[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 112 (Tuesday, September 12, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H6406-H6412]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: September 12, 2006 (House)]
[Page H6406-H6412]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr12se06-137]
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THE ATTACKS ON SEPTEMBER 11
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, I appreciate the privilege and the
honor to be recognized on the floor of the United States Congress, and
the opportunity to address you, Mr. Speaker, and the people that are
listening in around the country.
You know, as I listen to the message that has been delivered here by
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I think we share a
sentiment in balancing a budget one day. We don't always share exactly
the same sentiment on how to get there, but I am looking for black ink,
and I intend to be in this Congress to approve a black ink budget.
I want to say that to my colleague from Arkansas one of the ways I
would do that is tighten down this spending. In fact even on a
discretionary budget, Mr. Speaker, if we just spent 95 percent of the
money we spent this year we would have had a balanced budget. That is
one way we can get there. We need to present a balanced budget and go
from there.
But I want to support the gentleman in his philosophy, and I am not
for raising taxes, I am for doing it by restricting our spending,
because we need to keep this growth run going. We are something like 17
consecutive quarters of growth. I am confident they have averaged over
3 percent. There have been only been about two quarters, and I can only
think of one where our revenue was less than a 3 percent growth. This
is an astonishing success for our economy.
Mr. Speaker, I come here tonight, though, to talk about September 11,
the fifth year anniversary to commemorate this day that passed us
yesterday, and to renew our resolution to defend our people in this
country and to promote freedom and to defeat our enemies.
One of the things that happened, though, in reference to the debate
that took place in just the previous hour, was our Pentagon was hit, we
had a plane that was heroically taken to the ground in Pennsylvania,
and we had the planes that went into the Twin Towers and shut off our
financial centers in the United States.
It was a direct assault on free enterprise capitalism. It was a
direct assault on our financial markets, and it did shut down our
markets for a short period of time. It also required us to spend
billions of dollars in security in this country.
So, our spending went up, our revenue went down, the economy was
starting to drop down into a recession mode, and the President stepped
up and took a leadership role. Some of that leadership role was to
mobilize troops and send them to Afghanistan. Some of that leadership
role was to deal with the impending financial crisis.
By doing so, we addressed the tax cuts to stimulate this economy. Who
would have thought, Mr. Speaker, that those tax cuts that were
implemented the following year, and the second round that we did here
in 2003, would have put us on this run for this unprecedented economic
growth?
We have a strong economy, we have recovered from the attack on our
financial center, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars just in
our national security, our domestic security, as well as additionally
our additional costs in taking that fight to the enemy, taking the tip
of the spirit of the Middle East and elsewhere. It has cost a lot of
money to move forward in this global war against these terrorists.
Yet, the economy in the United States is strong. Mr. Speaker, not
only do we have a strong economy, an economy that I believe, if it
hadn't been for the attacks on the United States, if we hadn't had to
spend the money militarily, if we hadn't had to spend the money for our
domestic security, create this expensive airport security that we have,
I believe our budget would have balanced. In fact, the economy has
grown so well that we actually have our revenue stream has gone up by
$274 billion more than was anticipated and estimated.
That is the kind of rebound that this economy has done. That is the
way to
[[Page H6407]]
balance this budget, control the spending, not increase the taxes. Let
the economy grow us out of this, show fiscal discipline.
I am one of the people that has called for more fiscal discipline. We
always have to do that. We have to continue to be the conscience here
because everybody's project always seems reasonable to them. They
probably are reasonable. But when you add them all in the aggregate,
that is when we have to start slicing some of them out. We have been
doing that more and more.
But I think we should have tightened our belt more back in 2003 when
we engage the enemy in Iraq. We should have said to the American
people, you are going to have to sacrifice. You are going to have to
tighten your belt. We are going to reduce our domestic spending, at
least the increases, and we are going to give our military everything
that they need, and we are willing to all of us pull together as a
Nation, Mr. Speaker.
But had it not been for September 11, this would not be a budget
discussion going on here in this previous hour, because it would be in
the black, and there would not be complaints. That is my belief, and I
think we are getting there now anyway. I think it is closer than most
people will predict. It depends a little bit then on how the elections
turn out here in November.
But we are here today, just a day after the 5-year anniversary of the
horrible and tragic attack on September 11. On that day, each person
that is alive in America today that was around then remembers where
they were. They remember the shock. They remember the pictures as they
came out on television. Most of us saw this unfold as it went online.
Most of us got the news, found our way to a television, and stood
there mesmerized as the smoke poured out of the towers and as the first
one went down and then the second. Most of us watched and prayed for
those who were in the towers, and for their families. Most of us
believed that there would be significant survivors that would be
treated in medical units, and most of us were sadly informed that there
weren't going to be wounded arriving. Most of them either were killed
outright or got away clean without injury.
But on that day, as the casualties estimate went up, and the first
numbers that I heard, as I recall, were about 10,000 was the
prediction, and now we know that number is lower than that. But that
10,000 number of projected killed in those attacks went on up to
15,000, to 20,000, on up to 30,000 was the highest number that I heard.
I can still recall what it felt like to think about the concept of
30,000 Americans, burned to ashes in the inferno of that attack by al
Qaeda on our Twin Towers. I remember that feeling. I also remember the
feeling of gradual relief as the real estimates came down from 30,000
now to 25,000 to 20,000 to 15,000 to 10,000 and finally settled down.
