[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 36 (Tuesday, March 28, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2433-S2434]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      IRAQ'S FIGHT FOR ITS FREEDOM

  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I have to respond to my colleague from 
Illinois, who suggested that somehow the Iraqis are not standing up and 
fighting for the freedom of their country and the comment, ``How much 
longer do we have to wait?''
  Ask the Iraqi families of the men who were beheaded--30 of them most 
recently--whether they are waiting for the Iraqis to step forward and 
sacrifice for their country. Ask the Iraqis who are in the military who 
are dying today, sacrificing for the freedom of their country, whether 
they are waiting. The people of Iraq are stepping forward and fighting 
for their country. We are helping them do that. It is the clear 
intention of our policy in Iraq to hand over the responsibility, and it 
is happening.
  I find it almost remarkable that here now, 3 years into this 
conflict, where we are trying to transform an entire society, that the 
level of patience for this very difficult process, given all the 
progress made and all the elections that have been held and the 
Constitution drafted--I think in all but four of the provinces, there 
is very little terrorist activity, or insurgent activity, or whatever 
you want to call it. There is a concentration in a few provinces where 
there are problems.
  But I met with people from Mosul yesterday--elected officials--who 
came here and talked about the dramatic improvements that are going on 
in that area, and the lack of any kind of al-Qaida operations and 
terrorist operations in that area, saying that life is dramatically 
advancing. We don't hear talk about that. We hear talk about the 
problem spots, and that is legitimate. But the idea that the Iraqis are 
not fighting for their country, that they are not stepping forward--as 
we see day in and day out that they are conducting missions and they 
are eliminating the terrorist threat in Iraq--I think it is almost 
incredible. I don't know how you can read the news and suggest that the 
Iraqis are not stepping forward to defend their country and fight for 
their freedom.

  Also, coming back to the issue of patience, I thank God sometimes 
that some of the elected officials who are here today were not around 
in 1777, 1778, and 1779. We would still be singing ``God save the 
queen,'' not ``hail to the chief.'' It took us 11 years to put a 
democracy together, in circumstances that I suggest were far less 
difficult, in a neighborhood that was far less problematic than the 
neighborhood Iraq happens to be situated in. So the idea that we have 
lost our patience in a

[[Page S2434]]

struggle against Islamic fascism, which is a real present danger to the 
future of the United States of America, to me, is almost 
unconscionable.
  This is a struggle we are engaged in. This is a struggle for our 
time. It is one that I believe history will look back upon and suggest 
that we met the threat that would have fundamentally changed the future 
of the world, and we met it before it did so. We met it with strength, 
with determination, and we overcame the doubters, overcame those who 
would have rather cut and run. I am not for cutting and running when it 
comes to the future security of this country. I have patience because 
things that are difficult and meaningful take time. We have to give 
that time.
  I suggest there are some things that we are finding out now. Another 
effort I have been working on in Iraq is the intelligence information 
we have been able to gather from the former regimes in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. This has been a project that Congressman Peter Hoekstra, 
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been working on--and 
I have worked with him--to make sure these 48,000 boxes, containing 
roughly 2 million documents, are released to the American public and 
the world to determine what was the intelligence assessment and the 
activity level and, in particular, in Iraq with Saddam, and with his 
interaction with elements of al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations.
  What we are finding is that some of the statements that have been 
made on the floor and statements that were made just as recently as 
March 19, 2006 by my colleague from Pennsylvania, Congressman Jack 
Murtha, who said:

       There was no terrorism in Iraq before we went there. None. 
     There was no connection with al-Qaida. There was no 
     connection with terrorism in Iraq itself.

