[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 119 (Tuesday, September 28, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H7718]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WAR ON TERROR
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, in just a few short days, the American
people will make a decision that will determine the future of our
Nation for at least the next 4 years and maybe for the next four
decades. We find ourselves in a situation where more and more Americans
are losing their health insurance, more of our retirees are in fear
that their retirement benefits will be reduced or eliminated, more of
our young people are finding it increasingly difficult to afford a
college education, more of our senior citizens are finding it
impossible to buy the medicines they need, and, sadly, more and more of
our American troops are losing their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and
literally thousands of our troops have been and continue to be wounded
in that war.
We find ourselves with the situation in Afghanistan where the Taliban
is reconstituting its authority and power and we face the situation
where long after our country was attacked by the terrorists, the
mastermind of those attacks that took the lives of our citizens in New
York and Pennsylvania and here at the Pentagon in Washington, the
mastermind of that attack, of those attacks, Osama bin Laden, is still
on the loose. We know not where he is. He is seldom mentioned. Yet the
President claims that we are winning the war on terror when the major
terrorist has not been apprehended and continues to be free to plan the
next attack whenever or wherever that may occur.
The President spoke at the Republican Convention for 63 minutes,
quite a long time, and yet he never once mentioned the name of Osama
bin Laden. Osama bin Laden, the man who orchestrated the attacks upon
our country. Osama bin Laden. Not Saddam Hussein but Osama bin Laden.
It is almost as if the President has forgotten how to pronounce that
name. I point this out for I think a very legitimate reason. As long as
the person who was responsible for attacking our country is still on
the loose, has not been apprehended, is it not reasonable to assume
that the American people would conclude that we are still threatened by
this man? That regardless of what we have been able to claim in
Afghanistan, we have failed in the primary mission?
The President told us shortly after September 11 that Osama bin Laden
could run but he could not hide. Those were the President's words. He
can run but he cannot hide. The sad truth is that he ran and he has
successfully hidden and this night he is somewhere planning the next
attack. Symbolically, he is the hero to the terrorists. And as long as
Osama bin Laden is on the loose, the terrorists can say they have not
yet defeated us.
I get a little tired of hearing the rhetoric that is coming from the
White House, that is coming from Secretary Rumsfeld and occasionally
from Colin Powell, although he tends to be a little quieter about it. I
get a little tired of hearing from Vice President Dick Cheney that
things are going well, that we are winning in Iraq. The fact is that
much of Iraq is off limits to our soldiers. They are called no-go
zones. Our soldiers cannot go there. Well, they can only go there if
the Iraqi interim governmental leadership wants them to or says they
should, and in those cases they may wander into those no-go zones. They
tell us we are going to have elections in January. Yet with much of
Iraq off limits, I wonder, and I think it is a legitimate question to
ask, how can we have elections when we cannot even enter large cities
in Iraq?
The President needs to come clean with the American people. He needs
to tell us the truth. We are capable of dealing with the truth. We are
not capable of dealing with misleading deceptions and what I consider
manipulation and deceit on the part of this administration.
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