[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 73 (Friday, June 9, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H3709-H3716]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         CIVIL RIGHTS AND IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as always, I appreciate the honor and 
the privilege of addressing the Speaker and, in doing so, addressing 
this Chamber as well. I know that the voices that come to this floor to 
make these addresses echo across America, as our Founding Fathers 
envisioned.
  Before I pick up the issue I came to this floor to speak about, I 
would say a few words in support of the remarks made by my colleague, 
the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), with regard to Dr. Martin 
Luther King, Jr. Sometimes we lose perspective of that time in America, 
back in the 1960s, when there was the institutionalization of 
segregation, particularly in the South.
  Those were glorious days when there were civil rights marches for 
civil rights reasons and the rights that everyone has in this country 
that are guaranteed by our Constitution. These are individual rights. 
They are rights without regard to what group you might think you are 
aligned with. They belong to men and they belong to women, and they are 
rights that preclude group rights. They are individual rights, the 
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but more 
specifically freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, 
freedom of assembly, freedom to keep and bear arms, and the right to 
property ownership, which has been eroded by the Kelo decision here in 
these last few months, I might add for your benefit particularly, Mr. 
Speaker, and for mine.
  In those days, when there was a peaceful civil rights movement in 
this country that stood on solid philosophical ground that all people 
that are citizens of this country, that live here, have equal rights. 
That is a different kind of a civil rights call than we have heard 
sometimes across this country today.
  There is the argument that there is a civil right to marry anyone 
that you choose, say, for example, a same-sex marriage civil right they 
claim. Or a civil right that people claim because

[[Page H3710]]

they are illegally in this country and they say I have a global civil 
right to come to the United States of America and the Americans do not 
have a civil right to set immigration policies. Those are not civil 
rights, Mr. Speaker. There is not any civil right to come to America 
and demand the rights of citizenship; and there is no civil right to 
marriage, even for opposite sex couples that are madly in love, that 
traditionally have and will hopefully continue to be joined together in 
holy matrimony. That is not a civil right.
  In fact, we give a license for marriage. And a license is, by 
definition, a permit to do that which is otherwise illegal. So the 
State, meaning the government, the Federal Government, there are State 
governments and some of our local governments, take an interest in that 
sacred institution of marriage when a man and a woman are joined 
together in holy matrimony. Because we know that the value of this 
entire society and civilization is poured through into the next 
generation of our children through that relationship of holy matrimony 
between a man and a woman.
  We teach our children in that relationship everything that we know 
and everything that we believe about our values. We pass our religious 
values along through that marriage relationship. Children are our 
projects for our life. There is nothing more important that we can do 
in our lifetime than raise children. So we make them projects. And our 
first and most important thing is to be able to teach them our 
religious values and our moral values and our work ethic. And all the 
things that flow from our culture flow from a father and a mother and a 
family.
  Now, that is the ideal circumstance. And it doesn't mean that there 
aren't millions of children in America that aren't raised in that kind 
of an environment. It doesn't mean that they will not have 
opportunities. They will. And they will pick up their values sometimes 
from a single mother or a single father. But they need extra nurturing 
from their pastors and teachers in the neighborhood. We know that 
statistically most of society's pathologies can be solved by two people 
joined together in marriage raising children in that marriage and 
having them also keep a job.
  But the fact that there is a marriage license that is granted 
precludes the idea that there is a civil right to marriage, just like 
there is not a civil right to someone who lives in another country to 
come into the United States. Those are not civil rights. Civil rights 
are specified in title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and those are 
defined characteristics. There will be no discrimination against people 
based upon race, creed, religion, ethnicity, skin color, or national 
origin. And I am not sure that is exactly the quote, but it is exactly 
the theme, Mr. Speaker.
  I know that behind that some of the States have added also age or 
marital status. But those are all immutable rights or immutable 
characteristics, characteristics that can be independently identified 
and can't be willfully changed. Those are the reality. It is not 
something that I decide I am going to be a man or a woman or a person 
of a certain other country or color. You can't change that, Mr. 
Speaker.
  The immutable characteristics are those that are real, they are 
distinct, they can't be changed, and they can be independently 
identified. And what we say in title VII of the Civil Rights Act is it 
shall be unlawful to discriminate against people for that list of 
immutable characteristics that I have given.

