[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 103 (Thursday, July 22, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H6692-H6695]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) is
recognized for half the time remaining until midnight as the designee
of the majority leader.
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to kind of catch
up on some of the comments that were made earlier this evening by my
friends on the other side of the aisle.
One of our friends suggested that we should involve the international
community here in the Iraq situation. I would remind her that the
international community, the U.N., the United Nations is involved in
the largest scandal, the oil-for-food scandal that this world has seen,
almost $10 billion, and it looks like our friends in France and Russia
were involved in taking payoffs and taking oil vouchers at the very
time they were taking U.N. Security votes, and even in the press
accusing the United States of involving themselves in Iraq for the oil.
That is the international community that we would like to involve. I
would remind my friends also that the United Nations cannot even have a
definition, they do not have an established definition for terrorism
because Syria sits on the Security Council, and Syria will not let our
neighbors be characterized in any way as terrorists, and yet our
friends call for the involvement of the international community,
meaning the United Nations.
I would note that we pointed out last week in a similar venue that
the media somehow has seemed to overlook this scandal. They go smelling
around and looking for scandals any time the Bush administration makes
a decision, but when the facts come to light in the United Nations'
largest scandal ever, they simply ignore it.
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They also have overlooked the 400,000 mass graves that have been
found in Iraq and seem to be fixated on other problems overlooking the
damages that were done during 35 years of Saddam Hussein.
{time} 2310
I would like to associate myself with the comments by my other
colleague from the other side of the aisle who said put Sandy Berger in
jail. If it would help, I would second that and call for a vote
immediately on the floor of the House.
It looks like Mr. Berger rolled up documents, stuck them in his
underwear and stuck them in his socks and carried them out. These were
documents that related to his service during the Clinton years and as
it dealt with terrorism.
I suspect then that we begin to put some of the facts in place as we
consider Richard Clarke's testimony where he began to tell the American
people that there is absolutely no evidence that Iraq was ever
supporting al Qaeda ever. This is Richard Clark who was the head
terrorism expert under President Clinton.
If one looks back to his initial memos, immediately after 9/11, while
the Nation is still sorting through the grief, Mr. Clarke is beginning
to e-mail and memo his colleagues that we should begin to cover our
trails. It looks like Mr. Berger may have been doing the same thing
there in taking documents from the archives, continuing to cover trails
that they felt like were damaging.
But the 9/11 Commission came out today with their final report today,
Mr. Speaker, and we found several significant findings.
First of all, they declared that there was no smoking gun. The 9/11
Commission's report is very clear in its finding that the terrible
events of September 11 could not reasonably have been prevented. The
findings produce no smoking gun and place blame at the feet of no
single individual or institution.
Furthermore, they go on to quote that since we believe that both
President Clinton and President Bush were genuinely concerned about the
danger posed by al Qaeda, approaches involving more direct intervention
against the sanctuary in Afghanistan apparently must have seen, if they
were considered at all, to be disproportionate to the threat. That is
on page 349 of the document.
Furthermore, they commented that we do not believe, this is the 9/11
Commission quoting, that we do not believe it is possible to defeat all
terrorist attacks against Americans every time and everywhere. A
President should tell the American people no President can promise that
a catastrophic attack like that of 9/11 will not happen. Again, history
has shown us that even the most vigilant and expert agencies cannot
always prevent determined, suicidal attackers from reaching a target.
That is quoted on page 365.
The report goes on, Mr. Speaker, to establish a very clear link to al
Qaeda, and I would remind this body about former Vice President Al
Gore's quote. You will recall that in the height of his emotion about
60-days ago, former Vice President Al Gore quoted, the President
convinced the country with a mixture of documents that turned out to be
forged and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with al
Qaeda. I suspect that we should see Mr. Gore coming out now to say that
the 9/11 Commission was subjected to those same forged and blatantly
false documents because the 9/11 Commission says that there is a clear
link between Iraq and al Qaeda. The Commission's report provides ample
evidence that there was a strong and real link between al Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Quoting from the report, page 66, it describes similar meetings
between Iraqi officials and bin Laden or his aids may have occurred in
1999 during a period of some reported strings with the Taliban.
According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered bin Laden a safe
haven in Iraq. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some
common themes in both sides hatred of the United States.
