[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 108 (Wednesday, September 6, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H6291-H6296]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 2215
NATIONAL SECURITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Price of Georgia). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King)
is recognized for half the remaining time before midnight.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the privilege
and honor to address you here on the floor of the United States
Congress. I am pleased to be back in Washington, D.C., where we can
join together and work together to resolve the issues that are in front
of us between now and the election and after the election.
As I awaited this opportunity to address you, Mr. Speaker, and I
listened to the remarks made by my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle, I have to say that it is a bit depressing to listen to that
litany, but as I look back across these Presidents that have done such
a fantastic job, I think in terms of who was in charge when we got into
those wars that were ended when they were in charge, it is the same
person.
I don't take a great issue with the way the Second World War was
conducted by FDR. In fact, I am quite proud of the way Harry Truman had
enough vision and courage to do what he did to end the Second World
War. But as I listened through the rest of that, who was in charge when
the war in Vietnam began, and the first troops were sent over there by
John F. Kennedy, who was in charge at the Bay of Pigs when air power
was taken off to protect the lives of the Cuban freedom fighters who
were caught out in the open and slaughtered in the Bay of Pigs, that
was John F. Kennedy who decided not to provide the air cover that he
had guaranteed them. They went in there thinking they had air cover,
they didn't have air cover, and Castro has been in power ever since
down there in Cuba.
I would go further. Not only did Kennedy send the first troops into
Vietnam, but Johnson accelerated the operations that were there. As I
listened along throughout some of these Presidential candidates, and I
am just simply giving the balance on the other side, Mr. Speaker. I
didn't come here to make a case to denigrate any of our proud
Presidents that we have, just to put some balance in this perspective
that we have here and hopefully I can get that done and then move on to
some other subjects that I came here to talk about.
But the Johnson administration got to the point where Lyndon Johnson
would not run for a second term of office. Those of us that were here
remember that. He knew he couldn't win. The streets were full of
demonstrators. Things had melted down in Vietnam to the point and
melted down in this country to the point that he had lost confidence,
and he came to the American people and said I will not be a candidate
for a second term for President.
So that some characterize as a failed Presidency, and I just point
this out to bring some balance to the reality of it all.
I also recall what happened in the aftermath of the issue that nobody
is proud of, and that is the Watergate break-in. That put political
power in the hands of the people on the other side of the aisle. And
what was the first thing that they did with it? They passed legislation
that said there won't be a dollar spent in Vietnam helping anybody
defend anybody from the North Vietnamese. There won't be a dollar spent
for a meal or a bullet or a tank or a gallon of fuel for air cover to
protect the people that we pledged to protect.
And in a matter of a few months, the North Vietnamese stormed through
South Vietnam. And you wonder why they couldn't defend themselves. They
didn't have munitions to work with. They didn't have air cover support
which we had pledged them. And there were hundreds of thousands, in
fact, millions that died in the aftermath because we made a commitment
and didn't keep that commitment because of political fighting here in
Congress. Not because of the lack of the will of the American soldier
or the lack of the will of the South Vietnamese soldier, for that
matter, at least during that era.
And as we move forward throughout history and we bring ourselves up
to the Clinton era, I just have a little note in my pocket from a
speech that I gave a couple of nights ago. In fact, it was last night.
Someone remarked in that meeting that I was at that they knew what the
meaning of the word ``is'' is. Well, all I have to do is say that, Mr.
Speaker, and I think it brings back to mind all kinds of images of
things that went on through the 8 years of the Clinton administration.
I didn't notice that there were some strong remarks there, but I do
remember the remarks that were made with regard to Sandy Berger, the
proud adviser to the Clinton administration, and how he had provided
for a strong military.
Mr. Speaker, there is something about the image of Sandy Berger with
his socks full of secret documents at the National Archives that just
belies any kind of image of Sandy Berger contributing to a strong
military. In fact, on his watch, and on the watch of Bill Clinton, we
saw our military be reduced from 2.4 million military down to about
1.4, perhaps even 1.3 million in our military. Now, that is not what
you call contributing to a stronger military. That is reducing the
military. That is what they called the peace dividend.
If you remember when the Wall went down on November 9, 1989, most of
the people in the mainstream media thought that had to do with a family
reunion between East and West Berlin families. But what it was, when
that wall went down, the Iron Curtain came crashing down at the same
time and peace echoed across Europe almost bloodlessly in what I would
consider to be nearly a historical miracle.
But in that period of time after a couple of years and that soaked in
and we got around to the 1992 elections, people in Congress then
coupled with the President decided, and that would be President
Clinton, decided we have this great peace dividend. Now the Soviet
Union is no more. There is no evil empire out there. Of course, they
wouldn't have called it an evil empire. That was Ronald Reagan that
defined our enemy there. But the evil empire had fallen apart and been
separated into its parts. And, of course, it wasn't equal to the sum of
its parts. Each part was separate. They didn't pull together anymore.
