Congressional Record, Volume 150 Issue 100 (Monday, July 19, 2004)

[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 100 (Monday, July 19, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H5964-H5969]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

REGARDING NATIONAL SECURITY PRIORITIES AND THE REAL WAR ON TERROR

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hensarling). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr.
Skelton) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I am joined this evening by a number of
colleagues interested in the safety of America and Americans, and
concerned about the future of our military forces. We are speaking this
evening because we have great reservations about the way America's
national security policy is being conducted.
Sixty years ago next month, the American Army was welcomed into Paris
with cheers and flowers and cries of ``Vive les Americains!'' We had
fought a dogged and grueling war against the forces of a cruel
dictator. And from every window and rooftop, a liberated populace
honored the foreigners who restored their freedom.
Move forward 60 years to another war, another dictator, another
country freed. To be sure, many Iraqis welcomed the American invasion
and, for all the talk of coalition, this was an overwhelmingly American
force. But those who welcomed our forces found they had to keep their
voices low lest they become targets of those who rewarded their
liberators with bombs and bullets.
We should not accept the appearance of an ungrateful Nation at face
value. But neither should we idealize the occupation of Iraq.
It is increasingly clear that at a time when America should have
focused its might on punishing those who, callously and in defiance of
any known theology, attacked our country, and eliminating the threat
they continued to pose, we allowed ourselves, Mr. Speaker, to be
diverted.
What we see on TV every night is not the war on terror. The war in
Iraq; really, now, the peacekeeping mission in Iraq, is costly and
bloody and largely irrelevant. Was Saddam Hussein unpleasant? Yes. Did
he bode U.S. ill? Without a doubt. But going to war against Saddam
Hussein, taking people and resources away from the search for Osama bin
Laden and the destruction of al Qaeda, is like the football defense
that goes after the runner while the quarterback sneaks the ball across
the goal line. We fell for the fake.
The real war on terror is the war to find and punish those who
attacked this country and who would do so again. After nearly 3 years,
their networks have been shattered, their organization has been
bruised. But destroying such a strong and such a decentralized threat
is very difficult. Any one man with a weapon of mass destruction is a
superpower. The best we can do, militarily anyway, is to contain and
keep the leadership incommunicado or on the run. That is the real war.
Is America safer with Saddam Hussein out of power? Probably. But is
America safer because of the Iraq war? No, it is not. Because of the
way we entered that war and the way in which we have handled the
aftermath, I believe that we have increased the chances of another
attack and, sadly, another war. We have incited the anger of millions
who previously did not much like the United States, but probably would
have been willing to live and let live. We have become the villain of
millions of glittering eyes, and we did it to ourselves.
At the same time, we drove away stalwart friends whose company
provided us with such strength. By forcing a political showdown on Iraq
rather than focusing on the real war, the proven threat to all western
civilization, we made our allies choose between the will of their
people on the one hand and the relationship with the United States on
the other, and it was unnecessary.
After September 11, the leaders of countless nations expressed their
support to our President. Not one, not one called to gloat or said that
we deserved what we got. NATO invoked Article 5 for the first time ever
to come to the collective defense of the United States. They were all
on our side, in the real war.
We chose to defy the will of the international community and take it
upon ourselves to unilaterally enforce sanctions that were not solely
America's to begin with. The Canadian Mounties cannot come to
Lexington, Missouri to enforce Missouri law; that is the duty of the
State of Missouri. Similarly, I do not believe it was right for the
United States to act to enforce edicts that were not of our creation.
That is why the United Nations was created. By taking it upon ourselves
to literally become the world's policeman, we changed the view that
many of our allies had of us. We became, in their view, not just a
victim of a vicious attack, but a potential attacker ourselves.
Let me be candid, Mr. Speaker. I and some of those who will speak
later voted to give the President the authority to move Saddam Hussein
out. We did that based on the information at the time, much of which
has since fallen into question. The former Vice Chief of Staff of the
Army, General Jack Keane, told the Committee on Armed Services last
week, ``We were seduced by the Iraqi exiles.''

