[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.
____________________