[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 105 (Wednesday, September 8, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H6879-H6885]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, on September 11, 2001, 3 years ago, I 
watched in horror as America, and part of my district specifically, was 
attacked and destroyed. The extreme sense of pain and loss I felt as a 
New Yorker and as an American, as someone who knew many of the victims, 
does not even begin to match the pains that the families of that attack 
must have felt.
  This attack on the United States was an attack, a deliberate attack 
on civilians. It was a deliberate attempt to kill as many American 
civilians as possible for the simple and great crime of being

[[Page H6880]]

Americans. This we will never forget, and we must never forgive.
  We must not allow ourselves to forget how vulnerable we have become 
and how we must change that vulnerability. We know that we are not as 
safe as we should have been on September 11, 3 years ago, and we still 
mourn the thousands who died that day.
  The 9/11 Commission charged with investigating the tragic events of 
September 11 released its unanimous report that should help us ensure 
that this type of attack does not happen again. Democrats are fighting 
to implement the Commission's recommendations, but the Republicans, by 
and large, who fought the creation of the Commission and tried 
prematurely to end its work are still dragging their feet.
  President Bush strongly opposed any independent inquiry into the 9/11 
attacks. He argued that it would duplicate a probe conducted by 
Congress. In July 2002, his administration issued a statement of policy 
that read, The administration would oppose an amendment that would 
create a new commission to conduct a similar review. Such an amendment 
is duplicative and would cause a further diversion of essential 
personnel from their duty fighting the war.
  House majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), opposed 
the creation of the 9/11 Commission. I quote from a CNN interview on 
May 22nd, 2002, by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay): We are at war, 
and when you are at war, you have to worry about making public a lot of 
things that should be kept private for you to fight the war. An 
independent commission by its very nature is very public. Frankly, it 
has only been asked for by people that are running for President.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. NADLER. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Who is he referring to when he indicated that only 
those that were running for President would support the creation of an 
independent commission?
  Mr. NADLER. Well, I do not know because President Bush flip-flops. So 
maybe he is referring to President Bush after he decided to support it. 
The gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) flip-flops, and maybe he is 
referring to himself. Maybe he is referring to the families of the 9/11 
victims who were the leading proponents of an independent commission. 
He may have been referring to Democrats who were, in fact, running for 
President, or who a year later ran for President, such as Senator Kerry 
and Howard Dean and others who did support this. Most Democrats 
supported it, but the majority of the Americans supported it, and I do 
not think the majority of Americans ran for President.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, well, again, I am surprised that the 
Republican leader in this House made that statement, because, according 
to our information, upon our return, based on the 9/11 Commission's 
report, the majority leader has now announced that he hopes to have 
legislation before this House dealing with the concerns that were 
expressed by the 9/11 Commission. Am I confused?
  Mr. NADLER. No, no, you are quite correct, and as I am going to show 
in recounting the history here in a few minutes, the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. DeLay), bowing to Democratic pressure and to common sense, 
flip-flopped and did change his mind and is, or at least he says he is, 
supporting legislation. We still wait to see the legislation to 
implement the Commission's report, after the administration first did 
not want to do that.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Well, again, just to be clear in my mind, and I am sure 
that those who might be viewing our conversation this evening want 
clarity, what you are suggesting is that when the concept or the 
proposal of an independent commission looking into the events and the 
failures that led to our national tragedy on 9/11, it was President 
Bush and Vice President Cheney that steadfastly refused to accept the 
creation of that Commission; is that correct?
  Mr. NADLER. That is correct. It was President Bush, Vice President 
Cheney and the Republican leadership in both Houses of Congress who 
steadfastly opposed the creation of that Commission and eventually 
bowed to pressure coming from Democratic leaders in Congress and 
Democrats in Congress, from the families of the victims, from the press 
and from the American people at large, and eventually they bowed to 
that pressure and they flipped-flopped, and they reluctantly allowed 
the Commission to be created.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. If the gentleman will continue to yield, now they 
embrace, and I congratulate them with enthusiasm, the 9/11 independent 
Commission's report, and hopefully before we adjourn for this year, for 
this particular session, a review of their recommendations with 
appropriate legislation can be passed.
  Mr. NADLER. Well, that is correct. Again, they sought to delay it. 
They sought to oppose it. They sought to appoint Henry Kissinger to 
chair it. That did not fly when the public screamed at that because Mr. 
Kissinger was hardly an objective leader, as Governor Kean and former 
Congressman Hamilton have proven to be. And even after the Commission 
issued its recommendations, the President said he was going to file the 
recommendations and appoint an intelligence czar, but he also said that 
that intelligence czar would have no real power. But yesterday he flip-
flopped on that and finally bowed to the pressure of the Commission, 
and the American people, and the families of the victims, and the 
Democrats who have been pushing to implement the recommendations of the 
Commission and give the intelligence director that would be created by 
this recommendation real power. The President flip-flopped on that 
yesterday and came to the right decision finally yesterday.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. If the gentleman would yield once more, I believe it is 
important that the American people and our colleagues be reminded that 
this independent Commission that produced a document, again that has 
been widely praised and embraced, now by President Bush, by the 
Republican majority, by Democrats and others, and the American people, 
that this independent Commission was bipartisan in nature.
  You and I are aware that the former ranking member on the House 
Committee on International Relations, Lee Hamilton, was the vice chair. 
Mr. Hamilton was a Democrat and continues to be a Democrat, and the 
former Governor of New Jersey, Tom Kean, is a Republican, continues to 
be a Republican.
  Mr. NADLER. He was the Chairman.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. And he was the Chairman, and that was a bipartisan 
Commission.

