[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 120 (Wednesday, September 29, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H7844-H7850]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2300
                               IRAQ WATCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Miller of Michigan). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Inslee) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I come to the floor tonight and will be 
joined shortly by my colleagues who have been consistent in manning our 
stations in the Iraq Watch. Now, for several months, my colleagues and 
I in the Iraq Watch have been coming to the floor of the House of 
Representatives to discuss our policy in Iraq and to ask if we are on 
the right course in Iraq.
  I am reminded why we have been doing that when just before I came to 
the floor in the cloakroom, watching the TV, I saw a tribute to another 
fallen American hero in Iraq. That is all too regular an occurrence 
recently and reminds us why we come here for the Iraq Watch, because we 
are dedicated to the proposition that the men and women who fall in 
Iraq should not be shuttled off to page 12 and 14 and forgotten by 
Americans and have this trial and tribulation in Iraq somehow become 
sort of a back-burner issue.
  We who have participated in the Iraq Watch are committed to the 
proposition that we need to be diligent in asking hard questions of our 
government as to whether or not our government is doing the right thing 
or making mistakes in Iraq. This is important to do for a variety of 
reasons.
  The Vice President of the United States has suggested that only 
Members of Congress should just act as good little Members of Congress 
and be silent about Iraq and simply defer to the administration. The 
Vice President has suggested, at least implicitly, that whatever the 
administration is doing must be right and that all good Americans must 
fall in line and be silent about the Iraq policy and to do otherwise 
would give somehow aid and comfort to the enemy.
  Let me suggest that that would be the least patriotic thing for 
Americans to do, from the U.S. Congress all the way down to the voting 
booth on November 2, because the people in Iraq serving tonight deserve 
the right American policy. That is only going to happen if Americans 
stand up on their hind legs and speak their minds about what we should 
be doing in Iraq.
  So we are doing that, and representing my 600,000 constituents, and I 
know I will not be alone in expressing some sentiments tonight, to 
suggest that this administration has not made the right decisions in 
Iraq and, in fact, has repeatedly made the wrong decisions in Iraq that 
have now been responsible for us being in this terrible situation that 
we are now in tonight in Iraq.
  Before I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), I would 
suggest in our discussion tonight there will be two parts of our 
discussion. One, we will ask whether or not this administration has 
been right or wrong on a variety of decision-making in Iraq. That is 
the first part of our discussion. The second part of our discussion is 
what should we do now to get a fresh approach in Iraq to increase our 
chance of success in bringing our troops home in a reasonable fashion. 
Those are both important parts of our discussion.
  I have some questions that I would like to pose to the 
administration, but before I do so, I would like to yield to my friend, 
the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), who has been a very stalwart 
member of the Iraq Watch to start our discussion this evening.

[[Page H7845]]

  Mr. STRICKLAND. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Washington 
State for yielding.
  Why do we stand here and talk about this subject late at night? The 
reason is because the people who have made the decisions which have 
brought us to this current situation, this mess that we face in Iraq, 
where we have lost well over 1,000 of our soldiers' lives, where 
approximately 7,000 of our American soldiers have been injured, these 
same people, and I am talking about from the President to the Vice 
President Cheney on down to Secretary Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard 
Perle and others, the so-called ``neo cons,'' they have made the 
decisions which have led us to this place where we are tonight.
  We are in a mess. We are in a quagmire in Iraq, and we talk about 
what has happened in the past because the same people who have brought 
us to this point want to remain in positions of decision-making. They 
want to remain in power, and they want to make decisions for what we do 
in the future.
  I just a few moments ago left a dinner that I had with some of my 
friends from Ohio. These are people who have children and young 
relatives, and we were talking about the fact that we are in a 
situation in this country where our military is stretched so thinly 
that we are literally extending Reserve and National Guards persons 
well beyond any reasonable length of service in Iraq. They have been 
jerked out of their communities, away from their families, away from 
their jobs and professional  responsibilities, and they find themselves 
now in Iraq.

