[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 157 (Thursday, December 8, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H11310-H11317]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    IMPORTANT ISSUES TO THE COUNTRY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Poe). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be 
recognized on the floor of the United States Congress, and have this 
opportunity to address you on the issues that I think are important to 
this great country, this great country that all of us on the floor of 
this Chamber, all 435 of us, love so much and so desperately try to do 
our best to represent.
  Just a reflection upon the conclusion of the remarks made by the 
folks ahead of me in the previous hour and seeking to go to the new C 
words of cooperation and coming together. It is quite incongruous for 
me to try to understand how that would be when 1 or 2 hours a night 
there can be a relentless drumbeat challenging the motives, the 
integrity, the character and the intelligence, the planning and the 
convictions of the entire team over here on the Republican side of the 
aisle.
  In fact, I said Republican here, and that is the first time that word 
has been said on this floor in over an hour that did not sound like a 
word that was based on some type of profane term.
  This has gone on day after day, hour after hour, week after week, 
again relentlessly trying to undermine the hard work being done by the 
people here in the trenches, doing the work out on the floor, in 
committee, and behind the scenes.
  There is an awful lot that goes on behind every one of those office 
doors in Congress. Many, many things are happening behind those doors; 
the staff that multiplies the efforts of the Member, the grapevine that 
is out here feeding this information; the network; the information-
gathering process, the analysis of that; the input that comes from our 
constituents, and the trips back home of many of us every weekend to 
get our feet on the ground and look our constituents in the eye and 
listen to them to hear what they have to say.

[[Page H11311]]

  I am one of those people that I am pledged to listen. I am pledged to 
hear what they have for input. But I am also pledged to owe my 
constituents my best judgment. My best judgment includes, if I happen 
to disagree with them, but I will absolutely lay out the case as to why 
and hear their rebuttal. So far we have had a pretty good working 
relationship over the years that I have had the privilege to serve 
here, Mr. Speaker.
  Yet this undermining of our national effort that goes on continually 
is not conducive to coming together. It is not conducive to 
cooperation. It is not conducive to comity. It is not conducive to any 
type of cooperation that I can think of. It draws a bright line and 
drives a wedge between the two parties. We should try to find things we 
can agree on.
  I heard the gentlewoman from Florida say there were only a handful of 
things when she was in the State legislature in Florida that she 
disagreed with, and that the two parties disagreed with, and the rest 
of that they came together and found common ground. Well, I am 
wondering if that was the case.
  I have served in the State legislature myself, Mr. Speaker, and I did 
not find that every one on the other side of the aisle sat their alarm 
in the morning, got up and read the newspaper to figure out what they 
could do to attack the other side. I did not see the State legislators 
focus their energies from the first sunup in the morning to try to 
identify what they could do to undermine the other side. They actually 
came to work to try to find how they could come together. They tried to 
find common ground and how to move their State forward. That is the way 
it was in Iowa, and I suspect that is how it was in Florida, at least I 
have not heard otherwise.
  That is not the way it has become in this United States Congress. In 
fact, in the time I have been here, this is as partisan as I have ever 
seen it. There is as much partisan disagreement as I have ever seen.
  An example might be our trade agreements, and the Central American 
Free Trade Agreement would be one. There was a time when we negotiated 
trade agreements and they were bipartisan agreements. There was a good 
sized group of Members from the Democratic side of the aisle that would 
support a free trade agreement. They believed in free enterprise. They 
believed in world trade. They knew if we traded with other countries, 
that whenever you make a deal with anyone, whenever it comes to free 
enterprise, if you trade a dollar with one entity or two or more 
entities, everybody involved in that circle all has to have profit. It 
is good for all of us, and that is why we agree to those trade 
agreements. But it has become a sharp, bright-line partisan issue.
  Many, many more things have become partisan here in the last couple 
of years that, to my recollection, were not. And so to argue for 
cooperation is one thing, but the actions and the words over the months 
of this relentless effort here down on the floor have done the exact 
opposite. They have driven a wedge between us, Mr. Speaker. So that 
means we have to try to move this Nation forward sometimes without the 
help of the people on the other side of the aisle, and then it turns 
into a partisan debate. It also forces us to do the best we can with 
the votes we have to move this Nation forward.
  So a free trade agreement is one thing. This Nation has a large 
economy and we can recover from a few mistakes and the few difficulties 
that come with partisan opposition to some of those things that were, 
before this, bipartisan.
  But when it comes to a time of war, when it comes to a time that our 
United States military is deployed overseas and their lives are on the 
line 24/7, and have been ever since March of 2003; at a time when the 
destiny of the world hangs in the balance; at a time when the presence 
of the United States in the Middle East itself has brought Lebanon 
towards freedom, and caused Qaddafi in Libya to turn over all his hold 
cards, to play his cards face up on weapons of mass destruction, 
including nuclear, which had developed far ahead of where we thought it 
was, but Qaddafi contacted us and said I want to drop this. I do not 
want to play this game any more.
  Our presence in the Middle East meant too much. The threat was so 
great, he figured we would find out about his weapons and go eliminate 
his weapons, so he decided he would simply cease to develop them and 
eliminate the foundations he had built for those weapons of mass 
destruction. That came because the United States has a positive image 
in the world, in spite of the message that comes from this other side 
of the aisle.
  I have stood here on this floor, Mr. Speaker, for the third time, 
this is the third hour I have initiated to come down here and talk 
about the President's agenda, the Commander in Chief's agenda, the 
mission of our troops and the destiny of the entire world that is part 
of this plan that has been laid out by President Bush. I laid this out 
last night, Mr. Speaker, and I spent some time doing it in not 
necessarily a concise fashion, but a thorough fashion. And anybody that 
was listening should have understood.
  I walked off this floor, perhaps after 10 o'clock last night, and 
another hour of this relentless criticism flowed down here again, and 
they picked up the same old drumsticks and began beating the same old 
drum with the same old song: WMD, WMD, WMD. Weapons of mass 
destruction. Everything that goes on is illegitimate because, according 
to them, it has been proven that there were no weapons of mass 
destruction in Iraq.
  Now, you would think that anybody that arrived in this Congress and 
went through the crucible and testing process and was elected to owe 
their best judgment to their constituents, as I do, would know one of 
the most simple principles of rational logic, and you do not have to be 
a Rhodes Scholar or a Harvard lawyer to know this, but many are and 
still do not know this; that you cannot prove a negative. Yet they 
continually say it has been proven that there were no weapons of mass 
destruction.
  I would say tell that to the people up there in the region of Kirkuk 
and the area that is Kurdistan. Tell that to the swamp Arabs in the 
south; those that have lost perhaps 75 percent or more of their 
population because of the attacks of Saddam Hussein.
  Try and carry on this argument as the trial of Saddam Hussein goes on 
and this 140 or so people that he allegedly murdered in the one small 
city because of the assassination attempt on him. When that becomes the 
larger, there will be 180,000 or more deaths attributed to Saddam 
Hussein and the people who took orders from Saddam Hussein.
  In fact, as I was in Baghdad in the month of August, I met with the 
judges that are trying Saddam Hussein today, and we talked about the 
upcoming trial. They could not be specific about it, in order to 
protect the integrity of the system, but I did understand and learn in 
that room that the charges of killing 180,000 people that are charged 
against the person whom we know, or are familiar with his moniker as 
Chemical Ali, that he protested and said, that is not true, I did not 
kill more than 100,000 people. It was not 180,000 people. So how do you 
kill 180,000, or even 100,000 people, which is apparently the 
confession of Chemical Ali, how do you do that without weapons of mass 
destruction?
  How do you convince someone who lost their family in a gas attack in 
Halabja that Saddam Hussein did not have any weapons of mass 
destruction? I met a young lady that was raised up there near Kirkuk, 
in an area I will call Kurkistan, about an hour from Kirkuk. She has a 
friend who survived that gas attack in Halabja. He was able to get on a 
tractor and maybe went upwind and got away from it somehow and 
survived. A random act, I am sure, that kept him alive, and he probably 
wonders why he survived and not his family. His family was all wiped 
out in this.
  I would submit that you could take that individual or any other 
survivors that are there, and if they could come down on this floor and 
listen to this, I think they would plug their ears. They would plug 
their ears because they would not know how to react to this relentless 
drumbeat of ``there were no weapons of mass destruction.''
  Well, what caused all those deaths? Why is Saddam Hussein on trial? 
Why are there 180,000 people that have died

