[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 20 (Thursday, February 16, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H359-H365]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BALLOTS NOT BULLETS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Conaway). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms.

[[Page H360]]

McKinney) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my remarks this 
afternoon by congratulating first of all the people of Haiti, a small, 
very poor country that is our neighbor, but a country whose people 
still believe in the power of democracy. They still believe in the 
power of the vote. And so despite all odds, despite all intimidation, 
the people of Haiti overwhelmingly showed up at the polls and they 
voted. And not only did they show up at the polls and vote; they 
demanded that their vote be counted.
  Now, we understand that there were about 85,000 ballots that had 
nothing on them. They were probably ready to have something put on 
them. But the people of Haiti demanded that the vote that was actually 
voted and the results of that actual vote count be the results of the 
election.
  And I am also down here this afternoon to congratulate not only the 
people of Haiti, who prevailed, but to congratulate Rene Preval, who 
was their candidate of choice.
  Now, the people of Haiti have to be congratulated because they have 
gone to the polls over and over and over and over again. They have gone 
to the polls. A few years ago, when I had just come to Congress, they 
went to the polls, before I got to Congress, they went to the polls and 
they elected a former priest, a man of the cloth, a man of the 
community, of the neighborhood, a man of the poor to represent them.
  And hired thugs who were on the CIA payroll, whose leader enjoys the 
solace and solitude of America's neighborhoods, he should not even be 
here, helped to oust President Aristide.
  And so the hopes and aspirations of the people of Haiti, who were 
finally able to throw off the yoke of American-imposed and -supported 
dictatorship, saw their hopes and their dreams vanish once again.
  But thank goodness there was an administration in Washington, DC and 
there was a change in the face of the Democratic Caucus and so Members 
of the Congressional Black Caucus would not stand to allow this outrage 
to continue. And so working in concert with the Clinton administration, 
the members of the Congressional Black Caucus worked day in and day out 
and successfully saw the return of Jean Bertrand Aristide to power.
  But that was not enough. Because, as soon as Clinton was out of 
office, and the George W. Bush administration was in office, something 
else happened, after the people of Haiti voted to renew President 
Aristide's mandate. And what happened happened 2 years ago.
  The people of Haiti, in free, fair and transparent elections, elected 
Jean Bertrand Aristide to another term in office. U.S. Armed Forces 
showed up at his house and took him and his family away, put them on a 
plane, destination unknown. Kind of like what happened with the Katrina 
survivors.
  So once again, the people of Haiti saw that when they went to the 
polls, participated in the process, put their full faith and confidence 
in the power of the ballot box, ballot box, not bullets, that bullets 
from some place else could come and dash their dreams. So now former 
President Aristide lives in South Africa.
  I have to acknowledge the tremendous role that was played by my 
sister Congresswoman, Ms. Waters. Here she is. Now I am all 
discombobulated because my sister is here.

                              {time}  1300

  I will let her tell her story.
  Maxine, can I invite you to please tell the story of how you saved a 
little piece of America's honor by making sure that Jean Bertram 
Aristide was at least safely delivered to his final destination.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my sister.
  Ms. WATERS. I thank you very much. Congresswoman, I am very pleased 
that you have taken time to come to this floor to talk about what has 
just happened in Haiti.
  As you know, Haiti for too long has been dropped off of the corporate 
media's agenda. And whenever they have written stories, for the most 
part it has been distorted information which helped to lead to the 
unrest and the destabilization of Haiti. But you are absolutely 
correct. There was a coup d'etat that removed President Aristide from 
office. They did drop him off in the Central Republic of Africa.
  I got together with Randal Robinson and a few other people, and we 
chartered a plane, and we traveled to the Central Republic of Africa, 
and we negotiated with President Bokassa I think it is, who was holding 
him there and was afraid to release him because they had some kind of 
agreement with the French and also because the United States had 
brought him there. But we were able to convince them after many hours 
up in that country that they should let him go.
  As a matter of fact, they did not want us to leave. They had said we 
could not leave the night we came in. We basically said to them we had 
to leave and we had to leave with him and that if I was not back in 
Washington by the next day or so, then they would consider that he had 
kidnapped me also and that he was holding Aristide prisoner. And they 
did not want that reputation. They were negotiating at the World Bank 
at the time, and they did not know what it all meant, but we finally 
got him out of there.
  We took him to Jamaica where they kept him for 6 weeks. P.J. 
Patterson, the president there, gave him refuge until President Mbeki 
could be reelected in South Africa. After his reelection, he gave him 
asylum in South Africa, and that is where he is now, and now he is 
working with the university. But the fact of the matter is he is alive 
and he is well.
  I hope that he gets some joy in understanding that the Lavalas Party 
did win, even though there was an attempt maybe to deny them the win. 
The people rose up. The people went into Port-au-Prince, and the people 
went to the Montana Hotel, and they were basically nonviolent, but they 
went in numbers. And they had no choice but to work something out.
  I think Congresswoman McKinney is telling you about the ballots and 
we will be talking about that a little more. I yield back and thank you 
very much, Congresswoman.