{time} 2145

But regardless of underlying data, nowhere in our votes did we say to
go it alone. Never did we say that Iraq should take focus away from the
real war. At the same time, I twice wrote to the President and pointed
out that ejecting Saddam is one thing, but we have to plan to manage
the aftermath. That clearly did not happen.
The peace has been managed far worse than the war, and it has been
argued that the United States invasion was justified as an act of self-
defense. Indeed, this administration changed the national security
policy of our country to assert the right of the United States to
preemptively attack anywhere we believe there might be a threat to our
Nation.
We have debated, and I am sure we will continue to debate, whether
the

[[Page H5965]]

policy of preemption is wise or in keeping with American values. But
this much is clear. In order to preempt, in order to become an
aggressor, in order to throw the first punch, we had better have clear,
convincing and accurate intelligence that a real threat exists.
As we are seeing in the case of Iraq, our intelligence system is not
yet ready to meet that standard. Until it is, a doctrine of preemption
puts America in the black hat before the world. Whatever happened to
the Weinberger doctrine? Whatever happened to the Powell doctrine?
Mr. Speaker, if a global black eye were the only consequence of our
Iraqi adventure, it might be manageable. We could live with it. But to
do that and to take energy and focus from finding the true villains of
September the 11 and to enter into a war that was not clearly necessary
and to strain local economies by calling up reserves, National Guard
and even retired military to serve in that war and to drive a wedge in
the alliance that kept peace for 60 years and to engage in a bloody and
costly occupation and to stretch the American military forces to the
breaking point and ultimately to inflame new generations to hate
America, with all of that, I cannot see how America is in the end safer
or better off because of this war.
The Soviet Union tried to put America in this strategic situation for
half a century. We did it to ourselves in just a year. On top of that,
we have created a huge new burden for America's military. I recently
wrote that we could have forces in Iraq for 50 years. When I asked the
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz whether we would be in Iraq
for a good many years, he said this is entirely possible, and he added,
``I cannot tell you how long that's going to take.''
I and many who stand with me have tried to be supportive of our
President and our policies. We stand foresquare with the troops under
fire and grieve for the families of those who have been lost, who, Mr.
Speaker, come disproportionately from rural America. We stand with
them. We cannot stand with the failure to prosecute the real war
against those who attacked and continue to threaten our country. We do
not oppose having a strong military, and we do not oppose using it, but
we do oppose squandering it.
That is a question of priorities. Over $10 billion just this year on
missile defense. Is the threat of foreign missiles the most serious one
facing our country? Remember, this is not a defense against weapons of
mass destruction. Those can be delivered in many ways. Missile defense
addresses the delivery system with the highest cost and the lowest
probability of being used against us. So why is it there that we spend
the most?
The administration is devoting hundreds of millions a year to develop
fighter planes that push the envelope of technology and knowledge, bold
innovation, the edge, but the true threats to our country from people
who have no fighter airplanes, have no aircraft carriers and have no
satellites.
The war against terror is door to door and manpower-intensive, so
spending all this money on other items should make us ask, where are
our priorities?
Soldiers make the war on terrorism work, more than any doctrine or
any system. Yet, the most personnel-intensive services, the army and
the Marine Corps, are last in line for funding from the Defense
Department. Where are our priorities? Why, Mr. Speaker, are we not
throwing America's might into the real war?
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes).
Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and let
me say, Mr. Speaker, that I associate myself with his comments. As a
member of Congress, a veteran who has been to Iraq five times and have
sat many, many times across from our men and women in uniform, as they
look into our eyes and they show not just their commitment and their
professionalism but their trust in us to do the right thing, and
sometimes I wonder if we are not betraying our obligations of doing the
right thing for them.
So tonight, Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about an issue that is
vitally important to our country and to the men and women that are
fighting and defending our freedoms in Iraq, Afghanistan and other
parts of the world.