Actually, the number that I have is 2,973, all tragic, all human
beings, sacred lives with unique value, dashed to death that day, and
all of them with family friends or loved ones, most with all of those.
Those families have lived with the horror of that day. The prayers of
this Nation and the prayers of the world have gone out to them, Mr.
Speaker.
But as that number went down from 30,000 to 20,000 to 10,000 and then
down to 3,000 now, that equation of relief, in my mind, was palpable.
Today I can still feel it.
But on the other side of the ledger was also the realization that the
lower the number went, the shorter would be our attention span, and the
weaker would be our resolve.
As the 30,000 number settled down to 3,000, our resolve also was
strong that day, and it stayed strong for a long time afterwards, but
it is diminishing now in proportion to the loss of those lives. We
cannot allow ourselves to settle into complacency, Mr. Speaker. We
cannot allow ourselves to tell ourselves that this will go away, that
they will quit attacking us if we just leave them alone, that somehow
we could apologize to the people who attacked us, and find a way to
understand them better. Maybe if America would convert to Islam, we
could find a way to find peace with these people.
But it is not to be, not by this proud, free people, not by this
proud, free Nation. This Nation will never capitulate to threats. I
interviewed a World War II veteran, who had served just outside the
battle of Bataan, and I think about a commander there, when he demanded
that he surrender, and his answer was, nuts.
That is our attitude here in America, nuts. We don't ever do that. We
take it to you. You have attacked us. We are going to remain a proud,
free Nation. Our streets will be free and they will be open, and this
will be an open society, and we refuse to cower. We refuse to retreat
from the rest of the world and curl up in a national fetal position. We
will defend our schools and our hospitals and our ball games and our
theaters.
Essentially, the condition that Israel is in today, where they have
to guard everything, that will not be America. Because we will take
this a little to you, and it will be over, this war will be over when
we change the habitat that breeds the kind of venom and terror that
attacked us on September 11.
But 5 years later, Mr. Speaker, no attacks on America on our soil,
not one successful one, a significant number of attempts, but not one
successful attack. That is a testimonial that supports the effort, the
efforts of the PATRIOT Act, the efforts of other pieces of legislation
that we have done, the efforts of our intelligence personnel, our
emergency personnel, our law enforcement officers, a team of Americans,
and a team of people around the world who have an eye out for
suspicious behavior, help us with our leads, and maybe we have been a
little bit lucky. But we have got to be right 100 percent of the time.
So far, so good.
But at this point, I see the gentleman from Georgia, my good friend,
Mr. Gingrey, has arrived in the Chamber. I am quite interested in what
he might have to deliver this evening.
I would invite the gentleman from Georgia to address you, Mr.
Speaker. I would yield so much time as the gentleman may consume.
Mr. GINGREY. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Iowa,
Representative King, for taking the hour to discuss such important
matters, and, of course, in a timely manner, here, one day more than 5
years from the anniversary of that horrific event on 9/11. The
gentleman was mentioning, I think, earlier about people remembering, of
course, where they were at that horrific time of that initial plane
attack on the first Twin Tower.
We all do. We think back about that. We remember almost exactly what
we were doing. Just like back in 1963, I can remember exactly what I
was doing when our President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was brutally
assassinated. I remember exactly where I was on the campus at Georgia
Tech and what meeting that I was in and who the faculty leader was at
that meeting at the campus YMCA and how I left that meeting and walked
slowly across campus to my fraternity house to turn on the television
set where we all were glued for the next 72 hours.
That was the same shocked feeling that I felt 5 years ago yesterday
when I was a medical doctor and actually in the operating room
performing surgery early on that morning when the announcement was made
that a plane had struck one of the Twin Towers. We thought that maybe
it was a small private plane like the one that had hit the Empire State
Building in New York City many years ago, with not a massive loss of
life, and certainly no building came tumbling down.
So you remember. We all do, and, of course, today, as we are here
back in Washington on the floor of this hallowed Chamber, talking a
little bit about our memories, and why it is so important, as President
Bush said, the very next day, and Representative King has brought it
out so clearly, we will not cower against this horrific enemy. We will
fight them to their death.
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We will do everything in our power as a people and the President as
Commander in Chief and we as the Congress to prevent another attack on
our soil.
You know the old adage, the proof of the pudding is in the eating,
certainly that is true today. We can listen to all the naysayers and
the criticism of what we should have done, could have done, would have
done, what has gone wrong, why the plan is not perfect; but the bottom
line, Madam Speaker, my
[[Page H6408]]
colleagues, Representative King, we all know, is that we have not been
attacked. That is not to say that it couldn't or won't occur at some
time in the future, but I say we are where we are today because of the
action that this President, this Commander in Chief, this Congress and
our military and the will of the American people to not continue to
draw lines in the sand against the Islamic extremists, in this
instance, of course, al Qaeda.
But we had been attacked before, and last week when we talked about
this, you know, you can enumerate date time and event, loss of life,
really going all the way back to the Iran capture of the men and women
at our embassy in Tehran, and then after that, of course, the bombing
of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the loss of 241 lives, and the
first attack on the World Trade Center and the USS Cole and 17 of our
sailors killed in that attack. And what did we do? You say you better
not do that again.
