They found out
that kills them just as dead.
So what is that we replaced, and every American who has served in
Iraq, and there are 300,000 of them, incidentally, who have served in
Iraq, 16,000 bronze stars have been won. I would ask the gentleman to
pull that over. We might ask that that be noticed. That is one of 127
silver stars that have been awarded in combat operations to Gunnery
Sergeant Jeff Bohr, who happened to place his body between his wounded
people and the adversary until he himself was killed.
And, you know, as I was looking at the stuff about the Abu Ghraib
prison and the prison mess, which has dominated the media, I started to
look through some of these citations of bravery, and there are tons of
them. There are tons of brave, brave people who have sacrificed
everything, including giving that last full measure of devotion to this
cause.
And I want to say to them, what you have done, the purpose of what
you have done is of value. And the real meanness of the left, of these
operations, where they say, Well, we like the troops, we support the
troops, we do not support what they are doing, is to devalue and take
away meaning from the people that serve the cause of the American
military. What they did does have value. Every single person whose boot
has touched that sand of the Middle East who has served his country in
an honorable way has value to this country, and Gunny Sergeant Jeff
Bohr is just one of those people.
If my colleagues look through, there are literally dozens and dozens
of people, hundreds of people who have done heroic acts; some 16,000
Bronze Stars have been earned in that country. Yet, I saw all this
publicity about Abu Ghraib, because there is a couple of newspapers
driving that story. They want that story to stay alive, to the point
where The Washington Post had an article the other day and on the front
page I thought, boy, they are going to try to come out with something
really bad.

One of the bad things they cited was that the prisoners at Guantanamo
asked for sugar in their tea. These were suspected al Qaeda, some of
them, the people that ran those airplanes into our Twin Towers. These
people asked for sugar in their tea, and they were told by the cruel
American captors that it would be a long time before they got sugar in
their tea. The Washington Post, by golly, obviously thinks

[[Page H4156]]