Mr. Speaker, time and again attempts by this House to acquire
documents related to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal have been
defeated, largely on party line votes. During consideration of the
intelligence authorization bill, I offered an amendment, both in
committee markup and on the floor of this House, to require the
Department of Defense to turn over documents related to the handling
and the treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and
elsewhere, including those documents that would come from the Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence and documents that had been already
asked for, not just by our Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
but by other committees in this House.
Both of these attempts, attempts to find answers to the questions
that all Americans are asking and that all Americans are expecting us
to answer, have failed, again, largely on party line votes.
Last Thursday the House Committee on Armed Services met to mark up H.
Res. 689 and H. Con. Res. 472, two resolutions that are a direct result
of the prisoner abuse scandal. H. Res. 689 would require the Secretary
of Defense, the Secretary of the State and the Attorney General to
transmit to the House information produced in connection with the
investigations into allegations of abuse against prisoners and
detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba.
Unfortunately and disappointingly, the committee ordered that this
resolution be reported to the House with an adverse recommendation.
This is the second time in less than two months that the House
Committee on Armed Services has failed to order the production of
documents that could assist this committee in understanding and working
towards a resolution of the prisoner abuse scandal.
In June the committee adversely reported H. Res. 640, a bill that
sought documents associated with the investigation by Army Major
General Antonio Taguba into the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq. I am deeply disappointed in this committee and at the partisan
politics that are keeping America from learning the truth about what
happened at Abu Ghraib.
Instead of supporting this fact-seeking resolution last week,
Republicans on the House Committee on Armed Services preferred H. Con.
Res. 472, a resolution expressing the sense of Congress that the
apprehension, detention and interrogation of terrorists are fundamental
elements in the successful prosecution of the global war on terrorism,
and that the protection of the lives of the United States citizens at
home and abroad.
Fundamentally, this resolution is mired in a lot of partisanship and
may ultimately hurt our men and women in uniform. I am deeply concerned
about the unintended consequences that could result from the adoption
of such a resolution.
By effectively absolving ourselves from adhering to the Geneva
Conventions and instead following our own standards of ``humane
treatment for those in our custody,'' we open the doors for the rest of
the world to do the same to our own troops.
In the words of former prisoner of war, the Nation's first ambassador
to Vietnam and past Congressman Pete Peterson, ``I know what life in a
foreign prison is like. To a large degree, I credit the Geneva
Conventions for my survival. While the Vietnamese rarely abided by the
rules, the international pressure on them to do so forced them to walk
a fine line that ensured that they not perpetrate the sort of shocking
abuses at Abu Ghraib.''
It is imperative, Mr. Speaker, that we live to the same standard that
we expect other nations to abide by in the horrific event that they
capture our soldiers. I am disappointed that the Republicans on the
House Committee on Armed Services would prefer to have this resolution
passed through our committee in the House rather than a resolution
seeking the truth about what occurred at Abu Ghraib.
While we eventually voted to postpone marking up this resolution, the
committee, however, is scheduled to take it up again this week. I hope
that before then our colleagues will see the grave dangers that lie in
insisting on

[[Page H5966]]

dismissing such behavior and not blaming it just on a handful of
soldiers but instead recognizing it for what it is, a failure of our
system and our failure on this committee and in this House to do our
oversight responsibilities.
Mr. Speaker, I stand here tonight as a concerned American, a
concerned Member of Congress, and I join my colleague from Missouri in
asking our colleagues to do everything that we can to exercise our
oversight responsibilities. It is the right thing to do. It is what our
men and women in uniform expect us to do as they sit across the table
from us in places such as Tikrit, Mosul and other parts of faraway
lands. They trust us. We cannot fail them.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee
(Mr. Cooper).
Mr. COOPER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from
Missouri, for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I think that the entire House of Representatives knows
that our ranking member (Mr. Skelton), who there is not a more
patriotic individual, there is nobody in this body who is for a
stronger defense, and I think our ranking member has two of his sons
serving in the United States military right now. It is just an example
of the great military tradition in his family. And the ranking member
as a student of history has very insightful questions that he asks at
hearings, and his questioning of General Jack Keane the other day was
just an example of that.
And I was struck by General Keane's testimony, when he said that if
we had to put it in graphic terms, the prewar planning in Iraq was
about like this, more or less a bucket full, a large bucket full, but
the postwar planning in Iraq was more like this, more like a thimble
full. And our ranking member has quoted General Keane when he said that
he felt almost that he had been seduced by the Iraqi expatriates into
believing that the postwar situation would be easy, friendly, we would
be greeted as liberators, not as occupiers.
The two issues that I would like to bring up tonight have to do with
the troop commitment that Tennessee is making, yet again. We are the
Volunteer State and the most recent group of reservists and guardsmen
to be called up. The 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment, these men and
women in uniform are leaving family and friends back home for their
tour of duty. They are proud to serve, but almost 4,000 Tennesseans
will be involved in this mobilization, and that just reminds me that in
this next rotation, 43 percent of our troops in Iraq, 43 percent of the
130,000 men and women in uniform, will not be active duty personnel.
They will be guardsmen and reservists who are called up to serve their
country in a faraway land.
I worry that our Nation is not aware of this terrific OP TEMPO, the
fact that we have the heaviest OP TEMPO since World War II. A lot of
folks do not know how to put that into perspective, because they think
Vietnam was a big war or Korea was a big war; but, yet, due to the
rotational demands on our troops, they are facing some of the greatest
strains and stresses on family life and professional life than any
other men and women who have served in uniform have faced since World
War II. And the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment from Tennessee is just
the latest example of that in our State.
Another issue I wanted to focus on, Mr. Speaker, was the cost of the
war and honesty in accounting. People have said for a long time that
truth is the first casualty in war, and I am worried that when it comes
to honestly and fully disclosing the cost of this war, the
administration has not been forthcoming. As the gentleman from Missouri
knows, the administration included no money in this year's budget for
the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. That is almost too incredible to be
believed by folks back home. To have a war of this magnitude go on and
to have the administration put zero dollars in their budget for Iraq or
Afghanistan is incredible.
Finally, after Congressional pressure, they have inserted, as the
gentleman knows, $25 billion in the budget, and I think this week the
defense appropriations bill will go through and it will become
effective immediately. It won't wait until the beginning of the next
fiscal year in October. Because why? Our troops need the money now.
They are running out of money, and it is the least we can do as members
of the Committee on Armed Services to fully fund our troops, our men
and women in uniform, while they are serving our Nation abroad.
That $25 billion will not last for very long. As the gentleman knows,
the estimates we have got on the committee indicate it might last
through October, November, December, and then come January of next
year, the next Congress. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha)
estimates we could be facing $50 billion then, and none of this is
being disclosed to the American people as it should be. I think we
should be honest with them and forthright, let them know the nature of
our commitment overseas and let them know the burden that they bear as
taxpayers to pay for this, because this is a very serious financial
issue. These are large dollars involved.