  We have a situation where we have instituted the so-called backdoor 
draft where those who had felt that they had long since fulfilled their 
military obligations to this country, some in their forties, even I 
believe many in their fifties, are being pulled out of their 
communities, away from their families, sent to Iraq.
  We are taking our troops away from other really troubled spots in 
this world, and I would especially mention South Korea. We know that 
North Korea has stated they are going to go ahead and pursue their 
nuclear strategies. We are bringing troops away from South Korea simply 
because we cannot meet our military obligations.
  We have got about 135,000 to 140,000 American troops in Iraq tonight. 
The next country that has a significant number of troops in Iraq is 
Great Britain. They have got somewhere in the vicinity of 6,500. We 
have got 135,000 to 140,000, and the reports are that even Great 
Britain is considering withdrawing up to one-third of their troops from 
Iraq.
  So what do we have? We have a situation where every mother and father 
in this country should pay attention if they have a child and they do 
not want that child facing a military draft and being forced to go 
fight this war that George Bush has started in Iraq. I do not care if a 
parent's child is 10 years old or 14 years old or 18 years old. If they 
do not want that son or daughter to be subject to a military draft, 
they should be paying attention, because although the President says he 
has no intention of instituting a mandatory draft, if you look at the 
situation, you look at our manpower needs, you look at the fact that 
the National Guard is currently having difficulty recruiting sufficient 
numbers, that they are even taking people who are pre-enlisting, they 
may still be completing their education, for example, and will not 
actually be eligible to enter the military for another year or so, they 
are counting those people as new recruits in order to at least pretend 
that we are meeting our current manpower needs. That is happening right 
now.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I just want to add to the point backup for 
what you are saying.
  I read in the last 3 days two very disturbing things. Number one, for 
the first time in 15 years, the National Guard has fallen over 5,000 
people short in their recruiting, for obvious reasons, that we see the 
stretch that has resulted in a silent draft already of pulling people 
back repeatedly, and 50-year-old people who have gone to Iraq once for 
a year, come back for several months, now have to go back again, 
leaving their families and careers. Of course, the National Guard is 
going to fall short.
  We already have a silent draft because now the Army's pulling people 
back who served 4- and 5-year terms already, who never understood that 
they could realistically thought they would be pulled back, and it is 
disturbing to show you how bad this is. I think something like 25 
percent of those people have not appeared for duty. They are so upset 
about what has happened. This is a major problem in our military 
because the President planned so poorly about what was going to be 
involved in Iraq.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, my 
understanding is that those people, those citizens out there, are now 
being considered deserters because they have not reported.
  This is a serious matter. I think the President should be talking to 
the American people in a very straightforward way about how he intends 
to meet our military personnel manpower needs without a draft.

                              {time}  2310

  Just simply saying we are not going to have a draft is not an answer, 
because we have the need.
  What happens, for example, if something were to break loose on the 
Korean peninsula? What happens? North Korea is basically thumbing their 
nose at this administration and basically saying, what are you going to 
do to us? You are bogged down there in Iraq. Your military is stretched 
thin. What are you going to do to us if we decide to continue to pursue 
our efforts to acquire nuclear weapons?
  Then there is Iran. Iran is saying basically the same thing. Do they 
feel intimidated by us? Well, apparently not, because they are 
indicating they are going to go right ahead with their nuclear program. 
And we are bogged down in Iraq.
  Now, the fact is that Iraq did not have a nuclear program. Iraq was 
not an imminent threat to this country. Iraq did not present a danger 
to the American people, but we have diverted our resources and our 
military capabilities to Iraq, and now we are bogged down there. It is 
a quagmire. The President wants to avoid that word, but when you have 
large geographic areas and huge cities in Iraq that are off limits, 
that are ``no-go zones,'' where our soldiers cannot even enter, then 
you are living in a make-believe world to say things are going well; 
that we are going to have elections in January; that democracy is on 
the march. It is not.
  We are not winning in Iraq. And it is not the fault of our soldiers. 
We honor the service of our soldiers, all of us in this chamber do. But 
we are just sick and tired of the lack of candor coming from this 
administration.
  Mr. INSLEE. Reclaiming my time, Madam Speaker, I want the gentleman 
to know that it is not only our sort of hard military assets, when we 
think of soldiers and tanks and ships that have been pulled away from 
the real threats that we face, it is our intelligence services. Our 
intelligence services were pulled off of hunting Osama bin Laden to 
deal with Iraq.
  They actually took the Predator aircraft that was searching for Osama 
bin Laden up in Afghanistan and moved it to Iraq. And we still have not 
found Osama bin Laden. We actually diverted intelligence sources that 
could have been used to find out what Iran is actually doing with their 
nuclear program, a real threat to this country, a real statement that 
Iran wants to develop fissionable material. But we moved it to Iraq.
  Instead of having intelligence services in North Korea to find out 
what they are really doing, it is in Iraq. Our intelligence services 
have been malpositioned as a result of this.
  Before we go on into a lot of detail, I would like to suggest ten 
questions that we in Congress have a duty to ask the administration, 
and I think the American people have a duty to ask the President of the 
United States. I think, during the next 5 weeks, this is a very 
important time to ask these ten questions, and I will posit these ten 
questions and maybe even hazard an answer about the President's 
performance in Iraq.
  The President's performance is a life or death matter, and we have to 
ask whether the President's performance has been up to snuff or whether 
it has been something below expectations and whether it has cut the 
mustard.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Before the gentleman asks those questions, Madam