[[Page H11312]]

and that are part of these court records and which will be part of this 
prosecution as it unfolds?

                              {time}  1800

  Why does Chemical Ali say ``I did not kill any more than 100,000. I 
was not so bad.'' That is his defense?
  There are more deaths than that. There are hundreds of thousands of 
deaths, and some of the Members of Congress have been to the mass 
graves. I have not seen those mass graves. I have been to Iraq a number 
of times, but I have not seen the graves. But I have seen the pictures, 
seen the film, and I have read the reports and I have talked to the 
people that have been there. I cannot be convinced that anyone can kill 
that many people without weapons of mass destruction. Hitler could not. 
Neither could Saddam Hussein.
  So this drumbeat of no WMD, no WMD. Well, the King law of physics is 
everything has to be somewhere. And since we do not know where it is, 
it has to still be somewhere. If you find something you lost, it is 
always in the last place you looked. So perhaps we just have not looked 
in the last place yet. Perhaps it is buried in Iraq. Perhaps it has 
gone to Syria.
  We know before the Desert Storm operations in 1991, Saddam Hussein 
took his fighter jets and flew those to Iran. I remember the flight 
pattern that showed those jets going up and landing. I have never 
gotten a report that they ever came back. It may be that the ayatollahs 
in Iran kept them and maybe thought this is a nice way for us to get 
even for the war we had in the 1980s. He has a modus operandi of 
spiriting things out of the country when conflict is imminent.
  So if he would fly the MiGs out of Iraq into Iran, why would people 
not presume that he would haul weapons of mass destruction out of Iraq 
into perhaps Syria, or why would they think that he would not bury 
those weapons of mass destruction when, in fact, we discovered a fully 
operational MiG-29 buried in the desert, not because of any 
intelligence report, not because of some detector, not because David 
Kay was over there scouring that countryside for weapons. No, we found 
that fully operational MiG-29 because the wind blew the sand off the 
tail fin. They buried it in the desert.
  So he has an MO of bearing weapons and spiriting them out of the 
country when times get tough. Why would we presume that he did not do 
one or the other or both? We know everything has to be someplace. You 
cannot prove a negative. No one can honestly say with a rational mind 
that there were no weapons of mass destruction, because we know he used 
them at least 11 times. There are survivors from those attacks. The 
only way a rational person could contend there were not weapons of mass 
destruction would be to believe that Saddam Hussein used his last 
canister of gas on the Kurds and simply depleted his inventory and he 
decided not to rebuild it, but he decided to keep a system in place so 
he could reestablish that inventory any time he chose.
  He kept the system in place for both chemical and biological weapons. 
We know that. That is all in the David Kay record and the Duelfer 
Report. It is the same report that came to this Congress that is being 
quoted by the other people that says it proved that they had no weapons 
of mass destruction. There was no proof that there were no weapons of 
mass destruction. What there was not was a great big warehouse full of 
weapons of mass destruction. In fact, we found some canisters of nerve 
gas and we found munitions designed for gas, small quantities, not 
great warehouses. Out of the million tons of munitions that we found in 
Iraq, some of them were weapons of mass destruction components. Not in 
large volume. If there had been, we would have stacked them all up in 
the middle of a warehouse and brought in the inspectors, and maybe 
there would be a different story on this part.
  But I would contend if that were the case, if there had been 
warehouses of weapons of mass destruction there, then these people who 
are continually pulling down our national spirit every night with this 
massive, relentless pounding of pessimism, and they need to get away 
from the ``p'' words over there and get to the optimistic words, they 
would have moved the bar. They would have raised the bar and said maybe 
there were weapons of mass destruction, but. And I do not know their 
argument. I cannot think like they do; and I am grateful I cannot. But 
they would have raised the bar.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit this: if we ever get them now to set the 
standard on how to define a victory in Afghanistan and Iraq, if we 
could compel them to set a standard, then you would see that it would 
be such a high bar that they would know it could never be achieved. 
They would always find a way to define themselves away from that high 
bar because they will never admit that the President of the United 
States made a decision that could result in something that would be a 
fantastic result, a noble thing for this country to do, and an ultimate 
result that freed 50 million people and has every prospect of freeing 
hundreds of millions more throughout the Arab world, which is the only 
formula for ever getting to a victory on this war on terror.
  No, they say we are in this war on terror and they will keep 
attacking us until we get out of the Middle East. We were not in the 
Middle East when we were attacked on September 11.
  A couple other principles, Mr. Speaker. Since there was not a 
warehouse full of weapons of mass destruction that we have yet 
identified, and they make the allegation that they did not exist and do 
not seem to be quite up to that 8th grade level of ``you cannot prove a 
negative,'' since that seems to be the standard, what is wrong with 
liberating 50 million people, 25 million in Afghanistan and 25 million 
in Iraq? That is a noble thing. Is that not something that the United 
States has done throughout history?
  Do they not know that the Civil War was fought to save the Union? Do 
they not know that Abraham Lincoln's effort was to keep this Union 
intact? Do we not call it the war to free the slaves? Did we not 
liberate every black American, and it took a while to get it right, and 
we are still working on getting some of those pieces right. Do we call 
it the war to free the Union? No we call it the war to free the slaves. 
That was the result of the war. It was a noble thing.
  I will pick up some of these other issues, Mr. Speaker, and I would 
like to go back to that; but I see my colleagues here on the floor, and 
I wonder if maybe the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is prepared to 
speak.
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, I want to make a few comments regarding our 