                              {time}  1530

  That is what gives the Civil Rights Act the dignity and respect and 
sets it apart for many of the claims for civil rights that come out 
today. There is always looking to be another successor to the civil 
rights movement, and there will never be another need for the civil 
rights that were demanded in the 1960s, and provided by peaceful 
demonstrations done in the right way for the right reasons with the 
right ideals, and those were glorious days for America to go through 
that change and emerge. I will say we are very sensitive to these 
issues of race and ethnicity, and we are very respectful of the issues 
of race and ethnicity, and the work that was done in the 1960s, the 
benefits flow to us today.
  The legacy is with us today. We look across our public life and see 
successes in people from all avenues, from people that have come from 
any origin. They have overcome many obstacles, and we applaud that as 
Americans. As Americans, we are for the underdog. We are for the one 
who pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We are for the ones who had 
the least opportunity and made the most from the least opportunity.
  The reason that we are is because that embodies the American spirit, 
the American spirit which is embodied by the massive number of 
immigrants that have come to this country legally.
  Mr. Speaker, 66.1 million Americans have come to the United States 
legally, many of them through Ellis Island starting when we first began 
keeping records in 1820 until the year 2000 is the last time I can get 
the numbers added up and be firm on them. So 66.1 million self-selected 
individuals that brought their vitality to the United States because of 
the clarion call of freedom and liberty, and that liberty that was 
ensured and enhanced during the civil rights era.
  I applaud Mr. Davis for his remarks, and I am a great fan of the 
contribution of Martin Luther King, Jr.
  But, Mr. Speaker, I came to speak on an issue which has significant 
impact on the destiny of the United States of America. That is some of 
us found out very early yesterday morning, it came to my information 
about 3:30 yesterday morning here, that perhaps the worst, most 
horrible murderer on the face of the earth had been brought to justice 
by Coalition Forces and Iraqi intelligence as well as Task Force 145 of 
the United States military, and I will say, all of the Coalition Forces 
together, and that would be the end of the very tyrannical career of 
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
  We know they had followed him to a safe house where he was having a 
meeting with six of his other colleagues, some of them high level. Our 
surveillance had tracked him there. As they watched that safe house, 
they thought about different ways that they might be able to take 
action against Zarqawi, the person who was responsible for thousands of 
murders in Iraq.
  Zarqawi was the inspiration, was the person that led the recruitment 
of al Qaeda fighters to come into Iraq and take on Coalition Forces and 
try to foment an insurrection, tried to foment a civil war. One who 
argued and promoted and schemed and planned and strategized to attack 
Shiites within Iraq for the specific and stated purpose of fomenting 
civil war in Iraq.
  It was not just to fight Americans, which was bad enough, but it was 
to get Iraqis to fight Iraqis. And al Qaeda knew that if they lost a 
base of operations in Iraq, they didn't have another place to go to.
  When our military went into Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 and won 
the significant victories there, that took out a base of operations for 
al Qaeda. They had operations that were beginning to take place down to 
Mogadishu, and when they moved some of those operations up to 
Afghanistan, they had a base of operations that would allow them to 
penetrate anywhere in the world and mount their terrorist operations 
against the United States embassies in Africa, the USS Cole, and 
bombings across the globe against other countries as well as the United 
States.
  But when they had a base of operations, then they could raise funds, 
control those funds, bring in military supplies and munitions. They 
could train and recruit and send people out around the world. We picked 
out a lot of Taliban fighters during the Afghan operation, and many of 
them were brought to Guantanamo Bay. As we began to interrogate them, 
we found out that they had been going into Afghanistan to train. They 
came from different places in the world. And there was a handful of 
Americans that went to Afghanistan to train with al Qaeda to come back 
and fight somewhere in the world against the United States of America. 
Certainly we know that is the case for other countries as well.
  Well, that base of operations in Afghanistan was wiped out in the 
fall of 2001. Justifiably so. And then the base of operations shifted 
over to Iraq. Now we know that there was an al Qaeda training camp in 
northern Iraq up in the Kurdistan region. We know that Saddam was 
working and strategizing

[[Page H3711]]

with al Qaeda. Some would say Saddam was secular; and, therefore, he 
would not have collaborated with Osama bin Laden. We know better than 
that.
  The thing that is in history that we know the enemy of one's enemy is 
their friend. But Stalin and Hitler teamed together in World War II and 
converged in their battles over on Germany's eastern front until such 
time they met and clashed, and then Hitler turned around and attacked 
Stalin. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
  So we joined up with Stalin at that point and began to engage in that 
war that turned it into a two-front war for Germany. The idea that 
someone like Hitler could not have collaborated with Emperor Hirohito 
in Japan because they didn't match the same ideology doesn't matter 
throughout history. That is an erroneous assumption. That does not 
matter. It is an erroneous assumption throughout history that people 
will not cooperate and collaboration because they do not match the same 
goals or ideology. It is the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That is 
what was going on over between bin Laden and Saddam.
  We know that Zarqawi went to Iraq and established himself as the 
leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. He said that he pledged his allegiance to 
Osama bin Laden. We have watched on television the horrible beheading 
of at least one American at the hand of al-Zarqawi. We know how bad 
this evil individual was.
  I believe it was a year ago last April that he produced a letter. And 
the letter stated what the circumstances were like in Iraq. It should 
have been given us great heart. All Members in this Chamber should have 
read the letter and understood what it was Zarqawi was writing about.
  Many people on the other side of the aisle denied the reality of what 
Zarqawi knew last April when he wrote this letter. If I remember right, 
it was about a 17-page letter. I remember some of the things that were 
in the letter, and it followed along these lines of now we are here in 
Iraq and we have to find a place where we can hide because if we are 
going to operate out of this country, it is a very dangerous place to 
do it because we have coalition forces and U.S. military that are 
breathing down our neck at every turn.
  He said there is a difference between some countries where they have 
been successful in their guerrilla warfare and Iraq. And these are the 
reasons why Iraq will never be a Vietnam. He said there are no 
mountains or forests to hide in, we must hide in the homes of the Iraqi 
people who are willing to take us into their homes, and Iraqis willing 
to do so are as rare as red sulfur. That was a quote from the letter. 
Iraqis who are willing to receive al Qaeda and harbor and protect them 
are as rare as red sulfur.