  Mr. NADLER. Yes. This was a bipartisan Commission that was appointed 
by the President after the President and the Vice President and the 
Republican leadership in Congress continued to oppose its creation but 
eventually flip-flopped.
  Now, in fact, the House Republicans bowed to White House pressure in 
resisting creation of this Commission, and I quote the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Goss), who is now the President's nominee for Director of 
the CIA ironically. He stated, and he was quite honest, in the 
Baltimore Sun on June 14, 2002, I am very much aware that we have a 
good working relationship with the White House. Access to information 
is working well, he said, and I do not want anything to interfere with 
that. The White House is not interested in this Commission; hence, I am 
not for bringing the subject up.
  Then they bowed to pressure; they supported it. Finally in late 2002, 
after opposing it for a year, President Bush flip-flopped and finally 
agreed to support an independent investigation into the 9/11 attacks 
after the congressional committees that were looking into this 
unearthed more and more examples of intelligence lapses.
  But then, having been forced to accept the creation of the 
Commission, a bipartisan Commission, five members of either party 
headed by former Governor Kean, a Republican, and former ranking member 
Hamilton, a Democrat, they tried to stop the Commission's work.
  The Bush administration and Speaker Hastert fought to close down the 
Commission prematurely, after delaying, after refusing to give them 
information so they could get their work started. Remember that, when 
the 9/11 Commission because of these delays needed to seek an extension 
of this

[[Page H6881]]

deadline to complete the investigations from May, all the way to July, 
a 2-month extension, and I am quoting the New York Times of January 28 
of this year, White House and Republican congressional leaders have 
said they see no need to extend the congressionally-mandated deadline 
now set for May 27, and a spokesman for Speaker Hastert said Tuesday 
that Mr. Hastert would oppose any legislation to grant the extension.
  Then, in early February of this year, the White House again flip-
flopped and reversed course in support of an extension of the 
investigation into government failings surrounding the September 11 
terrorist attacks. The Bush administration had opposed expanding the 
charter of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission beyond the May 27 expiration 
date, but bowed to demands from victims' families and Democrats and to 
the panel's request for more time. Speaker Hastert was reluctant to 
support this extension, but he also flip-flopped. He bowed to pressure 
and agreed to support an extension in late February.
  Then, when the Commission finally came in with its report in July, a 
few weeks ago, the Republicans in Congress sought to delay the review 
of the 9/11 Commission recommendations until after recess, until after, 
so that they would not have anything ready to go before Congress until 
after the November 2 elections.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, if I could interrupt, and if the gentleman 
would yield, my memory of the press conference conducted by Chairman 
Kean, the Republican from New Jersey, and by Lee Hamilton, the Democrat 
from the Indiana, with the unanimity of the bipartisan Commission, 
underscored and emphasized the need to move expeditiously to protect 
the United States from a recurrence of the kind of attack that occurred 
on 9/11. Is that an accurate statement?
  Mr. NADLER. Yes, indeed. The Chairman, Governor Kean, and the vice 
chairman, former ranking member Hamilton, stressed that we are in a 
war; we are in a very serious war with terrorists, and speed is of the 
essence, and we should do this now. We should consider these 
recommendations now and enact them expeditiously and not wait till next 
year or until after the November elections.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, now here we are, heading towards an 
election, with obviously complex legislation to be drafted based upon 
those recommendations put forth by the Commission so that our homeland, 
the security of the United States, is enhanced, and yet, and maybe you 
can inform me and the American people who might be viewing us this 
evening, when was the concept, the idea of the 9/11 Commission first 
proposed in the aftermath of the attacks on our homeland on September 
11?