{time} 2200

If you add it all up, the total expenditure of the war so far is in
the neighborhood of 150 and $200 billion, 150 to $200 billion. This is
to wage war on a country whose annual defense budget was about $1
billion. So it is an incredible situation that we are in. And I think
by being honest and straightforward with our constituents back home,
being straightforward with the American taxpayer, we will come a lot
closer to getting through this conflict successfully, to winning and
bringing our troops back home safely.
I commend the leadership of our ranking member. He has done a great
job and has done so for many years on the committee, a true patriot, a
true leader, a true lover of the American military, and a true
supporter of our troops. It is an honor to serve with the gentleman,
and I am proud to be part of this special order.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr.
Cooper).
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel).
Mr. ISRAEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr.
Skelton) for his leadership of the House Committee on Armed Services,
as ranking member, where he commands respect on both sides of the aisle
and across our military.
Mr. Speaker, I have 3 unique privileges in this institution. One is
to represent the people of Long Island's Second Congressional District.
The second is to serve under the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton).
And the third is to serve under the gentleman from Missouri (Mr.
Skelton) on the House Committee on Armed Services, a committee which
has no more profound and fundamental mission than to protect our troops
and keep them strong so that they can keep our Nation strong.
How do we do that, Mr. Speaker? How do we keep them strong in order
to keep our Nation strong? We do it by having right priorities and by
giving them the best resources. Having the right priorities means that
we be focussed. We have to have focussed priorities and disciplined
priorities. And having focus and said disciplined priorities enables us
to provide the best resources to our troops so that they can combat the
global war on terror.
Sadly, Washington has fallen woefully short on those priorities. Let
me share some examples that come from some of the people that I
represent. These are real people with real stories.
I have a policy, Mr. Speaker, that if you have been deployed into any
dangerous place in the world, if you are a member of our military or
related to a member of the military, my door is open at all times. You
can come to my office on Long Island. You can come to my office in
Washington and I will sit with you and listen to what you have to say.
I sat with the mother of a young soldier who said to me at a table in
HopHog, New York. She said, I had to send my son money in Iraq so he
could afford the best armored vest because he did not have the best
armored vest. And then I had to send him money so he could afford night
vision goggled because I believe that my boy deserves the best night
vision goggles. And my boy had to spend 2 or $300 our of his own pocket
every month to give the men in his command socks and underwear because
they could not afford to do that. She said, Do you not think that
should be your obligation and not my obligation?

