[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 159 (Tuesday, December 13, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H11495-H11500]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            ENERGY CONCERNS

  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 the remaining time until midnight, approximately 48 
minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, thank you for the privilege to speak 
on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. As I 
listened to the discussion here this evening, some of my material was 
created by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and I wish to 
begin by responding to some of the remarks that were made.
  Again, I hear a consistent message of pessimism and really no message 
of solution or a plan. In fact, I heard a lament that they are night 
after night not coming up with the real answers for the American 
people, and I lament the same thing, and I agree with those statements, 
Mr. Speaker.
  First, some of the notes I wrote down as I picked up on some of the 
discussion that went on here on the other side of the aisle were 
concerns about energy and the price of gas and home heating. In fact, 
there is a government report out some few weeks ago that it is going to 
cost perhaps 50 to 51 percent more for the average American to heat 
their home this winter as opposed to last winter. And that is all true.
  We tried to move energy policy through this Chamber. In fact, we did 
move some through this Chamber, but we did not move near enough. I 
called for drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf and drilling in 
ANWR. It looks now like we are going to see the new year without a vote 
on either one of those things. I hope we do and that we get it passed, 
because it is the right thing to do. But into that bargain there are 
people that oppose energy development, and here sits this country on 
406 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on our Outer Continental Shelf.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Yes, I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. One of the proposals that we had was to take out 
the $16 billion in corporate subsidies in the energy bill. Would you be 
willing to support us on that?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I am talking about 
expanding the energy here in this country. And whether or not you 
address any kind of subsidies, whether they exist or not, does not 
affect our overall energy supply except to discourage the development 
of that energy, Mr. Ryan.
  What I am talking about is that we have 406 trillion cubic feet of 
natural gas on the Outer Continental Shelf. A lot of it is around 
Florida, and it is really much of the Florida delegation, and that is 
not a partisan issue down in that part of the panhandle; but we need to 
open up that gas, and we need to open it up all the way across for all 
of America, particularly in the Corn Belt where 90 percent of the cost 
of our nitrogen fertilizer is the cost of natural gas. It has gone up 
400 to 500 percent in the last 5 to 6 years. It used to be $2, and the 
other day it went to $15. That is my point.
  So that is a piece of it. But what I am hearing, and my issue really 
from what I have heard out of your discussion tonight that I do take 
issue with is that adding $1 billion to LIHEAP and talking about 
corporate welfare does not increase the supply of energy in this 
country. What I am about is increasing the supply of energy, because 
there is a law of supply and demand. The more energy we have, the lower 
the cost.
  We cannot sit here and turn up the heat in our homes and turn down 
the development of energy and expect that we are going to have a viable 
economy. In fact, it is economic suicide for a country with an energy 
component of our economy like we have to not develop our energy in this 
country. It puts a price on everything that we do.
  ANWR is part of the aspect of that, too. We are sitting on this 
massive supply of hydrocarbon up on the Arctic shore. I have been up 
there and walked on that sod. There is not an environmental reason not 
to drill up there. There are no caribou that live there. There are no 
trees. It is a frozen Arctic tundra. We do all the work on ice roads. 
We have proven we can do it next door on the north slope. There has not 
been a report of an environmental damage or an oil spill or an effect 
on that environment.
  There has been, because I did see some locations where they have gone 
in and reestablished tundra and it will grow back, it takes 5 to 6 
years to do that, I have seen the examples and flown over by air and am 
confident it can be done. Although the tundra will be disturbed, it is 
not something that is a permanent scar on the landscape.
  But this energy is one piece of it. We need to open up the energy 
supplies in the United States. It does not do to stand here on the 
floor and talk about tax breaks for corporations. Some of those are 
incentives so that they will develop energy. What we have is a 
statutory and a Presidential executive order that lingers from a 
previous Presidency that prevents us from drilling offshore. And with 
this massive supply of natural gas offshore and with this increase in 
gas prices, it puts us at a disadvantage with the rest of the world.
  It happens to be this same natural gas that is $15 here in the United 
States that peaked out here the other day has a natural gas price of 95 
cents in Russia and $1.60 in Venezuela. And those are the countries 
that are producing fertilizer and shipping it over to us. We have our 
fertilizer companies in this country that are put on hold. They have 
had to slow their operations down and practically freeze the 
development or stop the production of fertilizer. That means the 
farmers that were going to take delivery of fertilizer late in the 
year, and some of them to try to beat their year end for tax purposes 
as well, are not going to have that fertilizer.
  It means there will be a rush in the spring and prices are likely to 
be very high in the spring. But we are not far away from losing our 
entire fertilizer industry in this country because we refuse to develop 
the natural gas that is right under our very noses.
  I did some calculations. I thought, well, if we are going to bring in 
liquefied natural gas from the Middle East, or if we are going to be 
bringing it in from just across the Caribbean, from a place like 
Venezuela, which is a place