                         Parliamentary Inquiry

  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry. I would 
like to suspend my special order. The gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Waters) has requested a 5-minute special order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Conaway). The gentlewoman may yield to 
the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) on her time.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I have an hour, so I will yield to the 
gentlewoman.


          congratulating rene preval, president-elect of haiti

  Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Congresswoman. I appreciate your 
generosity.
  Mr. Speaker, I really came to the floor today to congratulate Rene 
Preval, the President-elect of Haiti. Rene Preval was just declared the 
winner in Haiti's presidential elections this morning with 51.15 
percent of the vote. President-elect Preval has said that his first 
priority as president will be to provide relief to the two-thirds of 
Haiti's population that is living in extreme poverty. His plans include 
universal public school education and at least a free meal a day for 
all of the poor children.
  A little bit about him. He was first elected President of Haiti in 
1995 as a member of the Lavalas Party, the party that represented the 
poor majority. He succeeded President Aristide and served until 
President Aristide's reelection in 2000. President Aristide, of course, 
as we have just talked about, was forced to leave Haiti 2 years ago in 
a coup d'etat that was planned and implemented and orchestrated by the 
United States, France and Canada.
  This election that took place on Tuesday, February 7 was very 
interesting. At first, the early results showed an overwhelming victory 
for Rene Preval. Many polling stations posted their results the day 
after the election, and Preval won between 60 and 90 percent of the 
vote in all of these polling places. But then something happened. By 
Thursday, the election officials, the one heading the CEP, reported 
that, well, no, at that time by Thursday they reported that he had 61.5 
percent of the votes counted thus far.
  Then Haiti's anti-Aristide elites who opposed him, Rene Preval, they 
were opposing him because they believed

[[Page H361]]

that he was influenced by President Aristide and he would carry out 
President Aristide's policies, policies that benefit Haiti's poor. 
These elites, of course, are the same people who helped to organize the 
coup d'etat in 2004 and the same people who have been responsible for 
oppressing the people of Haiti for decades in order to continue to 
operate the sweatshops and to profit from cheap labor and keeping the 
living standards low.
  Well, the elites reacted to the news of Preval's decisive victory and 
we believe that there really was something in play, an attempt to steal 
the election. And there was evidence of election fraud. It was 
abundant. Just yesterday hundreds and possibly thousands of burned 
ballots marked for Preval were found in a garbage dump.
  The counting rules used by Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council 
seemed to be rules that were designed to deny Preval a victory. About 
125,000 ballots, or 7.5 percent of the votes cast, were declared 
invalid because of alleged irregularities. And another 4 percent of the 
votes were allegedly blank, but nevertheless they included them in the 
vote count, thereby pushing Preval's percentage below 50 percent.
  When they announced that he was allotted 47 percent, I mean, not only 
did I, I simply could not believe my ears, the people of Haiti, the 
Lavalas Party, people normally referred to as shemeres, they said, oh, 
no. Not only do we want our President. These are people who were denied 
polling places in Cite Soleil and Bellair and other poor places.
  Ms. McKINNEY. I would like to point out that there were certain 
Members of Congress who actually traveled with Condoleezza Rice and 
they came back and said that Condoleezza Rice had promised that there 
would be some ballot access in Cite Soleil; isn't that correct?
  Ms. WATERS. I am told that they were given assurances that there 
would be an election and there would be polling places in all of the 
provinces and that the rumors that we were hearing about the CEP not 
having the polling places in Cite Soleil and Bellair would not happen. 
So when they said it I was suspicious, and I thought that perhaps she 
was saying that to try to appease them at the time.
  But we know that the Secretary of State has not paid any attention to 
Haiti. This is not on her radar, and I did not expect that there would 
be any follow-through to ensure that the people would have access to 
the ballot.
  As a matter of fact, they did have the polling places. But people got 
up in the wee hours of the morning, and they walked for hours, and they 
stood in line and they demanded that the polling place be open. When 
they got there, the polling places were supposed to be open. They were 
not. They demanded they open them. They stayed in line, and they voted 
in record numbers. They voted in record numbers. And that is why, when 
the announcement came that somehow his majority had fell below 50 
percent, we were all upset, and I fired off a press release that was 
not too nice at all.
  The Haitian people have suffered tremendously for decades. Haiti has 
been ruled by brutal dictators such as Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier. 
They really were doing the bidding of the elites there. They kept their 
feet on the necks of the people so that the elites could profit from 
the cheap labor and from slave labor. These dictators controlled a 
brutal army that protected the interests of the wealthy elite and 
foreign visitors while oppressing poor people.

