[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 41 (Friday, March 9, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H2381-H2390]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         MANNER OF CONDUCTING PROCEEDINGS IN THE 110TH CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, we have had I think a very eventful 
week here this week and accomplished a significant amount and had some 
intense debates here on the floor of this Congress. In my time here and 
in anybody's memory here, I don't think anyone remembers a time that 
there have been three motions to recommit that have actually succeeded 
and attached that new policy on to the bill that was prepared for final 
passage here on the floor. That makes it an eventful week.
  Madam Speaker, I reflect here that at the beginning of the 110th 
Congress there were a lot of objections to a scoreboard vote board that 
was kept open when Republicans were in charge for the sake of being 
able to allow people to change their votes until everyone was 
satisfied. There were strong and loud and vociferous complaints to 
keeping that board open when it was the Republicans in charge.
  I am not here to make a loud, vociferous objection to the Democrats 
keeping the board open, but I am here to point out that the shoe is on 
the other foot today, and today this motion to recommit went up on the 
board, and it had 147 Democrats that voted ``no'' on the motion to 
recommit.
  The motion to recommit, what it did was said that no individual who 
has been issued a transportation worker identification card may board a 
maritime vessel if the individual has been convicted of or found not 
guilty by reason of insanity in a civilian or military jurisdiction of 
any of the following felonies. In other words, nobody is going to be 
boarding a maritime vessel if they are guilty of these crimes: 
espionage or conspiracy, sedition or conspiracy to commit sedition, 
treason,

[[Page H2382]]

and a number of other crimes along through the list one can imagine, 
distribution, manufacture, purchase receipt, dealing with explosives. 
In other words, terrorists, people who have been identified as 
terrorists, convicted as terrorists. The motion to recommit said no one 
will be boarding a maritime vessel that has those things on their 
record.
  Upon the first vote that was up there, the peak came out to be 247 
Democrats voting against a motion that would block those who have 
committed those violent crimes, those crimes against this country. Then 
the board was left open, and as minutes went by, and I didn't watch my 
watch, but I am going to suspect it was 20 to 25 minutes, I watched 
Democrats vote their convictions and then began to adjust to their 
convictions, and 111 Members changed their vote here, getting down from 
147 that voted ``no'' to 56 that voted ``no,'' and final passage became 
359 to 56 on the passage of the motion to recommit.
  So I point out that sometimes that criticism that comes when you are 
in the minority doesn't seem like when the shoe is on the other foot 
that the rules you claim should apply are the ones that actually apply 
when you find yourself in a position of making the rules.
  I would point also out that the circumstance before the Rules 
Committee, since that word came out of my mouth, Madam Speaker, and in 
the Rules Committee, we brought rules before, there were rules that 
were brought before this full Congress and approved for the 110th 
Congress. This was going to be a 110th Congress with a new majority and 
a new Speaker and there was going to be sunshine on everything we did. 
There was going to be a level of integrity in the process that was 
here. There were great objections to the process we had, and there was 
going to be a change, a new era in government, which means more 
openness, more honesty, more reporting.
  But written into the rule was an exemption for the Rules Committee, 
so they are not required to report the recorded votes within the Rules 
Committee.
  Now, how is it that here we are a more open government, but we are 
writing in provisions that allow for more secrecy? And that is the 
fact, Madam Speaker. That is the fact that came before this Congress. 
That is the fact that many of us voted against on the rules package. 
That is the amendment that I brought before the Rules Committee a 
couple of days ago.
  What is ironic about that is that I have to go and appeal to the same 
people that want the secrecy and ask them if they will let me have a 
vote here on the floor about taking away the secrecy they have assigned 
themselves. Of course, the people that sat in judgment, that assigned 
themselves the secrecy, said, no, we won't allow a debate on it; we 
won't allow a vote on it. We are going to maintain the secrecy. And, by 
the way, it was offensive to them to have anyone raise the issue that 
they should be required to report the votes of the Rules Committee when 
there is a recorded vote.
  So that amendment was denied. The American people were denied a 
debate. They were denied a vote and denied an opportunity to even judge 
whether this is a more open process or whether it has become a more 
closed process.
  But I think these two instances that I brought up just this week, 
Madam Speaker, illustrate that the process is not more open, it is not 
cleaner, it is not with more sunshine on it, and it is not more 
reflective of the representation here in this Congress. There are other 
instances as well as I could go on, but I think that suffices to make 
my point.
  Madam Speaker, I came here to talk about another issue that has been 
rolled out in the media yesterday and today, this issue of the 
supplemental appropriations bill that the President has asked for in 
order to fund our troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
  The President has made a request so that we can provide adequate 
materials, supplies, training and equipment and munitions to our 
military that are on the front lines who put their lives on the line 
for our freedom. I am pledged to uphold that support for them. But what 
I see come out, at least with the report of the news with regard to the 
supplemental, has so many strings attached. This is an unprecedented 
attempt on the part of Congress to micromanage a shooting war.
  Our Founding Fathers understood this, and they declared in the 
Constitution that the President is the Commander in Chief. They didn't 
write in the Constitution that the President will be presiding over a 
committee of 435 Members of Congress on the House side and 100 Senators 
on the Senate side and they shall be a committee that will micromanage 
the nuances of a war.
  The Founding Fathers knew that you could not fight a war on 
consensus, that you can't fight it on majority vote. You have to have a 
Commander in Chief who is in charge. That was a clear understanding of 
history and human nature. It was reflected by our Founding Fathers into 
our Constitution, Madam Speaker. And yet to this day, I don't know how 
many Members of this Congress even understand how the Constitution 
controls the things that they do, even though every single one of us 
takes an oath to this Constitution at the beginning of every Congress.
  Every 2 years we stand up and we say: ``I pledge to uphold the 
Constitution of the United States.'' I do so here on the floor. I make 
that oath on a Bible.