                              {time}  2115

  Mr. NADLER. Well, I do not remember the exact date, but people were 
talking about this commission not long after 9/11. And, in fact, in 
early 2002 they were doing it. In July 2002, I quoted this before, the 
administration issued a statement of policy opposed to the creation of 
such a commission. In July of 2002, which meant in the spring of 2002, 
people were pushing it. So 2 years ago, or 2\1/2\ years ago.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Right, Mr. Speaker, better than 2\1/2\ years at this 
point in time this concept was introduced. We know from newspaper 
reports, from statements made by the leaders of the Republican Party in 
this House, as well as statements made by President Bush and others in 
the administration that there was a reluctance to cooperate with the 9/
11 Commission.
  Mr. NADLER. Well, there was a reluctance to have a 9/11 Commission, 
then there was a reluctance to cooperate with the 9/11 Commission, 
because, remember, they had to beg and threaten, threaten subpoenas to 
get information out of the administration. Then they had to threaten 
subpoenas to get witnesses before the commission. Then there had to be 
heavy political pressure because, with all these delays, they could not 
finish their work by the legislatively mandated time at the end of May; 
and so they sought a 2-month extension, and the administration and the 
Republican leadership of the House said no. So there had to be heavy 
pressure from the Democrats, from the public, from the families of the 
victims to get them the extension so they could finish their job.
  Then, when they got the extension and they made their recommendations 
at the end of July, and they said, okay, now it is time to move on 
this, then the Republican leadership in the House said, we cannot move 
on this. We will not have time to do it before the election, maybe 
until next year. Then there was heavy pressure from the Democrat 
leadership, from Democrats and the families of the victims, and others, 
and, finally, finally, the Republicans have now said, only in the last 
couple of weeks, that they are now going to try to have legislation 
enacted before the election.
  And I am glad the Republican leadership has flip-flopped once again 
on this, because at least I will say this, when they are pressured by 
the Democrats, when they are pressured by the families of the victims, 
when they are pressured by the American people, when they are pressured 
by the media, at least on this subject, they flipflop in the right 
direction, toward what they should have been doing earlier.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Well, Mr. Speaker, again, I guess my frustration, if 
the gentleman will continue to yield, is that in the aftermath of our 
national tragedy, if this proposal, and I presume it was put forward 
sometime from September of 2001, several months thereafter, if it had 
been acted on in good faith, with full cooperation from the White 
House, with the support of both parties in this House and in the 
Senate, we very well might have had the exact same report that we now 
have, that was presented to the American people just recently, months 
if not years ago so that we could have been in a position in the 
distant past to have acted in a responsible, thoughtful way to adopt 
those limitations that passed through the legislative process. Where 
would we have been?
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would agree with the 
gentleman. It is very clear that had we acted with dispatch, the 
commission could have been appointed at least a year or 16 months 
earlier than it was, and it could have had its report ready a year or 
16 months earlier than it did, and we could have acted on that report a 
year or 16 months earlier than we will, and we could have started 
implementing these things.
  This is part of a pattern. And the pattern is that despite these 
flipflops, despite this bowing to Democratic pressure to act, this 
administration, this House, the Senate still is not doing nearly enough 
to make this Nation safer. Osama bin Laden is still at large. We did 
not finish the job in Afghanistan. The Taliban has reemerged. The 
illegal drug trade is booming in Afghanistan. The warlord disarmament 
is behind schedule. Why? Because we took the resources away. In the 
fall of 2002, we started taking the resources, the troops who could 
have founded Osama bin Laden, the Rangers who knew how to look, and we 
took them away to put them in Iraq.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to read two paragraphs from an article in the 
current issue of the American Prospect about the war on terrorism. It 
says, ``The President, as he revealed last week, doesn't think,'' and 
this is an article by Matthew Yglesias. The title is ``Surrender Monkey 
in Chief.''
  ``The President, as he revealed last week, doesn't think he can win 
the war on terrorism. That is a bit of an off-message remark for a man 
whose re-election campaign is predicated on the notion that only he can 
win the war on terrorism. Worse, the statement suggests the President 
has only a passing familiarity with the generally accepted meaning of 
the term `war on terrorism.'
  ``Even stranger than this, however, is what the President said he 
thinks is possible. `I think you can create conditions so that those 
who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world.' 
Total victory may indeed be setting the bar too high, but is it so 
unreasonable to expect the President to promise that his policies will 
reduce the incidence of terrorism, mitigating the problem if not 
completely solving it? Apparently so.
  ``George Bush not only won't bring us total safety, he won't even 
make us safer. Instead he will make those who threaten us `less 
acceptable.' He won't

[[Page H6882]]