situation in Iraq.
  You and numerous other Members of this body have been to Iraq to see 
firsthand exactly the situation, see the finest military that has ever 
existed from any country; and I met with those young men and women and 
all branches of the service, and to a person they were proud not only 
to be Americans but they were proud to serve in Iraq to free the Iraqi 
people from the tyranny that they have had for years, numerous years.
  I think it is important that we remember our own history and how it 
is necessary to be eternally vigilant because of the issue and concept 
of liberty. Our own American Revolution took at least 7 years before 
this country became a free and independent Nation. Back then there were 
the naysayers and the quitters and the cut-and-run folks who wanted to 
give up and surrender and not fight for that liberty.
  It is good our history reflects those people were not listened to by 
the vast majority of those people who lived in the colonies and gained 
freedom and an independent Nation as well.
  In many wars since then, the same was true. Including back during 
World War II that we mentioned yesterday on this House floor that all 
started with another terrorist attack against this country, and the war 
was not going well for the United States at the beginning of World War 
II. Both the Japanese and the Germans had the upper hand. It is good 
that our history does not reflect that that greatest generation got 
tired of the war, quit and left that engagement but finished the job, 
finished the job for freedom as well.
  The country has a plan. I think the plan is very simple. We are going 
to win the war, finish the job, and bring our troops home as soon as 
liberty is established in that democracy, that democracy that many 
people said would never exist, that does exist.

[[Page H11313]]

  I was proud to be one of two Members of this body on January 30, 
2005, when Iraq started that democracy with that parliament that 
occurred. People voted that day, and of course there are those who said 
they will never vote; they do not understand democracy. They will never 
come out and vote. And yet they did, even though there were over 50 
Iraqis murdered because they chose to vote. Over 400 were wounded 
because they chose to vote, and they did it anyway because freedom is 
that important.
  But it all occurred because we are there. Our troops are there. Our 
young men and women are there doing what they can to have democracy in 
this part of the world that many years ago did not even understand the 
concept of it.
  I appreciate the opportunity to make these comments. The last 2 days 
I have stood on this House floor and mentioned two people in my 
district, one a marine and one a soldier, who gave their lives for this 
country in Iraq, gave their lives for the Iraqi people, and gave their 
lives for freedom. Both of them and their families have reiterated to 
me personally how they believed in what they were doing because they 
were doing the right thing.
  I appreciate the chance to make these comments. It is important that 
the American people focus, finish the job, win the war, and bring the 
troops home as soon as we can, but not until freedom is established.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas. I 
was not aware that you were actually on the ground in Iraq during the 
elections in January. What was it like to be in-country at that time?
  Mr. POE. We started out in Fallujah that day. I was there with Mr. 
Shays. When the sun came up, we were wondering whether people would 
come to the polls. The whole nation was shut down to vehicular traffic. 
The only vehicles on the roads were Iraqi security forces and our 
military. Nobody else could be driving, so everybody had to walk to the 
polls that day, sometimes up to 2 hours.
  After the sun came up, people started going to the polls. They 
walked. Not only did they walk, they took their families and their in-
laws. They stood in line to vote. They voted. It was a very simple 
process. To mark the ballot, they put their finger in that ink that 
stayed on their finger for about 5 days. It was a mark. It was a sign 
not just that they voted, but it was a sign to the terrorists that if 
we see anybody with those purple fingers we are going to do harm to 
you. Yet the Iraqis when they finished voting, many of them, especially 
women who had never had the right to vote in their history, walked 
defiantly down the street holding up their hand and finger to show the 
world, especially the terrorists, that they were not going to be 
intimidated because freedom is that important.
  So we traveled all over the country that day. Late that night we 
visited with the interim president of Iraq. And he said to us about 
midnight in a very somber, emotional way, but serious, that this day in 
Iraq would never have taken place if it were not for the American youth 
who were there. He was serious. He and the Iraqi people are grateful 
for this concept of freedom.
  That is what the United States does. We did that in World War II. We 
set up those democracies in Germany and Japan. People said that would 
never happen because of those totalitarian countries; yet those 
countries are democracies today. They are world powers, and they are 
our allies.
  Who is to say that in a few years the same thing may not happen in 
Afghanistan and Iraq. I would not trade anything for being there on 
election day.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that narrative. I wanted 
to be there that day. I was not able to set the trip up to make it 
work; but I recognize, as you clearly did and Mr. Shays clearly did, 
that was the best place in the world to be on that day.
  Mr. POE. No question about it. It was a very moving experience.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I remember watching the pictures as they unfolded 
on television and the Iraqis coming out of their polling booths with 
their purple fingers in the air, proud that they had made a mark for 
freedom and defiant about the threat to their lives that was supposed 
to keep them away from the polls.
  As I recall that day, 50 people were murdered, 108 polling places 
were attacked. And I believe on the October 15 elections, we were down 
to about 19 polling places were attacked. I do not know how many 
casualties there were. It is far safer for the ratification of the 
Constitution on October 15 than it was in January when you were there.
  On top of that, you did not go to Baghdad or on up to Kirkuk or down 
to Basr or some place where it might have been more stable. You went to 
Fallujah. What a place to be to see that happen. I know that is a 
memory you will never forget.