                              {time}  1500

  Most don't because it is hard to remember to bring the Bible with you 
on that day, but most do go over and have their picture taken 
ceremonially with their hand on the Bible. Well, I do both if I've got 
the time, but the one I don't miss is I bring the Bible to the floor 
and I take that oath, ``so help me God,'' to uphold this Constitution.
  And if it is inconvenient to have a provision in the Constitution, we 
have to live with it until it becomes so inconvenient that we are 
willing to amend it. But we do not have the authority here in this 
Congress to amend the Constitution, neither does the Supreme Court and 
neither does the commander in chief. The people of America have to 
ratify an amendment to the Constitution. And that is how the Founders 
saw it because they understood they were not creating a democracy, 
Madam Speaker. And if anybody is teaching out there in the classes of 
civics and government that go on all over America in nearly every 
school in America that we are blessed to be born and live in a 
democracy, I have to say, Madam Speaker, that is an erroneous lesson to 
be teaching our young people and to be perpetuating through the adults. 
And, in fact, a lot of the people in this Congress still believe this 
is a democracy.
  Well, when Benjamin Franklin stepped out of the Constitutional 
Congress he was asked by a lady on the streets, ``What have you 
produced?'' And his answer was, ``A republic, Madam, if you can keep 
it.'' And that is what we have. We have a constitutional republic 
because our Founders understood that if you went to the pure democracy 
form, and they studied the democracies of the city-states in Greece; in 
fact, I have been there to see the displays at the National Archives of 
the pottery that the Greeks had and their method of voting demagogues 
out of the city and banishing them for 7 years. And some of that system 
is still within our Greek system on our universities today.
  The Greeks identified a demagogue as someone who was so skilled with 
their rhetoric, so moving and passionate in their delivery of their 
oratorical speeches, that they could move the masses by emotion rather 
than rationale. So they banished the demagogues from their city-states 
because it sent them down the path of emotion rather than deductive 
reasoning.
  So the Founders understood that we didn't need to have the masses 
moving by emotion; they understood that the definition of a democracy 
was two wolves and a sheep taking a vote on what's for dinner. Majority 
rules; guess who's for dinner?
  They wrote rights into our Constitution and into the Bill of Rights 
because they understood human nature, and they knew there had to be 
protections in place higher than a majority vote, higher than being in 
the majority. There had to be guaranteed constitutional rights for all 
citizens in this country on equal standing, drafted in, plugged into 
the Bill of Rights and ratified by the several States, and now

[[Page H2383]]

ratified by all of the States, the 50 States in the Union. Those 
guarantees must be in place.
  This Constitution, Madam Speaker, means something. And the language 
in this Constitution means what it says. The text of this language 
means what it meant, means what it was understood to be when it was 
ratified. And if it is inconvenient or if we disagree with the 
fundamentals, we should amend it. We shouldn't ignore it.
  This Constitution grants Congress, this body in particular I am 
speaking to, but also the Senate as well, only two authorities when it 
comes to war; number one is, first, I will state it again, the 
President is the commander in chief of all Armed Services. We didn't 
have an Air Force then, but that is implied. So that is the standard, 
Madam Speaker.
  And then the Constitution grants Congress two different authorities 
when it comes to war: Number one, the authority to declare war. That 
has happened several times in our history, but the last time it 
happened was in the beginning of World War II.
  The second constitutional authority Congress has is to fund the war. 
But what we are seeing come out of the Democrat side of this is to 
micromanage the war in such a way that they can squeeze down and 
constrict the commander in chief's authority and responsibility to 
conduct war. And that can only end in disaster for our troops and 
disaster for the destiny of our country.
  But we do not have that authority to micromanage. We can appropriate 
to the Department of Defense. We can appropriate to the Department of 
Homeland Security and some other lesser departments within the fringes. 
But we don't have the authority to micromanage.
  I am going to go further, Madam Speaker, and take this position, that 
if this Congress should decide that building a bunch of ICBM missiles 
and placing them in places, say, across the polar ice cap are a high 
priority and they appropriated the money for that and we found out that 
we were in a shooting war that flared up maybe in six different places 
in the world and we needed to spend that money for armored Humvees and 
bullet-proof vests and more M-4 machine guns or more surveillance 
equipment, whatever it might be; if this Congress refused to change 
that appropriation, I am taking the position that the President has the 
authority, because he is commander in chief at a time of war, to do an 
interdepartmental transfer and prioritize those dollars within the 
Department of Defense in the place that he sees fit because he is the 
commander in chief. Anything less than that, Madam Speaker, is 
something that ties the hands of the commander in chief and the feet 
and puts our military at risk. That is the effort that is coming from 
the other side of the aisle here. And it is one that will eventually 
debilitate this country. This debate has encouraged our enemies and has 
diminished our ability to succeed.
  And so if we look back at history, I don't believe there has been any 
time in history that this constitutional principle that I have laid out 
here has been challenged and been taken to court. And even then, I 
wonder how the Supreme Court would come down on this. But there were 
times back in 1973, 1974 and 1975, at least 2 of those 3 years, if not 
3 of those 3 years, when Congress put strings on Department of Defense 
appropriations. And those strings said this, that none of these funds 
and any funds heretofore having been appropriated, meaning any money 
that is out there in the pipeline now, none of these funds can be spent 
in either North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia. And it shall 
not be used in the skies over those four countries or offshore from 
those four countries. So none of our appropriations money could be used 
there by the restrictions that were put on by this Congress, the 
micromanagement of this Congress.
  But the fact was that we pulled our troops out of Vietnam at that 
point. It wasn't the President's intent to go back into Vietnam, but it 
was his intent to provide air cover. So when that message went, North 
Vietnam probably didn't have C-SPAN then, but they watch what goes on 
in this Congress, just like our enemies do in Iraq and the Middle East 
today; they understood that Congress had lost its will to conduct war 
in Vietnam. And they began to marshal their forces and provide the 
munitions and the armament necessary to mount the invasion, which they 
did in the spring of 1975. And in the aftermath of Congress 
micromanaging a nonshooting war, 3 million people died in the South 
China Sea, in South Vietnam and in the countries of Laos and Cambodia, 
3 million people, because Congress injected themselves into a decision 
that was made by the commander in chief.