thwart their efforts to achieve their goals, the imposition of a 
neofundamentalist Caliphate on the Islamic world, followed by God knows 
what. He will simply discourage them from `using terror as a tool' to 
advance that goal. It's a starkly pessimistic vision.''
  Now, that is the paragraph from this article by Matthew Yglesias in 
the American Prospect, but it is quite correct. The President, Mr. 
Speaker, will not even recognize the nature of this war. He keeps 
calling it a war against terrorism. But the fact is we are not fighting 
against terrorism as a technique, nor, are we, in fact, fighting 
against all people who use terrorism as a technique. We are not at war 
with the Irish Republican Army, who do not threaten the United States. 
We are not at war with the Baath terrorists who threaten Spain, but not 
the United States. We are not at war with the Tamil Nadu terrorists who 
want a separate Nadu state in Sri Lanka, and who use terrorism against 
the Sri Lankans but not against the United States.
  We are at war against Islamic terrorists, against those in the Muslim 
world who think it their duty, who think it their religious mission to 
carry on a Jihad, to carry on a religious war using terrorist messages 
against the West in general and the United States in particular. That 
is who we are at war against. And if we do not admit who we are at war 
against, who have declared war on us, it is very difficult to define 
the war properly and the measures necessary to wage that war properly.
  That is one of the reasons why the President badly mistakes and the 
Vice President badly mistakes, and most of the speakers at the 
Republican convention last week badly mistake when they conflate the 
war in Iraq with the war on terrorism. The war in Iraq is a different 
war. Iraq is not part of the terrorist threat.
  Saddam Hussein was a standard fascist thug dictator, of whom there 
are, unfortunately, 40 or 50 in the world.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. If the gentleman would yield on that, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. NADLER. I will yield.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I think we all agree, and there is not a single 
individual in this House that would disagree with the statement that 
Saddam Hussein represented the kind of a despot and the kind of thug 
and the kind of dictator that we all find reprehensible. But what I 
find ironic is that in our effort to undermine and to defeat Saddam 
Hussein, we have now allied ourselves with similar thugs, with similar 
despots, with similar reprehensible heads of state.
  I find it fascinating that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld visits 
Uzbekistan and praises the President of Uzbekistan, Ivan Karimov, who 
to call a thug is a disservice to the term thug. He is absolutely a 
replica of Saddam Hussein. There are some 6,000 political prisoners 
today in Uzbekistan. And what do we hear from the White House, what do 
we hear from the Department of State? Nothing. Nothing. Yet when we 
read the Department of State's report on human rights abuses in 
Uzbekistan, it is damning. It is damning.
  What do we hear about the thug, the despot by the name of Turkman 
Bashi, who resides in Turkmenistan, who is also our new friend and 
ally, who by the way not only is a thug but is clearly a psychopath? 
Maybe the gentleman is unaware of this, but he changed the month of 
January, the name January, and named it after himself. But he has 
displayed a certain filial affection for his mother, because he then 
went forward and changed the name of the month of April and named it 
after his mother. And these are our new friends.
  Mr. NADLER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I understand that that 
is the case. I also understand that that is part of the problem. We are 
engaged in a very serious war with the Islamic terrorists. We may have 
to ally ourselves, and I am not going to criticize the President on 
this point, we may have to ally ourselves, as we did in the Cold War, 
sometimes justifiably, sometimes not, with not-too-presentable allies 
against the people who really threaten us.
  Winston Churchill, the great anti-Communist Winston Churchill, was a 
great anti-Communist for many years; and he also, of course, warned the 
world, and the British in particular, against the Nazis. And he went to 
war against the Nazis. Britain finally went to war against Germany. 
When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Churchill became Prime Minister in 
1940, and he rallied the British and rallied the Free World against the 
Nazis. And when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, who had been their 
allies and who Churchill hated, Churchill was asked, and he offered all 
aid to Stalin, who was another thug, Churchill was asked how can you 
say something nice about Stalin? Churchill said, I expect that if 
Hitler invaded hell I should find something nice to say about the 
Devil. So I am not going to criticize.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. If the gentleman will yield just for a moment.
  Mr. Speaker, I respect the gentleman's point. I guess what I am 
underscoring, though, is the repeated claim of a certain morality, a 
certain moralism, the distinction between good and evil. Yet the truth 
is we are allying ourselves, for convenience purposes, to individuals 
that are as evil as Saddam Hussein, who by the way we allied ourselves 
with back in the 1980s.
  Mr. NADLER. The fact is, that is true. We are doing that. We did that 
in the 1980s and 1970s and 1960s, and there was lively debate in this 
country, and it is a pragmatic debate. Sometimes you have to ally with 
bad people because of the danger presented by other bad people. The 
question whether you should is sometimes a question of pragmatism, is 
it really necessary? Is it really necessary in order to advance the 
greater cause of survival, the survival of liberty or the physical 
survival of the United States?
  Now here I want to get back to the main point I wanted to make. 
Iraq's Saddam Hussein is a fascist thug. Terrible. But there are 30 or 
40 others just as terrible. We do not seek to go to war against all of 
them to change those regimes. The only justification for going to war 
against another country, with the possible exception if it is 
committing genocide, is self-protection: to protect the United States, 
to protect our own people, to protect our friends and allies against 
invasion, against attack.

                              {time}  2130

  But because we attacked Iraq which was not a threat to the United 
States, we diverted resources from the real war against the Islamic 
terrorists. We did not find Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Dick 
Clarke, the former National Security Director, testified we had 
specialized troops in Afghanistan that could have found him, but they 
were taken away and the job was given to Afghanistani warlords. Who 
knows who gave them the higher pay, us or Osama bin Laden. They did not 
do the jobs because our troops were taken to Iraq. Now we have now 
shifted the resources back, so Dick Clarke says, well, we will find 
Osama bin Laden, but in those 2 years, al Qaeda has morphed. It has 
become many different organizations. It has become Hydra-headed. So 
capturing Osama bin Laden will not give us the yield in increased 
safety that doing so 2.5 years ago might have done.
  And why did we do that, to deal with a threat that we now know, and 
we should have known then, there were no weapons of mass destruction in 
Iraq? There were no nuclear weapons in Iraq. We had no operational 
connections with al Qaeda, to quote the 9/11 Commission findings, no 
real reason to go to war with them at all except the President now 
retroactively says they were nasty people. Sure, they were nasty 
people; but that does not justify going to war and having 1,000 
American troops killed so far, and thousands of Iraqi citizens killed 
so far because we decided it would be nice to have a democratic regime 
there. Sure it would. I do not know if it is going to happen. The more 
likely result is prolonged quagmire and civil war in Iraq.
  The fact is that should not have been on the front burner. We should 
have finished the job in Afghanistan and finished the job in going 
after al Qaeda.
  Equally to the point, we spent $200 billion in Iraq, a total waste of 
money, and between the $200 billion that we have spent in Iraq so far 
and the trillions of dollars of tax cuts to the wealthy this 
administration and this country have passed, this administration is not 
willing to spend the money on what they should spend the money on to 
protect us. This administration does not take seriously enough the 
terrorist war being waged against us by the Islamic jihaadists.