As my colleague from Iowa, and I think all of my colleagues, our
colleagues on both sides of the aisle understand, at some point you
have got to show some real courage and respond in the appropriate
manner, and that is indeed exactly what we have done.
It starts, of course, with the PATRIOT Act and the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security and the detention of these enemy
combatants that have been caught on the field of battle in Afghanistan.
Those people are not detained, whether it is at Guantanamo or these so-
called secret prisons in Eastern Europe, they are not detained because
they were caught jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk, Madam Speaker.
These were enemy combatants that were at the scene of the battle with
literally their hands caught in the cookie jar.
We have, because of the ability to interrogate them in a humane
fashion, a tough fashion, we have been able to get actionable
intelligence, and that is exactly what has led to things like the
capture, actually not capture, but the ferreting out and killing of al
Zarqawi, and finding Saddam Hussein himself and the ferreting out and
killing of his two sons. This is because we were able to obtain
actionable intelligence in the interrogation process.
Now we hear from the other side and all the naysayers saying, you
know, you have got to be kind and warm and fuzzy and treat these people
with respect. I say to my colleague, what kind of respect did they
show, Madam Speaker, to those 2,997 men and women, from not just the
United States, but from a lot of other countries, who were working,
law-abiding individuals at the Twin Towers that fateful day 5 years
ago? They were shown absolutely no mercy.
So it is important for our colleagues, it is important for the
American people, to understand that this President is doing exactly
what is necessary to protect this country. He is the Commander in
Chief. That is his first and foremost responsibility, to maintain
internal order and protect us, protect the domestic tranquility and
protect the American people.
So for us to have an opportunity tonight to talk about that I think
is a great thing, and I commend Representative King for leading this
hour. I am proud to be here with him and will be here to listen
carefully as we continue and as some of our other colleagues weigh in
on this issue and discuss this further.
At this point I yield back to my colleague, but intend to stay right
with him for the rest of this hour as we continue to discuss this most
important subject.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia, and I thank the
gentleman for his leadership on a whole variety of subjects. It appears
to me whenever we have an important issue before us, we have the
opportunity to hear a share of the wisdom of Mr. Gingrey, who comes to
the floor quite often and carries his voice to the American people.
As I pick this up, I reflect upon a number of things, some of the
things that we did and some of the stopgap measures that we put in
place.
I mentioned the PATRIOT Act. That PATRIOT Act, one of the important
things it did was eliminated the firewall that prevented the CIA from
exchanging information with the FBI. Had that firewall not been there
in place, if they had been able to exchange the information, it might
well have foiled the terrorist plot that attacked the United States on
9/11.
So we looked back on where were the holes in our system and we set
about fixing the holes. The PATRIOT Act fixed a lot of the holes, and
we are a lot safer because we have passed the PATRIOT Act.
There was a national debate on the PATRIOT Act. There were those that
came forward and said, well, it is going to infringe upon people's
rights, and there will be people who will have their library cards
examined, and somehow Big Brother is going to figure out what our
reading list happens to be out of a public library.
That has not happened. I am not sure what the concern actually was.
My reading list is all the way through my library in my office, and you
can take a look at that. You can learn a lot about people if you
observe their reading list and learn what is going on in their own
library and what it looks like.
But libraries are one of the top locations to exchange information by
spies and terrorists, because they are such an easy location for people
to walk into and out of and leave information in a specified place
within a book or simply have that conversation and pass the material
and the information there. But also the public libraries that were
opened up that had Internet access. On those computers, perhaps, was
information that can save thousands and maybe even millions of lives.
In spite of the allegations that there would be people who would be
individually singled out and unjustly have their privacy invaded by the
PATRIOT Act, as many hearings as we held, and I believe it was 13
hearings before the Judiciary Committee, I specifically offered a
number of witnesses an opportunity to name a single case of a single
individual American who had had their rights, their freedoms, their
privacy trampled on, infringed, or even specifically threatened. The
closest thing I got was a vague allegation about some obscure librarian
in Texas that no one could chase down.
These were all specious arguments designed to undermine the PATRIOT
Act. If that had been successful in doing that, your safety would have
been undermined as well. But we passed the PATRIOT Act and we
reauthorized the PATRIOT Act, and it was the right thing to do for
America, not just in the short term, but for the long term.
It is pretty impressive to see a bill that was passed quickly in the
wake of a crisis withstand that level of scrutiny after all of those
hearings and all that public criticism and emerge without a single
incident that can be named to a specific individual at least, only
allegations. The PATRIOT Act made us safer.
The REAL ID Act makes us safer. There were at least 5 of the 19
terrorist bombers on September 11 who could have been, would have been
removed from the United States if we would have been just applying the
law in the local places when they had a false driver's license or when
they weren't in the United States legally. We tightened this up with
the REAL ID Act.
There are something like 800 different kinds of identification that
come before law enforcement officers. They do a great job, but there is
literally no way they can have enough knowledge to examine the validity
of 800 different kinds of identification. So the REAL ID Act
standardizes and raises the legitimacy up of a driver's license.
When you think about it, Madam Speaker, when you go to rent a movie,
it takes a government-issued ID or a legitimate ID, a picture
identification. We don't have that same kind of standard, or didn't
have necessarily for climbing aboard an airplane and flying into the
United States or flying out of the United States or flying around the
United States.