  Haitians worked in sweatshops for foreign investors, receiving just 
pennies a day. Those who protested the exploitation and demanded better 
living conditions were arrested or killed by the army. The U.S. 
Government trained the army and supported the elite. After all of this 
suffering it would have been outrageous for the U.S. government to 
allow of the anti-Aristide elites to deny the Haitian people who have 
withstood so much pain, poverty and disenfranchisement and who 
persevered on election day, walked for miles, and waited for hours, the 
right to be governed by the president of their choice.
  Well, the people have spoken, and I think it is clear, and this 
interim government that was put in, Mr. Latour from Boca Raton and the 
others, they should pack up their bags and go home. They should get out 
of the way and allow this new President to do everything in his power 
to really exercise democracy in Haiti. They stole it and they took it 
from President Aristide.
  He was a priest who came from Cite Soleil, who was of the liberation 
theology, who preached for the least of these and who fought for the 
poor and fought for them, became a voice for them, speaking to them in 
Creole, in ways that had never been done before because the elite spoke 
in French to keep the poor people from even knowing what they were 
talking about. They never had a responsive government. Now they have 
got to give Preval a chance.
  My message today is, Mr. Andy Apid of the Group of 184 that helped to 
implement the coup d'etat, Mr. Apid, get out of the way of Mr. Preval 
and allow him to preside.
  To the Group of 184, to the elites who have profited so mightily on 
the backs of these poor people, they have to get out of the way.
  To Mr. Wolfowitz over at the World Bank, you need to meet with Mr. 
Preval right away.
  The International Monetary Fund, the funding agencies, USAID, let us 
get the resources in there to put in a water system so that people can 
have clean water. Let us support a health care system. Let us deal with 
the poor. Let us make sure that they have an opportunity to live and to 
grow and to have a decent quality of life.
  I am optimistic.
  And for all of those who have denied the people the right to just 
have a decent quality of life, I am not personally, and I think you, 
Congresswoman, we are going to say, okay, let bygones be bygones. If 
you do not try to oust this president, if you do not try to kill him, 
if you do not try to jail him, we are willing to work with you. We are 
willing to work in every way that we can to involve our country and our 
government in a way that it should have been involved before, for the 
people, on behalf of our neighbors in this very poor country.
  So my message today to all of those who have undermined Haiti for so 
long, who have profited on the backs of the people for so long, give 
Haiti a chance, give this President a chance. We look forward to 
working with everybody, but we are certainly going to work with Mr. 
Preval. We are going to be there with him. We are going to back him up. 
We are going to stand with him. Now is an opportunity for a new day in 
Haiti.
  Mr. Speaker, I would yield back the balance of my time, and I thank 
you so much, Congresswoman, for sharing this moment with me.
  Ms. McKINNEY. I am absolutely blown away by the things that 
Congresswoman Maxine Waters just said. She reminded us that the French 
and the Americans and the Canadians, which I did not realize that the 
Canadians were involved in this, they all got together to oust a duly 
elected president.
  But now let me just tell you that from 2000 in Florida this President 
was not duly elected. I will say that because the election was stolen, 
and we all know that the election was stolen. And it is interesting 
that you would use invalid ballots, blank ballots. This is the same 
mechanism that was used to disenfranchise black people in this country 
in 2000 in the presidential election. And so now, of course, they 
surface again in Haiti, invalid ballots, blank ballots. But the people 
of Haiti took to the streets.