[[Page H6883]]

  From before 9/11, when the Bush administration ignored many warnings, 
to this day, this administration refuses to spend the money necessary 
to protect the American people. Two months after 9/11, there were 
proposals in this House to spend $10 billion to protect our nuclear and 
chemical facilities and our transportation terminals against attacks 
which could kill or wound thousands of people. The administration 
opposed those proposals. Those proposals died. On ABC News tonight we 
saw pictures of trains going across tracks a few blocks from here, 
trains carrying chlorine gas and other lethal chemicals, unprotected; 
trains that, if attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade that pierced 
those cars, would loosen clouds of chlorine which could kill hundreds 
of thousands of people in Washington.
  This administration refuses to spend the money to buy the weapons-
grade plutonium and uranium in the former Soviet Union which could 
easily be smuggled out to make atomic weapons because they care more 
about tax cuts for the wealthy and this misbegotten quagmire in Iraq 
than about protecting the American people from the real threats.
  When I saw in real-time, and I was watching on television, I saw the 
second plane go into the World Trade Center, I had two thoughts 
immediately. My first thought, my God, this is a terrorist attack. And 
my second thought was thank God they do not have access to nuclear 
weapons. Three thousand people were killed. If that had been a 10-
kiloton nuclear bomb, which is a baby as they go these days, it would 
have been half a million people, and yet we are not doing what we 
should to make sure that that will not happen.
  I just finished reading a rather terrifying book by Graham Allison, 
``Nuclear Terrorism,'' which predicts flatly if we do not change our 
policies and start showing some real urgency, that within 10 years 
there will be nuclear explosions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and 
Washington, and God knows where else. Millions of Americans will die, 
but this administration is dragging its feet.
  The 9/11 Commission and leading nonproliferation experts say the 
administration has been too lax in securing nuclear weapons and 
materials in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
  Mr. Speaker, the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons is 
widespread. When President Bush said that if given weapons-grade 
material, weapons-grade plutonium and uranium, Iraq could build a 
nuclear bomb within a year, he was correct; but so could 20 other 
countries, if given the weapons-grade material, build a nuclear bomb 
within a year. So could al Qaeda, and so could a lot of sophisticated 
terrorist groups. The problem is getting that weapons-grade nuclear 
material. That is what countries spend millions of dollars to do. That 
is why we built Hanford and Oak Ridge in World War II. That is why Iran 
and Pakistan are trying to get lots of centrifuges, but you have to get 
hold of that material. Hundreds and hundreds of tons of it are lying 
around, enough to build thousands of bombs, in the former Soviet Union, 
guarded by a colonel who may not have been paid lately just waiting to 
be sold on the black market or smuggled to al Qaeda.
  We have an agreement with the Russians under the Threat Reduction 
Initiative of Nunn-Lugar. Again, that is a bipartisan initiative. 
Senator Nunn is a conservative Democrat; Senator Lugar, Republican 
chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. That bipartisan initiative 
was passed in 1991 to acquire that material. We have an agreement with 
the Russians to do it over a 30-year period.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, given what 
happened on September 11, 2001, it just makes common sense to 
accelerate the Nunn-Lugar efforts to reduce that 30 years to a 
significantly shorter period of time, make it months rather than 30 
years, to protect not just the homeland, but to protect the world from 
a nuclear disaster.
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with the gentleman. The 9/
11 Commission in their final report said, ``Outside experts are deeply 
worried about the U.S. Government's commitment and approach to securing 
the weapons and highly dangerous materials still scattered in Russia 
and other countries of the former Soviet Union.''
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I wonder out loud whether that $200 
billion that we have already expended of taxpayers' dollars in Iraq, if 
that had been diverted to deal with the real enemy, and I think the 
gentleman makes an excellent point, it is absolutely essential that we 
agree to identify the enemy that poses a threat to the United States. I 
am not referring again to nation states.
  Mr. NADLER. The problem is that there seems to be an obsession in the 
Bush administration with nation states, Iraq being one of them. The 
real enemy here is not nation states right now. The real enemy are the 
Islamic terrorist groups, al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and various 
others. They keep morphing and having new names and groups. They work 
together. They have tremendous technical sophistication. They have a 
lot of people, and they have the ability to threaten us with nuclear 
weapons.
  Let me say, to quote Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the 
Arms Control Association, ``All of the experts I know recommend that 
the most urgent task to prevent terrorist networks from getting their 
hands on such materials is to secure the stockpiles of these materials 
where they exist, and the prime location is Russia and the former 
Soviet Union.''
  Before September 11, 2001, the Bush administration intended to 
eliminate funding for this program, eliminate it, but they did reverse 
course after the terrorist attacks. Most critics agree that the pace is 
too slow and the scope is too narrow.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, how much on a yearly basis is expended by 
this White House?
  Mr. NADLER. We are now spending about $400 million a year.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Four hundred million dollars annually over a 30-year 
period, my math was never too good, but it clearly pales in comparison 
to the $200 billion that we have already expended in Iraq.
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman. To quote Joseph 
Cirincione, the Director for Nonproliferation of the Carnegie Endowment 
for International Peace, the author of the book ``Deadly Arsenals & 
Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction,'' we should be aiming to do all 
of this in the next 4 years, and Senator Kerry must have read that book 
because his proposal is to do it in 4 years.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I do not want to get into politics, but I 
think the gentleman makes an excellent point with clarity by 
identifying the issue, and the issue is it is important that we all 
understand what enemy are we describing and talking about when we talk 
about a threat to the United States.
  The administration continues to suggest that somehow by invading 
Iraq, we will have deterred terrorism, but the reality is it is just 
the opposite. Attacks are on the rise throughout the world. An NBC News 
analysis that was viewed on September 2, just last week, showed that of 
the roughly 2,930 terrorism-related deaths since 9/11, 58 percent of 
them have occurred this year. That is in excess of 1,700. We just 
picked the paper up this past weekend and witnessed a horrific 
incident.
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, 3 years after 9/11, the number of terrorist 
incidents is going up. The number of recruits for these terrorist 
groups are increasing far faster than we can kill or decapitate them. 
They have morphed and decentralized so even if we capture the people 
around bin Laden, or even bin Laden, it will not matter as much as if 
we had done it 2.5 years ago because new leaders have arisen.
  To finish, and this is the Director of the Carnegie Endowment for 
International Peace talking about securing all of the nuclear materials 
in the next 4 years, ``What we should be doing is implementing a very 
aggressive program to go out and secure and eliminate all potential 
source of nuclear weapons and materials that terrorists might obtain, 
whether in the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Iran, or more than 40 
countries that run research reactors.'' Would this be expensive? Yes. 
But we could do it annually for the price of 1 month of operations in 
Iraq, 3- to $4 billion a year for 4 years would do the trick, and yet 
President Bush has tried to cut this funding repeatedly.