So we tightened that up with the REAL ID Act, with an intense debate,
a lot of criticism. Whenever you change things in America, people are
going to rise up and resist. It is the nature of this free society that
we live in that we debate these issues intensively.
It is also natural that the resistance comes up with all kinds of
stories about how bad and how ugly it will be if you pass an act that
changes the status quo. It is also a matter of fact, a
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matter of fact, Madam Speaker, that once you pass good policy, the
criticism disappears, because the cases that are alleged to have
happened do not materialize if you pass good policy.
Mr. GINGREY. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I
just wanted to interject as he developed this line of thought. I was at
a rally in my district yesterday, we did a tribute to the 9/11 victims,
and in the newspaper in Marietta, GA, there was an article, Madam
Speaker, written by a former State representative who is now our chief
deputy sheriff, Colonel Linda Coker, who had been to Israel with a
group of law enforcement personnel to study what they do in Israel, in
that small country of 6.8 million people, particularly in the city of
Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, and what their citizens have to go through
to protect them from these horrific improvised explosive devices and
bombs that are strapped to bodies and folks walking into shopping
centers, crowded shopping malls.
The lesson, Madam Speaker, that we learned from them, and I think
what Representative King is pointing out that we need to understand,
and I think the American people do now understand, is that we are not,
because of what we have had to do, we all wish, pray to God, that we
could go back to September 10, 2001, and enjoy that false sense of
security. But now we know that we can't. And it is not about taking
away our liberties, but it is very much about inconveniencing us.
Madam Speaker and my colleague, Representative King, I just wanted to
point out that Colonel Coker said when she was there in Israel on this
recent trip with law enforcement, she noticed that people there when
they go into a shopping mall, they go into a Parisians or whatever,
they have to check their purses, they have to go through metal
detectors. We fret about that because we do it on getting on airplanes,
and yet they do that even going to shopping malls. But they understand
that is important.
I think we just need to understand that too. I hope my colleagues
agree with me that we can put up with a lot of inconveniences without
infringing on our liberty for the safety and protection of ourselves
and our families and our children and our grandchildren.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia and appreciate
the perspective that you brought to this debate.
I reflect upon some of those changes that we have seen over the years
with regard to our security. I recall when we brought our security down
tighter on boarding our airplanes, it ended up you were very likely to
get a fairly extensive spread-eagle search if you bought a one-way
ticket. That was an indicator. We all take our shoes off now. Those
things happen. There are lineups at the airport.
We are paying a lot of TSA officials a lot of money to make sure we
are safer, and our baggage is going through x-rays and being checked
for bombs. The list goes on and on and on.
I have two pair of nail clippers that they broke the tiny little file
off the end for fear that would be a weapon. That has been relaxed
somewhat. These are reminders, whenever I get the nail clippers out,
that is why that is broken off. It is because of terrorists that
attacked us in a cowardly way.
So after the events that unfolded in Great Britain here in the early
or middle part of last month with a plot to blow up perhaps 10
airliners across the Atlantic Ocean on their way over to the United
States, in that short period after that, when the regulations changed
and they said you can no longer have gel or liquids with you on the
airplane, so that covered one set of materials for the ladies and
another set of materials for the men, no shaving cream, no toothpaste
for either one of us, no lipstick in some of those cases.
My wife and I happened to have been stuck in a line that took an hour
and a half to get through security. While she watched our luggage, I
walked up and down the line and asked people what they thought.
Everyone there was unanimous. They said, if I have to give up some
liquid or gel or stand in line for an hour or longer, they are making
me safe, and if it makes the airline safer, I am happy to stand here.
I am proud of that kind of patience and that kind of tolerance, and
yet I do the equation and I think now a lot more people are checking
their luggage because they want to carry along some liquids.
{time} 2130
And the numbers of bags have gone up significantly since that period
of time. And when you have to go check your baggage, it takes more
time. Sometimes you can print your ticket and get on the plane if it is
carry-on luggage. So perhaps it is 20 minutes more to get on, and then
you have to wait for it to come off the carousel, and that might be
another 20 minutes. Maybe 40 minutes of flight multiplied by the
thousands of people who are in the air. And it has cost American
productivity, Madam Speaker, but we are patient about it.
I do caution the American people to always remember why you are
standing in that security line, always remember why you are not going
to be able to carry your toothpaste or your lotion or whatever it might
be. It is because these terrorists are actively plotting to attack us,
to kill us because of who we are and what we stand for. They want to
kill us because of our freedom. They want to kill us because of our
religion. They want to kill us because of our economic success, which
is why they attacked the financial centers. So while we are giving up
our liquids and while we are standing in line a little while longer,
Madam Speaker, I would ask all the American people to remember why that
is. Keep focussed on the real goal here. The goal is not to shed enough
things out of our luggage that no one is going to be able to bring a
bomb on a plane. The goal is to end the motivation of this enemy so all
of our freedoms come back to us and so our children and grandchildren
will live with the same sense of security and peace and safety that we
have lived with all of these years. Remember the frustration. We should
be a little frustrated. We should be patient. But we should understand
why and who is to blame.