                              {time}  1315

  They demanded a fair vote count, and they got a fair vote count, and 
they got a President.
  I want to thank my sister congresswoman for joining me on the House 
floor but also for those strong and powerful words. Because she is 
absolutely right, that it is our responsibility now that the people's 
voices have been heard and so now we have to respect that. We need to 
respect that.
  I want to shift gears for just a moment, and I do not think this 
poster should present a surprise to anyone as to what I am going to 
talk about now, and that is Hurricane Katrina. I want to remind people 
of these images that went all over the world. The black person who is 
trying to go through the water for food is looting. That is what 
Associated Press writes. That is what

[[Page H362]]

Associated Press wrote, the black person was looting. Agence France-
Press saw these white people, and they were finding bread and soda. 
Blacks loot; whites find. There is nothing more stark.
  This is the beginning of the Hurricane Katrina story, and this is the 
way Hurricane Katrina was portrayed to the American people and 
throughout the world. We need to question all of the press images from 
not just Associated Press but every newspaper and on television.
  What were our administration leaders doing as New Orleans was filling 
with water? The President was on vacation in Texas at the ranch. The 
Vice President was on vacation in Wyoming. He was fly fishing. The 
Secretary of State was visiting New York City and even in the midst of 
what was happening in New Orleans, she got booed, so the press reports 
tell us, because she took in a play, and then after she took in a play 
she went shopping for Ferragamo shoes and bought $7,000 worth, 
reportedly, of Ferragamo shoes, and then, after that, she decided to 
play a little tennis. Donald Rumsfeld took in a Padres' game in San 
Diego, and Michael Chertoff, who is the Secretary of the Department of 
Homeland Security, who is charged with taking care of the United States 
in a time of great trial and stress and catastrophe, stayed at home.
  So, as a result, the select committee that was formed by this 
Congress to investigate the government's preparations for and actions 
during Hurricane Katrina issued a report yesterday. The name of the 
report, ``A Failure of Initiative.'' It is a huge report.
  The bottom line is that Secretary Chertoff needs to resign. It is 
amazing to me to see the Secretary on television through the powers of 
C-SPAN doing an intellectual dance, trying to defend the indefensible.
  What happened to the people of the gulf States region and what is 
happening to them today is indefensible. And if thousands of families 
are being kicked out of their temporary homes, their temporary housing 
which was the hotel rooms, that is the responsibility at the end of the 
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security who said, okay, we 
will let FEMA go ahead with that call. Of course, the President bears 
responsibility, too, and he has accepted responsibility, but I have not 
yet heard Secretary Chertoff accept responsibility.
  Another sad fact about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath is that in 
the metropolitan Atlanta area we have about 60- to 70,000 Katrina 
survivors. They want to go back home, many of them, but there is so 
much uncertainty because, as the congresswoman from Florida said 
earlier, there is still uncertainty as to how the Hurricane Katrina 
survivors are going to be treated.
  I have introduced legislation that will force the EPA to look at 
tests and make public the environmental circumstances under which 
people will be returning, in particular to New Orleans. It is a shame 
that we would have to have legislation in order to get the EPA to do 
its job, but, right now, structures are being tested for habitability 
on their structural soundness but not on their environmental soundness, 
and we have that toxic sludge that is everywhere.
  So I would ask that this Congress look at the omnibus piece of 
legislation that was dropped in and signed by all of the members of the 
Congressional Black Caucus which addresses all aspects of the problem 
faced by those Katrina survivors.
  In addition, I find it curious that the panel that produced this, 
what some people are calling, scathing report was boycotted by the 
Democrats. Well, it was boycotted by the Democratic leadership. I chose 
to participate in it because there is one thing about participating in 
Congress. We are elected, we come here, we write, and we speak, and 
everything that we write and speak for the Congressional Record will 
survive as long as there is a Congressional Record and academicians and 
scholars, lawyers can search the Congressional Record to understand the 
environment within which certain actions were taken, certain 
legislation was passed. Attorneys and judges all rely on the 
Congressional Record, as well as scholars and academicians and 
historians and archivists. So the power of the Congressional Record is 
one that must not be thrown away.
  I participated in the hearing and my remarks are included in the 
panel's report, but the leadership was suggesting that, instead, we 
needed an independent commission, like the 9/11 Commission. I do not 
have a problem with an independent commission, but to use the 9/11 
Commission as a paragon of an example of how you ferret out the truth 
and find out what actually happened in a tragic event I think is not 
appropriately stated. Because yesterday in the Armed Services Committee 
we had three people who appeared before the Armed Services Committee in 
an Able Danger hearing. Able Danger is the data mining program that has 
been in the newspaper a lot because of the persistence of the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), one of our colleagues. These experts 
from the military and from intelligence said that if they had been 
allowed to do their job, their work product could quite possibly have 
prevented September 11. It provided the American intelligence community 
with the tools necessary to understand what was happening to our 
country in real time, but the program was shut down, and when efforts 
were made to brief the 9/11 Commission on what this Able Danger work 
product had demonstrated and had shown, their work was denigrated. 
Their work product was denigrated, and they were not given an 
opportunity to present their findings to the Commission as directly.
  It has been said in public statements that their work was 
historically insignificant. Yet we have three people in open session 
yesterday say to us that if they had been allowed to do their job, to 
do their work, that quite possibly September 11 could have been 
prevented. And instead of grasping on to this information, the staff of 
the 9/11 Commission said that these people were not credible and that 
the results that they touted were historically insignificant and, 
therefore, this program was ignored.
  Now I do not know why it was ignored, but the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) has had a lot to say about Able Danger and 
what it meant to our country and why it was shut down. I would 
encourage people to pay attention to Able Danger and the hearings that 
the House Armed Services Committee is having.
  Also, there was one other thing very sad that came out of the hearing 
that we had yesterday, and that is poor whistle-blower treatment. In 
fact, whistle-blower mistreatment and all kinds of allegations were 
made against average, ordinary Americans who had extraordinary jobs 
that put them in a position to know something, and because they saw 
something was wrong and they tried to inform the higher ups that 
something was wrong, they were personally mistreated at the workplace 
and away from the workplace, even comments made about their personal 
and private lives.