And the threat from a superpower from without diminished substantially.
When that happened, the decision was made here, Mr. Speaker, in this
Congress, to dramatically reduce our military and take the savings and
spend them on growing government programs. That is what was going on
during the reign of Sandy Berger. I don't know how he was the guide
that propped up and beefed up our military.
There are compliments that we can lay into every administration and
criticism that we can lay into every administration, but it is pretty
difficult to lay out a clear perspective that is subjective because all
of us have a different viewpoint. We have that different viewpoint. It
has driven us to come here to help serve the American people.
But out of this Congress needs to come a consensus that can help
direct the American people, Mr. Speaker. It doesn't serve us well to be
tearing down our effort of our military when they are overseas, when
their lives are on the line for our safety, for our freedom, to win
this global battle and this war on terror and provide an opportunity
for freedom for the Iraqi and the Afghani people.
And who knows what might be next. Who knows what people might be
next. Who knows who might be attacked next. But we are on the eve of
the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001, and I am standing tonight
on the floor of Congress listening to a lamentation of sadness and
despair because the resolve to finish this appears to not be there with
some of my esteemed colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I regret
that, and it saddens me.
But I ask: if they say staying the course is not a plan, and I am
looking for some direction that can resolve this thing more quickly
myself, Mr. Speaker, but if they say staying the course is not a plan,
I have to tell you, it is no
[[Page H6292]]
plan to tear down the effort. You had better have a positive message.
You better have a way to resolve this issue. Or it works against the
American people and it works against the American soldier to stand on
the floor of this Congress and say, This is not a plan. We're going to
take a new direction. We will fight the war wiser than President Bush
fights the war. But we're not going to tell you how. We're going to
keep that classified.
That would be one of the few things kept classified that had to do
with military, but that is because there is nothing to uncover. There
is not an idea. There is not a plan. They don't have a way to fight the
war smarter than it is being fought now, or they would tell you. They
would surely tell you between now and the elections in November. But
that seems to be still a secret.
So I say to them, gentlemen, what is your plan? Please tell the
American people what is your plan. How would you resolve the issue in
Iraq? How would you resolve the issue across the world where about 1.3
million Muslims have within them, maybe 10 percent that are sympathetic
to, or actively supporting, al Qaeda? How would you resolve this issue?
And if as some of the people on the other side of the aisle say, Mr.
Speaker, and that would include the minority leader, that Iraq was a
diversion, that it really didn't have anything to do with the global
war on terror, that the terrorists weren't in Iraq, that they weren't
operating in there. Saddam Hussein, they claim, was not harboring
terrorists and he was not fomenting any kind of terror. He was
essentially a benign dictator that just tortured and murdered, in mass
fashion, with weapons of mass destruction, his own people. That is the
argument, Mr. Speaker.
I would submit this, then: If Iraq was a diversion and didn't have
anything to do with the global war on terror, why did you vote for
military operations to go in there? Don't tell me that you were duped
by the intelligence of the United States, that you were given
misinformation. That was the intelligence that all the world had, that
all the world concurred with. This was the intelligence of America and
the United Nations and Great Britain and Israel, and probably the
intelligence that Saddam Hussein had as well.
We made a decision based upon the very best information that was
available, all of us together. And now you want to say, No, it was a
diversion. It was a distraction. We should have been somewhere else.
Where? Well, anywhere else.
If Iraq could have been taken off the map, and I would challenge you
on this, as a nation that didn't threaten us and didn't foment terror
and didn't have weapons of mass destruction, all these things we know
did happen, they are true, but you want to argue that they are not. If
you could have taken Iraq off the map and wouldn't have had to worry
about Iraq, what other countries out there, gentlemen, would you name
that are nice and safe and we can cozy up to and we can take them out
of the equation as a nation that might harbor terrorists, breed
terrorists, foment terror, fund them or sympathize with them or have
the kind of habitat that breeds them? Who can we take off our list?
Could it be Syria? I don't think so.
Iran? No, I don't believe so.
Even Saudi Arabia? Well, there are a lot of Saudis that were here 5
years ago in the air, came in to blow up Americans. So I don't think
so.
Pakistan? There are thousands of madrassas teaching hatred there.
Even though Musharaf has been doing a very good balancing job within
Pakistan and he is making progress there, but we can't turn our back
and conclude that the Pakistanis are all our friends. A lot of them
are. They have done a good job of working with us. But there are
elements from within.