And I would just put it into a simple metaphor. There are thousands
of people in America that lock their keys in their car. Each day it
happens, I imagine, thousands of times around this country. And I think
it is pretty rare for anyone to think why that is a problem. Now, we
are forgetful folks and we do things by habit. When we get out of our
rhythm, we might lock our keys in the car. Then we go get the locksmith
or we go find another set of keys. It costs time; it costs money. But
how many people who lock their keys in their car think if it were not
for the thieves, there would be no such thing as car keys? And how many
people that are standing in line at the airport think if it were not
for terrorists, there wouldn't be a line? There wouldn't be a TSA.
There would simply be people walking, getting to the gate in time to
jump on the plane before the door closes, and fly off into the wild
blue yonder. That is the way it was before these cowardly acts came,
Madam Speaker, and that is the way I pray it is again. But it will not
happen until we change the habitat that breeds this kind of terror.
And this subject comes back to me as I reflect on a conversation I
had with Benazir Bhutto, who was the former Prime Minister of Pakistan.
She came to Storm Lake, Iowa, Buena Vista University, to give a speech
shortly after September 11, 2001. And after that speech, and it was
really an impressive keynote address, I had the privilege to sit down
and talk with her in a casual conversation, and it wasn't casual to me
but it was casual to her, one on one in a private setting. And I asked
her a series of questions, but the most central question was how do we
win this war? How do you fight people that are interspersed throughout
a population of perhaps 1.3 billion Muslims and in there are the al
Qaeda members and the al Qaeda sympathizers? How many are there?
Perhaps 130 million would be the answer that I received that night. And
how do we defeat them? And former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's
response was you have got to give them freedom. You have got to give
them an opportunity at democracy. If you do that, they will change
their focus from hatred and killing to growing prosperity for their
families, their communities, their neighborhoods, their cities, their
countries, and their mosques. Now, that is a very human thing to do is
to grow that opportunity for the next generations. But
[[Page H6410]]
you have to have some control of your destiny to be able to do that.
And in order to have that control of destiny, you have to have freedom.
And this country has never gone to war against another free people.
It has always been tyrants and despots, never people who could control
their own destiny and elect their own national leaders. And I believe
free people can resolve their differences because free people have that
control of their destiny and they want to continue to grow and prosper
rather than live in hatred.
So I was not actually that impressed with that proposal at the time
until I did a series of readings in-depth into the Islamic mindset,
particularly into the al Qaeda mindset. And after I got into that
pretty deep, particularly Daniel Pipes, I came out of that, and I
thought I believe Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was right, that we
really do need to engage in promoting freedom. But I had simplified
this down to change the habitat that breeds terror. Change that
habitat. Well, it needs to be for the good. It cannot be for the worse.
And that means freedom. That means opportunity. And when the President
said that freedom is the right of every person and the hope and the
future of every nation, I believe that. Whether it is in our time or
whether it is in another time, that is the progress that we are making
in that direction. And bold steps were taken by the President in the
aftermath of September 11, when he said that they were going to hear us
now, the terrorists were going to hear us around this globe. And many
said it couldn't done. Many said that going into Afghanistan, no one
had ever succeeded in that in history; that it was too dangerous, it
was too mountainous, the terrain was too rugged, the local Taliban were
too good of fighters, that we couldn't risk our military to go in
there. And yet in cooperation and conjunction with the Northern
Alliance, we went in there. In a matter of weeks, Afghanistan was
liberated. And I recall talking to some Iowa National Guard troops who
were on the ground protecting the voting booths and the access and the
routes to them, about 750 Iowans deployed in Afghanistan. They were
there to help ensure that Afghanis could go to the polls and vote their
freedom for the first time ever in the history of the world on that
place on this planet. The first time. And now who would argue that the
Afghan people are free? Of course they are. And they are making
progress and they are moving forward. And they have their troubles, but
freedom has always been worth fighting for.
And it is something that we see moving in that same direction in
Iraq. Iraq has not been as easy. In fact, it has been more difficult.
The liberation of Iraq took place very quickly, faster than anyone
predicted, Madam Speaker, but in the aftermath there was a lull when
there wasn't very much violence and it looked like Iraq was going to
heal up the same way that Afghanistan did. But, you know, Iraq has
different neighbors than Afghanistan has, and Iraq became the center
that brought al Qaeda to Iraq to fight Americans, fight the coalition
forces, fight the new Iraqi forces because they realized, as Zarqawi
realized, there was no place to retreat to. If they were to lose in
Iraq, where else could a terrorist lay his weary head? Where else could
they hope to have a terrorist training ground and a terrorist center so
that they could gather resources and do their training and deploy their
terrorists around the world? Al Qaeda needs a safe haven. We took that
safe haven away from that them in Afghanistan and in the mountains of
Pakistan. We took that safe haven away from them in Iraq.
Zarqawi wrote a letter a couple of years ago that said that there was
no place for them to hide. There were no mountains. There were no
forests. There was no place for them to hide in Iraq. They had to rely
on Iraqis to take them into their homes to harbor them there. And he
said in that letter the Iraqi people that were willing to harbor and
provide a safe haven for al Qaeda were ``as rare as red sulfur.'' Now,
I never really got an answer to how rare red sulfur is. I would just
say this, Madam Speaker. I have never seen it and I have been around a
little bit. So I think it would be in the category of rare as hens'
teeth or frog whiskers, something like that. That is maybe a Middle
Eastern phrase, ``rare as red sulfur.'' So they were very apprehensive
then about being able to hang on to a toehold in Iraq. But Iraq has
attracted al Qaeda terrorists from other places around the globe to
come there to fight because they know that when Iraq is free, not only
does that erase their place where they hope to be able to have a
terrorist center, but it also shuts off their opportunities anywhere
else in the world because what it does is it inspires the Iraqi people.