[[Page H5967]]

I want to share with you the story of Raheen Tyson Heighter, a 19-
year-old from Bay Shore, enlisted in the Army. He was asked what kind
of life insurance he wants. That 19-year-old did not believe he needed
life insurance. Most 19-year-olds do not believe they need life
insurance. He said, Give me the cheapest that you have. Because all he
could afford from his net monthly paycheck of about $1,200 was a
$10,000 life insurance policy. And his pay check was docked about 80
cents a month for that policy. Well, he did not make it back. He was
killed in Baghdad.
His casualty officer called his mother and said, We regret to inform
you that your son was killed in action and his life insurance policy
was $10,000, which does not go very far.
I believe if we are going to send young men into battle, we can
handle their life insurance premiums, Mr. Speaker. It should not have
been to come out of Raheen Tyson Heighter's pay check.
I want to close by sharing a story that I heard from a young woman
whose husband is in the Reserves and has just been deployed. He has
been accumulating hundreds of dollars of cell phone calls on his
personal cell phone which he loans to the men in his command so that
they can call home because they cannot afford it without any
reimbursement.
These families do not complain. They do not come to my office to
complain. They do come to my office because they are patriots, and they
believe that we owe them something back. They are seeking fairness.
They say, if you are going to honor us, honor us not simply with your
words but in your budgets. Do not simply put lapel pins on your lapels,
but put us in your budgets and do not balance those budgets on the
backs of people who are fighting on our fronts.
Those are our sacred obligations to the men and women that are
fighting for our freedoms in dangerous parts of the world. There should
be no Democratic or Republican way to protect our troops. We ought to
do it because it is the right thing to do. And we ought to quit talking
about our troops as priorities and spending as if they were our
priorities.
It is my privilege to serve under the gentleman from Missouri (Mr.
Skelton) so we can reach that vital goal. It is my privilege to
continue to advocate for those in my words who advocate for us with
their sacrifices.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr.
Israel). Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the
opportunity. There has been a broad discussion here tonight on a
variety of issues that we have been dealing with the on the Committee
on Armed Services. I would like to thank the ranking member for the
opportunity to share some of these views because we do not always get
the opportunity in committee. We only usually have 5 minutes or so to
question some witnesses that we may have before us or to talk about a
particular issue.
Among some of the issues that were raised here tonight, I would like
to shift the debate just a little bit over to Afghanistan. There were
some of us when the war in Iraq began, where we were wondering, why are
we going over there when we have obligations already in Afghanistan?
And we had major obligations in Afghanistan. We had an international
coalition that we had put together to go into Afghanistan on October 7,
almost 3 years ago, to make this happen.
Reason we went into Afghanistan is that the Taliban, the ruling
government in Afghanistan, was harboring terrorists from al Qaeda. Al
Qaeda hit us on 9-11. We had every right to go into Afghanistan and try
to rectify the situation and try to get the terrorists and try to
destroy the al Qaeda network.
One of the problems in Afghanistan has been drug production, opium,
heroine, poppy, is the main culprit there. And those of us who thought
it was a bad idea to go into Iraq were saying, well, all the arguments
that we do not believe they had weapons of mass destruction and we do
not believe Saddam Hussein had any tie to 9-11 and all these other
arguments that some of us were making aside, if we are going to be in
Afghanistan let us be in Afghanistan.