[[Page H7846]]

Speaker, if he will continue to yield, I would like to make one further 
comment.
  I would hope every parent in this country would ask themselves, as 
they contemplate this war and the situation in which we find ourselves, 
do they believe that this President's leadership is such that his 
wisdom, his maturity, his judgment is such that they would entrust 
their son or their daughter to go fight this war in Iraq?
  And the reason I think that is a relevant question is because the 
President is asking no one to sacrifice for this war save the soldiers 
who are there risking their lives, in too many cases dying and being 
injured, and the people who love them back here at home. No one else is 
being asked to participate in this war.
  We are not being asked to pay taxes to pay for the war. We are not 
being asked to in any way discipline ourselves by saving energy so that 
we are less reliant on the Middle East for oil and gasoline and such. 
The President is not sacrificing for this war. It has not touched his 
life in any direct way. Members of this House, our friends in the other 
body, by and large, are not sacrificing for this war. I believe there 
are maybe two Members of the 435 Members of the House and 100 Senators 
who actually have a child, a son or daughter, who is a part of the 
active military now.
  So we are not sacrificing during this war. The American people 
generally are not being asked to sacrifice. Are we being asked to pay 
taxes so that the cost of this war will not be passed on to future 
generations? No. No. That is not happening.
  So it seems appropriate that as we contemplate the fact that some 
moms and dads are sacrificing and have sacrificed, some husbands and 
wives have sacrificed, this very night they go to bed wondering whether 
or not their loved one is going to be safe, it seems that we should 
reflect upon what is happening here with regard to the fact that we 
have entered a war of choice.
  Iraq did not attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. The al Qaeda 
network attacked us. Iraq was not an imminent threat, yet we find our 
sons and daughters fighting and dying in this war. So I think it is 
appropriate to pause and say to the mothers and fathers in this 
country, do you think this war is worth the sacrifice of your son or 
your daughter?
  And if the people who are listening cannot answer that question in 
the affirmative, it seems to me then that they should start to question 
whether or not the sacrifice of some other moms' or dads' sons or 
daughters is worth the sacrifice.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, this Congress needs to ask an additional 
question. Do we have the right people making the decisions that have 
exposed our sons and daughters to this life-and-death situation? It is  
certainly appropriate to ask at least ten hard questions in that regard 
to see whether this administration has been right or wrong in Iraq.

  So I will ask quickly ten questions and posit an answer, and they all 
are very simple. Was the President right or wrong on various issues in 
Iraq? I will ask these ten questions, and then I have pretty clear 
answers that should be pretty obvious to anyone.
  Question number one: Was the President right or wrong when he started 
a war under the statement clearly made to the American people that 
there is no doubt, no doubt, he said, that Iraq had weapons of mass 
destruction? Was he right or was he wrong on this life-or-death 
question?
  The fact simply is, he was wrong. He was wrong not only in hindsight, 
which is easy, but in foresight, because we now have seen the 
intelligence, and we know there was lots of doubt. This President says 
there was no doubt, and he was wrong. Then when he made that statement, 
and over 1,000 Americans have died as a result of that misstatement. 
The President was not right. He was wrong.
  Question number two: Was the President right or wrong when he led 
Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to the attack on 
America on September 11? Was he right or wrong when he led Members to 
believe that?
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I would 
like to answer that question.
  He was absolutely wrong. And in spite of all the evidence, the 
evidence, for example, that is coming from the 
9/11 Commission, this bipartisan commission that found that there was 
no credible relationship between Saddam Hussein and the attack upon our 
country, in spite of that evidence, the Vice President continues to try 
to mislead the American people and to cause the American people to see 
a connection that did not exist between Saddam Hussein and the attack 
upon our Nation.
  So the answer to the gentleman's second question is, the President 
was wrong.
  Mr. INSLEE. Let us go to question number three: Was the President 
right or wrong when he led the American people to believe that we would 
be welcomed as liberators, with rose petals aplenty, with joy in the 
streets for months welcoming us, which would reduce the need for 
American troops? Was he right or wrong?
  He was wrong, unfortunately. And he was wrong not just in hindsight 
but he was wrong in not listening to his own intelligence reports that 
we now know that he had. A report came out last week about the 
intelligence report he had at that time that predicted because of the 
ethnic tensions in Iraq that we would be seen as occupiers from day 
one. He was wrong.