  Yet if we look at some of the documents that are being released by 
Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte--and, again, only a 
few hundred of the millions of documents have been released. As a 
caveat, while Congressman Hoekstra and I are excited about the fact 
that DNI decided to release these documents, the pace of the release 
is, let us say, unsatisfactory to this point.
  We have, with the blogosphere, the Internet, the opportunity to put 
these documents out there and have almost instantaneously translated 
postings about what these documents contain.
  During the time the Director of National Intelligence Negroponte has 
had these documents--this is 3 years ago--less than 2 percent of the 
documents have been translated. At this pace, my grandchildren may know 
what is in these documents.
  We need to get these documents out. Mr. President, 600 over a little 
over a 2-week period is almost the same pace as translating with the 
people they had over in DNI Negroponte's shop. We need to get these 
documents out quicker. Why? Because if we look at what is in these 
documents, there is important information in understanding the 
connection between Iraq and terrorist organizations and the threat we 
were facing, the potential threat we had talked about, which is the 
coordination between a country that had used chemical and biological 
weapons, was thought universally to have chemical and biological 
weapons, and terrorists who have expressed a direct desire to use those 
weapons and get access to them.
  If we look at a report that was issued by the Pentagon Joint Forces 
Command translating and analyzing some of these documents, called the 
``Iraqi Perspectives,'' on page 54, they write: Beginning in 1994, the 
Fedayeen Saddam opened its own paramilitary training camps for 
volunteers--this is 9 years, by the way, before the Iraq war--
graduating more than 7,200 ``good men racing full with courage and 
enthusiasm'' in the first year.
  Mr. President, 7,200 in the first year, 1994.
  Beginning in 1998, these camps began hosting ``Arab volunteers from 
Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, `the Gulf,' and Syria.'' Volunteers. I wonder 
why they would be volunteering to help Saddam. It is not clear, it 
says, from the available evidence where are all these non-Iraqi 
volunteers who were ``sacrificing for the cause'' went to ply their 
newfound skills. Before the summer of 2002, most volunteers went home 
upon the completion of training. They didn't stay in Iraq. They came 
for training from countries in the gulf regions, and they went home. 
Odd that they would be fighting for the cause which would, in that 
case, be Saddam, if they went home.
  Before the summer of 2002, as I said, most volunteers went home upon 
completion of the training, but these camps were humming with frenzied 
activity in the months immediately prior to the war.
  As late as January 2003, the volunteers participated in a special 
training event called the Heroes Attack.
  Stephen Hayes, who deserves a tremendous amount of credit for his 
reporting on these documents in the Weekly Standard, has brought this 
issue to the forefront and has awakened Members of Congress, myself 
included, to the importance of discovering the content of these 
documents as well as some of the information contained in these 
documents.
  He reminds us of the special significance of that training in 1998:

       That is the same year that the U.N. weapons inspectors left 
     Iraq for good; the same year a known al Qaeda operative 
     visited Baghdad for 16 days in March; the same year the U.S. 
     embassies were bombed in East Africa; the same year the U.S. 
     bombed Baghdad in Operation Desert Fox; and, the same year 
     Saddam wired $150,000 to Jabir Salim, the former Iraqi 
     Ambassador to the Czech Republic, and ordered him to recruit 
     Islamic radicals to blow up the headquarters of Radio Free 
     Europe.

  What we have here is, again, information that I believe is vitally 
important for the American public to see. I encourage Director of 
National Intelligence John Negroponte to step up the pace. Congressman 
Hoekstra and I have introduced legislation which would require just 
that: it would require the release of these documents and provides a 
way to do so.
  We introduced this legislation prior to the decision to release these 
documents, but, again, I just make the point that the pace with which 
these documents are being released is inadequate. We need to continue 
to step that up, allow this information to get out for people to see, 
pro and con--all the information that is available to us. These are old 
documents. They are at least 3 years old; in some cases much more than 
that. The classified nature is specious, at best. We want to protect 
names, obviously, if there are reasons to protect certain names because 
of potential fallout from having their names released. If there are 
recipes for chemical weapons, fine. But the bottom line is most of this 
information should be released, can be released, and is not being 
released.
  I assure my colleagues--and I think I can speak for Congressman 
Hoekstra in this regard--we will stay on this issue, and we will make 
sure all of this information is made available to the American public 
so we have a better understanding of what the situation was in Iraq 
prior to the war.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Illinois.

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