  But the commander in chief didn't challenge that. The commander in 
chief at the time, the initial one was President Nixon, who was very 
weak politically. And then, of course, the appointed, not elected, 
President Ford, whom I revere, neither challenged that restriction put 
on by Congress.
  So I don't believe we have a constitutional challenge that has taken 
place because President Ford and President Nixon did not challenge the 
Congress when they began to tie the strings in Vietnam.
  This Congress is preparing to tie the strings. And I am saying to the 
public, Madam Speaker, and to the President, my position is I am going 
to uphold this Constitution. I'm going to defend the President's right 
to do interdepartmental transfers of funds if they think they are going 
to tie strings to this. I think the President can ignore any conditions 
that this House puts on him if the money is appropriated at DOD because 
that is his responsibility as commander in chief, not the 
responsibility of this Congress, not the Pelosi Congress, not the 
Murtha Congress, but the President of the United States is the 
commander in chief.
  In fact, I believe the last gentleman I mentioned would like to be 
the commander in chief. And given some of the legislation that he has 
drafted and introduced in this Congress, I think he would probably 
squeal had he been the commander in chief and someone tried to put the 
strings on him that he has tried to put on the White House.
  And I would add that, in the Department of Defense appropriations 
bill last year, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) was able 
to slip language into that appropriations bill that would prohibit any 
basing agreements from being negotiated in Iraq. He stated that it was 
for permanent bases, but the language said any bases. And there was 
misinformation that was brought to this floor. And my amendment that 
tried to strip that out of the appropriations bill failed here on this 
floor, which compelled me to go to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff and ask for a letter to support my amendment, which we put to the 
conference committee. And that letter then was enough to get that 
stripped out of the language.
  That is the kind of thing that is going on; that would have us 
already moving out of Iraq if General Pace hadn't agreed with me and 
made that request of the conference committee. And so the conference 
report came without that language, and we were able to keep our 
operations going in Iraq. It was that close in a Republican majority. 
And now you see what's coming, Madam Speaker, under this new majority.
  And here are some of the bullet points that come up on this subject 
that would come from the majority side of the aisle. This new 
appropriations, the strings that would be tied, the strings that I 
contend are unconstitutional, one would be, the legislation prohibits 
the deployment of troops who are not fully mission capable. Now, who 
would decide that? A definition apparently that is identified by the 
majority here in this Congress.
  There are a list of other conditions in this, but I also recognize 
that the gentleman from Arizona, who has a heart full of appreciation 
for our troops and the Constitution, is on the floor. I would be very 
happy to yield so much time as he may consume, Mr. Shadegg.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman for yielding and appreciate his 
taking the time to bring this message here to the floor and to talk 
about it.
  I guess my curiosity or my interest is piqued by you talking about 
the conditions that are placed in this bill. I will tell you that I 
fundamentally do not believe that you can justify, that any nation 
could ever justify, announcing, while their troops were in the field in 
the middle of a war, announcing that on a date certain in the future, 
we are

[[Page H2384]]

going to unilaterally stop. It seems to me that the illogic of that 
should be apparent to everybody, but even perhaps the immorality of 
that should be important. How do we say to troops, well, fight until 
August of 2008, and then, by the click of a tock on the arm of a clock, 
by the hand going one more notch until it now becomes August 2008, the 
fight is over. To me, that makes no sense. And I think it is important 
that the Nation have a discussion about whether that policy makes any 
sense.
  I would like to discuss it from two points of view. First of all, 
will withdrawing from Iraq end the war? I think that is a fair 
question. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle say, if we 
withdraw from Iraq, if we so called ``redeploy,'' that will end the 
war. Well, I think that is worth discussing, and I think that is an 
important issue. But I think there is another important issue, and that 
issue is, what do we owe to the people of Iraq? And on that latter 
point, I want to note that this morning a reporter for UPI appeared on 
Washington Journal; her name is Pamela Hess. She has written a series 
of articles that, as you know, in Washington Journal, they have callers 
call in. And a caller called in and said, look, this is an unjustified 
war; we are never going to win, all the various arguments. And she 
said, well, I would like to suggest, and she was not taking anybody's 
side in the fight; she said, I would like to suggest that it is 
important for us to recognize that while one can criticize or analyze 
the reasons why we went to war, and that is one set of facts and 
circumstances, one can also look at why we are there now. And 
interestingly, her assertion is one that I have made, and she laid out 
an explanation. She said, having come into Iraq as we did, having 
dismantled their army, sent them packing, having dismantled their 
police forces, sent them packing, having dismantled, disassembled, 
taken apart their government, we created a situation where there was 
chaos.