that ought to be fixed real quick. The other thing they did not get was
DVDs for their religious ceremonies. So on the one hand, we have people
who drive planes into buildings and kill thousands of Americans; and on
the other hand, we have people who commit those acts who are treated in
general so well that one of their biggest complaints is that they do
not get sugar in their tea and they have only The Washington Post to
fight for their rights.
Now, I looked at the number of articles that The Washington Post did,
because I made the statement the other day where some people said,
well, that puts you out on a limb. I said that the biggest event,
military event in our history, the event upon which the freedom of our
world hung in the balance, and that was D-Day, the invasion of Normandy
when we were fighting the forces of Hitler, that day, that event, that
operation received in The Washington Post, in those days when The
Washington Post wrote a lot about our military operations, that
received some 57 articles in The Washington Post. We counted them up.
Now, if I have missed a couple, I want The Washington Post to set me
straight and send in the other articles, and we will sure put them in
our count. Fifty-seven articles The Washington Post printed about the
invasion of Normandy.
Now, on the other hand, The Washington Post likes the prison story
like the one they just printed about the prisoners not getting enough
sugar in their tea. They have printed twice as many articles about the
prison mess, about Abu Ghraib, 127 articles, and they are still going,
so it is not over yet. They have printed 127 articles about the prison
mess, twice as many articles as they printed about the most important
day, arguably, in the history of this country during the 20th century,
and that was D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, when thousands of ships
and thousands of airplanes and hundreds of thousands of fighting
Americans, including thousands who lost their lives, did everything
they could to win back freedom for the world.
So the invasion of Normandy, D-Day, had roughly half as much
importance to The Washington Post as the Abu Ghraib prison mess. I
think that is imbalanced. And I think it is time for us to refocus on
winning this war and, maybe more importantly, now that we have come to
the first phase of this hand-off, handing off this country to a new
government, a government that is led by people who are responsive to
their constituents, that means to the Iraqi people, with a military
that will respond to a civilian leadership; and maybe it will not be a
Jeffersonian democracy, and it will not have all of the complex
attributes that a country that has been free for hundreds of years has.
But, hopefully, it will be a country where the average guy has a
modicum of freedom and protection, like freedom of speech, freedom to
come and go, freedom to buy or sell, freedom to know that somebody is
not going to knock on your door in the middle of the night and take you
on a bus to the killing fields and dig a trench and execute you and
push you into it.
So, hopefully, we are going to turn this country over to a government
and a military, a new military that we are standing up, which will be
strong enough to back that government and be responsible to that
civilian government. And the United States, which is much chastened by
the rest of the world, just as Ronald Reagan was chastened by the rest
of the world when he took on the Soviet Union for them, and when he
freed literally hundreds of millions of people, all we are asking of
the people of Iraq is this: be free. Be nice to each other. Be
representative if you are in government. Be responsive to what your
people want. Be good to each other. Have a rule of law. Have a court
system that works. Have an education system that works. Have economic
opportunities so a guy with a good idea and a machine shop can make
some money. Very basic, simple things.
Arguing against that, of course, are our so-called allies who really
have not been our allies in many cases. The French, for example, are
not our allies. The French have, on occasion, been very strong, stood
strongly with the United States. Certainly they did when our people
were shedding our blood at Normandy. The French liked us then. We have
Mr. Lafayette gazing at us from his framed picture here on the House
floor. We sure remember him.
We remember those allies in those early days, and also in World War
II and, of course, the French have contingents fighting terrorism in
other areas. But the idea that the French would not agree with us to
get rid of a man who left all of those Kurdish mothers killed with
poison gas with their babies laying across that hillside, or gunning
down people in wholesale quantities and pushing them with bulldozers
into open graves, or taking people who he suspected of having done
things against the State and having their arms removed from them, that
prison, and having schoolchildren who wrote graffiti on the blackboard
``Saddam Hussein is a bad guy'' taken out, schoolchildren, and hanged
from the neck until they are dead, certainly the French would agree
with us that that is the kind of a government you want to change. And
certainly the Russians should agree with us that that is the kind of
government that you want to change.
Now, maybe they will not agree with us; maybe they do not agree with
us. I am just reminded that when we hit Mr. Qadhafi in the days when
Ronald Reagan was then called a cowboy by the left, hit Mr. Qadhafi in
those days when Qadhafi's agents have bombed Americans in Germany, a
terrorist act, and we flew a responsive aircraft, we flew our bomber
aircraft out of Heathrow in England, I remember Maggie Thatcher stood
with us. And when she stood with us, even a majority of the British
people were right on the bubble as to whether or not they should
support us because they thought this might bring trouble on them, but
Maggie Thatcher stood with us.
But when we flew over France with our bombing runs, we had to go
around France, because France, even then, did not like our actions, and
this particular action against a terrorist who I think they felt they
could deal with, Mr. Qadhafi, so they told our planes not to cross
their soil. That was not under George Bush; that was under Ronald
Reagan. Do my colleagues know what Ronald Reagan did? He flew those
planes right through the Gulf of Sidra and he flew a couple of cruise
missiles right down to meet Mr. Qadhafi and he changed his attitude.
Maybe that change of attitude is going to result in new openings in
Libya.
Other actions that Mr. Qadhafi has taken lately would indicate maybe
it is not. But the point is that that President stood strong against
lots of criticism back here from the left and lots of criticism from
allies like the French, but he did the right thing.

{time} 1945

This President is doing the right thing, and we are on the verge now
of making this hand-off. We are going to have elections in December. It
is going to be a rough, tough, difficult road. We drove that steel
column up through Baghdad very quickly and did it in what I think was a
historically effective manner.
This occupation is a tough occupation. It is always tough when you
have to provide a shield behind which a new government can knit itself
together and that is what we are having to do. We have to provide that
shield. That shield has vulnerability. When you are out there shielding
people, you have vulnerability just when we have seen when they bombed
U.S. headquarters; they have bombed hospitals; they have bombed lots of
places where people are doing good things but we will continue to
provide that shields until we make this hand-off.
I will just say one thing to the gentleman that we have learned in
these United States that freedom is not free. It is also not guaranteed
and freedom is not going to be guaranteed for the Iraqi people either.
We are going to give them their freedom and a running start. They will
have to have some grit to maintain that freedom. They have lots of
enemies in the neighborhood. I hope they make it because we put an
enormous investment, an investment like the gunnery sergeant who is in
that particular citation.
In fact, if the gentleman will look at that, is that for the Navy
Cross or the Silver Star?
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. That is a Silver Star.
Mr. HUNTER. There are lots of folks who have given a great deal, not
just