                              {time}  1815

  I appreciate the gentleman's contribution down here night after 
night, the things the gentleman stood for, the things I stand for, and 
I sometimes wonder, if I have to check my conscience, I will go down to 
Texas and check with you.
  I have a number of thoughts to roll out here. But I think before I go 
on into those thoughts, I have an opportunity, I see the gentleman from 
Arizona (Mr. Franks) here, my good friend, another individual that if I 
need to check my conscience, I know where to go down to Arizona and 
check with that. But also the gentleman's vision and his commitment to 
this country and this Constitution, he is a fine colleague that sits 
with me on the Constitution Subcommittee of Judiciary, where we stand 
up for those foundational values together.
  Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to yield such time as he may consume 
to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks).
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King). I 
have to say that probably there is no way to explain what a precious 
honor it is in my life to be able to stand on this floor with people 
like Mr. Poe, and Mr. King and the gentleman that stands on the Speaker 
podium tonight, Mr. McHenry. These are people that I believe are Valley 
Forge Americans, and we are all very fortunate in this country to see 
them in this place.
  Mr. Speaker, our brave men and women in uniform have always fought 
desperately to preserve those unalienable rights of life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness that is endowed by the Creator himself. And 
that is exactly what they are doing right now in Iraq, and we should 
all be deeply grateful for that, Mr. Speaker.
  One of the things that I am desperately worried about is whether the 
people in this body and in this republic itself truly understand what 
we are facing, not only as a Nation, but as a western civilization. The 
question we must ask ourselves is not whether we can win this war, we 
must win this war. The question now is what will happen if we do not.
  Mr. Speaker, I am so concerned that this Nation does not really 
understand that we are at war with an ideology, an ideology that 
threatens the existence of the free world. This war did not begin on 9/
11. This war began many years ago when certain Muslim extremists 
embraced a divergent Islamist dogma that dictates that all infidels 
must die. Our Nation was first attacked during its very beginnings in 
the late 1700s by the Barbary terrorists of the day. And more recently, 
we were attacked in 1979 in Iran. Our embassy and our marine barracks 
were attacked in Beirut in 1983. The first World Trade Center attack 
was in 1993, Mr. Speaker, and we still did not wake up to what was 
happening. Our military complexes and soldiers have been targeted 
throughout the world. The Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Our 
embassies were blown up in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. We witnessed the 
attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
  And Mr. Speaker, just 1 year later, on September 11, terrorists 
murdered 3,000 American civilians on our own soil. And I wonder, have 
we actually forgotten that? Since then our soldiers and contractors 
have been kidnapped and executed, their bodies mutilated and dragged 
through the streets. And we are not alone, Mr. Speaker. This is taking 
place throughout the world. In Serbia and Bosnia, soldiers, POWs and 
civilians were beheaded by Mujahadin. In Beslan, Russia, 186 children 
and 158 teachers and parents were slaughtered in a terrorist attack 
against a grade school. And just a few weeks ago, Mr. Speaker, in 
Indonesia, three young

[[Page H11314]]