                              {time}  1515

  Ms. Hess, in her comments on Washington Journal this morning, said, 
stop for a moment and imagine if another country had invaded the United 
States and if they had wiped out our Army and wiped out and disbanded 
our police forces and sent them home and then taken down our 
government. How long would it take before even here in the United 
States we began to see chaos, not unlike the chaos you see on the 
streets in Iraq?
  And her argument was one that I think is the other important argument 
which is not being made in this debate. The one, as I mentioned, is if 
we retreat, if we embrace defeat, as our colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle are urging us to do, and say we cannot win in Iraq, let us 
leave and let us leave by a date certain, my first argument is, we can 
leave but the war will not end. I would suggest they have already 
demonstrated they will come to the United States. They will attack us 
here. They will attack Americans and nonradical Muslims all over the 
world. They will attack us and other Westerners in Europe, in Spain, in 
Indonesia. They will attack us everywhere. So I will suggest the war 
will not end.
  The second argument is, forgetting how the war started, what 
obligation do we have to assist the people of Iraq in reestablishing 
the basics of a government, of a police force and of an army such that 
they can stop chaos, they can stop lawlessness?
  One of the ways that you hear people in the Middle East articulate 
this, and the ambassadors from Jordan and Saudi Arabia came and made 
this argument to us and I think you heard them talk, they said the 
United States came into Iraq uninvited; the United States owes it to 
the Middle East and to the people of Iraq not to leave uninvited. And 
then you ask them what they mean by that, and they mean the same thing 
that Pamela Hess said, which is we have an obligation to aid the Iraqi 
people at least until they can get a government up and functioning, an 
army up and functioning, and a police force so that chaos does not 
reign.
  I think those are the two key arguments. I would insert into the 
Record articles that Ms. Hess has written since returning from her most 
recent visit to Iraq that document the things that have changed.

                    Analysis: Loudspeaker Diplomacy

                            (By Pamela Hess)

       Ramadi, Iraq, Feb. 17.--It's old fashioned. It's low-tech 
     but it works. One U.S. unit operating in Iraq has found the 
     best way to win hearts and minds is to put loudspeakers on 
     police stations. The speaker systems are erected over the 
     police stations. The daily broadcasts are 10 to 15 minutes 
     long. They are timed not to compete with the call to prayers, 
     and the messages are written by the police and local 
     political officials. Some of the speeches are copied onto CDs 
     and distributed around town. The broadcasts include Iraqi top 
     40 music; news dispatches taken from the BBC and Al Jazeera, 
     speeches by the governor and the police chief, warnings about 
     high threat areas, and the national anthem.
       ``That's a pretty catchy song,'' said Maj. Dan Zappa, the 
     executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 
     responsible for security operations in some of the most 
     contested areas of Ramadi. ``It's interspersed with popular 
     music. We've got video of kids dancing, hundreds of them, 
     jumping around.''
       ``We have the police chief in western Ramadi'' Zappa said, 
     ``and he's addressing his family, his extended family and his 
     tribe.'' Said Maj. Tiley Nunnink, a guest staff member of the 
     battalion sent by the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab in 
     Virginia: ``It's a vehicle for Iraqi policemen to say what 
     they need to say to the people.''
       The loudspeaker program would be a gamble in a town without 
     a legitimate local police presence. In that case it would 
     just be the overbearing--and clumsily worded--symbol of the 
     occupation trying to co-opt local religious customs, senior 
     commanders said.
       But they believe the loudspeaker broadcasts are part of 
     what seems to be turning the population in Ramadi against the 
     insurgency.
       ``The system's working because the local population is 
     approaching the Iraqi police with valuable information to 
     help put down criminal acts--roadside bombs, building IEDs, 
     stuff like that,'' Zappa said.
       ``Those are definitely the metrics, how does the population 
     respond to this?'' Nunnink said. ``You can hear it in the 
     broadcast. The broadcast says thank you for providing this 
     information. You're contributing to the further security of 
     the city.''
       The loudspeaker initiative addresses a huge hole in U.S. 
     warfighting capabilities in Iraq: Insurgents can turn around 
     videos of successful attacks on U.S. convoys, or dead Iraqi 
     soldiers, or doctored or misrepresented footage of events 
     within hours, sometimes before those events have even been 
     reported to American headquarters. The videos show up on 
     racks of bootlegged DVDs and CDs that seem to be for sale on 
     nearly every street corner almost instantaneously.
       Deployed U.S. forces however, do not have the authority to 
     respond directly on their own; ``information operations'' 
     products and messages have to be approved at high levels in 
     the chain of command. That takes time, and by the time the 
     message is approved, the story has moved on. Score one for 
     the adversary.
       ``I have the power to call in a lethal air strike but not 
     to respond to an insurgent video,'' one senior U.S. commander 
     told UPI this week.
       ``We've been getting our butt kicked by the (local) 
     media,'' Zappa said. ``There would be an incident when they 
     would blow up a Humvee and kill two Marines and wound 
     civilians, and they would turn that around and say that we 
     wounded the civilians.''
       ``That's how information travels out here, by word of 
     mouth,'' Nunnink said. ``So the question was, how are we 
     going to compete with that?''
       Ramadi is notorious as one of the bloodiest battlefields 
     for U.S. forces.
       ``There are local Iraqis doing great things for the 
     community, innocent civilians, heroes, trying to put down the 
     insurgents,'' said Zappa, a native of Pittsburgh. ``They are 
     out there but they don't have the ability to get the voice 
     that the insurgents do. So that population sitting on the 
     fence doesn't know, doesn't understand because they are not 
     in receive mode of that information.''
       For the last four years, U.S. forces have tried hosting 
     daily radio shows or cobbling together television broadcasts 
     to try to win the loyalty of the people. They hand out flyers 
     promising additional reconstruction funds if violence ebbs. 
     None of the delivery methods are really ideal for this 
     culture; the flyers go unread, the television and radio 
     require a recalcitrant public to actively tune in to listen. 
     But one thing everyone listens to is the booming call to 
     prayers from the local mosque's loudspeakers, five times a 
     day, plus a sermon on Friday.
       Zappa and Nunnink and several other headquarters officers 
     meet weekly to discuss the ``non-kinetic'' campaign--that is, 
     all the non-lethal activities the battalion conducts.
       ``Our approach was what can we do that is gonna be more 
     effective. We can kill bad guys all day but you're never 
     gonna kill enough of them; They are always gonna create more. 
     So we ask, what do the people really need? What's gonna give 
     a tactical advantage? What's gonna get the Iraqi army, get 
     the police out there? These are the things that drove us,'' 
     Zappa said.
       ``We realized the opportunity was here if we could convince 
     people the insurgency is not supporting them, it was 
     destroying their city . . . it was just offering chaos, and 
     capitalize on that, and the little successes that