                              {time}  2320

  Question number four: Was the President right or wrong in rejecting 
the advice from his own military personnel that we would need several 
hundred thousand troops in Iraq to provide security immediately after 
the collapse of the Iraqi Army or else loitering would run crazy and 
anarchy would run through the streets? Was he right or wrong when he 
sent out his hit men to defame General Shinseki, to say that General 
Shinseki did not know what he was talking about when he said we would 
need at least 300,000 or 400,000 troops to do this job?
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Madam Speaker, he was wrong again. The fact is that 
this question points to the fact that the civilian leadership within 
this administration really discounted the professional military advice 
coming to us from the military folks who had given their lives to 
studying and having knowledge about these issues. The fact is that 
General Shinseki, they say he was not fired, but he was pushed aside. 
He was forced into retirement because they did not want to hear what he 
had to say. When he gave advice that they found inconsistent with their 
own predetermined notions of what they wanted to do, they forced 
General Shinseki into retirement. Once again, the President was wrong.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, my fifth question: Was the President right 
or wrong when he said or the assumption was made that not all of our 
troops needed body armor and we did not need heavy armor in the streets 
of Baghdad because only the people in the front lines would be targets? 
He was wrong. Anyone who knows anything about insurgency should have 
reached that conclusion. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) has 
done yeomen's service in fighting this administration to get that body 
armor to our people.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Madam Speaker, I know something about body armor. 
There have been accusations that one of the candidates for president 
voted against an $87 billion supplemental request, somehow deprived our 
soldiers of body armor. I know something about this because, early on 
in the conflict, a young constituent of mine, a graduate of West Point 
and a gung-ho Army guy, wrote to me and said, my men wonder why they do 
not have this body armor protection. The fact is I started writing 
letters to Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers.
  I got letters back, and basically, they said to me, we did not plan 
adequately, we do not have the materials that are necessary to provide 
this body armor.
  So the truth is, in answer to the gentleman's question, the President 
was wrong because the President chose to send our young soldiers into 
battle without body armor. It took this administration an entire year 
from March of 2003 until March 2004 to protect all of our soldiers with 
individual body armor. And the body armor I am talking about is 
referred to as the interceptor vest. It costs about $1,500 a piece. It 
is composed of a vest made of

[[Page H7847]]

Kevlar with pockets in the front and back for the insertion of ceramic 
plates. This vest is capable of stopping an AK-47 round. I believe to 
the core of my being that we have had soldiers lose their lives and be 
unnecessarily injured simply because this administration prematurely 
sent our soldiers into battle without this vital equipment. The 
President was wrong when he sent our troops into battle without 
adequate body armor.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, the sixth question: Was the President 
right or wrong when he told Americans that, after the mission was 
accomplished and the President made his grandiose landing on the 
aircraft carrier in full regalia with the wonderful flight suit and 
helmet on, and stood in front of a banner that said ``Mission 
Accomplished'' and led Americans to believe it was going to be a 
decreased violent situation, was he right or wrong? And let me suggest 
that it was 800 lost American heroes ago. He was wrong sadly.
  But the problem with this is this is a repeated circumstance with 
this administration. The administration said that after the Iraqi Army 
collapsed, things would get better. They got worse. The President said 
that when we had the turnover, the purported turnover to a provisional 
Iraqi government, things would get better. They have gotten worse. We 
are having an accelerated loss of men and women since the turnover.
  The President says after the election, things will get better. The 
President simply has been wrong time and time again with his rose-
colored glasses and not facing the truth of the situation in Iraq.
  The seventh question: Was the President right or wrong when he 
decided that the way he was going to do the reconstruction of Iraq was 
not to hire Iraqis, not to hire Iraqi personnel to do the work, not to 
hire poor Iraqis which he might get off the street and reduce 
unemployment, but instead give the contracts to his friends at 
Halliburton so Halliburton could hire people from the Philippines with 
our taxpayer money? He was wrong in giving the money to Halliburton and 
the reason he was wrong is we know that every employed Iraqi is one 
less potential recruit for the insurgency, and we have been wasting 
billions of American taxpayer dollars, not using it effectively in the 
reconstruction of Iraq.
  Madam Speaker, my final question, my eighth question is: Was the 
President right or wrong in saying now that we have done enough, at a 
proper rate of training the new Iraqi security force, was he right or 
wrong?
  I am going to give Members one tidbit that I read today. Today, a 
year and a half after the invasion, this administration still has less 
than 40 percent of the infrastructure for the military necessary to 
train the Iraqi Army. So here we are with our GIs in harm's way and a 
year and a half later this administration has less than half of the 
people they need to do the training of the Iraqi Army, and they expect 
to have an election in 3 months.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Delahunt).
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Madam Speaker, here we are again late at night asking 
questions.
  Madam Speaker, it is a rare commodity, unfortunately, in Washington, 
D.C., when one speaks of courage. We witness courage all over America. 
We witness courage in terms of our men and women overseas risking their 
lives. We observe courage every day in our streets, particularly with 
our public safety officials. We clearly witnessed an extraordinary 
level of courage and heroism on September 11, but we seem to have a 
paucity of political courage because I believe and I think that most 
Americans share the view that political courage involves admitting that 
you are wrong when it is clear that you have made a mistake.
  Madam Speaker, all of the questions that the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Inslee) posed to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Strickland) elicited an obvious answer, that the President was wrong.