  Now I don't know how rare red sulfur is. I don't know if I have ever 
actually seen red sulfur. I have seen quite a lot of yellow sulfur. I 
am going to assume it might be an expression like as rare as frog's 
hair or as rare as hen's teeth. But as rare as red sulfur.
  So there weren't many places for al Qaeda to hide in Iraq even last 
April. They had to take over communities, and then we would go in and 
break up those cells. So they kept reforming again, kind of like flies 
do. We would scatter them and swat some and arrest some and kill some, 
and it was going along at a very brisk pace.
  In fact, as recently ago as last summer the Coalition Forces, and 
this includes the Iraqi military of which there are at least 245,000 
that are in uniform defending Iraqis today with those numbers going up 
70,000 to 90,000 within a year, but these Coalition Forces were taking 
out between killed and captured 3,000 a month.
  So as those numbers diminished within Iraq, so did Zarqawi's 
supporters. And the stronger the opposition to Zarqawi and the 
terrorist was, and the more confidence the Iraqi people got, the more 
tips that they handed over then to the Coalition Forces that we could 
act on.
  We know that Uday and Qusay, Saddam Hussein's two sons, and actually 
one of his grandsons that were taken out in Mosul a couple of years 
ago, that was as a result of a tip.
  Our 101st Airborne reacted and took them out. In the end the house 
that they were in, they demolished the house and hauled the rubble away 
and graded the lot empty. There will not be a martyr's shrine on that 
location, Mr. Speaker.
  It was intelligence that did that, and it was intelligence that took 
out Saddam Hussein some months later, to find him and track him and 
find him in his spider hole. This is another high level of intelligence 
to be able to close in on Zarqawi.
  We know they were close to him a number of times in the last few 
months. We have heard different people in the news state that 
eventually they would get Zarqawi. This should not be a surprise to us. 
Sometimes it is a surprise that a person can stay on the run and last 
as long as they did, but he stayed on the run until a little more than 
a day ago when our task force people put the laser on the safe house 
that he was in and then directed two 500-pound bombs into that house. 
We have seen the pictures of it. The house, made of cement blocks, is 
just a jumbled pile of broken up cement blocks.
  Of the people who were in there, Zarqawi was the only one that was 
alive by the time our forces arrived there. I understand he expired not 
too long after they closed in, but he had at least enough left to 
recognize that it was Americans that had closed in and put an end to 
his terrible reign as the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.
  Now, I believe that Zarqawi got his just desserts. I believe he has 
been sent to his eternal reward, or his eternal punishment is a more 
precise way to speak of that. I am grateful to the Coalition Forces, to 
the Iraqis, and especially to the United States military for the job 
they are doing over there in that country and in all of the theaters 
that we have in operations now in this global war on terror.
  We know that things have heated up some in Afghanistan and the 
intensity that is there in Iraq, and the futility of the people on the 
other side who believe they can keep blowing up women and children and 
noncombatants.
  The other day they pulled a bus over and sorted out the Sunnis and 
gave them a pass and executed the Shiias and the Kurds on the bus. It 
is a horrible thing to create that kind of violence.
  This man, Zarqawi, there was no level, no depth he would not stoop 
to. We know he has done the beheadings. He initiated the beheadings. 
Even today there were heads that were found in banana boxes in Iraq. 
They were put there to drive fear into the hearts of the people who 
would oppose al Qaeda.
  We know also there are retribution killings, revenge killings on the 
other side. But the truth of it is there is progress being made in 
Iraq, and the progress that has been made in the last 3\1/2\ years 
while we have been in those operations has been slower than many of us 
would have liked. But compared to any other similar operation in 
history, it is going along pretty good.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to keep in mind that the Iraqis have established 
themselves as a sovereign nation. That is no small task in a nation of 
25 million people torn by violence and strife and torn by an al Qaeda 
parasite that came into that society that was determined to tear them 
apart, that was attacking and fomenting the kind of violence that was 
designed to produce a civil war.
  With all of those forces inside, with Iran providing resources to try 
to incent a civil war within Iraq, Iran not wanting to see free people 
in Iraq, for obvious reasons, the clerics, the mullahs that run the 
country of Iran, they want to stay in power.

                              {time}  1545

  And we know that there is a significant amount of unrest within Iran. 
The people in Iran have memories of a more modern, open society under 
the Shah, and they want to join the world community of nations and they 
want to move into the future. And they understand that if they are held 
back into the Dark Ages by a clerical group of leaders who are 
determined to hold them there and tell them what they can wear and what 
they can say and how they are going to live, to hold women back, to not 
allow elections, at least legitimate elections, that they will not be 
able to move Iran into the 21st century. And they want their 
opportunity. But the leaders in Iran want to hang on to the power.
  That is all the way it is, Mr. Speaker. The leaders want to hang onto 
the

[[Page H3712]]