[[Page H2385]]

     these (Iraqi police) guys were bringing to the table.''
       It was in one of these meetings they came up with the 
     notion of a loudspeaker campaign of their own.

                    Analysis: The U.S. War of Ideas

                            (By Pamela Hess)

       Washington, Jan. 5.--As the ``global war on terrorism'' 
     enters its sixth year, the United States government is 
     beginning to rethink its approach to the larger battle--the 
     so-called ``war of ideas.''
       The war on terror is, at its heart, a physical fight 
     against extremists. The war of ideas, on the other hand, is a 
     philosophical debate that pits extremist ideology in the 
     Muslim world against tolerance and freedom. So far, however, 
     the United States seems to be losing.
       A Zogby International poll released in December shows that 
     the vast majority of Arabs in five key countries view the 
     United States and its policies in a strongly negative light. 
     In two countries, Jordan and Morocco, attitudes have declined 
     precipitously in the last year.
       U.S. government officials are grappling with how to win the 
     war of ideas, and some are embracing fresh conclusions: that 
     U.S. actions speak louder than any propaganda it can put 
     forth; that the promotion of democracy should be a sidecar to 
     providing humanitarian aid and economic development in the 
     Arab world; and acceptance that the United States has only a 
     peripheral role to play in the core philosophical debate 
     central to the war of ideas.
       ``I think we have to think about influencing people. The 
     way we influence people is not just what we say, but by what 
     we do and who we are,'' a Pentagon official closely involved 
     in the Defense Department's piece of the war of ideas, told 
     UPI last month. ``It is not primarily about messaging.'' For 
     40 years during the Cold War, the U.S. waged a war of ideas 
     against communism and totalitarianism, and won.
       ``During the Cold War, that was arguably easier to do 
     because the Soviet Union was oppressing people. It was an 
     easier argument to make, and (in Eastern Europe) we were more 
     or less culturally on neutral ground,'' he said.
       `` . . . They didn't really know about us because they were 
     in relatively closed societies. They didn't necessarily hate 
     us,'' he said.
       This new battle is more difficult and requires a different 
     approach, the official said. ``We are starting in the hole,'' 
     he acknowledged. ``In the Muslim world when 70 percent of the 
     people are opposed to the United States, that's a much harder 
     sell.''
       It does not help that many people in the Middle East 
     identify their own governments as their oppressors, and the 
     United States as their oppressors' allies.
       ``We start going in, we go in knowing they dislike us,'' he 
     said. ``It's gonna take a long time.'' He conceives the 
     battle as having two major fronts, and in only one of them 
     can the United States play a major public role.
       The official said the U.S. should not be trying to counter 
     terrorist propaganda. It should be finding ways to encourage 
     competing visions within the Islamic world.
       ``In the strategic sense I don't think we need to have a 
     counter-narrative,'' the official said. ``The violent 
     extremists, they have a single narrative. And I think from a 
     purely strategic perspective we just have to make sure there 
     are other narratives--not necessarily our own--that compete 
     with theirs.'' The debate must be engaged by ``protagonists 
     within the Muslim community,'' he said--probably theologians 
     from Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country.
       ``We know that the (Muslim) community is much more diverse 
     than it (seems). We have to find those people. I actually 
     think we would do ourselves a great favor if we worked from 
     the outside in, but look to examples outside of the Arab 
     core.''
       There are ``individuals who don't necessarily agree with 
     the United States but who don't agree with violence as a 
     tool,'' he said. ``Supporting that is very important. How we 
     do that is the tough part, because we don't want to taint 
     them by virtue of overt association (with the United States). 
     The government is struggling with how to do that.''
       The second front in the war of ideas is one in which the 
     United States can play a direct public role: changing the 
     conditions in the Arab world that feed terrorism--the lack of 
     educational and economic opportunity, poor health care, and 
     repressive regimes.
       ``Look at the level of despair in the Arab world. It rivals 
     sub-Saharan Africa,'' he said. ``That, plus broken regimes in 
     that part of the world--it's a tinder box.''
       The official believes desperate conditions do not cause 
     Islamic extremism. But they are what makes the Middle East so 
     ripe for recruitment.
       ``They are the kindling of terrorism. They are what 
     terrorists exploit,'' he said. ``I think what the United 
     States can do is essentially remove the kindling.''
       Done well, that could have two effects--draining the number 
     of potential terrorist recruits and sympathizers, and 
     demonstrating American good will in the Muslim world with 
     actions rather than words.
       ``Think about Hezbollah or al Qaida affiliates or . . . 
     (Muqtada Sadr in Iraq). What do they do? They don't stand on 
     street corners only getting out proselytizing. They set up 
     clinics, they give out food. That's their way of getting 
     in,'' he said.
       ``If you look at the (U.S. response to the) tsunami, to the 
     earthquake in Pakistan, the earthquake in Iran--that's when 
     we got the biggest spike,'' he said. ``Some of the things 
     that have given us the greatest return are not the things we 
     intended.''
       The Bush administration's emphasis on democracy building in 
     the region is necessary, he said, but likely to fail if the 
     ``kindling'' is not addressed.
       ``I do think you have to address the regimes. But I would 
     say that the second-tier efforts, removing kindling (is more 
     important). It's not just about notions, however justified, 
     of democracy alone. It's more broadly about (developing a) 
     healthy society, a civil society and addressing grievances.'' 
     Moreover, what the United States considers a democracy may 
     have to change if democracy is to be embraced in the Muslim 
     world.
       ``We often ask the question... is Islam compatible with 
     democracy? But we never question the other side, taking the 
     religion as a given and seeing how flexible democracy is,'' 
     he said. ``We pay lip service to the fact that (Arab 
     democracies are) not going to look like us. But I think we 
     very rarely say we ought to revisit what a democracy is, and 
     what role religion can play in it,'' he said. ``If we do that 
     we might be more flexible, and there might be different 
     approaches that might be successful.''
       He is disturbed that pundits characterize the war on 
     terrorism as a clash of civilizations. ``That feeds our 
     adversaries,'' he said. ``The reality is I don't see this as 
     a (rift) between Islam or between the East and West. It's a 
     horizontal (split) within civilizations,'' he said.