                              {time}  2330

  But what I find most disturbing is the inability of this President to 
summon the political courage to acknowledge that he was wrong. It is 
certainly no disgrace to make a mistake, to be wrong. We have all done 
it. I do it every day. But what I think is particularly un-American, 
undemocratic, is a reluctance to be forthright and honest about your 
failures. We do not hear that from this President. That is sad. Because 
that kind of courage would be the earmark of genuine leadership, of 
leadership that would be embraced by all of us, irrespective of 
partisan differences. But it is so sorely lacking at this moment in our 
history.
  We need a leader with political courage. I think it became clear to 
me last March when David Kay, the man who led this White House postwar 
effort to find the weapons of mass destruction that were purportedly in 
Iraq, called on the President to come clean with the American people. I 
think when he made that call, he felt that the President was receiving 
poor political advice and that what was necessary was to acknowledge 
that a mistake had been made. I know that the two of you remember his 
appearance before a committee in the other branch that appeared on the 
front page of, I think it was Time magazine, but it was eloquent in its 
courage when he said, ``We were all wrong.'' It is not a sin to be 
wrong, but it is not being patriotic and American to lack the courage 
to admit a mistake was made.
  David Kay said, and I am quoting from a story that appeared in the 
Guardian, a highly respected English magazine. He said that the 
administration's reluctance to make that admission was undermining its 
credibility at home and abroad. He called for a frank admission, even 
though it was embarrassing.
  Not only are we losing our prestige, not only are we losing our claim 
to moral authority but because of this President's failure to admit he 
was wrong, let me suggest we are losing the war on terror, because we 
are losing allies every day and the American people should know that. 
Because when you review the hard evidence that shows that incidents of 
terror are increasing dramatically every day all over the world, 
particularly in Iraq and in Afghanistan, I fear that we are losing that 
war, a war that every American wants to win. I thank the gentleman from 
Washington for enumerating that list of mistakes. But I could even 
forgive this President if he could accept responsibility, but he 
cannot. That is a failure of courage.
  Mr. INSLEE. I think the ninth question dovetails with what you are 
saying so eloquently that all of us can make mistakes. It is human. And 
these are difficult situations, obviously. But my ninth question, I 
think, goes to an issue that exposes why we are in such a difficult 
situation in Iraq. The ninth question is, Is the President right or 
wrong when he tells us, or leads us to believe that most of this 
violence against Americans in Iraq are outside forces of Iraq, sort of 
these outside terrorists who are coming into Iraq to commit this 
horrendous violence against us? The reason he has said this, I think, 
is he wants to believe that because he does not want to believe that 
the Iraqis themselves do not view us as liberators, because he always 
believed that apparently we would be greeted as liberators. He 
apparently cannot get out of that mind-set that some Iraqis view us as 
occupiers.
  So was the President right or wrong when he says that most of the 
violence against Americans is caused by people from outside of Iraq? 
The President is wrong. The reason I know that is they finally did an 
evaluation of the people in custody in our prisons, Abu Ghraib where we 
obviously had a lack of leadership as far up as the Secretary of 
Defense; but what they found was of all the people we had in custody, 
less than 2 percent were from outside of Iraq. Less than one out of 50 
of these people that we had in custody were from outside Iraq.
  What does that tell you? That is bad news for us, because what it 
means is that 49 out of 50 of those people are Iraqis who are fighting, 
who are domestic and who live there. That means that the President's 
working assumption from day one that we would be seen as liberators 
simply is not the case, and he refuses to recognize that reality.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. On this question, this ninth question, I think the 
President is partly right. I think he is mostly wrong because as my 
friend from Washington has indicated, the people

