[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 147 (Tuesday, November 8, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H9996-H9997]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       ONE NATION--TWO PRESIDENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, across the country today, Americans are 
going to the polls to vote for candidates and issues. A year ago, the 
Americans went to the polls and voted for a President, but they got two 
instead. We have George W. Bush, the President of domestic policy, like 
appointing a self-described fashion God who left the gulf coast 
unprotected; and we have Dick Cheney, the President of foreign policy, 
including secret CIA presence around the world.
  Now, today the President of foreign policy is trying to round up 
votes in the Senate to exempt the CIA from an amendment that would ban 
the torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. It is a sure sign that 
America has lost its way when we even have to talk about banning 
torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners.
  America has never had two Presidents until now, and America has never 
had a question about its moral integrity, until now. The President of 
foreign policy would have us believe that we must become the enemy to 
defeat the enemy. Like so much from this administration, this is not 
true. America's moral imperative is true enough, strong enough, and 
safe enough to keep this Nation a shining light of freedom without 
secret, black ops demanded by someone who was never elected President.
  Throughout our history, Presidents have led this Nation through wars 
at home and abroad by remaining true to America's principles and 
values. In the mid-19th century, America had never before faced a more 
ferocious enemy than the one from within that reduced us to the Civil 
War. President Lincoln never lost sight of what we were fighting for. 
He said: ``Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which 
prizes liberty as a heritage of all men in all lands everywhere. 
Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around 
your own doors.''
  In the early 20th century, America had never before faced a ferocious 
foe like the one that plunged the whole world into war, but President 
Woodrow Wilson did not forget what America stood for. He said: ``The 
present and all that it holds belongs to the nations and the peoples 
who preserve their self-control and the orderly processes of 
governments; the future to those who prove themselves the true friends 
of mankind.''
  In the mid-20th century, America had never before faced an enemy more 
like one that had plunged us again into a world war, but Franklin 
Delano Roosevelt never wavered in his defense of his country: ``The 
only thing we have to fear is fear itself.''
  And with the world on the brink of nuclear terror during the Cuban 
Missile Crisis, John Kennedy kept America free and safe without 
subverting American values. JFK knew a lot about winning a war without 
losing the peace. He said: ``When at least at some future date the high 
court of history sits in judgment on each one of us, our success or 
failure in whatever office we may hold will be measured by the answers 
to four questions: Were we truly men,'' and I would add women, ``of 
courage, men and women of judgment, men and women of integrity? Were we 
truly men and women of dedication?''
  Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Kennedy knew a thing about 
freedom and liberty; and they knew a lot about America. We are the land 
of the free and not the home of the afraid. But the President of 
foreign policy would have it otherwise. His demands for black ops is a 
black eye on this Nation. American history, not the unelected President 
of foreign policy, should be our guide.
  Great American Presidents have led this Nation in times no less 
frightening than today. Ask any veteran of the Second World War what 
was at stake. They called it a world war for a reason. They did not 
shrink from their duty, and we must not forget that we did our best and 
we are the best hope of this world. We keep America free without losing 
America's moral integrity.
  The unelected President of foreign policy wants an exemption on an 
amendment that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. 
He wants the CIA to be free to do whatever they want.
  We have come a long way from the days of great Presidents to arrive 
at the day of an unelected President. He acts not in the shadow of the 
White House, but standing in front of the person elected President. We 
used to shine light into the darkness of regimes where people 
disappeared into secret prisons, gulags. Now, the unelected President 
of foreign policy would have us become the custodians of gulags.
  For a long time, people have wondered just how President Bush could 
get it so wrong so often. Now we know: he has help. America has a 
second President we never elected.
  Mr. Speaker, I will include for the Record an article from the 
Village Voice.