power, and so they are promoting the violence also in Iraq. Some of 
that violence has been supported out of Syria the same way and the 
infiltrators that come in that are the fighters for the insurgents come 
across the border from Iran into Iraq and from Syria into Iraq in the 
greatest numbers from those two countries. There is support in both of 
those countries for an insurgency that had we had the cooperation of 
Iran, had we had the cooperation of Syria, this operation in Iraq would 
have been over a long time ago.
  And, Mr. Speaker, I would point out for the edification of the folks 
that don't think about this very much that a war is never over until 
the losing side realizes that they have lost. It isn't a function of 
how many people are killed, or a function of how much land is occupied, 
or a function of how many battles are fought and won. They are all 
factors. But those are all factors that are designed to influence and 
convince the other side that they will eventually lose, in fact, may 
have lost the war. And so every operation that we have, military 
operation, any kind of a sanction that is there, any kind of a 
blockade, any kind of psyops, any psychological operations that are 
going on, media message that is going out there, the voice of the 
President, the Secretary of Defense, the voices on this floor of 
Congress, Mr. Speaker, should all be designed to promote the idea that 
America will not blink, that we will not back out, that we will stand 
up for freedom and stand up for liberty. And if that consistent message 
goes across the ocean into the Middle East, those people that are 
sitting in those huts making bombs and deciding that they are going to 
plant them and detonate them on American troops or coalition troops or 
Iraqi troops, or Iraqi women and children, at some point they will 
understand, we will not blink. We will not flag. We will not fail. We 
will carry out our efforts on this war on terror globally, and Iraq is 
a battle field in the global war on terror.
  This country cannot fail in our resolve. We will be resolved and we 
will finish this task. And the task will be over when the enemy 
realizes that they have lost. That is the very definition of winning a 
war, Mr. Speaker. In fact, Von Clausewitz wrote in his book on war that 
the object of war is to destroy the enemy's will and ability to conduct 
war. Destroy the enemy's will and ability. And Von Clausewitz 
understood that if you could destroy the enemy's will, they would not 
have the ability to conduct war. And if you take away the enemy's 
ability to conduct war, part of that ability is having the will. 
Without the will, no amount of weapons, no amount of resources would 
even be used at all because there would be a lack of will to ever use 
them.
  So to destroy the enemy's will and ability to conduct war boils down 
in the Steve King version to make the enemy realize that they have 
lost. Once they reach that realization, then they will give up their 
arms, they will give up their efforts and there will be peace and there 
be a peaceful reconciliation that resolves things hopefully for the 
better so that people can live free. That is the effort that is going 
on in Iraq. And we lose sight of the reason that we want to see the 
Iraqi people with peace and freedom and, in fact, I would say freedom 
first and peace second. And the reason for that is because, after all, 
we have an obligation to promote freedom throughout the world, but we 
also can't be denying this freedom to anyone.
  And we need peace in the Middle East. It is a critical part of the 
world. It puts a threat on everyone in the world when we don't have 
peace in the Middle East. One of those things would be to look to the 
freest people that are in the Middle East today, and that would be the 
citizens of Israel. And where they sit with enemies surrounding them 
all around, the threat to them, the pressure on them is a threat and 
the pressure that threatens to annihilate an entire people. They have a 
right to be there. That is their sovereign nation. And they are a lamp 
of liberty in the Middle East. The people that live around them don't 
have the freedom that Israel has.
  But soon, I believe they will. I believe they will because Iraq is 
emerging as a free Arab nation. And Afghanistan has emerged as a free 
Arab nation. Not without trouble, not without strife, not without 
violence, not without some more outbreaks of Taliban violence, not 
without some more battles with al Qaeda over in Afghanistan, certainly 
not without more battles with al Qaeda within Iraq. But if Afghanistan, 
a nation of 25 million people, and Iraq, a nation of 25 million people, 
can emerge a free people, Afghanistan has, Iraq is poised to do so. 
They become the lode star for all the Arab people in the world. And the 
people that have lived the least under freedom now have an opportunity 
to live under freedom.
  And I don't believe that the force of freedom can be held back, 
because the march of history is always, Mr. Speaker, a march towards 
freedom. And it has been a gradual progression throughout the ages, but 
in our age, in our lifetime, and this past half a century and 
peripherally in this next half a century, we will see more progress 
towards freedom than ever in the history of the world and, in fact, in 
all the rest of the history of the world put together, I believe we 
will look back on this time and say this was the time that freedom 
emerged on the globe. And it emerged in the aftermath of World War II 
and it burst out when the Berlin Wall came down, November 9, 1989, and 
we saw freedom echo across Eastern Europe, almost bloodlessly, in a 
historical miracle of people that now live and breathe free. Five 
hundred million people at least freed in that echo of freedom when the 
Berlin Wall went tumbling down and families were reunited.
  And as I watched that on the news, I noticed that the national news 
media missed it. They thought it was about reuniting families and 
breaking champagne bottles on the Berlin Wall. They didn't realize it 
was the crashing down of the Iron Curtain. They didn't realize that 
that era was over. And even for 2\1/2\ years after that, as nation 
after nation emerged free, as they stood in the square in Prague and 
people stood there and shook their keys by the tens of thousands and 
just rattled their keys, Mr. Speaker, in a chorus, in a din that said 
we will be free, and that country is free today. They had their Velvet 
Revolution and separated again and they seem to be happy between the 
Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic and their neighbors are free.
  And as I look at the coalition troops that are there in Iraq today, 
the ones that I have met as I have been over there in my several trips 
over to the Iraq region and into Iraq, I recognize that the 
participation in this effort is greater within the countries that lived 
under tyranny up until the fall of the Wall and the end of the Cold War 
on November 9, 1989. That participation of those countries is greater 
in percentage than the countries that have lived under freedom longer. 
Those that got their freedom back from the Third Reich at the end of 
World War II, some of those countries forgot what it was that they 
achieved 60 years ago. But those countries that just achieved their 
freedom less than 15 years before sent their troops to fight for 
freedom in Afghanistan and in Iraq because they have an institutional 
memory within the people in the government and within their leaders on 
what it is like to live under tyranny.

  But here in this country, we have a better memory than that. We have 
not ever lived under tyranny here in the United States of America. We 
have lived free from July 4, 1776, even though we had to fight a few 
wars to keep it, all the way up until today. Some of us would argue 
that our freedom gets diminished and we argue, here, Mr. Speaker, 
rather than going to the streets to clash in the streets, we have our 
debates here. We have an outlet for our desire to make change. And this 
is that outlet. And there are outlets in the State legislatures all 
across this land and in the county supervisors and the city halls. We 
take our disagreements to the public forum, and we have a civilized 
debate. And as the former majority leader and my friend and colleague, 
Tom DeLay, said on this floor, this very podium about this same time 
yesterday, you show me a nation that doesn't have partisanship and I 
will show you a tyranny.
  If there is not a forum for debate and for disagreement and dialogue, 
then that means a tyrant will be in control and be denying that forum. 
Well, a tyrant was in control in Iraq and he is now under trial, Saddam 
Hussein. And there were tyrants in control of the lawless regions in 
Afghanistan. And