[[Page H7848]]

in Iraq simply do not want us there. All the opinion polls indicate 
that. When you see the people dancing in the streets when one of our 
tanks has been exploded or something, oftentimes you see young Iraqi 
children. These are not foreigners that have invaded Iraq. But I will 
admit that the President is partly right, because some of the people in 
Iraq now are in fact terrorists from outside the country.
  But that leads to another question. When did they come there, and why 
are they there? The evidence is that Iraq was not a country that was 
filled with al Qaeda terrorists prior to this war, but in fact since 
this war has started, now Iraq is becoming a haven for terrorists. 
Terrorists are in fact coming. Some of the Taliban, we are even being 
told, the former Taliban terrorists that were in Afghanistan are now 
finding some haven for themselves in Iraq. Some of the large cities in 
Iraq are havens for the terrorists. These are the so-called no-go zones 
where our troops cannot go and say they are places which are really 
breeding terrorists.
  So I do think that we have created a mess in Iraq. We have taken a 
country that was not an imminent threat to us, we took a country that 
was controlled by an authoritarian, despicable dictator who abused his 
own people, that is true. That is Saddam Hussein. Are we glad he is 
gone? Absolutely. He was a terrible human being, a terrible person. But 
the fact is that does not cover the problem we have of justifying 
invading Iraq as the President indicated because they were connected to 
the attack on our country or they were somehow an imminent danger to us 
or were developing nuclear weapons or had weapons of mass destruction.

                              {time}  2340

  None of those things are true. So what I am trying to say to my 
friend in regard to his ninth question, which I think is a thoughtful 
question, we have created in Iraq, or this administration has created 
in Iraq, a breeding ground for terrorists, and many of those terrorists 
are homegrown Iraqis. Some of them are the result of outsiders seeing 
an opportunity now to go into Iraq because of all the chaos that exists 
there and join this effort against the United States.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I really think that is a perceptive 
comment, what he said, which I agree with, that while Iraq may not have 
presented a terrorist threat before this invasion, it does now. And I 
think that is a very perceptive thing to say and I agree.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to 
yield, to make an effort just to clarify what I am saying, the 
President has made every attempt to convince the American people that 
the war in Iraq is the war against terror, and he has tried to blur the 
distinctions between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. He has tried 
to imply that al Qaeda, this terrorist network, was operative in Iraq.
  The fact is that the American people know better. They know the war 
on terror is the war against Osama bin Laden and against those who 
attacked our country. And the fact is that when the President tries to 
blur that distinction, I think he is doing a disservice to the American 
people.
  There is a war in Iraq, a preemptive war which we initiated. There is 
a war against terror, against those who were associated with Osama bin 
Laden and who are determined to once again strike our country. And I 
would just remind the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) and 
the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) that the leader of the war 
against us in terms of a terrorist network is Osama bin Laden. And 
Osama bin Laden is alive and well somewhere. And this President spoke 
for 63 minutes at the Republican convention and never once mentioned 
his name.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I have heard it said 
that he is really ``Osama been forgotten,'' and unfortunately that has 
some truth to it.
  Let me ask my tenth question about whether the President has been 
right or wrong on these critical issues.
  Was the President right or wrong when he told us that the American 
taxpayer would not have to pay for this effort because the Iraqi oil 
fields would be producing enough to essentially pay for this operation 
in the reconstruction of Iraq? Something Mr. Wolfowitz told I think 
every single Member, 435 Members of Congress, looked us in the eye and 
said not to worry, the Iraqi oil revenues will pay for this; the 
American taxpayers are not going to have to sacrifice a dime for this 
operation.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to Mr. Delahunt to answer that question, was 
the President right or wrong in that regard?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Madam Speaker, not only was he wrong, but what the 
administration did, and we have heard much about $87 billion, and the 
White House attacks John Kerry because he voted against the $87 
billion, but what they failed to do was tell the other half of the 
story, like we all voted against the $87 billion also, because not only 
did he fail to tell the truth about the cost of reconstruction but 
rather insisted that the monies that were to be utilized in rebuilding 
Iraq were to be a gift, a giveaway. So all of those American taxpayers 
who are out there who were misled about the cost of the war being paid 
for by the Iraqis in the first instance, they should understand that 
all of the money we are pouring into Iraq is not a loan. It is a gift. 
It is a giveaway. It is welfare, if you will.
  We heard today about welfare, welfare to work. We are providing 
welfare for the Iraqi people. We are building them 6,000 miles of 
roads. We cannot get a transportation bill through here to help build 
American roads and repair them. We are building schools in Iraq, and we 
are rehabilitating schools in Iraq, thousands of them. But there is no 
money to rebuild and rehab schools in America.
  And do my colleagues know what else we are doing? We are building 
affordable housing, 25,000 units, for Iraqi people. In the United 
States, with our population, which is ten times that of Iraq, we are 
building 5,000. And do my colleagues know what? Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer 
are not going to get a dime of it back. Sure, there are other nations 
that are giving something, nowhere near what we are, but their 
governments insisted it be a loan.
  So, in short, Madam Speaker, we were misled, and the American 
taxpayer has been duped, and the American taxpayer is not going to get 
a dime back.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, let me add insult to 
injury. The President has essentially wanted to fight this war on the 
cheap and not pay for it, the first time in American history where a 
President has done massive tax cuts in the middle of a war. And as a 
result of that, what this President has done has put the real cost of 
this war and the reconstruction of Iraq not on our generation. It is 
all deficit spending. The $200 billion-plus is all deficit spending 
because the President has not had the gumption to go to the American 
people and ask them to pay for this war. Winston Churchill said, ``All 
I have to offer you is blood, sweat, toil, and tears.'' This President 
has not been willing to level with the American people to really say, I 
am asking them to buck up for the cost of this. And when one is not 
willing to be candid with the American people in that regard, how can 
we continue to maintain support for this operation? This deficit 
spending is wrong.