Again, on page 61, the 9/11 Commission finds that bin Laden himself
met with senior Iraqi intelligence officers in Khartoum in late 1994 or
1995.
On page 66, again, the 9/11 Commission report quotes, in March 1998,
after bin Laden's public plot against the United States, two al Qaeda
members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In
July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with
the Taliban and then with bin Laden.
Mr. Speaker, I suspect that Mr. Gore should apologize to the American
people for blatant, false comments or he should provide the
documentation for his rhetoric.
The 9/11 Commission, Mr. Speaker, also comments on the fixation on
Iraq. Over the past year, there have been numerous reports from people
in the media and from our friends on the other side of the aisle that
the Bush administration was fixated on attacking Iraq in the wake of 9/
11. However, the Commission's finding strongly refutes such a claim.
On page 335, the Commission quotes, Secretary Powell recalled that
Wolfowitz, not Rumsfeld, argued that Iraq was ultimately the source of
terrorist problems and should, therefore, be attacked. Powell said the
President did not give Wolfowitz's argument much weight. Though
continuing to worry about Iraq in the following week, Powell said
President Bush saw Afghanistan as the priority.
It goes on on page 336 to quote that, on September 20, President Bush
met with British prime minister Tony Blair and the two leaders
discussed the global conflict ahead. When Blair asked about Iraq, the
President replied that Iraq was not the immediate problem. Some members
of his administration, he commented, had expressed a different view,
but he was the one responsible for making the decision. Again, the
September 11 Commission finds no fixation on Iraq.
Page 336, they continue speaking about General Franks, in quotes,
Franks told that he was pushing independently to do more robust
planning on military responses in Iraq during the summer before 9/11, a
request President Bush denied, arguing that the time was not right. The
CENTCOM commander told us he renewed his appeal for further military
planning to respond to Iraqi moves shortly after 9/11. Franks said that
President Bush again turned down the request.
So our friends on the other side of the aisle would like to
characterize the attacks on 9/11 as being easy to contemplate, easy to
forecast, and yet, the 9/11 Commission says it is not possible at all.
There is also great testimony on the other side that there was
absolutely no link between Iraq and al Qaeda, and the 9/11 Commission
report says blatantly that there was connection between the two. They
also comment that President Bush did not have a fixation on Iraq, that
actually he felt like the problems were elsewhere, Afghanistan or other
places.
Finally, the 9/11 report, Mr. Speaker, comments about our urgent need
in this country. It comments that perhaps the most powerful finding of
the 9/11 Commission is that fighting the global war on terror is a
total call to arms.
The Commission goes on to say that one of the key structural failures
that the Commission identifies, referred to as a lack of imagination,
that was the lack of the imagination of anyone in America to conceive
that any persons could hate America so much as to do the attacks on 9/
11. In failing to connect the isolated pieces of intelligence in the
past, leaders did not understand the urgency because they
underestimated the terrorists' singular goal of destroying every
American.
Therefore, the September 11 report continues, one of the larger
points that the Commission makes is that the war on terror is about
killing terrorists before they kill us.
The report said that bin Laden and Islamic terrorists mean exactly
what they say. To them, that is, to bin Laden and the terrorists,
America is the font of all evil, the head of the snake, and it must be
converted or destroyed. It is not in a position with which Americans
can bargain or negotiate.
With it, there is no common ground, not even respect for life on
which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly
isolated.
The report goes on to say that bin Laden said we do not differentiate
between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. They are all
targets in the spotlight. That is, bin
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Laden is saying that if you are dressed in a uniform, you are no more
of a military target than people walking on the streets in any town in
Iowa, Michigan or New Mexico.
Furthermore, the report goes on to clarify that the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing signaled a new terrorist challenge, one whose rage and
malice had no limit. Again, this is the 1993 attack on the World Trade
Center, following on 10 years later with the more brutal attack.
{time} 2320
But considering the 1993 attack Ramzi Yousef, the Sunni extremist who
planted the bomb, said later that he had hoped to kill 250,000 people,
all of those being Americans.
The recommendation on page 367 of this 9/11 report, this bipartisan
report that just came out today, this month's long study of the 9/11
catastrophe, the recommendation is that the U.S. Government must
identify and prioritize actual or potential terrorist sanctuaries. For
each it should have a realistic strategy to keep possible terrorists
insecure and on the run using all elements of national power.