What about Great Britain, speaking of elements from within? Can we
take them off the list? It would have been a foolish mistake to do so,
Mr. Speaker, as we found out just a few weeks ago as a plan was foiled
to blow up as many as 10 or more airliners across the Atlantic Ocean
that would have flown out of Great Britain towards the United States.
That plot was put together and led by, some of them, born citizens of
the United Kingdom, second generation people, who were taught hatred in
their home and in their schools that didn't assimilate into the
society.
So the argument that Iraq was a diversion just simply does not hold
up, Mr. Speaker, because you could not have taken Iraq out of that
equation any more than you could take Syria or Iran out of the equation
today.
It is a false and specious argument and the American people know it,
Mr. Speaker. The more it gets repeated by the other side of the aisle,
the broader the margins of victory are going to be for the Republicans
in November, because at least we have a rational process of thinking.
We are a reasonable people. Even though we disagree, we understand a
logical and rational argument, and we understand when one is not
logical and it is not rational. It is not rational to argue that we
didn't have to worry about Iraq if you can't name a country that we
don't have to worry about today. You didn't have the vision then, you
don't have the vision now, and that is where it stands.
Moving along now, Mr. Speaker, as I listened to the argument that we
need to go to Brazil to figure out what to do about our energy crisis
here in the United States of America, I went down to Brazil to take a
look at that. I wish the gentlemen over there would sit down and have a
conversation about this or maybe just simply, Mr. Speaker, tune into C-
SPAN and I will fill them in on what one can find out in a place like
that. You can go to Brazil believing that they have replaced 100
percent of their gasoline with ethanol that is produced from sugar
cane. But you can't go to Brazil and come home believing that, because
it is simply not true. And it is obvious from your first moments within
the country.
I can give you some real numbers that put this in perspective. Of all
of the fuel that is burned on the roads in Brazil, only 15 percent of
it is ethanol. Only 15 percent out of the 100 percent pie chart, 15
percent is ethanol, of all the fuel burned on the roads by all the
vehicles in Brazil. When you take the trucks and the diesel fuel
vehicles out of there so you are just dealing with the ethanol gas
market, now the number goes up to 37 percent. Not 100 percent. Even
when you take the diesel vehicles out of it. That is respectable,
though, I have to say. But it is only a little bit more than a third of
what most people think is the reality in Brazil.
But 37 percent of the gas-burning vehicles that have the option of
gas and ethanol, 37 percent of the fuel burned is ethanol. Then they
burn a blend. You can either go in, pull in and buy a 100 percent blend
of ethanol, or you can buy the blend.
The blend is actually a 25 percent blend. While I was there, they
reduced it down to 20 percent because they didn't have enough ethanol
to fuel their own vehicles. So I don't think Brazil has got the answer
for us all here. They want $8 billion to build the capital to invest in
their ethanol production because they want to double this production
that they have, but they don't have the sugar cane to make enough
ethanol to even blend their fuel up to 25 percent.
{time} 2230
I would rather have that capital invested in this country where we
can build an infrastructure here that is going to produce the ethanol
that will replace the gasoline from the Middle East.
So I would simply submit that there is $1 billion worth of private
capital that is being invested in this construction year in my little
congressional district to produce renewable fuels, between ethanol,
biodiesel, and wind, $1 billion in that sliver, that western third of
Iowa, and we are kicking up our ethanol production. And if you want to
see how to do it, come out there where we are doing it in America.
I see my esteemed colleague on the floor this evening, and I am quite
interested to hear what my friend and the chairman of the Armed
Services Committee, Duncan Hunter, might have to say, and I would be
happy to yield to him.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good colleague, Mr. King,
for yielding.
And I listened, as you probably did, to some of the Democrat Members
who were decrying the state of the world and ``woe is me'' and things
are going
[[Page H6293]]
terribly, according to them. And as the gentleman took the floor, as I
watched him take the floor, and started talking about the Republican
legacy in national security that they were complaining about and the
Republican legacy of peace through strength, I was reminded about
coming here in 1980 when a guy named Ronald Reagan was running for
President. And we just finished with a President who was very, very
similar to Jimmy Carter, the gentleman who had his tenure in office
somewhat truncated by Ronald Reagan, and that was Bill Clinton. And I
thought of the fact that the Democrats entered the Clinton
administration with 15 Army divisions, combat divisions, and when they
walked out of the White House and that administration left, they had
cut the United States Army by about 40 percent. They were down to 10
divisions, and many of those divisions were undermanned, and then I was
reminded that they were the same people that complained that we didn't
have enough people on the ground when we went into Iraq. And then I was
reminded that, as we are talking about Iraq, and today there is a big
hue and cry to get rid of Secretary Rumsfeld among the Democrats, in
the Democrat cloakroom, thankfully, 6,000 miles away that sentiment is
not shared by the Americans who are reenlisting in the combat zone, in
places like the Sunni triangle, where the 101st is well over 100
percent of their expected reenlistment rate. The First Marine Division
out in the very dangerous Anbar Province is up well over 100 percent of
their expected reenlistment rate. So the people that serve in combat
under Don Rumsfeld seem to like him.