If we want to try to set a democracy up in the Middle East, let us
set one up in Afghanistan. We were already there. We invaded the state.
We had taken control to a certain extent what was going on there.
We now, today, have 130,000 troops in Iraq. We have 17,000 troops in
Afghanistan.
I want to share with the people at home here a picture of Afghanistan
opium poppy cultivation in 2001. The areas that are producing or
growing poppy in 2001 are in red. You can see a majority of the country
is in white. Now I would like to share Afghanistan opium poppy
cultivation in 2003. Nearly the entire country is producing poppies
which is now, today, half of the gross domestic product in Afghanistan
is poppy, $2.3 billion.
We have a narco-state on our hands in Afghanistan. And what happens
is that in these outer regions outside of Kabul, which is the capital,
the drug lords are running the show and they are making $2.3 billion
worth of money that will eventually make its way back into the hands of
al Qaeda, which their sole purpose in life is to destroy the United
States of America, destroy the infidels.
So the question is, why do we have 130,000 troops in Iraq and only
17,000 in Afghanistan? We have $2.3 billion worth of poppies being
grown and sold outside of Afghanistan. When General Myers was before
our committee several months ago, maybe a month and a half ago, I asked
General Myers, What are we doing about the poppy? What are we doing
about the money that is making its way back to al Qaeda?
General Myers said, Well, we have a little problem this year. The
harvest came in early. The harvest came in early.
So we have another year's supply of heroine on the market being sold
that will eventually make its way back to al Qaeda to fund terrorists
acts against the United States and the reason is the harvest came in
early. We only have 17,000 troops there, and the question that I would
like to ask the people at home across the United States of America,
what would Afghanistan look like today if we had 130,000 troops there,
if we spent $200 billion there, and we had the international community
supporting the effort?
We would be much closer to having a democracy in the Middle East. I
believe that we would not have $2.3 billion of drug money going back to
al Qaeda to help fund acts against the United States. We would probably
have elections very soon. And we would have the entire national
community supporting the effort. And we would not be bogged down in the
situation we are in now in Iraq.
So, when we look at the production and we look and see this next
chart, how it has grown from 2001 when the Taliban ruled, they were
obviously anti-narcotic, and the growth in 2000 and 2003 of opium
production in Afghanistan. And when we look and see all the reasons
that we have had for going to Iraq, and now the latest is create a
democracy in the Middle East, we have spent $200 billion there. I think
we had an opportunity, we had the commitment, we had the international
community, we had the resolve to go into Afghanistan and set up this
Arab democracy that would hopefully lead to the domino effect of
leading the democracy throughout the Middle East.
So I want the people at home to know that this is a lack of
leadership in my mind as to why we are in the position we are in. While
we are over in Iraq struggling right now, we cannot forget that we also
broke Afghanistan as we broke Iraq. And if we break Iraq, we have got
to buy it, and it has cost us $200 billion. We cannot forget we broke
Afghanistan. And I believe the major threat to this country is the
money that is being taken out of this country through the drug sales
and back to al Qaeda to lead the terrorist acts in this country.
So my point is that I think we have dropped the ball in Afghanistan.
And I appreciate the letter the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton)
sent to the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) last week saying
that we need to have a full hearing on what is going on in Afghanistan
and that the American people will not stand for the excuse that the
harvest came in early as to why we have another $2.3 billion in the
hands of al Qaeda.

[[Page H5968]]

I thank the gentleman for the opportunity and all his support with
all the hearings that we have trying to get done in the Committee on
Armed Services. I thank the other members of the committee, the
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper) who was phenomenal in a
classified hearing last week. I would like to thank him as well.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, I yield
7 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