[[Page H11496]]

that has a lot of natural gas, or Trinidad, Tobago, would be another 
place where there is a lot of natural gas; and it also sounds like the 
commitment has been made to build a natural gas pipeline from the north 
slope of Alaska on down to the lower 48 States. So I thought, well, let 
me do a few simple calculations.
  So there are 38 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on the north slope 
developed at this point that we can tap into. There is likely much 
more. And it is 4,779 miles, I believe is the number from mile post 
zero at the pipeline terminal on the north slope of Alaska on down to, 
and I picked the middle of the United States, Kansas City, so 4,770 
miles from north slope, mile post zero, to Kansas City. How far is it 
to the mother lode of natural gas down on the south side of the 
Caribbean, Venezuela, for example? Well, it is 2,700-some miles down 
there, Mr. Speaker.
  So would it make more sense to run a pipeline from Alaska or a 
pipeline from Venezuela, when that gas is $1.60 and ours here on this 
continent is up to $15? Of course it would make more sense to bring 
that pipeline from Venezuela up here. It would enrich Hugo Chavez. It 
does not make a lot of sense. It does not make a lot of sense to run 
that pipeline right through some of our significant natural gas 
reserves in this country that we refuse to develop.
  But we could cut about a thousand miles off that 2,700-mile pipeline 
down to Venezuela, or just actually not bother to build the pipeline at 
all, Mr. Speaker, and continue to drill wells and hook up lines and 
move our way right around the gulf coast, right on around the tip of 
Florida and up the other side and right on up the east coast, and some 
of it up the west coast, Mr. Speaker, where there are some gas supplies 
offshore in California that are significant and that have not been 
tapped either.
  I think we should open it up, and I think we should open it up all at 
once. I think we ought to open it up for natural gas and for crude oil, 
so that we can take the lid off this slow metering of increasing of 
supplies that is allowing prices to go up while supplies creep up only 
marginally.
  If Alaska can compete with that, great. They are an outstanding 
State, and I have been quite impressed with what they have done up 
there. If it makes sense to run the pipeline down here from Alaska, run 
that too, and let us pump the energy into this country.
  There will be, or it is very likely, I should say, a crude oil 
pipeline to come down through the United States. It will come from up 
in Alberta where the tar sands are. There is a huge supply of crude oil 
up there, a very thick oil; and it takes some technology to get it out 
of the ground. The Canadians are developing, and I believe have 
developed, that technology. Those kinds of things need to happen.
  The rest of the discussion about who got what tax break and what 
incentive is there and what kind of class envy we can lay out here for 
the American people and how much pessimism we can pour out here on this 
floor every night are redundant subjects with regard to the overall 
question of increasing the size of the energy pie so that we can afford 
to heat our homes, our factories, produce our products, and produce our 
fertilizer and produce our food and keep this world economy rolling.