But I was reminded, as I listened to that ``woe is me'' discussion by
the Democrats, that it is the Republican Party that is the party of
peace through strength, and the American people rely on us to do that.
And I think that is one reason they are trying to pull down Secretary
Don Rumsfeld.
And I thought it was interesting today, as the President announced
that Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the attack that drove
those planes into New York, into Washington, D.C., and into
Pennsylvania, will soon be coming to a courtroom near us in the United
States because he was captured and he was interrogated and others were
interrogated in what the Democrats call inhumane methods, even though
our lawyers and all of the people who scrutinized the methods of
interrogation found that they were legal methods of interrogation,
uncomfortable but legal and not torture, and that that person and
others who joined him, his team of terrorists who joined him in
masterminding the 9/11 attacks on America, will be coming to a
courtroom near us, soon to be prosecuted, truly brought to justice
because of the leadership of this administration and because of some of
these methods of interrogation that have been associated with Secretary
of Defense Don Rumsfeld. And the President laid out today how thousands
of Americans had their lives spared, how we stopped attacks and we
stopped plots to attack our country in mid course, including not only
attacks that would include explosives but also attacks that would
include things like anthrax, because we had a forward-leaning, tough,
aggressive posture in this war against terror.
So as the Democrats sip their lattes and find themselves very
comfortable in what they describe as a very uncomfortable world, the
reason they are able to be here having enjoyed almost 5 years after the
9/11 attack with no further attacks on the United States is partly
because we had a President with an aggressive, forward-leaning policy
against terrorism; that he went out and took them on; that he hunted
them down in places where they didn't think they would ever be found,
with the leadership of Don Rumsfeld, and we kept them off balance. And
because of that, because they were kept off balance, because we
penetrated them, because we were able to get into their cells and we
were able to discover who was masterminding these plots against the
United States, we were able to keep our people safe.
And I am further reminded that when Don Rumsfeld's military, our
military, led by General Tommy Franks, was driving that iron spearhead
up toward Baghdad, you already had the Democrats complaining that there
were not enough troops and that he would get bogged down. And as you
saw them on talk shows, the talk shows in which Democrats were
complaining that he would get bogged down were interrupted by news
announcements that Tommy Franks had taken yet other stronghold of
Saddam Hussein. And they would seem to be almost disappointed rather
than joyous when they would hear that American troops had, in fact,
mowed down another line of defense by Saddam Hussein; so they stopped
criticizing for a while. Then after we took Baghdad, the criticism
started again. And this time the criticism was what I called the ``both
ways criticism.'' In the same discussion, a Democrat leader would say
we need to have more troops on the ground and in the next sentence he
would say we want to have an Iraqi face on the security apparatus.
Well, how do you have an Iraqi face on a security apparatus if you
stuff enough troops into that country to have a GI on every corner? The
facts are you cannot have it both ways.
And then the other criticism was, we should have kept the Iraqi
military intact.
The Iraqi military had over 10,000 Sunni generals. What do you do
with 10,000 Sunni generals? You don't do anything. And that is what the
army would have done to secure Iraq: nothing. The idea of having that
army where corruption was the order of the day, where you had people
who were simply following their own political agenda and making their
own way and making their own profits and the idea that we would
maintain that army as the new safeguard or security force in Iraq to
protect this fledgling, newly elected, democratically elected
government coming up makes no sense at all. The smartest thing we ever
did was starting with scratch with that military and teaching the new
army the chain of command; teaching them respect both up and down the
chain of command; teaching them to take responsibility; teaching them
to have a thing called NCOs, noncommissioned officers; teaching them to
be decent to people; teaching them not to be corrupt. And that is why
today the best force that we have in Iraq is not the police force, is
not the security force. It is the military. And even people who have
criticized this administration in the way they conducted the war concur
that there is a strong core in this Iraqi army. That is because we
built it from scratch, and we didn't start with 15,000 Sunni generals.
Now, the last thing, and I have mentioned it, that the administration
was condemned for and that Don Rumsfeld became a lightning rod for was
uncomfortable interrogation methods. Well, you know, the world is a
tough place, and the people that we are dealing with are not made out
of cotton candy. And the fact that we were able to get information from
terrorists because they are the ones that have the information, not
Americans, but because the terrorists are the ones that have the
information, the fact that we were able to get that information from
them and use that to stop other actions against the United States
before they could mature, before they could result in American
casualties accrued to the benefit of America's security.