girls on their way to school were attacked and beheaded by Muslim 
extremists. Their names were Theresa, Ida and Alfreda. Churches are 
being attacked. Pastors have been kidnapped, tortured and beheaded, and 
it seems there is not a day that goes by without some suicide bomber or 
some car bomb attack in Iraq. And we have witnessed the horrific 
bombings in Spain and London and Indonesia and Jordan and Israel. And 
just today, Mr. Speaker, in Bangladesh. We simply cannot deny that we 
are fighting a war against enemies with an evil ideology that is bent 
on the destruction of the western world. They are committed to killing 
us and any others they hold to be infidels. Mr. Speaker, we truly are 
at war, and to undermine the sacrifice and blood-bought advancements of 
our valiant American soldiers who are, at this very moment, fighting 
terrorists in Iraq is unconscionable, Mr. Speaker.
  A Nation divided against itself cannot stand. Those of us in this 
body, along with all Americans, must unite against this evil. We must 
win this war in Iraq. We must give our troops our unequivocal support, 
and we must give them everything else in our power to finish this job. 
Our troops have never failed us, and Mr. Speaker, we, in this body must 
not fail them. If freedom is to survive, to allow Islamist terrorists 
to declare victory in Iraq is not an option. We must win and we cannot 
win if we leave before this job is done, because if we leave too soon, 
Mr. Speaker, we will not be able to just go on about our daily lives as 
we once did because the world truly has changed, and those without 
conscience are relentlessly seeking to destroy us. And we must not let 
them have even the slightest hope of victory, not ever, Mr. Speaker. 
God bless America.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I appreciate the gentleman's contribution to this 
debate. And you have really, you set the tone, I think, that I am going 
to need to have to carry out the balance of this time that we have 
here.
  I think too about parts of history and how far back we go and how our 
military set such a tradition for so many years. And as I stepped away 
from this microphone the last time, I had taken us to this point, I 
think I made the point that it cannot be stated that there were no 
weapons of mass destruction and be rational about it, because you 
cannot prove a negative. And we know that they existed.
  So setting that argument aside, I will just say when it comes out, it 
is bogus, they will pound on it until they get embarrassed and 
embarrass themselves. So we will hear it more. We will hear it every 
night down here. But one of the things that I can move along to, maybe 
expand this discussion a little bit is to go back then to that point 
that I was making earlier, that point about why we went to war in the 
civil war and what the objective of that war was.
  Now, the objective was to save the union. And anything that you read 
about Lincoln in his earlier debates and his efforts and his decisions 
that he made along that process, it was a super human effort all 
targeted to save the union. And part of freeing the slaves, yes, it was 
something that was in his heart.
  He conceded that Dred Scott was actually a constitutional decision, 
but we needed to amend the constitution to eliminate slavery. Lincoln 
had so much respect for the constitution that he made that point. But 
he had so much respect for the binding nature of our Constitution that 
it was an irrevocable agreement between the States, that he was willing 
to stay at war and the cost in that civil war was over 600,000 American 
lives, over 600,000 American lives at a time when our population was 
perhaps a third of what it is today or less.
  So that was the greatest loss of humanity ever in a conflict in this 
country, and yet, he stuck to the central purpose, save the union, save 
the union, save the union. In 1863, the subject came up on whether to 
sign the Emancipation Proclamation. A great and powerful leader and one 
of the most profound stories of leadership that I have ever read 
throughout history comes back to the question, as he sat down with his 
cabinet, and there was the Emancipation Proclamation to free the 
slaves, and he asked his cabinet, gentlemen, what say you? And they 
started on his left and it went around the table at the cabinet table 
and the first member of his cabinet said Mr. President, I advise you do 
not sign it, and here are the reasons why.
  And the second and the third and the fourth and so on until it got 
around to the last member of the cabinet. And each member of the 
cabinet said, Mr. President, do not sign the Emancipation Proclamation. 
Some of the reasons were we are at this to save the union. Some other, 
well do not confuse the issue. Some of them were political reasons of 
the time that I do not have a feel for today. But as President Lincoln, 
in his singular motivation to save that union, listened to their 
recommendation, do not sign the Emancipation Proclamation, he said, 
well, gentlemen, the ayes have it. And he stepped forward with great 
courage and leadership and he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He 
did not really free anybody south of the Mason Dixon line because we 
did not have jurisdiction down there at the time. We were at war with 
the South.
  It didn't really free anybody north of the Mason Dixon line because 
the people north of the line were free. But what it did is it set up an 
image and a goal and a dream and it mobilized some people that had been 
mobilizes for a long time to abolish slavery, and it became 
historically, looking back on that, now we are taught we fought the 
civil war to free the slaves. So how can it be that here we are today, 
when a civil war began to save the union, it ended to save the union, 
but history interpreted it to mean that it was about the freedom of 
slavery, which I absolutely think it was worth the price. How can we 
sit here today and say we did not find mass quantities, great 
warehouses full of weapons of mass destruction, therefore all the rest 
of this is illegitimate. When did the United States decide that we did 
not free people? When did we decide that liberation of humanity was not 
a worthy cause? When did we decide that going to war, if it had 
multiple reasons, if one of those reasons did not meet your standard 
over here on the other side of the aisle, then all the rest of it is 
illegitimate.
  There were plenty of reasons and whole constellations of reasons to 
go into Iraq and, in fact, there really was not a choice. If you sit 
down and analyze the circumstances at the time, there really was not a 
choice. Saddam Hussein did not give President Bush a choice. And I 
think, well, I do not know what Saddam was actually thinking. But if we 
went to the war to save the union in the Civil War and it became to 
free the slaves, and by the way, in about 1898, when the USS Maine was 
sunk in Havana Harbor, it is still at the bottom of that harbor, by the 
way, and the mast and the anchor are out here at Arlington Cemetery. 
But the Maine is at the bottom of the harbor.
  And we went to war against the Spaniards because, and history can 
reanalyze this, we believed that we were attacked by the Spaniards and 
the ship was scuttled in a hostile act and that triggered the Spanish 
American War. Sure, there was tensions that brought that about and you 
can argue about the details. Some will say that the USS Maine really 
was not sunk by a hostile attack. Some will say it was an explosion in 
the magazine that sunk it to the bottom of Havana harbor. Some will say 
it was a pretext for war. We went to war just the same and defeated the 
Spanish in the Spanish American War that began in 1898. And I will tell 
you that one of the things we did as a result of that war, we went to 
the Philippines. Now, was that consistent with the reason for the war 
in the first place?
  Was there something about sinking the Maine down there in Havana 
Harbor that would cause us to send the Marines to the Philippines? 
Well, you can argue that either way too, but I can tell you that I 
listened to a speech by President Arroyo of the Philippines a couple of 
3 years ago here in Washington, D.C. at a hotel. She said thank you 
America. Thank you for sending the Marine Corps to the Philippines in 
1898. Thank you for liberating us. Thank you for bringing us freedom. 
Thank you for teaching us your free enterprise, your way of life, your 
rule of law. Thank you for sending the missionaries over here that made 
us a Christian Nation. Thank you for sending 10,000 teachers to the 
Philippines so that we would learn your way of life and the American 
values and we could