                              {time}  2320

  We need to answer those questions and resolve the energy issue. And I 
will add nuclear to that and expand coal. I would go with hydroelectric 
if we could get it. I will use wind. I will use everything we can to 
increase the size of this energy pie. If we let it compete, then supply 
and demand and costs of capital and the cost of the energy delivery to 
the system will be what determines how our whole energy supply is 
provided.
  Some of the other concerns here tonight is the concern about this 
economy. If a person had just woken up from a long and deep sleep and 
turned on C-SPAN and listened to the discussion about this economy, 
they would think that the stock market had crashed and people were 
jumping out of buildings and committing suicide because there was no 
hope in our economy. There was no signal whatsoever that we have 
completed 10 consecutive quarters of 3 percent or more growth. And the 
last quarter was 4.3 percent growth. That takes us back more than a 
generation to find a period of growth that has an equivalent period of 
time of consecutive quarters of this kind of growth. That goes back to 
the early Reagan years where growth after the Carter administration was 
not that difficult of a challenge.
  Mr. Speaker, growth after coming off of the dot-com bubble and the 
good years through the 1990s is a far more difficult challenge. And 
growth after September 11, growth after having to pour resources into a 
worldwide war on terror, growth getting through this bump of Hurricane 
Katrina, all of that growth came in spite of those things. It is 
because we have a Bush tax cut plan that stimulated this economy. There 
is no rational argument that it has been anything but a very, very 
successful plan. It has done what it was predicted and designed to do.
  I hear over here, it just did not pan out over and over again. Mr. 
Speaker, the numbers are there. It has panned out. It is here, and it 
is real. Unemployment numbers are going down, down, down. Economic 
growth numbers are going up, and the interest rate is going up 
consistently. They just announced that it is going up one more time. I 
do not remember how many quarters we have had the interest rate 
increase, but it is an attempt to hold down this economy that is 
bursting from the seams.
  And how does it do that if we are in the middle of an economic and an 
energy failure? We have failed to develop our energy because 
environmental extremists, and nearly everyone on this side of the aisle 
over here, has refused to let us develop the energy supply, and it is 
irrational to refuse to develop this energy that sits right here under 
this country and on the outer continental shelf of this country and pay 
the equivalent of an extortion price to some of the people around the 
world who are putting this energy into our system and taking the 
profits out, and we know a significant amount of money from those 
profits goes to fund our enemies, and it costs American lives.
  Opening up energy here in this country converts to more safety for 
every American, a higher quality of life for ever American, a stronger 
economy for every American, and an opportunity to move this Nation 
towards another level of our destiny.
  So this economy is strong. We need to do some things to open up 
energy. The lament that we are evicting Americans, and we are giving 
them a notice, telling them they have to find another place to live 
because we do not think that the taxpayers can fund flying people from 
New Orleans to Washington, D.C. where the hotels are some of the most 
expensive hotels in the country and putting them up in five-star hotels 
indefinitely; that is the lament about evicting Americans.
  It is a notice that says, after Christmas some time, you are going to 
need to find a place to live. I advocated for and wish we had simply 
put a voucher in their hand instead of trying to find a place for them 
to live and said go find yourself an alternative location. Rent 
yourself an apartment, buy yourself a house, do what you need to do.
  But this idea that we are going to take everyone by the hand and 
manage their lives because they lived in a disastrous, 
counterproductive situation, so Americans have to step up and take 
responsibility for themselves.
  Who among us, if we were going to be bunked in a five-star hotel and 
there was no limit, no end to that, would not just stay in that five-
star hotel? Good room service, laundry service, you have all of the 
facilities that you need. I suppose the bus picks the kids up for 
school. I cannot imagine living in a hotel for months on end and 
thinking that was somehow an entitlement.
  There are many things we could have done better with Hurricane 
Katrina and done them better, but there is not a justification for 
keeping people in five-star hotels in Washington, D.C. and then feeling 
guilty when we ask them to find an alternative place to live. I think 
that is about the end of America's generosity when we go to that point.
  Food stamps. The argument that we are starving children comes up over 
and over again. I sat through hours of that in the Committee on 
Agriculture when we marked up the reconciliation

[[Page H11497]]

package. We needed to find some savings. I looked back in the last 
reporting year, and I wanted to know how many dollars worth of food 
stamps were handed out to people that did not qualify, food stamp 
fraud. And in the last reporting year, I would find, $1 billion was 
handed out to people in food stamps, people that did not qualify, so 
food stamp fraud.
  So we set some conditions on this that were minor conditions and, 
over the grand scheme of millions of Americans, saved a few million 
dollars, and it had to do with a policy that said, when you come to the 
United States, you agree you are not going to put pressure on our 
welfare system for 5 years, and we extended that to 7 years for food 
stamps.
  A couple of tweaks of that nature, and we found all of the savings we 
needed to find in food stamps. It is not the issue of starving 
children. There are no children that are going to go without food 
stamps. Their nutrition is going to be there. I do not know anyone in 
the United States that is suffering from malnutrition, but yet the 
wailing and the crying from the other side of the aisle has to come up 
again because there are some Americans that will listen to that and 
believe that.
  A billion dollars in waste in the last year that was reported to me 
leaves plenty of room for a little tightening of the belt in food 
stamps. I think we should tighten that right up to the last dollar of 
the billionth dollar that is there and take all of the fraud out and 
take a little of the fat out while we are at it. We did not go anywhere 
near that, but the demagoguery persists.
  As I listened tonight to this group of nattering nabobs of 
negativity, it reminds me of a Vice President that laid that out on the 
news media some years ago, and I wonder, the argument was that we 
should not have troops over there in the Middle East spending money on 
those troops, a hundred billion or $200 billion, whatever their number 
was tonight, because we do not have a perfect health care system. We do 
not have a perfect retirement system. Our jobs are not perfect for 
everyone; our educational system is not perfect for everyone. So? So we 
should not be defending the safety and freedom of the American people 
and in the process liberating tens of millions of people who yearn for 
that freedom? Where are our priorities?
  When would this team that is here every night, when would they ever 
say we think we have it right now, Mr. President? Let me rephrase that, 
when would this team that we have here nearly every night say, We think 
we have it right now, Mr. Republican President? When would they ever 
say the word ``Republican'' in a fashion that had anything to do with 
objectivity or complimentary fashion? When would they ever say the 
health care system is as good as it needs to be, and we think we can 
now take care of our national security? And when would they say our 
retirement, especially for our military, is up to snuff so we can go 
ahead and protect our security with the military that we have in 
uniform, the active duty and Guard and Reserve people that are serving 
us so well and so honorably?
  When would they ever say there is an adequate number of jobs for an 
adequate price that pays an adequate amount of wages and benefits so 
now we can take a little extra money and put it into our military and 
defend our safety and our security?