So when I look at this ``woe is me'' and we have got the real
security plan and if we had only taken the other road, you will notice
that the road not taken is always the smoothest one, where we had all
the Sunni generals, that we would have used those to somehow bring
security to Iraq, or if we had stuffed enough GIs into Iraq that
somehow there would not be any car bombings or would not be any
violence, or if we would just ask people politely to give up the names
of their co-terrorists, they would do that and we wouldn't have to be
tough on them in interrogations. All those positions, I think, define
why the American people, Democrats and Republicans, rely on Republicans
for national security.
And I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for coming to the
floor and speaking on behalf of our military men and women. And as I
listened to his presentation, it was very welcomed from my perspective.
I wonder if the chairman would yield for a question.
[[Page H6294]]
Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Chairman Hunter, I would ask you, would you care to
comment on the remarks on the position that Iraq is a diversion on this
global war on terror and it didn't have anything to do with Osama bin
Laden and al Qaeda?
Mr. HUNTER. I think that comment that somehow this is a neat, tidy
package and if we just confined ourselves to Afghanistan, somehow we
would win the war against terror and we wouldn't have to worry about
Iraq is a naive position.
The facts are that we learned after 9/11 that if we didn't change the
world, the world was going to change us. And having an Iraq that has a
modicum of freedom, that is not an enemy of the United States and will
not be a springboard to future terrorism accrues to the benefit of
generations of Americans. It is not something you can put on a bumper
sticker, but having some change in that part of the world.
And one manifestation of that change that was little noticed was
when, during the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, Hezbollah
sought rearmaments from Iran, and Iran, according to reports, sent off
a plane full of new missiles to throw at the defenseless civilian
populations in Israeli cities, and Iraq would not let them fly over. So
they said, okay, we will try to fly over Turkey. And Turkey said, You
can come into our aerospace but only if you land and we can search your
plane. And Iran then turned the plane around and took it back home and
did not deliver the missiles.
Now, that is only a small thing. On the other hand, it could be a big
thing for the people who might have felt the impact of those warheads
in Israeli cities. But that was an Iraq whose government was not
friendly to terrorists. That was an Iraq whose government was
supportive of free people. And that was because of the American
position in Iraq and the fact that we have changed the face of Iraq.
Now, there is something I think all American troops should see
because they are hearing this constant drumbeat now from the Democrats
that the casualties have been in vain, that their efforts have been in
vain, that this is all a terrible fiasco. I think that every American
who serves should be shown the excavations that are taking place in
Iraq right now, those mass graves wherein if you watch the History
Channel, you might have seen some of this about a month ago where
American anthropologists and scientists are excavating the mass graves,
where Saddam Hussein's people would herd hundreds and thousands of
people and in many cases would shoot the mother holding her baby in the
back of the head. And then when the scientists would examine the skull
of the little baby, they would notice it too would have a pistol bullet
hole in the back of its head. Double execution, mother and baby. I
think all Americans that serve over there should see the photos of
those Kurdish mothers whose bodies are strewn out across the hillsides
still holding their babies, killed in mid stride by Chemical Ali.
And I am reminded of a Democrat President who stood on the west steps
of this Capitol many years ago and said, Let the word go out, let
friend and foe alike know that America will bear any burden to support
the cause of freedom. And I am paraphrasing, of course, John Kennedy.
What happened to those Democrats? What value do they place on those
thousands of people who were pushed into mass graves?
In fact, I think one farmer testified about Saddam Hussein's
executioners that they had an execution squad that would show up at
about 9 o'clock on his farm. They had an excavation squad or team that
would show up with construction equipment, and they would dig these big
trenches on his farm in the morning, and then the execution squad would
arrive, and then they would truck in the unfortunate villagers who were
going to be executed. They would line them up and shoot them in the
back of the head, push them into this big cut that they had made in the
Earth, and then they would cover them up with bulldozers.
{time} 2245
As I recall at one point, the farmer said that one day the execution
squad, the logistics guy did not show up so they did not have any
bullets. So he said, what the heck. They just pushed the people in
alive and covered them up without shooting them. It did not make a lot
of difference to them.
Those historical excavations, and that record of human suffering and
human tragedy that was visited on those people, that should be shown.
Because that is the work of Saddam Hussein. That should be shown to
every GI, every marine, every navy corpsman that serves out there in
that tough Fallujah area, and al Ramadi with the marines, every airman
who flies those long lifts, bringing and keeping that logistical train
going between American bases and that area of operation.
Every one of them ought to be shown the full story of what Saddam
Hussein did and what he was. And the idea that we can turn that country
where the ruler did that to those people, to a country who, when Iran
says we want to fly these missiles over your air space so we can kill
people in Israel says ``no, we are not going to let you do that. Go
back''.