[[Page H11315]]

learn English. And English is the national language of business and 
commerce. And today, 1.6 million Filipinos go throughout the world. 
They can get a job about wherever they want to because they have the 
language skills that are universal. They send their money back to the 
Philippines. A result of a detonation of an explosion in the hull of 
the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 where it sits at the bottom of 
that harbor yet today. The result are free people in the Philippines. 
When did the United States give up on liberating a people? When did we 
give up on our culture and our way of life and projecting that way of 
life throughout the world? When did we give up on our legacy of western 
civilization? Whose idea is that, to cut and run because what?
  The reasons that you think maybe were what justified it do not quite 
uphold the way you would analyze that today. What kind of idea is that? 
What were the circumstances when we were attacked by Pearl Harbor? And 
by the way, September 11, 2001, I remember where I was, I was on the 
road on my way up to a county fair. My wife called me on the phone and 
said turn on the radio, there has been a plane that crashed into one of 
the Twin Towers. I turned on the radio and a few minutes later a second 
plane crashed into the Twin Towers. And the individual that was riding 
with me was a World War II veteran and the first words out of his mouth 
were Pearl Harbor. I will never forget that tone in his voice. The 
second plane into the Twin Towers made it clear it was not an aerial 
accident. It was a planned, stealth attack against civilians in the 
United States of America, the worst attack ever on our soil, and it was 
not against a military installation. It was against civilians. Pearl 
Harbor. Pearl Harbor happened December 7, 1941. It was the anniversary 
just a couple of days ago, Mr. Speaker.

                              {time}  1830

  We went to war. We declared unconditional war against our enemies, 
and a few days later, Hitler declared war on us from Europe. Now we 
were involved in a two-front war. What was the objective of our 
declaring war on the Japanese in the first place? Unconditional war, 
that it would be total and unconditional surrender of the Japanese. 
Then we found ourselves in Europe, fighting a two-front war, which the 
Germans had found was not very successful, but for the United States it 
has been. We put troops on the east, we put troops in the west and in 
the South Pacific. And we were successful on both fronts of that war. 
Was there a clamor in this country at the time to say we were attacked 
at Pearl Harbor; what are we doing fighting Germans? What was the idea 
of that?
  And, by the way, all the people that were liberated around this globe 
as a result of the Second World War are all beneficiaries. Look at the 
Japanese today, their culture, their economy, their prosperity. The 
size of their economy compared with the rest of the countries' in the 
world is fantastic considering the population and the limitations that 
they have geographically living on that island. They are well off today 
as a country, and a big part of that has been the result of the 
reconstruction afterwards and the liberation that came to them. They 
were living under an imperialistic Japan.
  So this idea that the American people do not liberate anyone, that 
freedom is not a goal of a war is just simply false throughout history.
  And there are other examples throughout history, and I am wondering 
if the gentleman from Arizona might have one to add to that. I noticed 
the look in his eye.
  I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. King) for yielding to me.
  I have to say to the gentleman I am just sitting here cheering him on 
because I think he is dead on target here.
  Always throughout history, our history, we have held to the notion in 
our Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, that 
there is something intrinsically valuable about people and, therefore, 
their freedom was worth protecting and defending. And I think that when 
he has pointed out that we faced this battle between freedom and 
despotism for a long time, it is such a foundational issue.
  And I am not sure that we all understand how the war has changed a 
little bit. The basic foundation is the same, but the war has changed a 
little bit with terrorism. When we were fighting in World War II, when 
the war was over, we had the Cold War, and in a sense we based our 
safety upon the sanity of our enemy. We had this thing called 
``mutually assured destruction.'' We had an enemy that cared about 
their own people, that did not want them to perish. So there was a 
peace in a sense because there was a concern about innocent human 
beings.
  The kind of war that we face now is a war with terrorists who do not 
seem to have any sort of concern for innocent human life, and that 
makes them very dangerous. When they stand there and cut someone's head 
off, screaming before the world, I think that we need to understand we 
are up against a mindset that is either going to grow within the world 
or it is going to be crushed out of the world because if we let that 
thing get away from us, it could literally change everything.
  And I think that is why it comes back down to this thing called Iraq. 
I am not sure that we all understand that in the mindset of the 
terrorists that Iraq is sort of the frontline. It is a symbolic battle. 
And if we somehow fail in Iraq, we, I believe, will activate this 
ideology within the terrorist world that will cause them to be able to 
recruit more and essentially begin to germinate throughout the planet. 
And I am not sure that the country, or really the world, understands 
just how serious a challenge that we really face.
  And so I think that the gentleman is right on to point out that there 
has always been this battle for freedom throughout history, and if we 
stop now, as our Forefathers fought for freedom for us so that we can 
stand on this floor in freedom, if we do not build our step in the 
stairway of freedom for our future generations, then we really fail the 
cause that we have called to action tonight and always on this floor.
  And, again, I just think that the President has understood that. I 
think he understands that in order to fight terrorism that we have to 
be on the offensive, that we cannot let this ideology that if a knife 
that cuts someone's head off could become a nuclear weapon, how much it 
would change our concept of freedom forever. And we have to win in 
Iraq. We have to see that beachhead of freedom established in the 
Middle East. It could germinate and see the whole of humanity turn in a 
better direction if we continue to do our job here.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his 
comments.
  He did bring up another war that I did not include in this when he 
mentioned the Cold War. The Cold War went on for perhaps 45 years, 
beginning shortly after World War II and ending, I am going to say, 
November 9, 1989, when the wall went down in Berlin. And it took about 
2, 2\1/2\ years for freedom to echo all the way across Eastern Europe. 
But the liberation that took place at the culmination at the Cold War, 
and it was a glorious victory. We say a bloodless victory, and I have 
stood on this floor and called it a bloodless victory. But it was not 
without price. The mutually assured destruction, the millions of men 
and women that needed to be mobilized, the capital that had to be 
poured into the research and development to be ahead of the Soviet 
Union it came to the arms race, and not just the price in treasure but 
the price in blood as well.