                              {time}  2330

  When would they ever say, Mr. Speaker, that the educational system 
was adequate for all of our children and our young people and that they 
had an opportunity for a good K through 12 government education and 
they could go off to higher learning and they could all go off to 
college, all at the expense of the taxpayer, of course, Mr. Speaker. 
When would the health care, retirement, jobs education, when would all 
of that ever meet the satisfaction of the nattering nabobs of 
negativity that are here every single night, lamenting how terrible it 
is here in the United States of America.
  Meanwhile, we cannot defend our own borders, and 4 million illegal 
aliens pour across our southern border every single year for the last 
few years. Why are they coming here? Are they not watching C-SPAN at 
night? Do they not see how bad it is? I submit, Mr. Speaker, that they 
see how good it is. They can go on the Web page. They can click on and 
see what the Department of Labor statistics are. They can see the 
economic statistics. They know that there have been 10 consecutive 
quarters of 3 percent or more growth. They know unemployment is going 
down. They know there is health care accessible to everyone. They know 
there is nobody malnourished in the United States of America. They know 
there is a free education.
  How can you go wrong in the United States of America when you compare 
it to any other nation in the world? And so, at what point, Mr. 
Speaker, do we say we must provide for the safety and security of the 
American people, and while we are there, let us give the people that 
are in those countries that opportunity for freedom and liberty so they 
can erase the habitat that breeds terror. That is what is going on over 
there.
  And then I hear, well, all we are asking for, Mr. President, is we 
have got benchmark, benchmark, benchmark. Yes, they mentioned some of 
the benchmarks, Mr. Speaker, and I have some of them here. And I want 
to point out these benchmarks in Iraq. March 20, 2003, was the 
beginning of the liberation of Iraq and it was March 19 over here at 
9:30 a.m., if you want to mark your calendar and put the time on, 
eastern standard time. That was March 20.
  By May 12, Paul Bremer was in place. He had replaced Jay Garner as 
the civil administrator in Iraq, May 12, 2003. July 13, Iraq's interim 
governing council was inaugurated. So just a few short months, April, 
May, June, halfway through July, 3\1/2\ months, and the Iraqi interim 
governing council was inaugurated.
  By July 22, Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Kusay, were eliminated in 
a fire fight in Mosul. And I have been to that site, Mr. Speaker, and 
the building is gone. The lot is razed. The only sign of it there is I 
imagine you have to have a GPS locator to figure that out. The 
neighbors know. But that was the end of the terror of those two 
terrorists on July 22, 2003.
  December 13, 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured. If my date serves me 
correctly, this is the 2-year anniversary of the capture of Saddam 
Hussein. And we have something to celebrate here, Mr. Speaker, and that 
was that we handed over Saddam Hussein to the civilian government then, 
and a little bit later down the line, or I will pick that date out here 
in a moment. But this is the 2-year anniversary of the capture of 
Saddam Hussein. We were delighted on that day. I am still delighted. He 
is before a court in Iraq. He is receiving a fair trial. It looks a 
little bit like a circus from time to time, but the Iraqis will bring 
this out. And they will provide justice.
  I have met with the judges over there. They are courageous people. 
Their lives are on the line. They must have an objective court, and 
they have got to get into the record the crimes of the administration 
so that it is recorded in history and once it is recorded and packaged 
up, then when punishment is meted out to the perpetrators that 
committed those crimes against humanity, then the Iraqis can move 
forward and put that stage into their history. So that was December 13, 
2003, 2 years ago today, Mr. Speaker.
  On March 8, 2004, the Iraqi governing council signed the interim 
constitution and that guided them. It was a bill of rights, it was a 
system of checks and balances, and it made the military subordinate to 
civilian rule. Those were all significant milestones. A bill of rights 
for the people that have never had a bill of rights before. And on May 
28, 2004, Iyad Allawi was designated Prime Minister in the Iraqi 
interim government, a Shiite neurologist by profession. And it happened 
to have been my birthday that day as well. So I will try and remember 
that as a milestone for a couple of reasons.
  And I have admired Iyad Allawi, who came to this Chamber and spoke to 
a joint session of Congress, and he said thank you America, thanks for 
liberating us, thanks for making us free. It was a moving speech that 
he gave, not so much for the language, for the words. The words were 
very appropriate, but for the way it poured from his heart that day. 
You could feel that reverberate in these Chambers, Mr. Speaker.