                Analysis: Iraq out of Time, Needs Troops

                            (By Pamela Hess)

       Washington, Dec. 15.--A leading U.S. military analyst is 
     advocating the addition of some 30,000 U.S. forces to Iraq, 
     with a new mission: to protect the Iraqi people.
       Frederick Kagan, a former instructor at West Point and now 
     a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, 
     believes his plan to add seven Army brigade combat teams and 
     Marine regiments to Baghdad and Anbar province early next 
     year could establish security in Baghdad by the fall of 2007. 
     While much of the focus in Washington is on increasing the 
     pace of American training of Iraqi security forces who will 
     eventually take on the bulk of the fighting, Kagan argues the 
     United States and Iraq no longer has that luxury of time.
       ``Iraq has reached a critical point. The strategy of 
     relying on a political process to eliminate the insurgency 
     has failed. Rising sectarian violence threatens to break 
     America's will to fight. This violence will destroy the Iraqi 
     government, armed forces, and people if it is not rapidly 
     controlled,'' he writes. ``Violence is accelerating beyond 
     the Iraqis'' ability to control it.''
       The surge in troops, if it succeeds in turning around the 
     deteriorating situation in Iraq, would pave the way for a 
     major troop withdrawal in 18 to 24 months, he says.
       But the surge would also mean an increase in battle 
     casualties, now nearing 3,000.
       ``Short-term increase in casualties is not a sign of 
     failure ... As troops actively secure the population the 
     enemy will surge its attacks on coalition troops and Iraqi 
     civilians,'' Kagan writes.
       He envisions a four-phase strategy in 2007: surging forces 
     into Iraq by March; preparing for ``clear and hold'' 
     operations by June; clear critical areas by September; and 
     then transition control of them to Iraqi forces.
       ``These forces, partnered with Iraqi units, will clear 
     critical Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods, 
     primarily on the west side of the city. After the 
     neighborhoods have been cleared, U.S. soldiers and Marines, 
     again partnered with Iraqis, will remain behind to maintain 
     security,'' Kagan writes in a new paper for AEI.
       The clear and hold operation would be closely linked to a 
     U.S. military led-reconstruction package with a fully funded 
     plan in place prior to the battles so they can immediately 
     pick up trash and get water and electricity working, area by 
     area.
       ``Even large reconstruction efforts are cheap compared to 
     continued fighting,'' he notes. It's an expansion of the 
     tactics used with some success in Tall 'Afar and Fallujah but 
     far more ambitious. Those towns were a fraction of the size 
     of Baghdad and relatively isolated, making them easier to 
     surround, empty and conduct house-to-house searches. Their 
     size and location also allowed the return of residents, and 
     potential fighters, to be managed.
       Five U.S. brigades are currently operating in Baghdad along 
     with six Iraqi brigades. In Anbar province, there are two 
     Marine regimental combat teams and one U.S. Army brigade 
     combat team. Together, they comprise just 52,500 combat 
     forces in a total U.S. deployment of about 140,000. The 
     remainder are serving in combat service support, 
     headquarters, intelligence and other non-battle functions. 
     Kagan's plan would bring the number of combat troops to 
     84,000 by September 2007, nearly a 50 percent increase in 
     combat power.
       Kagan is not alone in advocating a troop increase. Senior 
     military officers who spoke to UPI on condition of anonymity 
     say that having sufficient troops in Iraq to actually quell 
     the insurgency and combat sectarian violence is the one 
     approach the United States has not yet tried. Since the 
     insurgency began in earnest in November 2003, U.S. forces 
     have been playing catch-up, never having quite enough troops 
     to both carry out