When they stand up; when they become prosperous; when free enterprise
starts to work; when the oil starts to pump out of the ground; when the
Baghdad Chamber of Commerce, whom I gave a speech to here about a year
ago and they were just so spontaneous in their response to me; when
those good things happen in Iraq, when safety is established, commerce
is established, and the oil comes out of the ground and the money flows
into Iraq and they become a free, prosperous nation, an Islamic nation
and an Arab nation, that inspiration that Iraq can and I believe, Madam
Speaker, will become will be too much for al Qaeda, too much for the
rest of the world of al Qaeda and the people within that religion who
hate freedom, who hate Western civilization, who hate Christianity, who
hate Americans, who hate free enterprise capitalism because the model
of success would be what will defeat the rest of them. So Afghanistan
and Iraq become the two lodestar nations, and those two together are
the inspiration for the Muslim world.
And as they move forward towards freedom and they want to share in
that prosperity, I would just ask the world to consider what happened
after November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall went down and the Iron
Curtain came crashing down on that day and freedom echoed bloodlessly
across Eastern Europe all the way to the Pacific ocean. Almost
bloodlessly. Ceausescu, I think we have to exempt him from that
category. And that is about the only place where the bullets flew. But
in the end, the people of Eastern Europe and across Asia loved freedom.
They reached out for freedom and were ready to fight for freedom. That
kind of historical miracle that took place in about a 2\1/2\-year
period of time can be that same kind of historical miracle for the Arab
world.
So, Madam Speaker, I want the American people to understand the Bush
doctrine, this goal that we have, which is to change the habitat that
breeds terror and promote freedom so people can choose their own
destiny. And if they choose their destiny to be something less than the
freedom that we have, there is not much we can do about that, but we
can encourage them to be free and make their own decisions and take a
look at models around the world. And the best model, Madam Speaker, is
right here in the United States. There is no place with more freedom.
There is no place with more prosperity. There is no place with a
stronger economy than we have here in the United States. And it is one
of the places that has the strongest families and the strongest
tradition of faith and Biblical values, and you put that all together.
We are descended from Western civilization. We are now the leaders in
Western civilization. The thought process that was descended from the
Greeks and through France in the Age of Enlightenment and over to the
United States at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, that
dynamic that came from Western civilization coupled with the Industrial
Revolution and that dynamic of free enterprise capitalism that matched
with the Industrial Revolution, was tempered by and given a moral
authority from our Biblical values, those three pillars are what made
this Nation the great Nation that we are. And we need to be anchored in
those pillars.
But I would take us back, Madam Speaker, to some situations that are
just simply facts, facts that we forget about. Osama bin Laden
officially declared war against the United States on August 23, 1996.
He just flat came out and said, We are at war with the United States of
America. He decided he wanted to take us on. That was after the World
Trade Center was bombed, which was February of 1993. There were also
the plotting terrorists there, and I believe that number was also five
of them, that had we enforced our laws on our security, we would
[[Page H6411]]
have plucked them off the streets and they wouldn't have been in the
mix and perhaps we could have interceded in the first attack on the
World Trade Center. But that was February, 1993, Madam Speaker. And
then there was an attack on the Khobar Towers in June of 1996. After
that, August 23, 1996, Osama bin Laden declared war on the United
States. And our response was, I guess we will have to serve a warrant
on Osama bin Laden and make it a law enforcement approach rather than a
war. And according to significant, credible accounts, we passed up
several opportunities to take Osama bin Laden out. It would have saved
3,000 lives then and perhaps another 3,000 lives of our troops that
have been in the field, not to mention the thousands of Iraqis and
Afghanis and our coalition troops, who have all had casualties
associated with this. But I would take us into a perspective that might
lay it out a little differently, and that would be 5 years ago
yesterday, I was on my way down the road to the Clay County Fair. My
wife called me on the phone and said, Turn on the radio. A plane has
been flown into the Twin Towers.
{time} 2145
I turned on the radio, a few minutes later the second plane hit the
other tower. The gentleman with me said, and he is a World War II
veteran, just said under his breath, ``Pearl Harbor.'' It didn't take
him five seconds to analyze what had happened. There had been another
cowardly attack on the United States of a similar magnitude. And in the
aftermath of Pearl Harbor, we went into an all-out global war and we
fought on two fronts, in Europe and in the Pacific, and we fought the
Nazis and the Japanese. And the loss of American lives in that 3\1/2\-
year period of time was about 450,000 brave Americans, about the
similar number of lives lost in Pearl Harbor as there was in the Twin
Towers.
Since that time of the attack on the Twin Towers, this Nation has
suffered not quite 3,000 killed in action. But 450,000 in the aftermath
of Pearl Harbor. If you calculate that ratio or that equation, Madam
Speaker, I think it indicates pretty strongly how successful this
effort has been. And this is a different kind of war. It is a war that
is going to go on for a long time, and it will not be over until we
change the habitat of the people who get up every morning and decide
they are going to come and kill us.