[[Page H6884]]

  What I find baffling is why the White House has insisted on attacking 
the most peripheral elements of the WMD threat, like Iraq, while 
ignoring, largely ignoring, the central threat, nuclear proliferation. 
The upshot, and this is a quote from a column in the New York Times by 
Nicholas Kristof a month ago, in fact a month ago and 2 days, ``The 
upshot is that the risk that a nuclear explosion will devastate an 
American city is greater now than it was during the Cold War, and it is 
growing.''
  So the first thing we should be doing is spending our money, the 
money that we are now wasting on a tax cut for the rich, the money that 
we are wasting on the quagmire in Iraq. A far more important use of it 
is to control the production cycle for nuclear materials. That is how 
you shut off the risk of nuclear explosions.
  The second thing, this administration inspects only 2 percent of the 
6 million shipping containers that come into this country every year, 
any one of which could hide a chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon 
inside it.
  I had an amendment on the floor of this House a year ago to insist 
that we inspect every container. When I say inspect every container, I 
do not mean that someone has to go through it by hand. That has to be 
done in some cases, but in most cases you set up a machine that 
operates through neutrons or neumasons, which is probably a better 
technology. It costs a couple of million dollars for the machine, and 
you set it up in Singapore or Hong Kong, and it is like a car wash. You 
take the container on a truck or train chassis through it, and it tells 
you what is in it.