  There is a price in blood as a price to be ready, Mr. Speaker, and we 
do not often talk about it. I asked the Pentagon to put some numbers 
together for me so I had a sense of that. I wanted to know how many of 
our soldiers in uniform die in the line of duty not at the cause of 
combat but perhaps at the cause of an accident, a training accident, 
for example, an on-duty accident, an in uniform on-duty accident. And I 
had them look back through a whole number of years, and I put that 
together and I boiled it down into a figure that I could at least 
commit to memory so that I could put it into proportion and talk about 
it in a way that made sense.
  The number that they gave me worked out to be an average of 505 
American lives lost every year during peaceable activities in uniform, 
deaths as a price to be ready to go into combat. Five hundred and five 
Americans a

[[Page H11316]]

year. Now, that is the average that takes place during the 1990s up 
until the year 2001. The average prior to that, during the Cold War, I 
do not know that number, and their records were not very available. But 
I would suspect it would be greater, not less because we have more 
safety, not less, and we had more people in uniform, not less. But I 
took that number and just said 500 a year, and as the gentleman from 
Arizona (Mr. Franks) was talking, I multiplied it across the 45 years 
of the Cold War. And the number I came up with was 22,500 American 
lives. That gives us a sense of the magnitude of the price of winning 
the Cold War, not to add the treasure. That is the blood. That is the 
sacrifice. There is a price to be ready.
  There is another whole price out here that is paid for our freedom 
that is never acknowledged by the pessimists on the other side of the 
aisle, and that is that price to be ready. And it is measured in this 
victory in the Cold War, 22,500 lives perhaps. A quick scratch here on 
the paper is all that supports that statement and some good information 
to support it. But with that number of lives, hundreds of millions of 
people were liberated in the aftermath of the Cold War. When the Iron 
Curtain descended down across Europe and those people lived for 45 
years behind the Iron Curtain in a kind of a world where we were in 
full technicolor and they were living in black and white, it gives us a 
sense of how bad it was where they did not have free enterprise, did 
not have opportunity, did not have freedom. And today they do.
  And, by the way, the most recent people who have achieved freedom are 
the ones that cherish it the most. They are the ones that are the most 
eager to be part of our coalition forces in Iraq to defend the freedom 
of the Iraqi people.
  So this price for freedom has been great, but the value has been 
astonishing. The pessimism on the other side of the aisle has been 
stupendous. And I have brought some posters along to talk about what 
happens when we send a pessimistic message from this Congress; from the 
leaders of this country; from the people who are viewed, at least on 
the other side of the ocean, as the quasi-leaders of the United States 
of America. And I will start with Muqtada al-Sadr.
  This individual here, Mr. Speaker, decided to put his own militia 
together, Sadr City, Baghdad, in a region south of Baghdad. And his 
militia attacked coalition troops, American troops. His militia did not 
fair very well, and it took some really severe, and he has decided a 
few times that he kind of likes getting involved in politics as opposed 
to being a general of a militia because it is far less hazardous to be 
in politics there in Iraq. But I was sitting in Kuwait City on one of 
my trips over there at night, waiting to go into Iraq early the next 
morning. I turned the television on to al-Jazeera TV. I always, when I 
am in a foreign country, want to know what is going on; so I turn on 
the local channel.
  Al-Jazeera is the local channel for the Arab world. And there in 
Arabic out of his mouth came, with English subtitles, what I will never 
forget. And this is the date that I was sitting in that hotel room, 
June 11, 2004, al-Jazeera: ``If we keep attacking Americans, they will 
leave Iraq the same way they left Vietnam, the same way they left 
Lebanon, the same way they left Mogadishu.''
  Where does Muqtada al-Sadr get an idea like that? What encourages him 
to continue the insurgency and the attacks on Americans and the 
recruitment of his people and his militia? What encourages him to raise 
the money and build the bombs and do the things that they have done? 
And this is not the worst enemy we have over there, by the way. He is 
not the biggest demon that we have. But it was just the circumstance 
that I heard this from the television screen while I was in Kuwait. 
Where does he get his motivation? Why does he think this is true?