  I just want to summarize before we go to the future and use our 
remaining time talking about where we go in the future. I just want to 
summarize our discussion. We have asked ten questions tonight, the ten 
critical questions about this President's performance in Iraq, was he 
right or wrong? Here is the summary of the answers:
  He was wrong on WMD. He was wrong about al Qaeda's links. He was 
wrong about our being greeted as liberators with rose petals. He was 
wrong about the number of troops that we would need to maintain 
security in Iraq, despite the advice of his own generals. He was wrong 
about not saying that we needed body armor for everyone. He was wrong 
about saying, as soon as mission is accomplished and there is a new 
government, things would get better. He was wrong about saying it is 
better to give deals to his friends at Halliburton than it is to Iraqis 
working to get this work done. He was wrong about saying there would be 
a decrease in violence. He was wrong about saying that the majority of 
the people essentially are outside of Iraq. He was wrong about not 
providing enough trainers early enough to get an army of Iraqis up to 
face this threat. And, lastly, he

[[Page H7849]]

was wrong in not facing the real cost of this operation and wrong in 
making this all deficit spending.
  Those are ten very serious failures of leadership by this American 
President. And these are not peripheral issues. And it shows a pattern. 
And one thing the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) said and the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) both, these are difficult 
issues. We can all make mistakes. But this is a pattern of repeated 
failure that has now resulted in a terrible situation where things are 
getting worse rather than better in Iraq. There has been one person in 
the administration who has said that, and that is the Secretary of 
State. Exactly one person in the administration has recognized how dire 
this situation is. And now the American people are going to be called 
to ask, was this good enough performance in difficult situations? And 
that is a decision they will make in November.
  I hope we can turn our discussion for our remaining time now about 
our suggestions about where we go from here, what we suggest we need to 
do because we are in this pickle together. Democrats and Republicans, 
we are all in the lifeboat together. Let me just make one quick 
suggestion I would make.