                              {time}  2145

  It tells you the elements. It is spectroscopic. If you see uranium in 
it or plutonium, then maybe you look through it. And if you see a lot 
of nitrogen where it should not be, then you say maybe there are 
explosives in there and you look through it. You could do this again 
for a couple of billion dollars a year, inspect every container before 
it gets put on a ship in a foreign port bound for the United States.
  When I brought this up on the floor of the House, the distinguished 
chairman of the appropriations subcommittee said, No, we don't need to 
do that. We will inspect the high-risk containers. I said, Mr. 
Chairman, the terrorists know that. They'll put the bombs in the low-
risk containers. If you read the book ``America the Vulnerable'' by 
Steve Flynn who served under Presidents Bush and Clinton and Reagan, 
you see exactly how a very innocent container with innocent stuff in it 
from perfectly legitimate, reputable firms can have a bomb or a 
biological weapon or a radiological bomb, a dirty bomb placed in it in 
various ways while it is in transit.
  We must inspect these. You can then, after inspecting them, put 
certain electronic things on it that communicates with a GPS satellite 
and tells you if it has been tampered with or opened or moved on board 
this ship before it comes into port here. Then you can hold that ship 
outside American territorial waters. Why we are not doing that is again 
beyond me.
  The Bush administration, if there is a nuclear attack in this 
country, if there is a radiological bomb, a dirty bomb in this country 
and if it comes in by container, will have a lot to explain.
  And another question. Why are we spending $100 billion on an 
antiballistic missile system? We are told, assuming it worked, which it 
does not yet, but eventually it will, we are told that the ABM is 
necessary in case some rogue state, North Korea, Iran, whoever, should 
get three or four atomic bombs and wished to attack the United States. 
But a rogue state that got three or four atomic bombs and wished to 
attack the United States would not put the atomic bomb on a missile.
  Aside from the fact that it is harder to design an atomic bomb to put 
on a missile than in a shipping container, a missile has a return 
address. If, God forbid, a nuclear explosion occurred in an American 
city or cities, our radar would tell us where that missile came from 
and that regime would know, that dictator would know that if they did 
that, they would cease to exist, their country would cease to exist and 
they would cease to exist half an hour later. It is called deterrence. 
It works against nation states who are rational.
  What they would do would be to take that bomb, put it in a shipping 
container, ship comes into the United States, New York or Los Angeles 
or wherever, explodes and we do not know who to retaliate against. That 
is the real danger. That is how the danger will occur to this country 
and that we are doing virtually nothing against, certainly not spending 
$100 billion.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Yet meanwhile, and these are very valid points that you 
are making, the United States is bogged down in Iraq. Reports from 
media outlets just this week, the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld, 
and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Myers, now admit 
that we have lost control of parts of Iraq. The number of cities not 
under U.S. or central government control is growing. Pause and think of 
that for a moment. First Fallujah, then Ramadi, Baqubah and Samarra, 
now Najaf and Karbala, perhaps soon part of Baghdad City itself, Sadr 
City. This is reported by the New York Times. The reality is that 
security is so bad that a U.S. general says it may be necessary to 
delay or skip over voting in violent areas in order to hold elections 
in January. But clearly what would that do to the legitimacy of the 
interim government? What would that do to the future of democracy in 
Iraq?
  Mr. NADLER. Clearly, to answer your question, there will be no 
legitimacy. There is no legitimacy for that government there now. There 
will be no legitimacy for any government that is a result of elections 
in which large parts of the country do not participate, and I think it 
is probably illusory at this point to hope that there is going to be a 
democratic regime in Iraq any time soon.
  But what this really points out, what these facts really point out is 
that this administration through very ill-advised policies, through not 
doing what Senator Kerry and others urged a year and a half ago, to 
internationalize it, to say to other countries, we will surrender to 
you the monopoly, we will share it with you, we will share with you the 
decision-making power, we will share with your companies the business 
contracts for reconstruction if you send in your troops to help 
reconstruct and if you help do this. They are not going to do it now. 
But if this had been done, then it might have been possible to have the 
Iraqi people see what is going on there as an international 
reconstruction of their country, rather than an American occupation, 
because an occupation will bring forth as it now has a nationalist 
insurgency resulting in a real quagmire. I do not know how to get out 
of it. The worst problem is we are now deeply engaged in a quagmire 
that no one has a good idea how to get out at this point.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. The gentleman's point is corroborated by an American 
military officer. Let me read what a U.S. officer in Sadr City, which 
is that restive part, a slum area, if you will, in Baghdad, what he 
said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, but this was reported in 
Jane's Weekly, a highly respected defense journal published in Britain. 
I am quoting him now:
  ``We're supposed to turn our zones over to the Iraqi National Guard 
by October. They are not ready for that. So unless it is coincidence, 
it seems politically driven bearing in mind the Presidential election 
in November. I know how it must have felt in Vietnam. Everything we do 
is driven by political considerations. We don't have enough forces to 
stay here. We move into Sadr City and then we leave and each time the 
Mahdi Army, that is the army of the Mullah Saddah, comes straight back 
in.''
  That is the reality of Iraq at this moment in time, and it is only 
worsening and it is underscored by what happened this week. Tragically, 
tragically, the 1,000th U.S. hero was killed in Iraq.

  Mr. NADLER. And tragically that is going to continue. But Iraq is 
essentially, despite the fact that we are spending $200 billion so far, 
despite the fact that 1,000 Americans so far have been killed and 6 or 
7,000 wounded, Iraq is a side show in the war of terrorism that is 
being waged against us by the Islamic jihadists and we are not 
directing our attention and our resources toward where they are really 
needed because we are diverted by Iraq.
  As I said before, Saddam Hussein was not a real threat to this 
country. He