  Then on June 1, just 3 days later Mr. al-Yahwir was chosen as 
president. So

[[Page H11498]]

this set up the Iraqi governing council and gave them leadership. And 
then the plan was to hand over the governing of Iraq to their interim 
governing council on June 30 of 2004. But, Mr. Speaker, the Iraqis have 
been meeting every deadline, every milestone, except when they beat 
them. And on this milestone they beat it because the United States 
transferred sovereignty to the Iraqi interim government on June 28 as 
opposed to June 30, 2 days early. And I think it was a good move. It 
said that nothing has been delayed along this way. It has always been 
done on time.
  Then on June 30, was the day, 2 days after, we handed over the 
civilian control of Iraq to the Iraqis on June 30 of 2004, we just 2 
days later handed over control of Saddam Hussein, the legal custody of 
Saddam Hussein and 11 other high profile, I will say, perpetrators, 
Baath party officials to the Iraqis. And they took control of that, and 
it is entirely appropriate that this trial be conducted by Iraqis. They 
must do this. Then, another milestone. A huge milestone, January 30, 
2005 purple finger day. That was the day that millions of Iraqis went 
to the polls to elect themselves a new national assembly, and this 
national assembly's job was to draft a Constitution. So they were 
elected January 30, 2005 and on March 26 they were seated.
  The Iraqi assembly was convened and they went to work in drafting not 
an interim Constitution now, but a real Constitution, a Constitution 
that was amendable, but a Constitution for all time. So they went to 
work to draft that Constitution, a Constitution that was amendable, a 
Constitution for all time. To the polls, dipped their finger in purple 
ink. January 30, convened their assembly March 26, 2005. Their new 
Constitution was presented to the Iraqi National Assembly August 28, 
2005.
  October 15 of 2005 the Iraqis went to the polls. Seventy-nine percent 
of them voted to ratify their new Constitution. That sets up the stage 
that we are in right now, and there are elections taking place in Iraq 
as we speak, and they are elections that build up to the final and 
formal election day which takes place on the 15th of December. And at 
that point, Mr. Speaker, there will be named a full general assembly; a 
sovereign nation will be formed when, in March, the new general 
assembly is seated under the new Constitution and that will make Iraq 
as legitimate a government as exists in the Arab world and, in fact, 
they will have an argument that theirs is as legitimate a government as 
exists anywhere in the world.
  When seated at the United Nations under their new Constitution and 
their new sovereignty with leaders that are chosen by the people, they 
will have and enjoy a measure of legitimacy that meets or exceeds the 
measure of legitimacy of almost every country in the world, certainly 
in the Middle East. They will surpass that and set the highest standard 
of legitimacy. They will be an Arab constitutional republic, a 
democracy.
  That is what we have been working for, Mr. Speaker. That is what the 
treasure has been poured into Iraq for is to change that habitat in 
that terrorist part of the world, and it is working. Last Friday, Mr. 
Speaker, I made a trip out to Bethesda to the national naval medical 
center. I make it a point to go to either Bethesda or Walter Reed or at 
Landstuhl in Germany if I happen to be going through there at least 
once a quarter to visit our soldiers and marines and our corpsmen who 
are wounded and in the hospital and who paid a significant price to 
defend our freedom and to promote it throughout the world. It is always 
an uplifting experience for me. It is always something that encourages 
me and gives me strength and great faith in this country. Sometimes you 
walk in the room, and no matter the injuries, if they are in pain it is 
one thing, but there is often laughter in the room.

