[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 46 (Tuesday, April 25, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H1712]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        USING HISTORY AS A GUIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dent). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that bothers me 
is how some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle come down here 
and paint a picture using history as a guide that is totally 
inconsistent with what I, as a Member of Congress for 24 years, have 
seen and believe.
  The President of the United States and the Congress's number one 
responsibility is to protect this country from enemies, both domestic 
and foreign. After the attack on 9/11, the President of the United 
States went after the bad guys, the terrorists. And Saddam Hussein, we 
were told, was building weapons of mass destruction. In the early 1980s 
the Israelis attacked a nuclear production site in Iraq because he was 
trying to build a nuclear weapon. In the Iran/Iraq war he used chemical 
weapons to kill Iranians during that war. He killed thousands and 
thousands of innocent women and children, Kurds, using chemical 
weapons. And in just the last couple of days, some of our expert 
military personnel in Iraq have found 800 canisters, 800 canisters of 
chemical weapons, the type that were used to kill Kurds and kill people 
in the Iran/Iraq war. That is a weapon of mass destruction. We just 
found it. And so people that say that there are no weapons of mass 
destruction, or were none, we are starting to find those. And we 
believe that many of those weapons were carted out of the country 
before we invaded.
  And when I hear my colleagues say there was no connection between al 
Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and we had no reason to go in there, the fact 
of the matter is we know that Uday, Saddam Hussein's son, had leaders 
of the al Qaeda movement in Baghdad in the hospital and at other get-
togethers many, many times. There was a loose-knit association between 
the Taliban, al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and others who want to do the 
Free World ill. That is a fact. And how we see people trying to distort 
history to say, oh, my gosh, America's made a terrible mistake by going 
into Iraq really bothers me. The President is doing his dead level best 
to defeat the terrorists and protect this Nation and the world. There 
have been attacks in Spain, in France, in England, the United States 
and other places, in Bali, the terrorists in Egypt just recently. And 
we cannot back down to the terrorists. We cannot appease them. The 
President is doing the right things.
  Now, regarding Iraq, we are turning the war over to the Iraqis. 
Eleven million people went to the polls and voted for freedom, 
democracy and a government; and that government will be formed. It is 
being formed as we speak.
  But we are reducing our troop forces. I understand we have gone from 
161,000 just recently to a troop reduction of 30,000 down to 131,000. 
So we are reducing our forces, and we are turning it over to the Iraqis 
as they are able to take care of the problems themselves.
  The terrorists are going to continue to try to tear up jack over 
there. They are going to try to drive everybody out and destroy 
democracy. But it is in our interest and the Free World's to stay the 
course. And if we don't, we will rue the day that we didn't.
  And I want to end up one more time by saying to my colleagues who 
were talking about Iran early today, the gentleman from Washington, 
Iran is a terrorist state. We cannot allow them to develop a nuclear 
capability. And if we do that, we will be dead sorry we did.

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