                              {time}  1330

  What that says to us is that we have got to do a better job in this 
place of allowing the truth to come out. I remember when I was in 
Congress during my previous tenure, and at that time we were working 
very hard on U.S. foreign policy in Africa. We wanted the truth to come 
out about the real events surrounding the Rwandan genocide. It seemed 
that everybody who was associated with not telling the truth, or making 
sure that we didn't get access to the truth, got a promotion.
  I have become fond of saying, it seems that it is only in Washington, 
DC where you can be incompetent and get a promotion. Anywhere else in 
America, if you are incompetent, you lose your job, but not so here in 
this country.
  As we contemplate the enormity of what the Able Danger panelists told 
us in open testimony yesterday, as we contemplate as a country the 
enormity of this revelation, let us also weigh it against what is 
happening now. What is happening now is that the war drums are beating 
once again.
  I have a constituent who is over the age of 40, and he has been told 
he has got to report for duty to go to Iraq. Over 40. The drumbeats for 
war are sounding, not just against Iraq now, but also against Iran and 
Syria.
  In the face of these beating drums, the backdrop is that this 
administration is being investigated. This administration being 
investigated has two

[[Page H363]]

ongoing investigations. The Department of Justice just opened another 
one today, which makes this the third investigation, the third 
investigation on wiretapping. This administration is being investigated 
and has drawn indictments and a guilty plea. The Vice President's 
former chief of staff, Lewis Libby, has been indicted, and Lawrence 
Franklin, who is being investigated by Paul McNulty, has been sentenced 
for 12 years for passing classified material over to another country.
  This administration is being investigated on how we got into the 
first war, and now they want us to go to a second war, to open another 
front on this war. It is about time that we say no more war. No more 
war, Mr. Bush.
  I also want to, as I remember the gentleman in my district who is 
over 40 years of age who has been told that he has got to report for 
duty in Iraq, remember Kevin Benderman, whose wife frantically 
contacted my office asking for help for her husband. Kevin Benderman 
went to Iraq one time. He was asked to do things that he thought as a 
human being went against his conscience.
  We know that collateral damage is not just a number: 100,000; 
200,000. It is people. It is little boys and little girls. It is women. 
Kevin Benderman said, I am not going to kill innocent people. Don't ask 
me to do that. I have done it once. Once is too much.
  He decided that he would apply for conscientious objector status. 
Well, Kevin Benderman is in the brig because he did not want to kill 
innocent little girls and little boys and women and men in Iraq. He is 
in the brig.
  Last weekend, there was an action to free Kevin Benderman. It's a 
shame.
  I didn't expect to take all of my time, but I was pleased that my 
sister from California chose to come down and say a few words of 
congratulations to the people of Haiti and to the new President-elect, 
Rene Preval.
  I was clicking around on the computer, and I came across a very 
interesting article written by Thom Hartmann, and it can be found on 
Common Dreams at commondreams.org. The title of it is ``Rumsfeld and 
Cheney Revive Their 70's Terror Playbook.''
  Basically what they say in this article, which I am going to submit 
for the Record, is that when they were in office before, this dynamic 
duo decided to cook up an idea of Soviet military dominance to frighten 
the American people and justify huge defense contracts, or the huge 
defense budget, which then would result in defense contracts.
  Let me just read. They said that the Soviets had a new secret weapon 
of mass destruction. They succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear 
in the United States, and making themselves and their defense 
contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the world. 
Trillions of dollars and years later, it was proven that they had been 
wrong all along, and the CIA had been right. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and 
Wolfowitz lied to America in the 1970s about Soviet weapons of mass 
destruction and the Soviet supersub technology.
  But the Cold War was good for business and good for the political 
power of its advocates, from Rumsfeld to Wolfowitz to Cheney, who have 
all become rich, in part, because of the arms industry.
  I am going to place this into the Record, because it appears that 
America has been through this before.