[[Page H3713]]

now they are free and there are people who have a future. And now, Iraq 
has a brighter future because the tyrant, the murderer, the baby 
slaughterer, the person who beheaded people on television has gone to 
meet his eternal justice. And I think I know where he will spend 
eternity, Mr. Speaker, and I can think of no better justice for someone 
like Zarqawi than that.
  Some of the things that he did would be to go take someone off the 
street and kill them because maybe they had a different viewpoint about 
what the future of Iraq should be. Kill them, disembowel them, fill 
their body up with explosives and projectiles such as screws and bolts 
and ball bearings and then put their body alongside the road and sit 
back and wait for the family to come and recover the body and then 
detonate the body and blow it up and kill the rest of the family. I 
cannot think of anything more horrible than an act like that.
  But I can tell you that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Mr. Speaker, spent a 
great deal of his time trying to think of more brutal things that he 
could do, more shocking things that he could do, more ways that he 
could try to crack the nerve of the Iraqi people so that somehow, in 
that conflict, in the confusion into a civil war that he would have 
like to have created, he could have found a way to take power and turn 
Iraq not into a sovereign nation, not even into a real tyranny, but to 
turn it into a terrorist camp so that he could bring funds in, train 
people and dispatch people around the world to attack civilizations 
unlike him.
  And that is what the hatred is of al Qaeda. That is the kind of enemy 
that we are up against, Mr. Speaker, and that is that this is a battle 
and Western Civilization is an element in this battle. And I will 
submit that al Qaeda, radical Islam is a parasite on the religion of 
Islam. And this parasite has attached themselves to Islam. And a 
parasite will attach themselves to the host; Islam is the host. And 
they will travel on the host. They will feed off the host; they will 
reproduce on and within the host. And they will attack the host and 
they will drop off the host and attack other species. That is what a 
parasite is.
  And I will submit that al Qaeda and radical Islam is that parasite 
that is now riding on the host of Islam. And we need to be asking Islam 
to rid themselves of this host, with our help, help guide us, but purge 
yourselves, rid themselves of this parasite. Purge themselves of the 
parasite radical Islam, al Qaeda, because sometimes parasites are 
fatal, and they will consume their host and the host will perish. Well, 
this parasite has caused numerous Muslims to perish because they have 
turned and attacked the host and, in fact, I believe that there is not 
really any question about it. When we look across the world and we 
count the bodies, the bodies of Muslims lie in significantly greater 
numbers than the bodies of Jews or Christians that are victims of al 
Qaeda, victims of radical Islam. They turn on their own. Zarqawi was 
one of those people. He drew a distinction between Shiias and Sunnis. 
And when he did that, he began attacking Shiias to try to get them 
infuriated. He blew up their mosque to try to get them to turn around 
and attack the Sunnis so that they could have a civil war.

                              {time}  1600

  And we had leaders within this country and this Congress, Mr. 
Speaker, that would join together and declare that there was a civil 
war in Iraq, and their definition of a civil war would be when the 
unrest in Iraq got to the point where they had lost their level of 
tolerance to watch it on the news, I guess. And so some came to the 
floor and said that there was a civil war. Many said so in the news. 
There was a group of Senators from the other body that did so. A junior 
Senator from Iowa declared a civil war to be taking place in Iraq. And 
I contend that you need to define a civil war before you declare there 
is one, and I will define it this way:
  We will know when there is a civil war in Iraq, and I do not believe 
for a moment there will be one. I think the steps that were taken 
yesterday and the death of Zarqawi move things closer towards peace and 
freedom and further away from the threat of a civil war. But a civil 
war in Iraq will be defined when the Iraqi military that are in uniform 
protecting Iraqis, and remember we have Kurds and Shiias and Sunnis all 
wearing the same uniforms, Mr. Speaker, and they all take the same 
training and they all carry the same weapons, and they answer to 
officers that are officers, without regard to whether they are Shiias, 
Kurds, or Sunnis. But if that ecumenical military, if I can use a 
little license to describe them that way, chooses up sides and starts 
to shoot at each other, that is how we will know there is a civil war.
  But what we have are at least 250,000 Iraqis in uniform protecting 
Iraqis without regard to whether they are Shiias, Sunnis, or Kurds, 
wearing the same uniforms, mixed up in roughly proportionate numbers 
and defending Iraqis against al Qaeda, defending Iraqis against 
terrorists, defending Iraqis against criminals, and defending Iraqis 
against former Baathists that are in their last gasps.
  Now, there are also some that believe that somehow Saddam Hussein 
will come back to power. And because he is alive, because he is able to 
put up a fight in the courtroom, it gives inspiration to those people 
that have always been intimidated by Saddam and believe that somehow he 
has, I don't want to call it a supernatural power, but a power that 
transcends the limits of a mortal human being in a way that they can't 
be confident that he is out of power forever until he checks into the 
next life and joins Zarqawi.
  For that reason, I am hopeful that we can get the trials over in 
Iraq. I am hopeful that we can move forward and if Saddam is found 
guilty, and so in this country we say innocent until proven guilty and 
I will afford him on this floor, Mr. Speaker, at least that much 
latitude, he is innocent until proven guilty. But I have seen and the 
world has seen plenty of evidence to the contrary.
  Now, if that evidence is continually presented in court and the Iraqi 
court finds him guilty, I did meet with the judges over there last 
August and sat down with the panel of the judges and one of the 
questions that I asked the judge was, what is the penalty for Saddam? 
And he said, Well, first I cannot speak about a case that is before the 
court. That is appropriate. That is the rules we have in this country. 
And I should probably not have asked him such a direct question, but I 
did test out apparently his good judgment to not speak about a case 
that was before the court.
  So I asked him the longest convoluted question one could imagine, at 
least that I could imagine at the time, which is: If there were crimes 
that were committed or alleged to have been committed which would be of 
a similar vein, of the murders up in the region in Kurdistan and the 
killing of the swamp Arabs in the south, I went through the whole list 
of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that had died, if that had happened 
and if hypothetically we had someone who was found responsible for 
committing those kind of atrocities, if that person were brought before 
this court and they were faced with a penalty that would be similar to 
or charges that were similar to a charge that was being faced by Saddam 
Hussein then, what would the penalty be?
  That is how you have to ask the question without him addressing the 
case. And he said if someone is charged under Iraqi law the charge of 
crimes against humanity, then there is only one penalty available and 
it all is in one paragraph in Iraqi law and I have read it, and that 
one penalty is death. And so that would be I think a suitable 
punishment for someone who may well be responsible for the deaths of 
half a million Iraqis.
  I have looked at some of the statistics, and under Saddam's reign 
there are varying numbers, but I am always asking these questions 
trying to quantify how bad was the violence under Saddam Hussein, and I 
can come up with some conclusions. The number that I see come up the 
most often, the annual deaths in Iraq or the total deaths during 
Saddam's regime, and then divide it by the year and by the day. And, 
Mr. Speaker, the most common number that came up was that Saddam was 
killing his own people at the rate of 182 per day; 182 of his own 
people per day murdered, many of them tortured, many of them raped in 
rape rooms. Can you imagine an administration that had professional 
rapists that