{time} 2215

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr.
Skelton) for bringing us together this evening. I thank him for
training his insight on a situation that, as I say, this as somebody
who did not vote for the resolution in the first place because of my
apprehension, but I could not have foreseen it being mishandled in a
way that has produced the situation we face today.
I salute the gentleman for his leadership, his voice of reason
throughout my tenure in Congress during some very difficult times.
Whether it is in the Balkans or it is the Middle East, he has focused
our attention. He has asked the right questions, and he has done so in
a way that permits people to get past some of their biases and concerns
and I think really approach it in an open, honest and forthright
fashion. I salute the gentleman for that. I appreciate the leadership
he is providing this evening.
I listened to the gentleman's appraisal and I could not agree more,
that, sadly, this administration was not prepared to win the peace, and
this, as my colleague has pointed out time and again, is not the fault
of our men and women in uniform, who have performed heroically. They
have done the task that is assigned to them and more.
I think it is clear that what we have seen here has been a failure of
the people at the top, who refused to listen to the men and women in
uniform in the command structure. They have indeed, as the gentleman
mentioned, been diverted from the real war in Afghanistan, something
that the vast majority of people in this chamber were united behind.
They understood that was the origin of the attack on the United States.
That is where al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were headquartered. That is
where we needed to act. Sadly, we did not finish the job. We were
diverted.
We have seen stress unprecedented on our National Guard and ready
Reserve, and I appreciate the gentleman focusing on that. It is
something that I encounter every week as I go home, hearing from the
families, from the employers, the news accounts, the meetings we have
had at home where sometimes there are people that just want to have a
confidential moment.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a young man call the office. I was very
tightly scheduled. He said, ``I'll tell you what. I know you're going
back to Washington, DC. Can I come and ride to the airport with you? I
just want to tell you what's in my heart before I go back.''
It was for me extraordinarily frustrating to hear this young man
unburden himself. He was back stateside because he had won a special
commendation. He was back, but he wanted me to know the deep concern
that the men and women he served with had about what was going on.
As the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) said, we did it to
ourselves. Three years ago, the world was united behind us. We had
specific objectives. There was a sense of unity here that could have
been mobilized and was not, but I think the question that the gentleman
is raising for us is not just focusing on what went tragically wrong,
understanding what is there, but he is focusing our attention on where
we go from here, how do we do right by these young men and women in the
field, how do we do right by the people in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well, I think, first and foremost, I would like to see us do a better
job at oversight, and I know the gentleman has done his best as the
ranking member of the Committee on Armed Services, but there is no
excuse for our not being able to do a better job of pulling this
information out, sharing it with our colleagues and the American
public, and holding people accountable, doing a better job of focusing
on what is happening to the 5,600, what are we calling them, post-
active duty people who are being brought back to service yet again. The
strains that have been put on the ready Reserve, more people called up
than in every previous mobilization from the Cuban missile crisis
through every decade, every year right up till today, we have had this
amazing stress.
What can we do? We can have an honest accounting of the costs and
consequences, not the budgeting that puts it off till the future. We
can chase down what happened with that prison abuse scandal and not
scapegoat a few young men and women who were in a situation, candidly I
think, over their heads. I would have liked to have thought that they
would have known better, but by no stretch of the imagination can the
evidence coming forth lead us to believe that we can resolve this by
simply coming down on a half dozen, a dozen of these young men and
women. It goes much further up the chain of command, all the way to the
top. When we look at what orders have been issued, side-stepping the
Geneva Convention, detention, it is a failure of responsibility at the
top. We ought to hold them accountable.
There is also the focus on the people who are, to a greater extent
than ever before in wartime in the United States, dealing with
unaccountable, unelected, no-bid contracts and contractors who are
doing things that should be the purview of the United States military,
and had they been done, they would have been done far, far better.
We can shift much of this activity overseas to the locals, but it is
insanity when we are paying $10-, $12,000 a month for contractors to
drive a truck when we have Iraqis, for instance, unemployed, who would
take that job for a couple hundred dollars a month and put that right
back into their families.
Last, but by no means least, it is important that we not forget about
Afghanistan, and I appreciate my colleague focusing our attention on
that this evening. Here is a country from which the attack on the
United States on 9/11 was launched. Here is a country that has been
abused and damaged for over a quarter century. It is larger than Iraq.
It is poorer than Iraq. It has a larger population than Iraq. Our
friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) just pointed out how narco-
terrorism is building and some of those resources are being used
against us in the war on terror, and yet we are investing less than
one-tenth of the amount of money in Afghanistan as we are in Iraq, and
we have a much tinier military footprint, about one-ninth.
I appreciate the gentleman from Missouri's (Mr. Skelton) leadership,
his attention and the calm and quiet, thoughtful way he has analyzed
this issue in a way that I think ought to touch the mind and heart of
every Member of this chamber. I look forward to working with him in the
weeks and months ahead to try and recover our momentum, our balance,
and place our priorities where they belong and do right by the American
people, the Iraqis, Afghanistan, and win this struggle against terror.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, let me thank my friend, the gentleman from
the State of Oregon.
I now yield to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott).
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking the gentleman
from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) for bringing this issue before the House
tonight. This is an issue that I spoke about this morning, and it
seemed strange to me, as I was coming in here about to ask him for some
time, to realize that his thinking and the thinking of the people who
have been speaking are very much where my mind was.
I think it is probably where the American people actually are
because, in my view, it is past time for America to have a national
terrorism policy. The line between countries we call friend and foe is
blurred. The distinction between peril and safety is just as vague here
at home. America has too much at stake not to consider a national
terrorism policy as a work in progress.
Civil liberties hang in the balance at home. Credibility is
questioned in countries around the world. Military personnel are
fighting and dying in one country today, but what about tomorrow?
America is spending in excess of

[[Page H5969]]