                              {time}  2340

  There is often a measure of optimism. That optimism often comes from 
the family, the wife, mother there, maybe the children that are there.
  I had great conversations with these Marines last Friday. They 
pointed out that while so much good work is getting done, the media has 
not highlighted their efforts to rebuild the critical infrastructure in 
Iraq and that these important pieces of critical infrastructure lead 
Iraqis to democratic independence, but we do not hear about it here, 
Mr. Speaker. And I would point out that there was a report released by 
the Media Research Center, and it confirms the concerns of the Marines. 
Out of 1,388 reports broadcast on network news programs, only eight 
were devoted to recounting episodes of heroism or valor by U.S. troops 
and only nine featured instances when soldiers reached out to help the 
Iraqi people. Eight of heroism, nine of helping hand. Calculate the 
rest of the 1,388 were stories about what was sensationalized bad news, 
Mr. Speaker. If you sensationalize bad news long enough, the people in 
the world that are inclined to be the nattering nabobs of negativism 
will believe it, and that is what is being poured out here on the floor 
of the House of Representatives each and every night, and this focusing 
on negativity encourages our enemies.
  I will take us back then to the benchmark argument. I have read down 
through the list of benchmarks that have been met in Iraq. Every 
benchmark has been met or exceeded. One was exceeded by 2 days of the 
civilian takeover for the Iraqi people from our CPA and Paul Bremer, 
and the argument now is, what about all these benchmarks, Mr. 
President? We need a benchmark to get out, to quote the gentlewoman 
from Florida.
  No, Mr. Speaker, that is the last thing we need, is an announcement 
on when we might pull out of Iraq.
  I happen to remember the previous President set a benchmark to get 
out of Kosovo. He said we will be there 1 year, no more. We are going 
to send troops over there, and we are going to send air cover over 
there, 1 year and no more, and we will be out of Kosovo.
  I think we are into the 11th year now since that deployment has been 
taking place, Mr. Speaker, but it is at least 10. So that benchmark 
really did not work so well. Benchmarks do not work well in wartime. 
And even if one could measure that kind of progress and pull out, the 
enemy is still going to use that to strategize against us. Why is that 
a difficult concept to understand? If we would say, here is a date on 
the calendar by which the first American troops are going to get out or 
the last American troops will be gone, we know very well that the enemy 
will husband their resources and change their tactics and go 
underground and store up their munitions and recruit their personnel. 
They would be able to go out and say, Here, we will take over of Iraq. 
It will be a terrorist center, and here is how we will handle that: 
They will be done taking casualties until such time as the Americans 
are gone.
  Remember what happened when we deployed, and that is the kind of word 
that has been used here, deployed out of Vietnam? I went back and read 
through some of that legislation from back in that 1973, 1974 and early 
1975 era. The legislation that is there confirms my recollection, 
although my dates were not exactly precise. This Congress took this 
debate, this national debate, this cut-and-run philosophy to the point 
where they passed legislation here on the floor of the United States 
House of Representatives and the United States Senate that forbade any 
resources from going to even supporting South Vietnamese troops. Not an 
M-16 bullet for a South Vietnamese troop defending his own freedom in 
his own country. The Vietnamization program that President Nixon had 
established, all that shut off. No air cover, no missions flown to 
protect them, no munitions to support them, squeezed the valve down so 
there was not a drop of help. In the ensuing aftermath, when 
helicopters were lifting people off of the U.S. embassy in Saigon and 
people were doing everything they could to hang on to the struts of 
those helicopters and they were pouring into boats and going out into 
the South China Sea to go anywhere to get away from Vietnam and many of 
the boats capsized and some being sunk intentionally and militarily and 
thousands of people dying, in fact, tens of thousands of people dying 
even in the immediate aftermath, millions dying in Southeast Asia in 
the subsequent aftermath because we did not hold our bargain with the 
people in Southeast Asia. And millions died, Mr. Speaker.
  I heard the gentleman from Ohio say, ``No one is going to tell me 
that I am

[[Page H11499]]

not supporting our troops.'' Mr. Speaker, I will submit this: If you do 
not support the mission, you are not supporting the troops. If you send 
a soldier off into a hostile region, send him off to war and ask him to 
go defend your freedom with his life and to do so in a cause that you 
say is not justified, wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, Mr. Speaker, 
how can you ask a person to put his life on the line for a cause you do 
not believe in, a cause that you will not even put your vote behind or 
your voice behind? How can you ask them to put their life behind that 
and then say, No one is going to tell me that I am not supporting our 
troops? Well, supporting the troops, supporting the mission, and they 
are inseparable. If you do not support the mission, you are not 
supporting the troops.