[[Page H4157]]

for our country, but for Iraq; and it is a very, very important thing
that the Iraqi people take hold and have discipline and have tenacity
and have toughness and grab hold of this idea of freedom and evolve
that idea, that policy, that desire into a Nation that can endure, that
will have a good relationship with the United States.
I thank the gentleman for taking out this time and I thank the
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo), who is just a great contributor
to these discussions for letting me talk about Iraq.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I thank the distinguished chairman. And it is
very difficult, as you know, to add much to the chairman's words
because he is so articulate and has such a command of the history and
just the heart and passion of what it is all about. I guess I would
only associate my own feelings with the way that the gentleman has
pointed out the heroism of our soldiers.
As it happens, just the Iraqi conflict about 3,700 soldiers have
received Purple Hearts, 4 Distinguished Service Crosses, 127 Silver
Stars, and 16,000 Bronze Stars and we had 7 that did bad things in the
Abu Ghraib prison.
I think it is a great reminder to those of us in the political
atmosphere that it is not those of us in this body that are the ones
that bought freedom, even though there are some of the veterans here,
but it is those who went out on the front lines and poured their blood
out on the battlefields that bought our freedom.
With that, I would like to yield to the distinguished gentleman from
Colorado (Mr. Tancredo).
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I also am impressed
by the words of our colleague from California. His observations, his
analysis, I think as always are incredibly insightful and important. I
wish every single American could have heard this discussion of the
history of our involvement, the political nature of the debate we are
having about our involvement and exactly what is at stake. Because I do
not think I have ever heard it put better and more succinctly.
The gentleman suggests that the issues that we are attempting to
pursue and are involved with in our efforts in Iraq are broad and
honorable and they are. His description of what it is we are trying to
accomplish, the kind of government we are trying to put in place in
Iraq is accurate. Also, his analysis of how difficult this is going to
be is important for us to focus on for a moment. And if we do not think
for a moment, if we do not think that what we are doing is right and
that, in fact, the seeds of democracy that we are attempting to implant
in that area of the world, a place, of course, where these seeds have
never been planted before, certainly never have sprouted before, if we
do not think that that is a threat to the rest of the world, the Arab
world especially, the fundamentalist Islamic world, then we should only
look to what is happening tonight.
As we speak here, reports are now coming through that the Iranians
are massing troops, perhaps four divisions, on the border with Iraq.
Their intentions we, of course, are not sure of but they are not good,
we are sure of that. Whether or not they are intending to move quickly
before some change of power occurs there or whether or not they intend
to, in fact, take advantage of what may be a chaotic situation at the
point that a change in power and authority occurs, we are not sure. But
they are there for a reason.