                              {time}  2350

  I believe it is important for the American President to make very 
clear to the Iraqi people that we are not going to be in Iraq forever. 
We are not going to be a permanent presence in Iraq. Unfortunately, he 
is sending different messages and building 14 permanent military bases 
in Iraq that obviously are going to be there for decades, the way they 
are under construction.
  We need Iraqis to realize their destiny is in their hands, that they 
cannot rely on us. They need to get on their own two feet and shoulder 
these burdens. These groups we are putting in the army have to decide 
they might have to engage for their own benefit, they cannot rely on us 
as a crutch forever. We need to make that statement very clear to the 
Iraqis to encourage them to take responsibility for their own destiny.
  I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Madam Speaker, I like that suggestion from my friend 
from Washington State, that we need to convey to Iraqis that we do not 
intend to stay there.
  A second suggestion I would like to make is we need to convey to the 
world community that this is their problem, not just an American 
problem. Stability in the Middle East, access to the resources, the oil 
resources in the Middle East, is important for so many countries, not 
just us. But the fact is that this President and this administration 
really have stuck their thumbs in the eyes, figuratively speaking, of 
so many of our traditional allies.
  The fact is that we had this administration announcing right off that 
the work to do the reconstruction in Iraq would only go to certain 
companies, Halliburton being the primary one, and no other countries 
could or would be involved. So we basically said we do not want you 
involved, because, as was said earlier, we thought it was going to be 
easy sailing. We would go in there, they would love us, democracy would 
bloom, we would have access to oil, and we did not want the help of 
other countries.
  Now it has gotten pretty tough, and we find more and more of even the 
coalition partners pulling back, pulling away. Some countries have 
pulled out entirely. Even Great Britain, they are talking about the 
possibility of reducing their force in Iraq by one-third. So I believe 
we do need to internationalize the effort in Iraq.
  We need to go to the UN, we need to go to NATO. We need to say this 
is a problem that is of importance to all of us, the solution must come 
from all of us, and the burden must be borne by all of us.
  Now, can President Bush do that? I doubt if he can. I think he has so 
poisoned the water in terms of our international relationships that it 
is highly unlikely that we will ever be able to develop the kind of 
international cooperation and coalition that will enable us to 
extricate ourselves from Iraq in a timely manner with honor. So that is 
why I believe we need a change in administration.
  Now, our traditional allies, and I am talking about the Europeans 
that have fought wars with us and been our partners, I do not think 
they like to be alienated from us. I do not think they like a division 
between our country and their country. I believe they would welcome an 
opportunity for a rapprochement, for a coming together, even to deal 
with this most difficult issue. But I do not think it will happen under 
the leadership of this President or this administration.
  So my suggestion, in addition to the one I have heard from my 
colleague and friend from Washington State, is that we move forward 
with a renewed effort to internationalize the conflict in that part of 
the world, and I think it can be done, and I think it will be done 
under new presidential leadership.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) for a suggestion.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Madam Speaker, I would simply add to that is what we 
have now is the President in terms of world opinion that has very 
little credibility. Let us just state the truth, the reality: If we are 
going to internationalize, we have to have an administration that has 
credibility and respect throughout the world.
  There was a recent survey of some nine Islamic countries, and in fact 
Secretary Powell just indicated that the magnitude of anti-Americanism 
throughout the world and specifically among Muslim nations is growing 
at a fearful rate. But the survey that was done of these nine countries 
indicated that the vast majority of those people in those nations 
believed that we went there for oil; for oil.
  I would like to leave you with this question: Before September 11, 
according to an anecdote that was related in a book by the former 
Secretary of Treasury, a Republican, a conservative who served in the 
Reagan and the Nixon administrations, indicated that on February 26, 
2001, months before our national tragedy, he saw a map. It was prepared 
by the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Rumsfeld, with markings for a 
super giant oil field and earmarked for production sharing and dividing 
the largely undeveloped southwest of the country into nine blocks for 
future exploration.
  In other words, in February of 2001, according to Secretary of 
Treasury Paul O'Neill, the administration had a map, and the map is to 
my left. This was before any issue of weapons of mass destruction or 
links to al Qaeda came up.
  Now, where did this map come from? Well, it was produced as a result 
of a lawsuit, a lawsuit by a group called Judicial Watch, which 
certainly is no fan or ally of partisan Democrats. They secured it as a 
result of discovery proceedings in a lawsuit against the vice president 
of the United States, Dick Cheney, because of the secrecy surrounding 
his Energy Task Force. That is where it came out. And here is the map 
of Iraq.
  We need some answers and the rest of the world needs some answers 
about this map, about Secretary O'Neill's reference to it, so that we 
can clarify, once and for all, what the real motive of our military 
intervention in Iraq was all about, because it is stories like this 
that lead the rest of the world to doubt our motives and our 
proclamation, Madam Speaker, that we are bringing democracy to the rest 
of the world.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, the gentleman brings 
up the issue of our relationship with these contractors.
  Let me make a third suggestion, and that is that this administration 
stop pouring money into Halliburton and start getting it to Iraqis so 
they can get to work rebuilding their own country.
  There is no reason for us to be giving our taxpayer dollars to 
Halliburton so they can hire Filipinos and take, I don't know what the 
percentage is, but to skim profits off the top in this cost-plus kind 
of contract, no-bid contracts. That is wrong to taxpayers. But, more 
importantly, it is wrong in our effort to stop the insurgency in Iraq.
  You have got thousands of idle young men in Iraq with no job, and yet 
we are paying our taxpayer money to hire Filipinos in Iraq? This makes 
no sense whatsoever. Whatever relationship the vice president had with 
Halliburton, it should not be driving bad decision making when it comes 
to contracting in Iraq. That has got to stop. That is my third 
suggestion.

[[Page H7850]]

  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Madam Speaker, I just want to thank my friend the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) and my friend the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) for participating tonight. What we are 
talking about is quite serious, it involves life and death, it involves 
the future of our Nation, and the American people need to be paying 
attention, because this war could drag on for 50 years or more.
  We have unleashed a hornet's nest in the Middle East and I see no 
plan to bring it under control. All we are promised by this 
administration basically is more of the same or something worse, out-
and-out civil war, with our troops caught in the cross fire.
  So it is important that we talk about these matters, it is important 
that the American people pay attention to these matters, because we are 
going to be making a decision in 32 days, or something like that, 
regarding the future of this Nation, and I believe under the current 
administration we will have nothing but more of the same.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, we will note that we 
will continue our discussion about Iraq in the weeks to come. We owe 
this obligation to our men and women serving proudly tonight. We will 
not be intimidated into stopping to ask these hard questions of the 
Federal Government. Americans deserve these questions to be asked, and 
they will be answered.

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