Mr. Speaker, after 9/11, the President came on TV and said we must do
three things. We must first of all uproot the Taliban to where they
cannot continue to train and turn out terrorists onto the streets. We
must uproot the Taliban from Afghanistan and its training camps.
Secondly, we need to choke off the funding for the Taliban for the
terrorists. Thirdly, we need to take the fight to them.
Mr. Speaker, in Afghanistan we did uproot the Taliban and put them on
the run. They are not able to sit and take shots at us because they are
in a defensive mode moving constantly. So the President followed
through on the first of his objectives.
On the second objective, that is squeezing off funding to the
terrorist groups worldwide, the President and members of the
international community have done a very good job. Just recently,
Secretary Powell reported that even in Saudi Arabia that the leaders
there acknowledged within the last 30 days that they have a tremendous
problem with terrorism and they committed to seek to end the funding
that Saudi nationals have given to terrorists.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, in response to the third mantra that he laid
out, the President did take the fight to the terrorists. Liberating
Iraq is the right thing to do. He has taken the fight to them. He has
uprooted them, and we have begun squeezing off their funding sources.
Mr. Speaker, the only thing that could cause us to lose this war on
terror is for us to lose our resolve.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter) at
this time for observations that he has in dealing and talking with
Iraqis here in this city this week.
Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr.
Pearce). As a member of the Committee on International Relations,
Subcommittee on the Middle East, I would like to thank the gentlewoman
from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen) for bringing into the committee some
victims who had survived Saddam Hussein's brutality so we could
personally hear from them. They also had with them a documentary
filmmaker, Mr. Janos, who showed excerpts of his film interviewing
survivors, the grieving mothers and widows of Saddam Hussein's
executioners.
It is not often that we truly get a chance to plumb the unfathomable
depths of human pain, but I believe we experienced that in committee
yesterday. We had a chance to see a grieving mother whose husband was
killed, whose children were killed, saying she would never laugh again
in her lifetime, and praying to God for a short life and a merciful
death so she could forget.
We saw a mother break down because she remembered the cries of her
child in a cell, a 6 year old, crying out that he had no milk, he was
hungry. Well, he is gone and she remains to grief. We had a Mr. Ibraham
and a Mr. Taimor. They were both testaments to the evil of the Iraqi
dictator. Mr. Ibraham, a Shiite, had been chased through that country,
arrested several times, housed in Abu Ghraib prison, and was so shocked
by what he experienced there he could not speak about it, especially
about what happened to the women.
We also saw Mr. Taimor who had been shot by Iraqi executioners in
front of a mass grave and while bleeding had to crawl out.
We in this country hear much from many that Iraq was a mistake. I ask
one thing of those people, I ask them to say it to those victim's
faces. We hear the hippocrits in this country say that Saddam was a bad
man, but the United States should not have taken him from power. I ask
them to say that to the Iraqi victims' faces. For those people who
believe America is the greatest threat to peace in the world, I ask
them never to show their faces in public again.
Whether we like it or not, what we are seeing internationally is a
clash of revolutions. It is a clash of revolutions that is fought not
upon maps but upon minds. It is the American revolution of freedom for
the individual and republican forms of democracy and private enterprise
that chased every king from Europe or put them on the dole, that has
chased imperial Japanese forces and put a democracy in place, and the
world is better. We have seen the Philippines that we once annexed and
helped bring into a stable democracy, and throughout the globe we see
people trying to emulate the freedom and opportunity we have here.
Yet the second revolution, which is lot upon many, is the Iranian
revolution, a revolution of extremism and totalitarianism perverting
the peaceful tenets of Islam to accomplish political objectives. Right
now our revolutions meet in Iraq. That is why those in this country who
do not think deeply about this believe we can retreat from Iraq and
that the only consequence will be the United States will have to act
multilaterally. The reality is we cannot retreat because unless freedom
and democracy are established on the borders of the Iranian revolution,
the Iranian revolution will continue to be exported through means both
traditional and terrorist. The stakes have never been greater.
I know it is very difficult for many to remember that we are and
remain the seminal revolutionary country, and that in many ways it is
hard to admit we are a moral force for good in this world, and that
absent the United States, what would the world be like.