To me that is a remarkable thing. Now, you know, the freedom of the
Iraqi people is not guaranteed by this operation in perpetuity.
Nobody's freedom is guaranteed in perpetuity including our own. We are
developing them, a freedom for that country. We are giving them a
running start at freedom. I think it was Ben Franklin one time who
said, we have our freedom, now if we can keep it. It will be up to them
to keep it.
But we learned after 9/11 that if we did not change the world, the
world was going to change us. This is far-reaching. This is visionary.
This is going beyond Fortress America that somehow we must have said
something wrong to these extremists to come after us and bomb us and do
these things to us.
And you know, I have thought about this idea that somehow what did we
do wrong to invite this strike against America? I thought about that. I
thought about the last couple of wars we fought. Two wars ago it was
the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. Kuwait is a Muslim country.
We saved it.
And then we went in and we saved hundreds of thousands of Muslims in
the Balkans, in Bosnia. We had that record. And the reward that we got
from the extremists was for them to attack the United States of
America. So what more could we do? So this idea of this flagellation of
America is something that is reviving in the Democratic party. I think
you probably noticed that. It is coming to the fore. It is, we did
something wrong. And it is not Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the real devils
in this operation, according to the Democrats, are not these people
that we are going after who have tried to kill thousands of Americans,
it is really our leaders.
Those are the people that they say are the bad people. And it is not
the guys that our great intelligence agencies and military people
manage to bring to justice that we will soon see in a court of justice
being tried I believe for murder, among other things.
But it is the methods of these uncomfortable methods that were used
to get them to tell about people that were planning to kill Americans
and fly planes into our country loaded with explosives and do the other
things that the President talked about today. This blame America first
thing is reviving on the Democrat side of the aisle.
I do not think the American people are going to buy it.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would take this to
another level of this vision too. Before I do that, I would point out
that I sometimes have some opportunities to sit down and talk to people
who were raised in Iraq. Some of them are refugees that have found
their way here. There is just a certain bond and affinity between Iraqi
and Americans today because they understand and they appreciate the
sacrifice and the commitment that has given them now an opportunity.
I recall a conversation with a young lady who was raised in the north
up near Kirkuk. And she said that no one admitted that they had any
boys in the family. The houses in that town all had hidden compartments
in them. If they had a boy they had hidden compartments. So when
Saddam's men came to town, those boys crawled into those hiding places
within those homes to hide from the military recruiters.
[[Page H6295]]
They would pick those young men up and haul them off to the military
and they would never know where they went and they would never see them
again. The girls could go out and play, but the boys could not. They
had to be kept in hiding, like young little Anne Frank hiding in their
home and growing up and trying to make a happy life out of this.
But I would take this image, that we had Iowa Guard troops on the
ground in Afghanistan helping to guard the routes to and those polling
places that were there. The first time in the history of the world that
those people had ever voted on that place in the planet.
And we have seen the Iraqi people go to the polls, and three times
pull off a successful election, when the naysayers on the other side of
the aisle said it cannot be done, there is too much violence, and the
Iraqi people really cannot handle this Democratic process.
Think about what this means. The inspiration that Afghanistan is
today, and the inspiration that Iraq is becoming. I see those two
nations as the loadstar for the world of Islam. And if Islam can see
that they can live in compatibility with freedom and prosper and turn
their focus, as Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan
told me shortly after September 11, she came to Buena Vista University
in Storm Lake, Iowa, and gave an outstanding speech.
And we sat down afterwards one on one and had a conversation. And I
asked her a couple of questions, that I remember, at least. And one of
them was, what percentage of the Muslims are really inclined to be
supportive of or sympathetic to al-Qaeda? And her answer was, not very
many, perhaps 10 percent. A very quick answer which told me that she
had thought about it.
Daniel Pipes used the number 15 percent in his book Radical Islam, I
think, Visits America or something very close to that. 15 percent. So
when you think about what that means, I said how can we get to this
point? How do we define victory, and how do we achieve victory?
And she said, you have got to give them freedom, you have got to give
them a chance at democracy. And if you do that, they will turn their
focus then from hatred and killing and jealousy, and the kind of things
that motivate people to evil, their focus will be to good.
It will be to build their families and build their communities and
build their countries and make that stronger. Take those goals, and now
they have an opportunity to reach for. But today, their energy is being
used in hatred and being taught in madrassas to hate people that are
not like them.
So when you think about it in terms of Iraq and Afghanistan becoming
the lodestar nations, they are the inspiration for the world of Islam.
