Congressional Record, Volume 150 Issue 120 (Wednesday, September 29, 2004)

[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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