[[Page H3714]]

are on salary to torture and terrorize and rape family members within 
the presence of other family members in order to extract certain 
confessions out of them or just simply punish them to watch their loved 
ones treated in that fashion? Put through shredders, plastic shredders 
and ground into little pieces, fed to lions. Those are the kinds of 
things that Saddam Hussein was doing as well as unleashing gas on the 
Kurds, for example.
  This was going on in that country for years and years. And maybe that 
number is not 182 a day. The lowest number I can find is about 135 a 
day. But if you add these numbers up and you subtract from it the 
numbers of Iraqi civilians that have lost their lives in this conflict 
since the aberrations began in March of 2003, if you add that up, there 
are at least 100,000 Iraqis alive today in Iraq that would not be if we 
had not intervened and pulled Saddam Hussein from power and given the 
Iraqi people their opportunity at freedom. 100,000 lives at least 
statistically have been saved in this operation that the news media 
characterizes as so utterly violent that we should sack up our bats and 
hit the road no matter what the consequences.
  I have heard that statement made even in the aftermath of Zarqawi. 
The gentleman from California (Mr. Stark) made the statement, or at 
least the news reported that, this is, that we should get out of Iraq. 
This is a sign that tells us to get out of Iraq.
  Well, those that want to get out of Iraq will use any excuse to try 
to make the argument. But I asked the question sometime back and I have 
made the statement on this floor, Mr. Speaker, and I will go down this 
path of making it again. And it is from memory and not some notes, so 
there could be a decimal point or two that I could be off, but I will 
be exactly right on the substance and on the theme.
  I asked the question, myself: How can the regular Iraqi civilian, 
people that are living there scattered all over Iraq in random places, 
some in Baghdad, some in Kirkuk, some in Mosul, some down in Basra, 
some in smaller towns, Tikrit and wherever, how can those people, those 
citizens that want to live a peaceful life and raise their families and 
have a future, how can they tolerate living in a country that has the 
level of violence that every day shows these bombings on television to 
the point where we are jaded here in America and hardly look at them 
anymore. We kind of do a little mental calculation of what kind of 
casualties there are over there in civilians. Here was a bombing with 
10, here is a bomb that killed 20, here is the bus they pulled aside 
and, by Zarqawi's orders everyone has to assume, when they sorted out 
the Sunnis and let them go and killed the Kurds and the Shiias, how can 
one live in a country that has that level of violence? How violent is 
Iraq?

  And I will have to admit that some of the places that I have been in 
this country and the statistics that I see caused me to pay attention. 
And not too long ago, Mr. Speaker, I was down in Brazil in Sao Paulo, 
and some of the briefings as I came into that city from the airport and 
it is a large city in southern Brazil that they have 10,000 homicides 
in that city every year. 10,000. A division, a number greater than a 
division are annihilated in that one city in Brazil by murder.
  So I began to simply calculate, statistically what does that mean. 
And I didn't get good statistics on how large an area that was, so I 
didn't commit those numbers to where I could repeat them here, Mr. 
Speaker. But you divide the 10,000 into the population of Sao Paulo to 
find out how many homicides per 100,000. And internationally that is 
the way we measure the risk of violence and homicide.
  And so I don't have that number, but that is the one that inspired me 
to look. So we went back and we added up all the deaths, all the deaths 
that are in Iraq, all the deaths that we can calculate and tabulate. 
And there are a couple of Web sites that do that, and at least one of 
those Web sites is designed to be able to add as many numbers as 
possible to this.
  Now, here are the statistics then, Mr. Speaker, on how dangerous it 
is to be a regular civilian living in an average place in any of these 
countries that I have laid out here on this graph, and you can see by 
the chart.
  Here is the United States. Out of every 100,000 people, every year 
annually there are 4.28 Americans that are murdered, that die violently 
at the hands of someone who willfully wished them harm and acted upon 
it: 4.28 per 100,000. Mexico's rate is three times greater than ours, a 
little more than three times greater. Theirs is 13.02 per 100,000.
  We move up the line. Here is Iraq down here pretty low in this graph 
scale, 27.51 per 100,000 people. That is their level of violence. Now, 
it is possible that the tabulation has missed some murder in Iraq that 
maybe didn't get reported perhaps out in some of the obscure towns and 
cities because their bureaucracy is not very efficient at this point. 
But it is also likely and in fact very probable that they double-
counted some of the other homicides; so I can't tell you if this number 
is maybe a little bit lower than it is in reality or it is a little 
higher than it is in reality, but I can tell you this, we don't expect 
this number to be down here. And if we would double this number, we 
would still not anticipate that is the case, and the reason is because 
of the United States news media, Mr. Speaker. And I so will take you up 
the line.
  Venezuela, 31.61 violent deaths per 100,000; Jamaica, 32.42 violent 
deaths per 100,000. I can remember these. Venezuela and Jamaica, I 
teamed those together. They both average out at 32 deaths per 100,000. 
That happened to be OJ Simpson's jersey number, so I will never forget 
that number. You can ask me in 20 years. Thirty-two violent deaths per 
100,000 for Venezuela and Jamaica.
  And then you go to South Africa, and down in that country, a great 
welcome when I visited and met good people and they are struggling to 
move themselves into the 21st century as well, Mr. Speaker, but in 
reality you look around and you will see that there are fences built 
around the homes and walls built around the homes. And they will take 
glass, and when they finish their wall on top of their wall put mortar 
on top and set broken glass in the top of that mortar, so those people 
that want to climb across the wall have to get cut up on that glass.
  And then I talked to one of our U.S. council employees and asked him 
what it was like to live in a country that was walled in, that you were 
shut in in your own little fortress of your home. And he said, Well, it 
is not so bad for me because we have a good wall around our house and 
it has got good security on top of it, and we have got cameras and we 
have got warning devices, and we have got good solid doors and bars 
across the windows. And, if they get through those doors or through 
those bars and get into the interior of the house, we have good solid 
doors there, too, but we have a chamber that we can go into to protect 
ourselves that is almost impregnable. So we can always retreat into 
that if someone invades our home.
  It kind of sounds like a war. It sounds like an invading army coming 
into a country the same way one might consider to be an invading 
terrorist, criminal coming into a home. It is not a lot different when 
someone comes across our border, especially when they are armed.
  South Africa, 49.60 violent deaths per 100,000. Colombia, one of the 
highest murder rates in the world and it ranks significantly higher 
than the United States. So of 61.78 violent deaths per 100,000 in 
Colombia, well over twice as high as the violent deaths in Iraq.
  Now I start to ask the question: How can an individual, an average 
citizen in Colombia, tolerate the level of violence in Colombia? How 
long has it been since you have seen the mainstream news media run a 
story on that? And I would say you could do a Lexus-Nexus search, but 
never wouldn't surprise me, Mr. Speaker. So Colombia is not the highest 
murder rate in the world, but they are multiple times greater than the 
United States. Honduras is not on here, but their rate is nine times 
that of the United States. And Swaziland is out there at 88.61 violent 
deaths per 100,000. Now, that is a lawless society. But I just about 
guarantee, Mr. Speaker, that nobody hears a word about that lawless 
society in Swaziland, but it approaches that number of three times as 
dangerous to live in Swaziland, in fact it exceeds that of number as 
three times as dangerous to live in Swaziland as it is to live in Iraq 
today.