                      President Should Dump Cheney

                          (By James Ridgeway)

       Washington, D.C.--Politicians across the political spectrum 
     are hoping against hope that President Bush can take control 
     of the nation and jumpstart a second term, kicking out chief 
     adviser Karl Rove--who remains at risk in the Plame Affair--
     and changing policy in Iraq, where U.S. soldiers continue to 
     die. But as everyone in Washington knows, Rove isn't the real 
     problem here. The real problem for Bush is Vice President 
     Dick Cheney--it's Cheney's now former chief of staff, Scooter 
     Libby, who has been indicted in the Plame Affair, and it's 
     his pushing that has the administration taking a hard line on 
     the handling of detainees. And the best way, perhaps the only 
     way, for Bush to take charge of the country is to dump the 
     vice president, forcing him into retirement before he can be 
     charged by Plame Affair prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald with 
     violating the espionage laws.
       These last few days, while Bush wandered around South 
     America from one fruitless meeting to another and fended off 
     charges of prisoner abuse in Iraq with bland statements such 
     as ``We do not torture,'' Cheney was busily working away 
     behind the scenes seeking to persuade Congress not to impose 
     restrictions on the CIA torture interrogators. The Washington 
     Post revealed last week the CIA was running interrogations in 
     secret jails for suspected terrorists in eastern Europe.
       Cheney, even more than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 
     is the man behind the Iraq war. Fitzgerald's indictment of 
     Libby bluntly states that Cheney's top aide learned Valerie 
     Plame, the covert CIA agent, was administration critic Joe 
     Wilson's wife from Cheney. Given that, how can Cheney avoid 
     testifying in a Libby trial? He does not have the immunity of 
     a president.
       ``Libby is the firewall protecting Vice President Cheney,'' 
     writes John Dean in his FindLaw column:
       The Libby indictment asserts that ``[o]n or about June 12, 
     2003 Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United 
     States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence 
     Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood 
     that the Vice President had learned this information from the 
     CIA.''
       In short, Cheney provided the classified information to 
     Libby--who then told the press. Anyone who works in 
     national security matters knows that the 
     Counterproliferation Division is part of the Directorate 
     of Operations--the covert side of the CIA, where most 
     everything and everyone are classified.
       If Fitzgerald were successful in flipping Libby--and that 
     seems pretty clearly to be his intention--then Cheney himself 
     would face charges of violating the espionage act.
       The outcome? Libby will probably hold fast through the 2006 
     election, his lawyers dragging out the case by interviewing 
     reporters, etc, and then Libby, if convicted, can expect a 
     pardon. As for Cheney, he could save face, resigning for 
     health reasons--that suspect ticker of his coming to the 
     rescue.
       At that point, Bush could appoint a new vice president to 
     serve out the remainder of his term. This appointment would 
     require majority approval of both houses of Congress under 
     the 25th Amendment.
       Meanwhile, its business as usual, Bush drifting from day to 
     day with the currents. Yesterday just as Bush uttered his 
     denial of torture, the army charged five Rangers with abusing 
     prisoners in Iraq. This morning, Italian state TV aired a 
     documentary describing how the U.S. used white phosphorous 
     bombs against civilians in Falluja. The U.S. admits using the 
     weapons to illuminate battlefields. We are not signatories to 
     a treaty banning the use of white phosphorous weapons. The 
     film is being broadcast on the first anniversary of the U.S. 
     attack on Falluja, which destroyed much of the city and 
     displaced its population of 300,000.
       Tomorrow, Ahmed Chalabi, a deputy prime minister of Iraq, 
     the man who fed the gullible American press wrong information 
     on Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction, is 
     visiting Washington to address neocon headquarters at the 
     American Enterprise Institute. Chalabi also is to meet with 
     Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A thoroughly disgraced 
     liar, the conduit of so much of the phony information that 
     led us to war, a man with no political base outside the 
     conniving neocon circles, Chalabi is now seriously discussed 
     in Washington as a possible American-backed compromise 
     candidate for Iraqi prime minister because he might appeal of 
     the Shiite southern part of the country. As it stands, he is 
     now in control of the

[[Page H9997]]

     oil industry, and in the minds of U.S. policymakers, that 
     counts for a lot.

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