I want to say to the Arab world, but then we have got countries like
Iran that are really not Arab they are Persian. But the inspiration for
those countries to know that they can become free, and then index that
to that historical miracle that I referenced a little earlier about how
freedom echoed across eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall and the Iran
Curtain came crashing down, that historical
miracle can be replicated in the Middle East, probably not as fast,
certainly not as easy, maybe it takes a lot longer, maybe it is not as
pretty when it is done, but there is an opportunity there to find a way
to finally win.
Our alternatives become, promote freedom as the President has done,
that is the Bush doctrine. And in that freedom, change the habitat that
breeds terror. And if we go the other route, if we go the route to the
poor me's, the lamentations, the everything is wrong and we would have
been smarter, we just cannot tell you even in hindsight how, and we
certainly are not going to give you any foresight as to how to be
smarter, if we go that route, then our alternative, and there only
being two, the first one is the road to freedom, to change the habitat
that breeds terror.
The other road is for the United States of America to curl up in a
fetal position and guard every bus stop and every school and every
hospital and every football stadium, and still be attacked and still
see our families blown to bits by people that hate us. We cannot
prevail in this war, this clash of these two civilizations by simply
playing defense and thinking it is a law enforcement mission. It is a
matter of defending ourselves militarily, putting our resources at the
tip of the spear, but it is also a matter of changing that habitat, so
that freedom can grow and prosper.
When that day comes, and I believe that freedom burns in the heart of
every person, and I believe it is in the future of everyone on this
earth. When that day comes, we will be a lot closer to freedom than we
are today. Free people never go to war against other free people.
I particularly appreciate the chairman and ask him if he has any
other remarks to make.
Mr HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I think the last thing the gentleman said,
and I appreciate you letting me come in and butt in here and talk a
little bit. But you know Great Britain has nuclear weapons. But we do
not fear Great Britain because Great Britain is free. France has
nuclear weapons. We do not fear France because France is free.
The Soviet Union, former Soviet Union, now Russia has nuclear
weapons, residual from their days as the center of the Soviet Empire.
But they are becoming free. They are still a fragile country that is
trying to move in that direction. Still with lots of problems. We have
less worry about them today because they have more freedom than they
had before.
So clearly bringing freedom to the world is an important part of
America's own future, and an important part of our own security. And
for those who think we can hold back in Fortress America and not change
the world, and not worry about what the rest of the world is doing,
that is a naive position.
It is one that politicians had a number of occasions in the last
century, in which 619,000 Americans died on battlefields around the
world. In many places and cases where we had forgotten that we achieved
peace through strength, where we let our guard down, where we thought
we could pull back into the United States and not worry about what was
going on around the world.
This president is aggressive. He has been tough in the war against
terror. He has been determined. That is probably his best quality. He
does not read the polls every day. He does not check the wind every day
to see which direction it is blowing. But his aggressive stance against
the terrorists, running them down in places where they never thought
that our forces could get to them, killing them at 10,000-foot
elevation mountains in Afghanistan, taking them out in safe houses
where they had no idea that we were on to them, going after them and
taking them out and keeping them off balance is one reason that we have
had 5 years without attacks on this United States.
So I thank the gentleman for talking about the Republican position on
national security. It is too bad. I think it is too bad when we have to
politicize or put a partisan face on national security. But I think it
is appropriate when the Democratic leadership gets up and talks about
the Republican position on security.
I think it is appropriate to remind them that we rebuilt our national
security after we had the hollow army of the 1970s, we had 1,500 petty
officers a month leaving the navy because they could not make enough
money to feed their families. We had about 35 percent of our ships that
could not sail, about 50 percent of our combat aircraft that were not
fully mission capable.
And we rebuilt America from those days. We stood up to the Soviet
Union and we disassembled the Soviet Union and we made the world a lot
safer because we did that. We stood up to the Communist intrusion in
Central America. When on this side of the aisle, the Democrats were
writing Dear Commandante letters and talking about appeasement in
Central America.
Because of that, those countries that were dictatorships when Ronald
Reagan came into office are now fragile democracies where people get to
vote, where they settle things with ballots not bullets. That is the
legacy of the Republican Party. And it is the Republican party that
rebuilt national security.
You know, we put $40 billion extra into the defense budgets during
the Clinton years because President Clinton took our defenses down like
a rock falling off a cliff. As I said, we had over 15-plus Army
divisions when he came
[[Page H6296]]
into office. When he left we only had 10. When he needed money for
other things in the budget, he just cut the military. We had to rebuild
that force after that gentleman left office. We did it.
Today we are spending more than $100 billion more, not counting the
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq than we did under the Clinton
administration.
{time} 2300
We still need to spend more. We are spending about 4 percent of GDP
on defense today. Under John Kennedy, a conservative Democrat who
believed in peace through strength, we were spending 9 percent of GDP
on defense, and under Ronald Reagan, we were spending 6 percent.