Much of the problem we are having in Iraq, much of the destruction,
much of the terrorist activity is as a result of Iranian aggression in
the area. They have, as you know, supported insurgencies in Iraq. They
have themselves supported both financially and morally the development
of the most extreme mosques and the most extreme Imams, pushing them
into Iraq and the Shia areas.
My own guess is that they are looking for an opportunity that as we
approach the time that we are going to turn over the government of Iraq
to the Iraqis this is a volatile and very precarious situation that
exists and they are going to make it even more volatile and even more
precarious. Why? What is their purpose? Again, we can only speculate
right now, the three of us here, I am sure there is a great deal more
information available to other people, certainly to the chairman, but
we at this point in time can only assume that they are afraid that it
will work, that Iran is afraid that what we are trying to do in Iraq
will work and that we will, indeed, create a democratic government, the
tentacles of which may spread throughout the area.
This is something that, in fact, they cannot abide. It is a threat to
their existence. It is true because it is a totalitarian dictatorship
that as we know now even the IAEA agrees that they are in the process
of developing a nuclear weapons program. Even the Europeans are now
saying, golly, there is something happening in Iran we have to be aware
of and concerned of. There is no doubt that the Iranians, that the
mullahs in Iran, in Tehran, are frightened by the prospects of freedom
in Iraq.
Again, what should that tell us about our own efforts and about
whether or not this policy is sound? There are, of course, Iranian
dissidents in the United States. There are folks who have been driven
out of Iran who are on the border now in Iraq. They are being protected
by the United States. I know that the Iranian government has demanded
many times that they be turned over to Iran, the dissidents that now
form the MEK. And although now the MEK in many respects, historically
speaking, we can be concerned about their actions, the fact is they are
pressing for a secular government in Iran, a government that would
allow freedom of religion, press, and speech. I worry of course about
their safety, the safety of the people in Iraq. I worry about our
willingness, what may be our willingness to surrender them. I hope that
does not occur. Because I hope they can be valuable, and I hope that as
they have been valuable allies over the last several years.
They are the ones that, as a matter of fact, have given us the
information, much of the information that we have, the reliable
information we have about Iraq's program of nuclear weapons
development. But it is important for us to realize that this fight is
enormous in its scope. It is not just for the security of Iraq and the
freedom of Iraq. It is for the security of the entire Middle East and
for the freedom of the entire Middle East. And this is the greatest
threat to fundamentalist Islam. Our existence, our way of life, what we
believe to be the way in which people can exist on this planet, that is
the threat that they face because they cannot coexist with that. A
totalitarian dictatorship, a theocracy of that nature cannot exist in a
modern world where people are allowed to make decisions about
themselves and about their creator and choose religions based upon
their consciences and not forced upon them by any authority.
This is not a world in which they can live, nor will they, and they
will fight and they will threaten and they will bluster. But it is an
indication to me that we are in fact doing what is right in Iraq. We
are creating an environment that is threatening to the rest of the
fundamentalist regimes in the area. This is an honorable goal on our
part, but it is worrisome to the extreme. We do not know what they will
do, nor what they have to do it with.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman for his remarks.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I just thank the gentleman for his very
astute analysis that there are no guarantees in this war against
terrorism and this is a central part of the war against terrorism.
It is interesting that we had America hit with these aircraft taken
over by terrorists, shocking Americans beyond their wildest nightmares
and in a way that no one could imagine just a few years ago. I think
that is going to be for this country, even Iraq aside, that is going to
be the pattern for the next many, many years.
We live in a new age. The age is terrorists with high technology. And
we had a Soviet Union which was big and strong and fielded literally in
the Warsaw Pact hundreds of divisions. It had a lot of might. It had
309 SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles, each of which had 10
warheads, each of which was about 30 times as powerful as the bomb that
hit Hiroshima. And they had those bombs and those missiles aimed at
American cities, and they had at times over the last 20, 30 years very
aggressive foreign policies. But they were fairly predictable, the
Soviet Union.
We certainly should not lapse into nostalgia for the Soviet Union
because

[[Page H4158]]

they were very much an evil empire. From where the sun now stands we
will have people excavating graves, many of them mass graves that were
caused by the Soviet Union, but this is a new era. This is an era of
terrorists with high technology, and it is an era that will see bad
people doing everything they can to leverage technology and to hurt
Americans and our allies in ways that go far beyond the scope of what
was possible just a few years ago. And just a usage of those American
aircraft that were taken over by the terrorists and the thousands of
people who were killed and hurt by those actions are representative of
what we can expect for the next 20 or 30 years.
We all breathed a sigh of relief when the Soviet Union went down. We
look forward to an era of peace. Unfortunately, we will only have an
era of peace if we have strength, and one thing that we will have to
have if that we dissembled in the days when liberals in this country
thought that it was not Marquis of Queensbury rules for us to have good
intelligence. We are going to have to have really good intelligence.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my very good friend, the gentleman from
Colorado (Mr. Tancredo), as he is leaving, because he is a gentleman
who is very astute and has spent a lot of time looking in depth at
these issues and knows a lot about security. He is not a member of our
Committee on Armed Services, but we wish he was. And I want to thank
the gentleman from Colorado.
Mr. Speaker, I wanted to ask my friend, the gentleman from Arizona
(Mr. Franks), who has done a great job on this Committee on Armed
Services, we put together this bill. We hope to get the other body to
get to work and get their bill done and get the thing finished and get
it to the President's desk. But I wanted to ask him what his
impressions are of where we stand in this war against terror. Because I
know he looks at it every day and I just say to the gentleman, you have
done a great job on the Committee on Armed Services.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman so much.
Ironically, I suppose it does not surprise the chairman that one of his
junior members would be largely in agreement with him related to the
circumstances that we face in this world.
I think that the terrorist circumstances today are just what the
gentleman said. We have the melding of being 60 years in the nuclear
age with this mindless terrorist element that has no regard for human
life, their own or others, and I think that is a recipe of the gravest
concern for the United States.
I am perhaps more concerned than anything else about a nation like
North Korea selling some type of nuclear weapon or weaponized anthrax
or other weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda. And I think that even
underscores further the importance of our presence in Iraq because in
so doing, we are keeping the terrorist organizations occupied and,
indeed, defeating them in the battlefields and breaking up that
network.