          [From the Common Dreams News Center, Feb. 13, 2006]

          Rumsfeld and Cheney Revive Their 70s Terror Playbook

                           (by Thom Hartmann)

       Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are at it again.
       Last week, Rumsfeld told the press we should be preparing 
     for ``the Long War,'' saying of the war this administration 
     has stirred up with its attack on Iraq that, ``Just as the 
     Cold War lasted a long time, this war is something that is 
     not going to go away.''
       The last time Rumsfeld talked like this was in the 1970s, 
     in response to the danger of peace presented by Richard 
     Nixon.
       In 1972, President Richard Nixon returned from the Soviet 
     Union with a treaty worked out by Secretary of State Henry 
     Kissinger, the beginning of a process Kissinger called 
     ``detente.'' On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he 
     said: ``Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of 
     the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we 
     have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to 
     reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear--for 
     our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world.''
       But Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford's 
     Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff 
     (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans 
     might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could 
     Americans be manipulated? And how could billions of dollars 
     taken as taxes from average working people be transferred to 
     the companies that Rumsfeld and Cheney--and their cronies--
     would soon work for and/or run?
       Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort--first 
     secretly and then openly--to undermine Nixon's treaty for 
     peace and to rebuild the state of fear.
       They did it by claiming that the Soviets had a new secret 
     weapon of mass destruction that the president didn't know 
     about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody knew about 
     but them. It was a nuclear submarine technology that was 
     undetectable by current American technology. And, they said, 
     because of this and related-undetectable-technology weapons, 
     the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic 
     programs and instead give the money to defense contractors 
     for whom these two men would one day work or have businesses 
     relationships with.
       The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a 
     ``complete fiction'' and pointing out that the Soviet Union 
     was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed 
     their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two 
     if simply left alone.
       As Dr. Anne Cahn, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 
     1977 to 1980, told the BBC's Adam Curtis for his documentary 
     ``The Power of Nightmares'': ``They couldn't say that the 
     Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, 
     because they couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they 
     have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet 
     vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-
     acoustic system. They're saying, `we can't find evidence that 
     they're doing it the way that everyone thinks they're doing 
     it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don't know 
     what that different way is, but they must be doing it.'
       ``INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no 
     evidence.
       ``CAHN: Even though there was no evidence.
       ``INTERVIEWER: So they're saying there, that the fact that 
     the weapon doesn't exist . . .
       ``CAHN: Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist It just means 
     that we haven't found it.''
       But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there 
     was something nefarious going on, something we should be very 
     afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to 
     appoint a commission including their old friend Paul 
     Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good.
       Wolfowitz's group, known as ``Team B,'' came to the 
     conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying 
     new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed 
     submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend 
     on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current 
     technology. It could--within a matter of months--be off the 
     coast of New York City with a nuclear warhead.
       Although Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's assertions of this 
     powerful new Soviet WMD was unproven--they said the lack of 
     proof proved the ``undetectable'' sub existed--they 
     nonetheless used their charges to push for dramatic 
     escalations in military spending to selected defense 
     contractors, a process that continued through the Reagan 
     administration.
       Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz helped re-organized a group--The 
     Committee on the Present Danger--to promote their worldview. 
     The Committee produced documentaries, publications, and 
     provided guests for national talk shows and news reports. 
     They worked hard to whip up fear and encourage increases in 
     defense spending, particularly for sophisticated weapons 
     systems offered by the defense contractors for whom many of 
     these same men would later become lobbyists.
       And they succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear in 
     the United States, and making themselves and their defense 
     contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the 
     world.
       Trillions of dollars and years later, it was proven that 
     they had been wrong all along, and the CIA had been right. 
     Rumsfeld * * * and Wolfowitz lied to America in the 1970s 
     about Soviet WMDs and the Soviet super-sub technology.
       Not only do we now know that the Soviets didn't have any 
     new and impressive WMDs, but we also now know that the 
     Soviets were, in fact, decaying from within, ripe for 
     collapse any time, regardless of what the US did--just as the 
     CIA (and anybody who visited Soviet states--as I had--during 
     that time could easily predict). The Soviet economic and 
     political system wasn't working, and their military was 
     disintegrating.
       But the Cold War was good for business, and good for the 
     political power of its advocates, from Rumsfeld to Wolfowitz 
     to Cheney who have all become rich in part because of the 
     arms industry.
       Today, making Americans terrified with their so-called 
     ``War On Terror'' is the same strategy, run for many of the 
     same reasons, by the same people. And by hyping it--and then 
     invading Iraq to bring it into fruition--we may well be 
     bringing into reality forces