  Well, there is the legacy of Vietnam. And these people over here 
every night that are dragging down our administration and undermining 
our military are the political descendants of the ones that dragged 
down our devotion to our military and our support for them during the 
Vietnam era. In the aftermath of Vietnam when Congress voted to shut 
off all funding for all military efforts in all of South Vietnam and 
ground every airplane that was flying air cover over the South 
Vietnamese, and a few months later, we saw the North Vietnamese army 
sweep through there, and we were lifting people off the U.S. Embassy in 
Saigon.
  Why? Not because the South Vietnamese would not fight any longer but 
because the will and the commitment to support them disappeared over 
here, and the rug was jerked out from underneath not just our military 
but underneath the military of South Vietnam. And in the aftermath, 
they say they saved lives. We know 3 million people died in that part 
of the world in the aftermath of not keeping our commitment with the 
South Vietnamese military.
  That message resounds today and echoes throughout the Middle East, 
echoes throughout al Qaeda. ``The Americans will leave Iraq the same 
way they left Vietnam, Lebanon, Mogadishu.'' Is that hard to figure 
out, then? They watch American TV too. I imagine they turn on C-SPAN 
and watch this every night and cheer and pop their popcorn and they 
have a good time seeing that their argument is being supported on the 
floor of this Congress every night for 1 or 2 hours. They build more 
bombs, not less, Mr. Speaker. That puts American soldiers' lives at 
risk. Bombs cost American soldiers lives. That is on the conscience of 
the people that are leading this country in that wrong direction.
  Now, on the chance that one might think that this is a coincidence 
that Muqtada al-Sadr just picked up this Vietnam idea on his own, maybe 
he read a comic book somewhere or watched C-SPAN or watched the 
Congress here and our Special Orders. Here is a statement made by 
Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second in command. He is al Qaeda. He is a 
more dangerous enemy than Muqtada al-Sadr. In February of 2004, in a 
letter to al Qaeda, he wrote: ``The collapse of American power in 
Vietnam,'' they ran and left. It sent a message, did it not, to 
Zawahiri? We know it sent a message to Osama bin Laden. It sent a 
message to Muqtada al-Sadr. It sent a message also to other leaders of 
al Qaeda. It gave them hope. It gave them spirit. It caused them to 
have more energy, more courage, more will, more resourcefulness to 
attack coalition troops and to attack Americans. Is that a hard thing 
to figure out?
  If that is a hard thing to figure out, Mr. Speaker, then I need to 
make this point very, very clear. In all of those wars that Mr. Franks 
and I talked about throughout this course of history, in the Civil War, 
in the Spanish-American War, in the Second World War, and the Cold War 
and other wars in between, what are the conditions by which a war is 
over? Not because somebody over here passes a resolution and says we 
are going to pick a date on when we are going to be deployed out, the 
cut-and-run date. We cannot set a date for the end of a war if the war 
is not finished. Wars are over when the losing party realizes and 
understands that they have lost. That is how a war gets over. You have 
got to convince the enemy that they cannot win, and you do that through 
violence.
  Yes, all history knows that. But when it is a relentless pounding 
from the other side of the aisle and the quasi-leaders of the United 
States of America and they stand up here and say the war cannot be won, 
people like Zawahiri, Muqtada al-Sadr, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, 
do they not hear that message? Is it not something that encourages 
them? Do they not think that the will of the American people is being 
broken because they hear that relentless message every single day 
coming out of this Congress, coming out through the media? In fact, I 
would suspect that Saddam Hussein probably has a higher opinion of the 
United States of America than some of our mainstream media do, 
listening to some of them out there.

                              {time}  1845

  The pessimistic message that gets pounded out of here, that gets run 
through the mainstream media, that is supported by some people from the 
other body, that is supported by other leaders, quasi-leaders in this 
country, gets through to people like Zawahari, Zarqawi, Muqtada Al-
Sadr, Osama bin Laden. If you doubt that, Mr. Speaker, if any one 
doubts that, I have another poster for you.

[[Page H11317]]

  There he is. The face and the voice of the Democratic Party, the 
leader of the left. One of the inspirational voices that mobilizes the 
other party for pessimism, negativism, and attacks. This individual 
whom we know pretty well, Howard Dean, DNC chairman, spent a lot of 
time in my home State of Iowa, about a year and a half in there.
  He was there most of the time going through the counties and the 
cities. I will grant him, he worked very hard running for President. 
And this is the picture that I think has been made famous by that 
mainstream news media that finally did turn on one of their own. I do 
not think he quite deserved the hit that he took over that.
  But that frustration from the scream, his failure to win the caucuses 
in Iowa and his failure to win the nomination on through that process 
did not really come from the scream. The scream was a result of, but 
the people who met him in the coffee shops and the living rooms 
understood the real man here, the man here that says, ``The idea that 
we are going to win is just plain wrong.''
  Do you not think these other people I put up here see this man as a 
leader of the United States of America, the voice of the Democratic 
Party, the almost-majority in the House of Representatives? Of course 
they do. And they hear this message: the idea that we are going to win 
is just plain wrong.
  Now, if you had seen your troops decimated like al Qaeda has, if you 
had watched 3,000 of them disappear from your ability to utilize them 
in combat, in battle, 3,000 every month, those that are either killed 
or captured, and you do not see that in the mainstream news media, that 
is a number that does not come out here anywhere that I can find. But I 
can tell you that that is the number that has been the average over the 
last several months, 3,000 of the enemy off the streets, killed and 
captured.
  So that has got to be dispiriting to them. We are losing casualties. 
It hurts us. It breaks the confidence of the people on the other side 
of the aisle. What would our confidence be if it were 3,000 of ours 
lost every month instead of the numbers that we are facing today?
  So what happens? This man stands up and says the idea that we are 
going to win is just plain wrong. Well, if you are all beaten down 
after your 3,000th casualty for the month, and if you are looking for 
some optimism, here is the place to go. There are plenty of voices over 
here that bring this optimism for the other side.
  They keep mentioning the Vietnam War. That is the only war that the 
liberals ever won; they just won it for the wrong side, Mr. Speaker, 
and are trying to win another one. They have got so much invested in 
failure in Iraq, they could not abide by that.
  So I would ask this other side of the aisle, define victory. I will 
define it. We have had this sequence of it that took place. We listened 
to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) talk about being in Iraq during 
the elections, the first free elections in January, with the purple 
fingers in air, 8\1/2\ million Iraqis voted.
  We went through sequence of liberations, martial law, a Coalition 
Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer and handed over to a civilian 
government until such time as they could set up the elections, which 
they did in January, and they elected then a provisional parliament, an 
interim temporary parliament whose job it was to write the 
Constitution. On October 15 then they ratified their Constitution.
  And 10 days later we had leaders of this country that were speaking 
against the effort and undermining their freedom. And now here we are 
just a few days from a real election in Iraq that finally culminates 
this whole process and gives them a legitimate sovereignty in Iraq, one 
that will select a prime minister, gives them the ability now to take 
this massive amount of oil wealth that they have, market some oil 
contracts for development so that they can start to get this cash-flow 
coming back into Iraq, lift that country up.
  They are just dilapidated and depreciated from 35 years of neglect. 
We have given them a little shot in the arm, $18.5 billion. The number 
was wrong over here, by the way, last night. It was not 87 billion that 
went in there to rebuild Iraq. It was 18.5. The balance was for the 
military. But 18.5 billion of that, 12\1/2\ the Army invested, and the 
balance of that was scattered through some other entities. That was 
like the down payment on your house that gets them started.
  They will be certified December 15. There is hope. There is freedom. 
We must stick it out.

                          ____________________