Well, we might have trouble remembering that, but when I had the
chance to ask the victims of Saddam if they thought any other country
on the face of the earth could or would save them from his butchery,
their answer was no, only the United States could do that. Only the
United States would do that. I asked them if they thought it was a
mistake, and they said no, that they believe we were a great and a good
country for helping to save them.
So as we engage in the debate through now and the election and
perhaps throughout the remainder of our lives, let us remember what is
at stake, the clash of revolutions. Either we will prevail or we will
be defeated, and if we are defeated, as President Lincoln said, we will
lose the last best hope of earth.
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.
Mr. Speaker, in the last year I have had the opportunity to meet a
man in New Mexico and I have become friends with him. In looking at
things he has in his story, I told him you have been in China for a
very long time.
He said yes, since the late sixties.
I commented to him you had to be one of the only Americans there
during that period of time. I said how did you go there?
He very truthfully and straightforwardly responded, and his comment
was, ``To my internal shame, I was invited to mainland China in the
late sixties because of my campus radicalism. I went there with the
greatest hope to help fight the war for communism and to spread it.''
He said, ``I was not in China more than 30 minutes before I realized it
was one of the deepest and biggest scams I had ever seen.''
{time} 2330
He continued to live in China, eventually marrying a Chinese woman.
They watched as her father was carried to the edge of town and
summarily shot.
Mr. Speaker, we defeated communism for the most part in this world
because of the efforts of Ronald Reagan. But I feel like there is as
much lack of truth in this argument about al Qaeda and Iraq and the
dangers that
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terrorism presents to the United States and to the world today as there
was back in the 1960s and 1970s about the Communist regimes throughout
the world.
There is much work to be done if we are to find freedom and liberty
for more people. Freedom and liberty cannot live together in the same
world as terrorism. We are finding that out. What the world is going
through right now is a decision process: Are we going to accept
terrorism, or are we going to root terrorism out? Are we going to have
liberty, or are we going to have tyranny? This is one of the most
important discussions in our history because at this point terrorism
has the potential to be spread worldwide.
Terrorism has as its main focus instability. The terrorists
understand they could not militarily defeat the United States. Their
attempt was to destabilize us financially. On 9/11, the high estimates
are that over $2 trillion worth of losses occurred in the U.S. economy.
$2 trillion represents almost 20 percent, Mr. Speaker, of our total
economy. How many countries could have suffered that kind of loss and
still bounced back with an economy where we could be concerned about
the production of jobs? $2 trillion and over 3,000 lives in one split
second. That is what happened on 9/11.
If the terrorists are not defeated at every turn, they have stated
their intent to get vials of disease, to unleash chemical weapons, to
unleash nuclear weapons. Whatever it takes to defeat freedom, they are
willing to do. Those attacks on freedom are going to continue to be
targeted at the United States first because they realize that this
country is the heart and soul of freedom worldwide, that this country
is a shining light of liberty to those countries that would aspire to
it.
Mr. Speaker, we can make no mistake. We must choose sides in this. We
cannot appease terrorists. We cannot act like it will get better. We
have read into the Record earlier tonight an entire list, two pages,
double-spaced, of attacks into the United States or to United States
troops by terrorists. Mostly those went unresponded to, but President
Bush made a bold decision that we will take the fight to the
terrorists. He should be commended for his activities, Mr. Speaker,
because it is that boldness that has forestalled any future attacks.
The investments in homeland security, the investments in our defense
have been somewhat successful. I agree with the 9/11 report, though,
that says that any President should promise the American people that we
cannot fight a defensive battle all of the time. That is the reason I
favor taking the fight to the terrorists. We must take the heart out of
the fight for them. We must take the will to damage this country away
from the heart of terrorism.
Mr. Speaker, the 9/11 Commission report gives us valuable information
about this Nation's lack of preparedness, the lack of preparedness that
extended across more than one administration. I would recommend that
Members of this body on both sides of the aisle begin to discuss the
findings of the 9/11 Commission, that commission which stated that
there is a link between al Qaeda and Iraq, that there was no
preoccupation with Iraq as far as President Bush is concerned, and,
finally, that we must either kill the terrorists or accept that they
are going to kill us.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hensarling). The gentleman from New
Mexico will suspend.
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