[[Page H364]]

     that previously existed only on the margins and with very 
     little power to harm us.
       Most recently we've learned from former CIA National 
     Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia Paul 
     Pillar that, just like in the 1970s, the CIA disagreed in 
     2002 with Rumsfeld and Cheney about an WMD threat--this time 
     posed by Iraq--even as Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz were 
     telling America how afraid we should be of an eminent 
     ``mushroom cloud.''
       We've seen this movie before. The last time, it cost our 
     nation hundreds of billions of dollars, vastly enriched the 
     cronies of these men, and ultimately helped bring Ronald 
     Reagan to power. This time they've added on top of their 
     crony enrichment program the burden of over 2200 dead 
     American servicemen and women, tens of thousands wounded, as 
     many as a hundred thousand dead Iraqis, and a level of 
     worldwide instability not seen since the run-up to World War 
     Two.
       When Hillary Clinton recently noted that the only political 
     card Republicans are any longer capable of playing is the 
     card of fear, she was spot-on right. They're now even running 
     radio and TV commercials designed to terrorize our children 
     (``Do you have a plan for a terrorist attack?''), the modern 
     reincarnation of ``Duck and Cover.''
       Now that former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has 
     confessed that many of the terror alerts that continually 
     popped up during the 2004 election campaign were, as USA 
     Today noted on 10 May 2005, based on ``flimsy evidence'' or 
     were done over his objection at the insistence of 
     ``administration officials,'' it's increasingly clear that 
     the Bush administration itself is the source of much of the 
     ``be afraid!'' terror inflicted on US citizens over the past 
     5 years.
       It's time for patriotic Americans of all political 
     affiliations, and for our media, to join with Senator 
     Clinton, former CIA official Paul Pillar, and the many others 
     who are pointing this out, and refuse to allow the Bush 
     administration to inflict terror on Americans--and the 
     world--for political gain.
       As Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural 
     address in 1932, when Americans were terrorized by the 
     Republican Great Depression, the echoes of World War One, and 
     the rise of Communism in Russia: This is preeminently the 
     time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. 
     Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our 
     country today. This great Nation will endure as it has 
     endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let 
     me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear 
     is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror 
     which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into 
     advance.
       Indeed, the best hope for the growth of democracy around 
     the world and the survival of individual liberty in the 
     United States is for us to turn away from Rumsfeld's and 
     Cheney's politics of terror and fear, and once again embrace 
     the great vision of this nation, held by her great statesmen 
     and women from 1776 to today. Indeed, they are still among 
     us, as we saw most recently when a brave few senators stood 
     up to filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito.
       In this election year, we must redouble our efforts to 
     swell their ranks, to involve ourselves in local and national 
     political groups, and to return America to her destiny as the 
     world's beacon of courage, liberty, and light.