  Here is a measure of optimism, Mr. Speaker. We hear about casualties 
continually. The only measure I found in my research over the last 2\1/
2\ years or a little more is that Saddam Hussein was killing his own 
people at an average rate of 182 per day. I have gone back and measured 
some of that, and I can come up with a bigger number and a little 
smaller number, but that number seems to fit about in the middle of the 
Iraqis that were killed at the hands of Saddam Hussein. And so I would 
submit, Mr. Speaker, that we have been at this operation and Saddam has 
been out of power for approximately 1,000 days; so there are 182,000 
Iraqis alive today that would not be if we had not enforced a regime 
change in Iraq and liberated the Iraqi people; 182,000 alive today, Mr. 
Speaker. And, yes, there have been casualties, and we have lost more 
than 2,000 Americans. And there have been something in the neighborhood 
of 30,000 or perhaps more Iraqis that have been killed in this 
conflict, civilian Iraqis for the most part. So if we are at the 32,000 
to 34,000 number, let us just say 32,000 because that number works out 
round enough that I can do the math in my head, subtract that 32,000 
from 182,000, and we come up with 150,000 Iraqis alive today that would 
not be if they had not been liberated by coalition troops, especially 
Americans. That is no small feat. That is no small endeavor to free 25 
million people and to have a net savings in lives over 2\1/2\ years of 
150,000 people. Do we not ever measure the positive side of this 
ledger, or is it always that the nattering nabobs of negativity cannot 
get to that plus side so I have to come down here nearly every night 
and bring this thing back around to reality, Mr. Speaker? And I will 
continue to do that as long as this message needs to come out to the 
American people.
  I carry a few more messages here that happen to point out some points 
that I think we do not see in the news media. I have to put on my 
glasses for this one.
  What are some of the changes that are taking place in Iraq in a 
positive way? And I have a chart here before me. This is a chart that 
shows the number of Iraqis taking action to provide tips they received 
from the population. In March of 2005, the early part of this year, 
there was not much confidence in Iraq that we were going to stick this 
out. So there were 483 tips given on who the terrorists were, and how 
do we send troops in there to bust the terrorists? Four hundred and 
eighty-three tips. They did not all pan out, but that is an indication 
of the Iraqis being willing to cooperate. That was March, 483. April, 
1,591 tips; May, 1,740; June, 2,519 tips; July, 3,303; August, 3,341. 
And that is where my bar chart stops. So we have gone from 483 tips in 
March to 3,341 in August. That tells us the Iraqi people are stepping 
up to provide their own safety, their own security, cooperating with 
American troops and coalition troops and Iraqi troops, of which about 
210,000 are trained. Most of them are combat ready. All of them are 
operational in one form or another. Some of them are top-ranked troops 
that will match up with any in the world.

                              {time}  2350

  Yet, I hear this drumbeat, the nattering nabobs of negativity, that 
there is only one battalion that is really combat ready. Well, that is 
really not true. There are quite a few battalions combat ready. At the 
time there was only one battalion that was ranked at the very highest 
level of ready. All of our troops are not ranked at that highest level 
all the time either. They waiver in and out of that level of readiness, 
depending on where their training is and what kind of condition that 
their equipment is in.
  So I wanted to make a point here in the last couple of minutes of why 
it is important to support our troops.
  Muqtada al-Sadr. This is a quote that I heard from Al-Jazeera TV in 
Kuwait City as I waited to go into Iraq June 11, 2004. ``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 a person like Muqtada al-Sadr get such an idea that if he 
keeps attacking Americans, we are going to leave? Is it from reading 
the history books? Is it from reading other literature, Mr. Speaker? Is 
it from observations of history as wishful thinking? I would submit it 
could be all of those things. But I want to do a little bit from 
history.
  I have here, Mr. Speaker, a book written by an author who hails from 
my district, Sioux City, Iowa. This is Colonel George Bud Day's book, 
``Duty, Honor, Country.'' Colonel Day is the most highly decorated 
American hero that we have who is living today.
  This book is about him being a prisoner of war in Vietnam, Mr. 
Speaker. It lays out a tone that I think every American should know, 
every American child should study, and this book should be turned to 
page 155, Duty, Honor, Country by Colonel Bud Day, Medal of Honor 
winner.
  He writes as he is in the prison camp in Vietnam, and this is the 
mindset of our enemies, he writes, ``The Vietnamese were positive of 
victory and that their cause was predestined for success. Their 
propaganda organs had been convinced that massive rioting against the 
war was commonplace in the United States and in support of the commies. 
That was the Jane Fonda message.''
  He goes on. He says, ``It was disheartening at a quiz, which means an 
interrogation, to have Senator Fulbright or some looney politician 
declaring himself on the enemy's side of the argument. Many a torture 
was accomplished just to force a POW to say or agree to the same things 
that were attributed to fellow Americans, Senators and Representatives. 
It got to the point where the Vietnamese did not have to write their 
own propaganda against the U.S. They could simply quote Senator 
Gruening from Alaska, Fulbright from Arkansas, Kennedy from 
Massachusetts or a Congressman of the same ilk. I was sickened by these 
statements,'' writes Colonel Day, ``for the U.S. Congress passed the 
questionable Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which sent me to Southeast Asia. 
Loyalty I felt was a two-way street. It is a bit disconcerting not to 
be able to tells the difference between the words of a U.S. Senator and 
those of your enemy. More devastating to our cause was the fact that 
the North Vietnamese thought these statements to be semi-official U.S. 
policy. When combined with propaganda, it stiffened the Vietnamese 
backs immeasurably,'' and I emphasize this point, Mr. Speaker, ``adding 
significantly to the U.S. death list on the battlefield and the death 
of several POWs in Hanoi.''
  That is not a hard lesson to understand when you encourage the enemy 
by sitting in the gun emplacements in North Vietnam, as Jane Fonda did, 
or speaking out against this effort relentlessly night after night, as 
happens here on the floor of the United States Congress. It encouraged 
our enemies in Vietnam, it encourages our enemies around the world 
today.
  In fact, I happened to come across a Web page, and there is a quote 
here from Colonel Bud Day, and his answer today is, ``John Kerry 
launched his political career more than 30 years ago by comparing the 
actions of U.S. troops in Vietnam to those of the armies of Genghis 
Khan.'' I think that is not a refuted statement. But here is a point 
that exists today.
  Mr. Speaker, after the comparison of the acts of Genghis Khan to 
create the political career, now we have the same individual saying to 
the American people, picked up immediately by Al-Jazeera, we all know, 
saying ``American soldiers in the dead of night terrorizing kids and 
children, women, breaking religious customs.'' The same individual, 
this is the Senator that came to Iowa for a year-and-a-half and said 
wrong war, wrong place, wrong