I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).
Mr. GINGREY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just want to
interject, he is exactly right. And his friend, the veteran that was
with him on that fateful morning and said, ``Pearl Harbor,'' that
attack on December 7, 1941, that day which President Roosevelt said
would live in infamy, certainly it has. And as Representative King
pointed out, Madam Speaker and my colleagues, something like 2,400,
slightly less than 2,500, people were lost on that Sunday morning at
Pearl Harbor in that unprovoked sneak attack by the Japanese. And the
Twin Towers was very, very similar: an unprovoked sneak attack on 2,997
people.
Representative King, I was asked recently in my district on a radio
interview, and the reporter said, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, we have
lost almost 2,700 of our brightest and bravest patriots. Is it worth
it? And is it worth it, indeed. Losing one life is painful. It is
painful for the families, of course, and for the Commander in Chief and
from this Congress who gave the President the authority to wage war
against these dastardly Islamic extremists. But it is worth it. It is
worth it because that is the price we have to pay. I think Thomas
Jefferson said a long time ago that the tree of liberty has to be
nourished occasionally by the blood of patriots.
And I think about World War II. The island of Iwo Jima, that very
important foothold in the mid-Pacific. In 30 days we lost 7,000 of our
best generation, our Greatest Generation. But it was worth it.
I just felt like I had to make these points with my colleague and say
that that is why the President says we will stay the course, we will
not fail those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice, and their
families.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Gingrey from Georgia.
And those sacrifices in the past have indeed been significant, and
every life is equally cherished whether it is in today's conflict or a
conflict back in that era.
Madam Speaker, I would pose this question: Would anyone like to be on
the side of the other guys? Would anyone like to be sitting there
without the resources that we have, without the firepower, without the
intelligence, without the tactics that we have, without the finances to
support that, and without the 300 million people that stand behind our
military and the ability to go out and recruit? Our recruitment is up.
One thing that is different between Desert Storm number one and
Operation Iraqi Freedom is that we had about 2.4 million people in our
armed services than at the beginning of the liberation of Kuwait. Now
we are down to about 1.3, 1.4, because in the aftermath of Desert
Storm, there was called the peace dividend, and that is when the
Clinton administration came in and decided we can provide all the money
we want to grow social programs by simply cutting the military. That is
the peace dividend, we are going to grow social programs. Well, a
million men and women came out of uniform in that period of time, and
now we sit here thinner. And I am ready to beef these numbers of troops
up some more to take some of the load off of the ones that we have so
they we don't have to deploy so much.
But the folks on the other side that are sitting there, and their
recruitment, they have got a count of people coming into Iraq that have
watched al-Jazeera TV perhaps, people that would infiltrate in from
Syria and Iran, and their weapons, their munition, their funding all
needs to be smuggled in to them and they have to cower and hide and
sneak around like rats day and night to try to find an opportunity to
detonate a bomb, not confront us face to face, but to detonate a bomb.
And they know that they cannot win tactically, and they know that the
only way they can win is if we lose our resolve.
And at that point, I want to point out an experience that happened to
me over there in the Middle East. This is the poster of the Shia cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr. Now, he is the individual that today I would say is
the surrogate to the Iranians because he is a Shia, because he has been
in here fomenting violence on a regular basis, and he has had his
militia. And there was a time when the casualty rates from American
troops on his militia and the coalition troops on his militia was so
strong that he really considered take up a career in politics because
he didn't have much militia left over there in those days. He has since
built it up some and his militia is operating, although in a restricted
fashion, within Sadr city area Baghdad.
But as I was over there a couple of trips ago sitting in Kuwait City
in the hotel waiting to go into Iraq the next day, I had on al-Jazeera
TV. As it came on, on TV, and Muqtada al-Sadr is a dentist, I think, he
came on television. He was speaking in Arabic and they had the crawler
going on underneath, so I could track him. And he said, if we keep
attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq the same way they left
Vietnam, the same way they left Lebanon, the same way they left
Mogadishu. That was June 11, 2004, and it was on al-Jazeera TV. I wish
I had the tape of that. I haven't been able to quite find that. But I
know what I saw and I know what I heard, Madam Speaker, and that tells
us why we must prevail in this conflict.
The price for cut and run to the future of the security of this
country would be cataclysmic. If we pulled out of Iraq without a
government there that can provide safety and security and freedom and a
tactical position in the world, if we pull out of there before those
goals are reached and ensured, the price will be terrible to the
destiny of the world and the security of the world, and the terrorists
will be emboldened and Iraq will become their terrorist training
ground, their campground, their deployment ground, the place where they
would be insulated from the rest of the world because, after all, if
the United States didn't come in there, if we ever pulled out, heaven
help us if we ever tried back because half of the people in this
Congress would stand up and resist that.
[[Page H6412]]
We must prevail while we are there; otherwise, that same sentiment
that comes out of Muqtada al-Sadr will be on the lips of every person
that is our enemy. They will think that the Americans will lack
resolve. And, in fact, we would not have resolve because if any
terrorist flare-up came up anywhere else in the world, if we didn't
finish the job in Iraq, how do you make the case to go someplace else?
How do you make the case to go to Syria?