                Announcement by the Speaker pro tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Conaway.) The gentlewoman will suspend. 
The gentlewoman is reminded to refrain from personalities toward the 
Vice President.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman is not suggesting 
that I cannot say the name of the Vice President. I am reading an 
article. Is the gentleman suggesting?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman will suspend. The 
gentlewoman may state the name of the Vice President or make policy 
references, but she should refrain from engaging in personalities with 
regard to the Vice President, even by quoting the words of another.
  Ms. McKINNEY. I did not make a personal reference, so I will move on 
with my time. I would commend this article to this Congress: ``Rumsfeld 
and Cheney Revive Their 70's Terror Playbook,'' and everything I have 
said is quoted right here in this article. Now, I think the last thing 
this Congress wants to do is try to snuff out the right of people to 
speak.
  The next thing I would like to draw to your attention is an excerpt 
from a book. The name of the book is ``War is a Racket.'' It is written 
by Major General Smedley Butler, and this is how it goes:
  War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, 
easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one 
international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are 
reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best 
described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the 
majority of the people. Only a small inside group knows what it is 
about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense 
of the very many. Out of war, a few people make huge fortunes.
  In the world war, because this was written at the time of World War 
I, a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 
new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during 
the world war. That many admitted to their huge blood gains in their 
income tax returns.
  How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns, no one 
knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many 
of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry 
in a rat-infested dugout? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened 
nights ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of 
them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were 
wounded or killed in battle?
  Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up by a few. 
Munitions makers, bankers, ship builders, manufacturers, meat packers, 
speculators, they would fare well. Yes, they are getting ready for 
another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends. But what does 
it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers, 
their sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit 
their children? What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom 
war means huge profits? Yes, what does it profit the Nation?
  But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill. If you don't 
believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad, 
or visit any of the veterans hospitals in the United States where there 
are thousands of the living dead. The very able chief surgeon told me 
that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those 
who stayed at home. Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the 
fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks.

                              {time}  1345

  There they were remolded. They were made over. They were made to 
about face, to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put 
shoulder to shoulder and through mass psychology they were entirely 
changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think 
nothing at all of killing or of being killed.
  Then, suddenly, we discharge them and told them to make another about 
face. This time they had to do their own readjustment, without mass 
psychology, without officers aid and advice and without nationwide 
propaganda. We did not need them anymore, so we scattered them about 
without any speeches or parades.
  Too many of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed mentally 
because they could not make the final about face alone. In the 
government hospitals, these boys are in a barracks with steel bars and 
wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These 
already have been mentally destroyed. These boys do not even look like 
human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces. Physically, they are in 
good shape. Mentally, they are gone. There are thousands and thousands 
of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. Another 
step is necessary in this fight to smash the war racket.
  To summarize, three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. One, 
we must take the profit out of war. Two, we must permit the youth of 
the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be 
war. And three, we must limit our military forces to defense purposes. 
He says home defense purposes. This is an excerpt from Smedley Butler's 
War is a Racket.
  Now, juxtapose what this man of war said to the drumbeats of war that 
we hear in our media now, that are emanating from high places within 
this administration, people who have not borne the rifle, who have not 
been in war. In fact, when America called them because America needed 
them, they were full of deferments. And yet they want to put a young 
man like Kevin Benderman who does not want to kill children and women 
and innocent people in Iraq anymore in the brig, and they would tell 
our country that we need to prepare for a long war. We do

[[Page H365]]

not prepare for a long war. Certainly not George Bush's war. And if Tom 
Hartman is right in his assessment, we do not need to prepare for Dick 
Cheney's war either.
  We have had some discussion in this body about war, and one of my 
colleagues from Pennsylvania did what Major General Smedley Butler said 
we ought to do. He visited the young men and women who have been asked 
to fight this war, who are on the front lines of Donald Rumsfeld's long 
war. There he was compelled to make a change, a change in his 
conviction, that perhaps this is not the right war for America; and he 
came back to this Congress and he said so. I am talking about my 
colleague from Pennsylvania, Mr. Murtha.
  We need to really think about where we are as a country. We need to 
think about who we are as a country, as Americans. What does it mean to 
be an American?
  Look at the people of Haiti who have nothing but their hopes and 
aspirations in democracy. And despite dictatorship and coup d'etat and 
dictatorship and coup d'etat again, they went to the polls and they 
demanded that their votes be counted.
  We, too, have, in this country, the opportunity to express ourselves 
at the ballot box. The way I stand here is the way all 535 Members of 
Congress stand here, because people choose to participate or people 
choose not to.
  In my case, I was put out of Congress because I spoke up about 
September 11. And the people of the Fourth Congressional District of 
Georgia said, we are not going to stand for that, and they sent me 
back, showing the power of the vote, as the people of Haiti have 
demonstrated to the world the power of the vote. I would hope all 
Americans would value the power of the vote and exercise it.

                          ____________________