[[Page H11500]]

time, gave aid and comfort to our enemies then, gives aid and comfort 
to our enemies now.
  Mr. Speaker, if that were the only one, it would not be so bad. Maybe 
we could isolate an individual like that. But it is sad to say it is 
not the only one. I have another example, a blast from the past.
  Here is our blast from the past, the individual, the other Senator 
from Massachusetts. I will not tell you that I just happened to pick a 
State randomly and pick two of their Senators. No, this is on purpose, 
Mr. Speaker.
  This is the Senator referenced in the book Duty, Honor, Country from 
more than 30 years ago. He is still here and today he says, ``This war 
was made up in Texas. This whole thing was a fraud. Iraq is George 
Bush's Vietnam.''
  Now do we understand, Mr. Speaker, why our enemies believe that Iraq 
can be another Vietnam? Not because of the forests or the mountains to 
hide in or the place for guerrilla warfare to take place, because we 
read in Zarqawi's letter that there are not any mountains to hide in, 
there are not any forests to hide in, and that the Iraqi people are 
willing to take the insurgents in and protect them and let them operate 
from their are as rare as red sulfur.
  So the structure of this war in Iraq does not allow for that kind of 
guerrilla warfare. Yes, it is an urban warfare of a kind, but it is not 
at all like Vietnam. Iraq is a desert, Vietnam is a jungle. Vietnam has 
mountains and forests and jungle, Iraq has sand dunes and buildings. 
There is a huge differential though between the two countries because 
the Iraqis really do not want to hide these insurgents, and in Vietnam 
they were forced to hide them. In fact, there were places for the enemy 
to hide regardless of whether they had the cooperation of the 
civilians.
  But the same individual who encouraged the enemies then, who is 
attributed by the most decorated American hero as contributing to the 
loss of American lives and particularly the lives of POWs, is still at 
it, Mr. Speaker, still at it. ``This was made up in Texas. This whole 
thing was a fraud. This is George Bush's Vietnam.''
  Is that not some good Al-Jazeera material, Mr. Speaker? And I am not 
done. This material roles out every day in this country. We are trying 
to keep up with it by printing posters and putting quotes in there, and 
I am going to try to come down here on a periodic basis and try to keep 
the American people up to speed.
  But I am glad that our soldiers are too busy with their diplomacy and 
the liberation of Iraq to be watching the news and have to listen to 
all of this debate. But I am determined to stand here and defend their 
efforts. And I support their mission and our soldiers, and that mission 
and the soldiers and the support for them cannot be separated. You 
cannot argue that I support them and I do not support the mission, Mr. 
Speaker.
  So, in conclusion, we have a duty here on the floor of the United 
States Congress and in our jobs across this land as we represent our 
country and the people from our districts and as we interact with them 
and with the media to inform the American people that our military 
mission is on track in Iraq, the political sequence of events is on 
track in Iraq, and that the economic solution is around the corner. 
When they truly establish a sovereign Nation in Iraq, which will take 
place after these elections on the 15th, and when they are seated in 
March and when they sign a contract to develop that oil and the cash 
starts to flow into Iraq and free enterprise kicks in and the 
government gets the kinks out of its systems, and as the Iraqis step 
forward and do more and more providing the safety and security for the 
Iraqi people, this will be resolved to the satisfaction of history, if 
not the satisfaction of the nattering nabobs of negativity.

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