Probably, we are going to need to go up to about 4\1/2\ or 5 percent of
GDP being spent on defense to make sure that we ensure security for the
coming decades.
I thank the gentleman for his allowing me to come down and say a word
or two this evening.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman. It is for a good
cause, and as I recall, I believe that the percentage of our GDP during
the Second World War was perhaps up to 26 percent for a period of time
there. There was a real, real commitment, and as those numbers go down
and you see the numbers in the military shrink, our commitment to our
military has not been as strong as it might have been and needs to be
stronger again.
We do not have a real handle on how broad and how deep this is going
to have to be, but we must be ready at every quarter, and especially,
this homeland security side has been for these 5 years, it has
outstripped the expectations and the aspirations I think. I did not
hear anybody say back on September 11, 2001, we can go a half a decade
without an attack in this country. Everyone believed that there would
be another attack. Now, heaven forbid it happens at this point or
beyond, but I am grateful for work that has been done that has kept us
safe to this point.
I would take us to another aspect of this issue, too. One of the
things that this administration decided to do was we are not going to
touch the oil in Iraq, and we set that aside for the Iraqi people. Now,
that system over there is not shaping up the way it might be. There is
a lot of oil in Iraq. It seeps to the top of the ground, and the wells
they have drilled, there have not been new ones in years and years, and
a lot of the infrastructure has not been rebuilt. That needs to all
happen and get that oil online.
One of the first things I would do, if I were the prime minister of
Iraq, would be to hold a bidding conference and bring in the oil
companies and get them to inject international capital into the
development of the fields and the development of the infrastructure so
they can get that cash flow running, and if the cash flow runs,
capitalism will take over.
I gave a speech in Baghdad a while back to the Baghdad Chamber of
Commerce in the Al Rasheed hotel. As I walked in there, they started to
introduce me. I said, just a moment, I would like to know who my
interpreter is before you introduce me. They said, no, you do not have
an interpreter. I said, but I do not speak Arabic. They said, you do
not need to; these businesspeople speak English. There were 57 members
there of the Iraqi Chamber of Commerce, and you could tell by the way
they laughed and smiled and applauded, it was all timed just right.
They understood English.
Afterwards we had a great gathering over on the side of the room,
handing out business cards like frantic businessmen in a way. They
wanted to exchange information and ideas. They are ready to do business
in that country, and they are doing business in that country. The more
dollars can come in and the faster that can get turned over, the closer
they are to their own solution in Iraq. So I am optimistic that we get
a solution out of there that bodes well when judged by history.
Sometimes we lose confidence in who we are as a Nation. I would take
us back to a little over 100 years ago, and actually in 1898, we sent
the military over to the Philippines. I recall being in this city about
3 years ago in a hotel when the President of the Philippines, President
Arroyo gave a speech. She was not speaking to Members of Congress. I
was kind of a random dinner guest, but she said, speaking of this
random crowd in a hotel here in Washington, she said, Thank you
America. Thank you for sending the Marine Corps to the Philippines in
1898. Thank you for freeing us. Thank you for liberating us. Thank you
for sending the priests and the pastors there. Thank you for sending
10,000 teachers that taught in our schools and you taught your language
to us and we learned your language. We learned your culture, and today,
there are 1.6 million Filipinos that go anywhere in the world to work
and send their money back to the Philippines because they have the
language skills and they have the cultural skills that came because of
the liberation that came from the American military.
How often do we read that in our history books, Mr. Speaker, that
kind of an impact that, a century later, the expressions of gratitude
that come from a national leader? That was an insurgency. That was an
insurgency we fought in the Philippines and defeated at insurgency in
the Philippines. That does not seem to be part of our national memory.
We can often learn from history, and we need to understand the
economics and the sociology and the military tactics and put this all
together, but we must have faith in who we are as a people. We must
have faith in what has made us great. We must hang on to those things
that are going to enhance that greatness and move America to the next
level of our destiny. Once in a while we have got to discard some of
those things that are not assets to us.
We have got to move into the future with technology. We have got to
hang on to those core things that give us strength, and those things I
believe are free enterprise capitalism, Western civilization and our
biblical values, tied together as the three pillars that make America
great.
So, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address this chamber
and address you tonight. I especially appreciate the chairman coming
down to stand up for American fighting men and women, and the job that
you have done to lead us through these difficult years from September
11 and on into the future, and I will stand with you and our military
men and women when one day hopefully it will be us, and if it will not,
it will be our children and grandchildren that realize there has been a
victory in this global war on terror and the face of the world will
have changed and the world will be a freer place. A freer place is a
safer place, and that is the goal and that is the call of the trumpet
for us in this country.
____________________