[[Page H2386]]

     aggressive offensive operations and to maintain a daily 
     presence in the areas already under control. That has 
     resulted in a nationwide ``whack-a-mole'' strategy, they 
     said.
       When they have come down hard on one area, the enemy has 
     squeezed out to somewhere they are not. The training of more 
     than 300,000 Iraqi army and police has provided a ``holding'' 
     force but their performance has been uneven at best, and in 
     the case of the police, sometimes counterproductive. And the 
     intervening three years has similarly allowed the insurgent 
     and militia forces to grow as well, diminishing the impact 
     Iraqi forces can have.
       The answer, according to Kagan, is a dramatic increase in 
     the number of U.S. troops assigned to protecting Iraq's 
     civilian population.
       To get the number of U.S. troops up, Kagan proposes to 
     accelerate the deployment of the next four brigades, now 
     scheduled from April to February. The remaining BCTs would be 
     extended from a 12-month deployment to 15 months. The Marine 
     regiments would be extended from seven months to 12. That 
     would bring the American troops presence in Baghdad up to 
     nine or 10 BCTs, each with about 4,000 soldiers. The plan 
     would also result in two additional Marine regimental combat 
     teams in Anbar province.
       Kagan would not pull forces from outside of Baghdad into 
     that fight, Rather, he would leave them in place to continue 
     their daily operations--preventing insurgents and sectarian 
     militias from establishing a foothold in areas previously 
     secured from them.
       This military version of ``robbing Peter to pay Paul'' has 
     been played out repeatedly throughout the war, commanders 
     have complained. When they have stabilized an area, troops 
     get called on to put out a fire somewhere else--leaving a 
     security vacuum where they came from and inviting new 
     violence.
       If the clear and hold plan is carried out in Baghdad in 
     2007, Kagan writes that in 2008 the U.S. military could help 
     disarm Shiite militias, stabilize Anbar or northern Iraq, 
     and/or continue the training mission. Kagan concedes the 
     potential responses to an invigorated American offensive in 
     Iraq, outlining each factions' likely responses, and the most 
     dangerous short- and long-term scenarios, along with a plan 
     to counter them.
       Kagan also says the U.S. Army and Marine Corps must add at 
     least 60,000 troops to their pay roll in the next two years 
     and the increase must be permanent.
       It is ``vital to offset increased demand on the ground 
     forces in Iraq, and vital to provide strategic options in 
     many scenarios beyond Iraq,'' he writes.
       Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker said Thursday 
     that the most the Army can hope to recruit above the 80,000 a 
     year it does now is 6,000 to 7,000 additional soldiers. 
     Marine Corps officials believe they can add another 2,000 
     additional recruits annually. However, the Army and Marine 
     Corps could likely retain far greater numbers of troops than 
     they currently do. Re-enlistments and extensions are at all 
     time highs, particularly among combat units deployed to Iraq.
       Schoomaker also warned that if he does not get additional 
     troops, and more freedom to use reservists to fill out the 
     force, the Army is in danger of ``breaking.''
       Kagan says his plan will not break the Army: only four 
     units would be accelerated to Iraq, and they were tapped to 
     go anyway. Moreover, no unit will have less than a year 
     between deployments under his plan.
       ``Losing now will certainly break the force,'' Kagan 
     writes.
       Kagan could not be immediately reached for comment. An AEI 
     spokeswoman said he was at a White House briefing.

  As I mentioned, she has written a series of these articles. She went 
to Iraq, as she explained this morning on Washington Journal, to look 
at the question of how is it that our troops in Iraq feel they have 
such an important mission, feel they are accomplishing things. She 
mentioned that this was her third, I believe, visit to Iraq, and she 
said, this time, more than either of the two visits, she felt like our 
troops were more engaged, working more closely with the Iraqi people, 
felt a greater kinship with the Iraqi people, and felt like they were 
making progress.
  Her purpose was to say, well, this must be just a myth. It must not 
be true that our troops are really feeling like they are accomplishing 
something; they are just parroting words given to them from the 
commanders and higher up.
  But her pitch this morning was that is not true; that in point of 
fact, the thing that has changed was in part the attitude of our troops 
and the enhanced ability of our troops who have now been deployed there 
two or three times to speak Arabic, but also that the attitude of the 
Iraqi people has changed. She talked about how the Iraqi people are now 
rising up, resisting the violence, fighting back on their own and 
engaged in this battle in a way in which she had not seen before.
  I believe this supplemental is extremely important to our Nation. I 
believe our confrontation with radical, militant Islam is the single 
most important confrontation we will face probably in my lifetime. I 
think back about the threat to world peace posed by communism, which is 
the threat I grew up with as a child, and I have to evaluate that 
threat versus the threat we now face with radical, militant Islam.
  I have begun to read some of the writings on radical, militant Islam 
and what they want. I would commend to anyone who cares about this 
issue a book by a Yale professor by the name of Mary Habeck. Professor 
Habeck came and spoke, I think you know, to the bipartisan caucus on 
anti-terrorism and I heard her. I was very impressed. She has written a 
book called, ``Knowing the Enemy,'' and that book goes into detail on 
how the radical Islamic wing, the jihadi wing of the Islam faith, 
strays from the Koran, and how at times they have twisted the Koran, at 
least in her opinion, and have come to this conclusion that they must 
reestablish the caliphate, they must stay at a constant state of war, 
they want to not only reestablish the caliphate in its historical 
areas, but then expand it and at least require that every nation in the 
world be under the domination of radical Islam; and that everybody 
there has to at least be offered the opportunity to live under radical 
Islam. Then the question of whether or not they have to kill you if you 
do not remains on the table, but it is an excellent book, and I would 
urge that people read it. The other book that I would say people should 
read is a book called, ``America Alone,'' by Mark Steyn.
  Again, I think the challenge we face from radical Islam and its 
confrontation of Western society, ours here in America, Japan, Germany, 
France, Italy, Britain, is the single most important confrontation, 
single most important challenge of our lifetimes for us, for our 
children, for our grandchildren.
  I understand the frustration of my colleagues who want us to get out 
and get out as quickly as we can. It breaks my heart. I have been there 
three times. I have seen grave errors made in the conduct of the war. I 
am troubled by the conduct of the war. I am embarrassed by our conduct 
of the war at times, but that does not answer the fundamental question. 
The fundamental question is: Can we leave? If we leave, does the war 
stop? If we leave, does it instead get worse?
  I would suggest that if we leave Iraq, if we decide we cannot win 
there now, if we follow what the current draft supplemental proffered 
this week by the other side says and say in August of 2008, we are out 
no matter what, I think things do not get better. I would suggest that 
what happens is that the radical jihadi now in Iraq seeking to kill us 
there simply pick up their stakes, jump in a pick-up truck and head to 
Afghanistan, and suddenly we are fighting the same fight in 
Afghanistan.
  I heard my colleagues on the floor and in the statement say we should 
be fighting in Afghanistan, and that is a serious fight, and the 
Taliban and the insurgency are re-arising in their battle and their 
challenge to us. I agree with them about that. But the problem is, what 
have we gained if we just moved the fight from Iraq to Afghanistan? And 
are we willing to stand up to the radical jihadi somewhere? Because if 
we do not do it in Iraq, I would submit we are going to have to do it 
somewhere.
  I would also suggest that before we abandon Iraq, we need to think 
about what it is we owe to the people of that society. Having torn down 
their institutions, having torn down their government, their police and 
their army, what do we owe them to help them rebuild those institutions 
before we walk away?
  And so I think the supplemental is very important. I think it is 
going to get a lot of discussion and debate. I personally believe that 
as long as you leave an arbitrary cut-off date in it that says we will 
be out of there as of a date certain, it is something I personally 
cannot support; and I would hope the American people would look at what 
jeopardy that places us in.
  I think you also hear General Petraeus say, look, I just started this 
job. I need the troops to be able to accomplish it. There are early 
signs we are making progress. Give me a chance.
  I think that is a plea that I hope we do not abandon. I hope that it 
is a plea