[[Page H6885]]

had terrible will, he had terrible intentions; but we had him 
contained. He did not have the weapons. He did not have the capability. 
We had him contained with the no-fly zones, and we had him deterred.
  The real threat to the United States in the Middle East is Iran, 
because Iran is not a fascist dictatorship. Iran is a religious fanatic 
dictatorship. Religious fanatics cannot be deterred. You cannot deter a 
suicide bomber. If Saddam Hussein had gotten nuclear weapons, which he 
was nowhere near getting, the CIA said 7 to 10 years, and we knew that 
before we attacked them. But had he gotten nuclear weapons, deterrence 
would have stopped him from using them, because he was a fascist 
dictator, not a religious fanatic, and he did not want to just kill 
himself and his whole country.
  But the mullahs in charge, the ayatollahs in charge in Iran are 
religious fanatics and unless that regime is changed, and there is a 
lot of domestic opposition to it and maybe we will be saved by regime 
change, by domestic insurrection, but if that does not happen, they are 
trying to get nuclear weapons; and if Iran gets nuclear weapons, if a 
religious dictatorship, religious fanatic dictatorship gets nuclear 
weapons, they may very well use them. They say they would. You read the 
speeches of Mr. Rafsanjani, the former president, the current chairman 
of the council of expediency. He says they would use it. They say they 
want to destroy American civilization, and you have to take them at 
their word. We cannot permit this regime if it survives to have nuclear 
weapons, even if that should mean a few years down the road the 
necessity for military action because they might use those nuclear 
weapons simply for the greater glory of Allah. They say they would. You 
have to believe them. If it became necessary, if President Bush or 
President Kerry or their successor 5 years from now or 8 years from now 
came before this House and said, based on our intelligence, we know 
that the Iranians are about to get nuclear weapons, and we know that 
they would use them and we must stop them now, and therefore I ask 
authorization for action, who would believe that President?
  We cried wolf in Iraq. Like the fabled shepherd boy who cried wolf, 
we have no credibility, not this administration certainly and even 
another administration will have a long way to go to regain the 
credibility of the United States and of our intelligence agencies. To 
deal with a nonexistent phantom threat in Iraq, we have made the 
problem of dealing with a very possibly real mortal threat in Iran in 
years to come 40 or 50 times more difficult because that is where the 
threat might really be.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I just want to read into the Record a quote by a former 
distinguished Member of this body that commanded respect on both sides 
of the aisle. I refer to a good Republican from Nebraska, Doug 
Bereuter, who was the vice chair of the Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence and, as you well know, one of the most respected Members 
of this House. In a farewell letter to his constituents, this is what 
he had to say:
  ``It was a mistake to launch the invasion of Iraq.'' And to 
underscore the point that the gentleman from New York was making, ``Our 
country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our 
alliances are weakened. Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess 
and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq 
without creating bigger future problems in the region and in general in 
the Muslim world.''
  I daresay what he is saying is our credibility is at its lowest point 
probably in modern American history. That does present a threat to our 
national security as we go forward.
  Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentleman and I thank Representative Bereuter 
for being honest and being right. Unfortunately, he is right. We are in 
a quagmire in Iraq. We must extricate ourselves. I do not know how, 
frankly. We must extricate ourselves, and we must get our priorities 
straight. We have a war being waged against us by the Muslim 
terrorists, not by all Muslims, but by the Muslim terrorists. There is 
a civil war going on in the Muslim world. We must have Radio Free 
Islam. We must try to help the moderates against the jihadists.
  But we must also protect ourselves. We must fight the terrorists, but 
we must lead a worldwide civilized effort against the Islamic 
terrorists. To do that we have to have credibility around the world. We 
have to have alliances around the world. It is not wrong to have 
alliances. When Vice President Cheney said, shamefully, that if Senator 
Kerry is elected President, our country would not be safe, I think it 
more accurately could be said the other way around, because this 
administration does not have its priorities straight. It is not 
protecting us against the threat of Islamic jihadists having nuclear 
weapons, as they will if we do not get control of those nuclear 
materials as fast as possible, if we do not spend $3 billion or $4 
billion a year for the next 4 years and get them the heck out of Russia 
and Uzbekistan and Pakistan and the 40 countries around the world.
  We are at risk if we do not protect our ports by having every 
container inspected electronically or by hand before it is put on a 
ship bound to the United States. We are at risk if we do not protect 
our nuclear facilities and our chemical facilities and our 
transportation facilities in this country, if we do not harden this 
country.
  We have been talking about this, but we will not spend the money. 
This administration talks a great game about national security, but it 
will not spend the money. It will spend it in Iraq, it will spend it on 
an ABM system against a nonexistent threat, but against the real 
threats of nuclear terrorism, of nuclear explosions in this country, 
against the real threats of bombs coming in in a container, of the real 
threat of missiles, of shoulder-fired missiles being launched on 
American airliners, against the real threat of our nuclear facilities, 
our chemical facilities, our transportation facilities being targeted, 
we are not spending the money because they care about Iraq, they care 
about the ABM, they care about the tax cuts for the rich, but they do 
not seem to really care about the safety and security of the American 
people; or if they do care, they do not seem to understand where the 
real dangers are coming from.

                              {time}  2200

  We must secure the nuclear materials. We must protect the containers 
and other shipping facilities abroad. We must protect the ships coming 
here. We must harden our nuclear and chemical and transportation 
facilities, and this will cost a lot of money. And we must ally with 
other countries in a worldwide alliance against the Muslim terrorists 
so that when a cell is broken up in Hamburg by German intelligence, by 
German police work, that helps us. We must have a worldwide effort 
here, and we must spend the money on the real threats and not on these 
phantom threats that this administration is preoccupied with.

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