And what if Iran continues with their nuclear build-up? How would we
ever have the resolve to take that away from them, to say to them,
Iran, we have decided the date that your nuclear effort will cease, and
the only option to you is try to divest yourself of that nuclear
capability before that day comes. Oh, and by the way, we aren't telling
you what day that is. That is the kind of price that would have to be
paid for the next several generations if we don't stay in Iraq and
finish this job.
As General Casey said the last time I was over in Iraq, he said the
enemy cannot win if the politicians stay in the fight. If the
politicians stay in the fight. And yet I hear, especially on the other
side of the aisle, let's get out of there, we can't win. These are
sometimes the same people that surrendered before we ever got there.
And they are trying to get their prophecy fulfilled by encouraging the
enemy to attack us. And that encouragement of the enemy is costing
American lives, and it is encouraging not only our enemy but it is
encouraging the people around them, the countries around them that
support al Qaeda and the terrorists within Iraq.
And the people that are doing that support comes out of Syria, it
comes out of Iran. And I am starting to come to the conclusion that
Iraq can't really be the safe country and the free and prosperous
country that it has the potential to be as long as Iran is fomenting
terror within the boundaries of Iraq.
But we know the Iraqi people love freedom. They have had a taste of
freedom. And when I watched the way they react to me when I go over
there, I watch the interest that they show, I am convinced that there
is a future for them and they want that free future.
But if we also compare into this the Israeli situation where
simultaneously Hamas attacked in Gaza and Hezbollah attacked in the
north, now, what could coordinate such an attack like that? Iran. Iran
whom I am reported sent tens of millions of dollars to Hamas, because
Hamas, the Sunnis, weren't quite tied as tightly with Iran. So a little
money helped, and they unleashed their attacks in Gaza and had to face
the Israeli defense forces there. And Hezbollah, clearly a surrogate of
Iran, began to fire their missiles into Israel.
Look at the violence that is being fomented, the terror that is being
pushed out of Iran today, Madam Speaker. That violence that in the
Middle East is there today is rooted in Iran, rooted in Iran that just
last month celebrated the centennial year of the formation of their
constitution, a short-lived constitution, but a constitution that laid
out the parameters for a free people. Iran has a tradition of freedom
as well, Madam Speaker, and as old as it is, 100 years old, I believe
the date was August 6, 1906, and to commemorate the centennial of that
I hope that we move a resolution to acknowledge that date. I hope the
Iranian people will be inspired to go back into the streets and grasp
their freedom from the despotic rulers that are the ones that are
fomenting so much terror and so much hatred, and take the control away
from the madman that would continue to develop nuclear weapons and
threaten to use them.
We know from historical experience that when tyrants threaten, they
generally follow through. And it was the British who learned that when
they tried to negotiate in Munich with Hitler. And when they came back
with a letter that said we will guarantee peace for the next hundred
years, it didn't last very long; it lasted until the 1st day of
September 1939 when the Nazis attacked Poland. But Hitler threatened
and he followed through.
Ahmadinejad is threatening. He will follow through because he is not
afraid of anything. He is not deterred by a threat. He has a view that
things are inevitable; and if he can kill enough people, his one
religious cleric will come back, the 13th Imam or whatever his name is.
And that is a radical approach to it all, but he would drive an entire
people into oblivion. And if they get a nuclear weapon and the ability
to deliver it, Tel-Aviv will be the first target, and he will threaten
the rest of the Middle East and he will keep building missiles that
will fire longer and longer until he is threatening Western Europe, and
pretty soon he will be threatening the United States, just as that
growing capability in North Korea has the potential within a very short
time of threatening the United States.
We simply cannot let nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them
into the hands of madmen. There is not a rational regime. He doesn't
represent the people of Iran. The people of Iran are a modern, moderate
society, and they would like their opportunity at freedom. They would
like their opportunity at prosperity. And I hope that they reach up and
grasp that before it is too late, before annihilation is brought upon
Iran by their leader.
And so on this date, this fifth anniversary plus one day of the
terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, on Pennsylvania, on the Pentagon,
I wish, Madam Speaker, to thank and give gratitude to our military men
and women who have so selflessly served with great courage, great
bravery, great fortitude in a foreign land.
The safety that the American people have been able to enjoy over the
last 5 years are to the credit also of our emergency personnel and our
intelligence system that is there and the security that is put in
place. There has been a good network, Madam Speaker, and we need to be
ever vigilant and ever increasing our network. There are places where
we are vulnerable, and we are working to bring that vulnerability under
control. But over the last 5 years we have a lot to be thankful for. We
are a prosperous Nation. We have recovered from this.
I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
{time} 2200
Mr. GINGREY. I realize the time is drawing to a close in this hour,
but I wanted to point out, Madam Speaker, to our colleagues, that of
course tomorrow on the floor of this House we will have 4 hours of
debate on a resolution, a House Resolution, recognizing these men and
women that Representative King just referred to, and I am talking about
the first responders.
We all honored them yesterday across this Nation, the 350-something
firefighters that lost their lives on 9/11 as they charged into those
burning towers. I am sure that none of them thought for a moment about
their own safety. They just knew that there were men and women,
possibly children in those buildings that needed to be rescued.
So, again, I hope tomorrow we will have a unanimous vote on that
resolution, and I look forward to being a part of that.
____________________