[[Page H3715]]

And yet people think that civil society has broken down in Iraq and 
that there is not a way to operate in that country because it has been 
taken over by violence.
  Well, we had a little violence there for al Zarqawi and lots of 
people were dancing in the street and firing their weapons in the air 
like they did when Saddam Hussein was collared, and it is a significant 
moment in the history of this war on terror, and it is an indicator of 
what will happen to the next person that emerges to take the head of 
the operation of al Qaeda and the enemy operations within Iraq. We will 
always be targeting those people at the top, those people that are 
second tier, third tier, grabbing them wherever we can. And we have an 
individual here on the floor with us who has, as I know, been to a very 
intense and detailed and informative briefing on the operations that 
were able to take Zarqawi out.
  Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield so much time as he may 
consume to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce).

                              {time}  1615

  Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman from Iowa, and I appreciate his 
dealing with this subject. It is important right now, while we are 
talking about Mr. Zarqawi and his timely departure, that we consider 
why it has taken so long to find him.
  Under President Clinton, we began to see the budget cut for our 
intelligence services by up to 30 percent. But one of the most damaging 
things that happened during that time was that the intelligence 
services, under Presidential order, began to refuse to pay or refused 
to use the services of anyone who had a criminal background or anyone 
who had an association with unsavory elements.
  It was an attempt to bring purity into a system that frankly cannot 
work on purity. Many times people with information are insiders, and 
they are insiders because they are willing to cooperate with the 
officials.
  So what we did when we eliminated all intelligence sources with any 
crimes in their background, we eliminated in Iraq, for instance, all of 
the people who had fought with the Ba'athists, either willingly or 
unwillingly.
  Because we eliminated them, we eliminated any capability to really 
get information from them. So we dismantled in the 1990s, we began to 
dismantle our overseas operations, especially in North Africa, we said 
we do not need information anymore. I do not if the President looked at 
the falling of the Berlin Wall and assumed that the American threats 
were finished.
  But President Clinton severely hindered our capability to find 
information from human sources, and instead said we will accomplish all 
of our intelligence operations through electronic means.
  Well, electronic means do not tell you the heart and soul and plans 
of what people want to do. And so 9/11 had many indicators and in the 
period leading up to it, but we were not able to capitalize on those, 
because we did not know future plans.
  The entire operation that nabbed Mr. Zarqawi was, in fact, a very 
strong indicator that our intelligence system is beginning to work 
again. President Bush reinstated our security, our using of human 
intelligence in other countries.
  We began to search for information. And because of that, we began to 
reestablish intelligence that, in the end, began to tell us where 
Zarqawi was. Then we watched him for several days. We saw the places 
where he went, and a coordinated attack took out not only Mr. Zarqawi, 
we took out several of the people that he was with.
  But we hit 17 different sites on the same day. Now we did not damage 
or completely take out of all of those sites, we simply hit the sites, 
cleared everybody up and then we went in and captured all of the hard 
drives, the computers, all of the intelligence.
  Now the important thing about what our opponents are saying these 
days in the streets of America, that we should not be listening to any 
of the conversations of al-Qaeda on the telephone, is that in the 
aftermath of those 17 sites being captured, we have access to computer 
records, phone numbers, that tell us who the terrorists are talking to 
every day.
  And we do not have the time, if we want to get timely information, to 
go through the laborious process of filing all of the documents, 
building the case, taking them in, getting the warrants under the FISA 
provisions. Instead, the President has said, we are in a time of war. 
The Constitution says that the President can use means to monitor the 
enemy in times of war. And, in fact, we are doing that at this point.
  We have got good, well-meaning people in America who would dismantle 
that program and hinder our capability to even capture or kill more of 
the terrorist, but I think that President Bush is on the right track, 
and the fact that we cannot not only hit the leader of al-Qaeda, Mr. 
Zarqawi, but in addition to that, hit 17 different spots in the same 
day and take out other people and capture important hard drives, 
computer-generated information, is an exceptional thing.
  I have more comments, but I would yield back to the gentleman from 
Iowa for him to make his comments.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico. 
In the interim I was able to come up with this picture that I think is 
important to have posted here for us to remember this individual.
  Remember, Zarqawi was an inspiration to our enemy. And I do not 
believe that Zarqawi is going to end up being the inspiration in the 
form of a martyr as we often consider them to be.
  You know, when you think about what a martyr is, that would be one 
person who committed and dedicated their lives to a cause selflessly, 
