[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.
____________________