$150 billion in a country that has more to do with errors in judgment
than threats of terrorism against the United States.
The patchwork of actions and reactions about terrorism are long on
rhetoric but stop well short of defining potential threats and
responses or a philosophy to guide America. Questions need to be asked
and answered, and that is why what the gentleman from Missouri (Mr.
Skelton) is doing tonight is so important.
The acting director of the CIA admits that a good case can be made
for a new Cabinet-level Secretary to oversee all of the Nation's
intelligence agencies, but the director thinks some changes in the CIA
could accomplish just as much.
Now, in Washington, D.C., turf issues are big issues. Are the remarks
by the acting director turf or analysis? When it comes to terrorism,
the old ways of Washington, turf among them, must change.
The President took America to war in Iraq over alleged ties to
terrorism, now proven incorrect. We learned just today that eight of
the 9/11 hijackers passed back and forth through Iran before the
attacks. We learned the Iranian government instructed border guards to
let all al Qaeda pass. The CIA says there is no evidence of an official
connection, but there is tacit approval, at a minimum. The same could
have been said before Iraq, but that did not stop the President from
going to war.
What does this new information mean about Iran? The President says he
launched a preemptive war in Iraq. Well, will the President launch a
post-emptive war against Iran? Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Iran is openly developing a nuclear capacity, claimed peaceful at this
point, but outside the scope of objective knowledge and data. Is Iran
next for U.S. military action? Why? Why not?
Given Iraq, would Congress write this President another blank check
for anywhere else in the world? What about North Korea? There is a
regime that is as oppressive as Saddam's. There is a country that
bought weapons technology from our old friend or our new friend and our
old nemesis Libya. There is a country where weapons are almost
certainly not theoretical. Are we going into North Korea anytime soon?
We are pulling our troops back in South Korea from the border. We are
thinking about moving some of them to Iraq. What does that mean?
Today, Libya must be in line for, and I am not kidding about it, a
football game. Mr. Qaddafi may have isolated himself economically for
years, but he could still watch television. So, today, Qaddafi is
trying to buy a British sports club, hoping that the English version of
football will thaw the icy relations.
Then there is Pakistan. They were not at the top of our list until we
needed a friendly Nation in the Middle East after the September 11
attacks. Now, Pakistan is a key ally. We have made them a non-European
NATO ally. Is that good for Pakistan and the United States? If so, why?
Is it a good thing for relationships between India and Pakistan and the
United States? If it is, does this mean that the world is so
interconnected that the notion of friend or enemy no longer applies?
After all, we remember the television networks have shown pictures of
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld bringing greetings to Saddam Hussein, not
that many years ago, in the administration of Bush I. He was a bad guy
then, but Mr. Bush liked him, and I guess that was good enough for
those days.

{time} 2230

Mr. Speaker, 2 years ago he became a bad guy. We did not like him any
more, and we all know what happened then. What is the distinction
between Saddam Hussein in Bush I and in Bush II? He just gassed people
in his own country in Bush I. America needs a better definition of
policy than just expediency. American policy today is grounded in
reaction, not philosophy.
There has been enough time since the tragedy of 9/11 for the
President to articulate a terrorism policy for the Nation to debate,
adopt and defend. All of us gave him some slack right after 9/11. Who
would not want our President to have the power to deal with what he
needed to deal with at the moment, but that is a long time ago.
We see nothing. We do not have a policy, and the headlines can prove
it. We have a military stretched so thin that the President launched an
undeclared draft to compel soldiers to return to active military duty.
If officers did not resign their commission, the service can reach back
20 years to bring them in.
The New England Journal of Medicine just carried a study that 1 out
of 5 people coming home is subject to psychological problems, post-
traumatic stress disorder, depression, and other problems. We are
suffering casualties. If we think out of 160,000 people, 1 out of 5
coming home, that is 30,000 people, never mind all of the people who
have lost an arm or leg. Now we have psychological problems coming home
as well.
Does America need a draft? The administration says no, or not until
at least after the election. They say this ``no'' just after they have
issued stop-loss orders to prevent soldiers from leaving active duty in
Iraq. We have an indefinite military commitment in Iraq. But why, if we
supposedly handed the country over to the Iraqis?
America lives in perpetual terrorism-alert status. Is there nothing
to be gained other than a CYA for this policy? Who decided that we
should be told to be very worried just after America was told not to
worry any more that we were already worried? They are moving the fear
back and forth and keeping the American people on edge, and that
summarizes the administration's recent public statements on terror. It
also symbolizes the lack of a coherent terrorism policy.
Today the administration basically says just trust us. Just trust us.
America's response should be mine from the Reagan administration,
``Just Say No.'' We did trust, and that is how we got into Iraq. The
safety and security of America is everyone's business. It should be
debated in this House before the People's Body. Every district, every
person in this country is represented on this floor. It should not be
decided by one man. I think the average American knows that and knows
what the administration has given us so far is not a policy but wishful
thinking.
Mr. Speaker, the President has 105 days to articulate the terror
policy, what he is really trying to do. If he does not do that, we are
going to have a new President.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) for
yielding me this time.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. Let
me close by saying at the end of the day we all need to pay tribute to
those wonderful, wonderful young men and young women in uniform,
whether they come from Missouri, Washington, Ohio, New York, Florida,
or all across our country. They are professionals. They know what their
duty is, and we certainly wish to salute them this evening as well as
the families that support them and wish well for them and of course
pray for them.

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