{time} 2000

Sometimes terrorists, it is a terrible way to analogize it, but
teenagers, if there is just one of them, do not get in a lot of
trouble, but when they get together, they figure out ways to really get
in trouble. I feel like that it is critically important for us to
continue to break up the organizational mechanism.
Mr. HUNTER. That is one thing this President has done in moving so
aggressively because lots of people cautioned him to hold back and wait
and delay; and by moving aggressively, he kept the terrorists off
balance. Many people have said, well, how come we have not had more
strikes and have not had more actions against Americans. Very simply,
when you have a meeting and a bomb-guided precision munition comes
through the window and blows up your meeting, it is pretty tough to
conspire to kill Americans, and the literally hundreds and hundreds of
bad guys have discovered that the Americans were able to find them in
places where they thought they were totally inviolate.
That is because of the aggressive posture against terrorism that this
President assumed. He did the right thing by doing that.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I think the chairman is exactly
accurate. The idea that a good defense is a good offense is certainly
not a new concept, but in this case it is extremely appropriate; and as
you say, when terrorists are meeting in a tent and a bomb flies in,
that can be a real distraction. It can really break up their approach,
and I just think it says a great deal for this President in
understanding the mindset of terrorists.
The terrorists here are not going to be redeemed, and they are not
going to turn over a new leaf or we are not going to be able to
negotiate with them. We have to defeat them in the purest terms for the
sake of the innocent people both in this country and other parts of the
world, and I think the chairman is exactly right.
I yield back to the gentleman.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I say one other thing to my good colleague.
I think I got the name wrong on Gunny Sergeant Jeffrey Bohr. I called
him Jeffrey Shore. That shows how good my eyes are after being here for
20 years or so. I just ask the gentleman, since we have got Gunny
Sergeant Bohr's citation up there and since the doggone media has
literally, with the 127 articles coming out of one newspaper alone
about the prison mess involving criminal acts by what so far have been
focused, been identified as seven people who have been recommended to
be bound over under article 32 of UCMJ for courts-martial, with all
that mess occurring and being so focused on by the media, that brave
people like those people who are out there fighting in the field for
our freedom are not being recognized. This gentleman did not get on the
front pages of any newspaper. It was more important to talk about a
detainee not getting sugar in his tea; but if the gentleman could read
that citation, I think as long as we put him up there, we better get it
right. I would ask the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks) to help me
out on this one. If you could read that citation, I think that would be
appreciated, hopefully, by the gentleman's family.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I would be honored to do so. This is on the
letterhead of the Secretary of the Navy in Washington, D.C., and it
starts:
``The President of the United States takes pride in presenting the
Silver Star posthumously to Gunnery Sergeant Jeffrey E. Bohr, Jr.,
United States Marine Corps, for service as set forth in the following.
``CITATION:
``For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the
enemy while serving as Company Gunnery Sergeant, Company A, 1st
Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 5, 1st Marine
Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force in support of Operation Iraqi
Freedom on 10 April 2003. With his company assigned the dangerous
mission of seizing a presidential palace in Baghdad and concerned that
logistical resupply might be slow in reaching his comrades once they
reached the objective, Gunnery Sergeant Bohr selflessly volunteered to
move in his two soft skinned vehicles with the company's main armored
convoy. While moving through narrow streets toward the objective, the
convoy took intense small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire.
Throughout this movement, Gunnery Sergeant Bohr delivered accurate,
effective fires on the enemy while encouraging his Marines and
supplying critical information to his company commander. When the lead
vehicles of the convoy reached a dead end and were subjected to enemy
fire, Gunnery Sergeant Bohr continued to boldly engage the enemy while
calmly maneuvering his Marines to safety. Upon learning of a wounded
Marine in a forward vehicle, Gunnery Sergeant Bohr immediately
coordinated medical treatment and evacuation. Moving to the position of
the injured Marine, Gunnery Sergeant Bohr continued to lay down a high
volume of suppressive fire, while simultaneously guiding the medical
evacuation vehicle, until he was mortally wounded by enemy fire. By his
bold leadership, wise judgment, and complete dedication to duty,
Gunnery Sergeant Bohr reflected great credit upon himself and upheld
the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval
Service.
``For the President, the Secretary of the Navy.''