in an inspirational way, and perhaps one who might have died in that 
cause.
  Can you think of two martyrs for the same cause, Mr. Speaker? And I 
think back, I cannot think of two martyrs for the same cause. But I 
would point that out. Maybe there are.
  But if I cannot think of two, I am convinced I cannot think of three, 
or four or five or six or ten martyrs for the same cause, or 100 or 
1,000 or 10,000. Martyrs come along in groups of 1, not groups of 2, 5, 
10, 20 or 1,000.
  I would submit this, Mr. Speaker, that the more of these alleged 
martyrs that there are, the less they are martyrs and the more they 
become statistics, and the less anyone is inspired by someone who is 
full of murder and hatred and brutality.
  They do not stand for anything except murder, hatred and brutality. I 
would be happy to yield to Mr. Pearce.
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I would make a short comment, Mr. Speaker, 
that we, in essence, have helped the message. Mr. Bin Laden and Mr. 
Zarqawi have been telling all of their peers that it is better to die 
for your beliefs, that you should go out and die for your beliefs.
  Please, go out and through yourself into the enemy, sacrifice your 
life. And so Mr. Bin Laden and Mr. Zarqawi, up to this point, have been 
unwilling to do that. They have been willing to preach it, but not to 
do it. So either unwilling or willingly, Mr. Zarqawi has been given 
over to his fate.
  So I would just say that we are beginning to see the dismantling of 
the leadership. I will tell you that the Civil War failed for the South 
because they could never keep enough generals in the field. The Union 
had more generals and more depth. And as the Confederacy began to lose 
generals, then the decisions that were made became not so sound, the 
military maneuvers, the military battlefields were not commanded with 
the same professionalism, and that is where the South began to really 
have its difficulties.
  I think we are going to see al-Qaeda have the same difficulties. I 
think we are going to continue until we ultimately tap Mr. Bin Laden, 
allow him to find his glory in this great struggle also.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman. I point out also to key into 
that point, that Stonewall Jackson may have been the most inspiring 
general in the South, but you cannot inspire people from the grave. 
Well, you can do that, but you cannot recruit military to fight 
underneath you from the grave.
  This fellow, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is done recruiting for al-Qaeda. 
They are not going to come here to fight in his memory, because they 
are going to meet the same kind of end as Zarqawi.
  But I want to point out his statement here, Mr. Speaker, because I 
think it is important for Americans to burn into

[[Page H3716]]

their mind his attitude towards Americans. He said, ``Americans are the 
most cowardly of God's creatures. They are an easy quarry, praise be to 
God. We ask God to enable us to kill and capture them.''
  That was his letter to al-Qaeda, February 2004. Americans, the most 
cowardly of creatures? You know, in this entire conflict, the battle in 
the global war on terror, in the breadth of Afghanistan and Iraq and 
all points in between and the periphery of all of those, I have yet to 
hear of a single incident of an cowardly American soldier.
  I mean, it may have happened. But I have not heard of a single 
incident. I have only heard of bravery and courage and sacrifice. And 
each quarter, I never let it be longer than that, I go to visit our 
wounded Americans in places like Bethesda, Walter Reed and Landstuhl 
there in Germany. And when I go in to visit those wounded soldiers, 
they give me strength, they give me inspiration. They believe in this 
cause, and we must not let them down.
  And most of them feel guilty that they were wounded, because now they 
are not with their men. Most of them want to go back to their unit. In 
fact, we have had amputees that have gone back to their unit and 
engaged in combat again. That is the kind of inspiration, that is what 
Americans are about.
  Zarqawi could not be more wrong. I am happy to say today he could not 
be more dead. I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico.
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa. I would 
remind the body that we had warning signs. Just because Mr. Zarqawi is 
no longer part of the conspiracy of al-Qaeda, the war of terrorism, 
just because of that, that does not mean this struggle is over.
  Again, the war on terror started in 1972 with the Munich Olympics. At 
that point, the world negotiators gave the terrorists center stage. 
They allowed them to come to the table. That was a mistake that we 
continued all of the way up through President Bush, almost 30 years of 
giving them credibility instead of trying to dismantle the operation.
  So I would remind our viewers that this is not going to be an easy 
task, even with this significant loss this week. And I would yield back 
to the gentleman from Iowa to close the discussion.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico 
for joining me and raising his voice and standing up for United States 
of America.
  Mr. Speaker, I have this one quick chart that I am going to run 
through quickly. That is, the Iraq numbers again for civilians, 27.51 
for 100,000.
  Where is the place most comparable to that in the United States 
today? Oakland, California. If you are safe in Oakland, that is about 
how safe they feel in Iraq today with the exception of the national 
news media's exceptions.
  God bless our troops. I yield back.

                          ____________________