[[Page H4159]]

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for reading
that citation and so we have laid out for Gunny Sergeant Bohr's family
at least publication of his service to our country and to our flag that
will never make the front page of The Washington Post because unless he
denies sugar for the tea of detainees at Guantanamo, he will not merit
that kind of attention; but we have literally, again, 16,000 Bronze
Stars were earned, and all those are not earned for valor. All Silver
Stars are earned for valor.
We have got a picture, and I would ask the gentleman if he could hold
that picture up. That is the picture of a GI giving some stuff to some
kids. That is the story of the American GI. The Marines right now, they
went up and got in battle at Fallujah, but you know what they brought
to Fallujah? They brought soccer balls to Fallujah because they wanted
to help people and to be good and American GIs are good to people.
I am reminded in the days when the liberals were talking about how
Vietnam hated us and just wanted us out and if we would just get out of
there, by golly, the Viet Cong and the MVA could create a people's
paradise. When the GIs left Vietnam, about half that country tried to
swim after us; and for years after that, they would get out and push
off in a leaky shrimp boat into the South China Sea, some of them to be
capsized and drowned, a few of them to make refugee camps like the one
in Hong Kong.
I am kind of reminded of Senator Kerry, meeting in Paris with the
North Vietnamese leaders must have felt strongly they were on the right
side of this thing. I am reminded that when those people pushed off in
those leaky shrimp boats and got to Hong Kong and later were forcibly
repatriated to what was described as the People's Paradise of Communist
Vietnam, if you look at the photographs of those refugees being taken
back to so-called people's paradise, you will notice that many of them
were shrieking and crying and holding on to the chain link of the
detaining facility. They had to be sedated and forcibly removed from
that squalid refugee camp because that squalid refugee camp in Hong
Kong meant one thing to them that they would never see in Vietnam. It
meant freedom, and that is the real story of the American presence in
Vietnam.

It is also the story of the American presence in Tokyo. After World
War II, we had the capability of doing anything we wanted to the
Japanese people, and the warlords of Japan told their people to expect
us to be as bad to them as they had been to the rest of the world, when
they raped and killed over 100,000 people in Manking, China; when they
beheaded many of our American captives; killed a third of our POWs. Yet
American GIs walked down the streets of Tokyo and handed out Hershey
bars to the kids, and there were almost no incidents of mistreatment of
civilians by Americans.
Once again, if you take that drop in the bucket, that one group of
people that did wrong at Abu Ghraib and match them against the 300,000
GIs who did right, it should not dominate 127 articles out of one paper
alone. So I thank my friend for letting me ramble on here. I think we
have had a good discussion. I would like to hear his closing thoughts.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I just would be grateful to
listen to your rambling at anytime. I think you so poignantly expressed
the nobility of the American soldier. They are the most noble fighting
force in the world. There is a verse that says, Greater love hath no
man than this, than man lay down his life for his friends, and I am
certain of what the American soldier has done.
I find it kind of interesting as a closing thought that one of the
members of the Iraq Governing Council and leader of Iraq's Assyrian
Democratic Movement that visited here, his name is Younadem Kana, and
he came to America and these were his words about our American soldiers
in a sense. They are really to all of us.
He said: ``We are calling on America not to stop; to go on with us on
this blessed mission, which the Iraqi people will never forget: this
blessed mission of liberation, of democracy, and of freedom.''
``The Iraqi people are free now,'' Kana proclaims. ``For first time
in the history of Iraq, for the first time in 14 centuries, our
neighbors, and the majority of people today, recognize us and
acknowledge us. We are all together on the Governing Council, and the
cabinet; our rights are guaranteed under the fundamental law.
``We appreciate the losses of the United States of those 700 victims,
martyrs we call them, who shed their blood on Iraqi soil. But compare
the losses in 1 year of fighting terrorism to the roughly 3,000 people
terrorism killed in America in 2 minutes. Think of the $84 billion lost
in those 2 minutes, and compare that to the financial cost in Iraq. You
have to make these comparisons, and then choose whether to fight the
terrorists in the Middle East and keep yourselves safe, or to fight
terrorism here, in your own home.''
Then he says, ``I am at risk all of the time. But this is the price
of freedom.''
Our soldiers have certainly taught us the price of freedom.

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