[[Page H2387]]

we acknowledge. I would agree that we cannot leave it totally open-
ended.
  I thank the gentleman for allowing me some time on this point. I 
thought it was worth my time to cite this reporter, Pamela Hess, and 
talk about her because she has just been there. She went with the 
purpose of trying to find out are things different, and at least as I 
heard her comments on Washington Journal this morning, she said things 
are different, progress is being made, and the Iraqi people are kicking 
in. She cited vastly better than I can examples of that.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg), 
and I pick up a point that Mr. Shadegg made, and that is about what the 
enemy thinks and what happens if we should pull out of the central 
battlefield in this war on terror called Iraq.
  So I am going to just make this transitional point here, Madam 
Speaker, and that is, I have a date written down here. July 11, 2004, I 
was sitting in a hotel in Kuwait City waiting to go into Iraq the next 
day, and I turned on al Jazeera TV, and I saw the face of this rather 
notorious person right here, Moqtada al Sadr, and he was speaking in 
Arabic with the English crawler going on underneath, and as I read what 
he said, and I heard it sparingly in Arabic, 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. Moqtada al Sadr who has now absconded to Iran to be with his 
cronies who have been funding him, supporting him, sending him 
munitions and training him.
  But the philosophy that he has voiced here is a philosophy that 
echoes back in the ghosts of Vietnam and through Lebanon and Mogadishu, 
and that is, do our enemies take great heart in believing that we do 
not have the will to complete a military task if it gets difficult or 
if it gets long?
  So the voice of Moqtada al Sadr saying Americans will leave Iraq the 
same way they left Vietnam, Lebanon and Mogadishu will be replaced 
should we not succeed in Iraq, and I will point out that Prime Minister 
Maliki stood right back here at this microphone some months ago, and he 
said, if this war against terrorism cannot be won in Iraq, it cannot be 
won anywhere.
  Our enemy will know that. We must succeed there on that battleground. 
The al Qaeda is in Iraq. They have come there to fight us. They have 
generated a few more out of the Sunnis there in particular; but if we 
pulled out of Iraq the way the other side would like to see that 
happen, then the battlefield does transfer to Afghanistan, and that 
battlefield in Afghanistan will be inspired by a failure to achieve 
victory in Iraq.
  I would point out that the next poster you will see on this floor 
after such a time, if this Congress acts in a disgraceful fashion, then 
the next poster you will see will not be the face of Moqtada al Sadr, 
Mr. Speaker, but it will be the face of Osama bin Laden himself and the 
quote will not be quite like this. It will be close, though. It will 
read like this: If we keep attacking Americans, they will leave 
Afghanistan the same way they left Vietnam, the same way they left 
Lebanon, the same way they left Mogadishu and the same way they left 
Iraq.
  That is what is coming if this side of the aisle does not suck it up 
and understand that far more American lives are at risk if we do not 
have the will and the resolve to succeed. Playing politics with the 
lives of American soldiers and playing politics with the destiny of 
America just simply cannot be tolerated.
  This supplemental appropriations bill, as it is announced to be 
written, and we do not have a draft to work with yet, is, I believe, an 
unconstitutional micromanaging of the powers of the Commander in Chief 
of the United States.
  I wish to support and reiterate the statements made by the gentleman 
from Arizona when he said with the tick of a clock, the fight is over. 
Can you imagine, Madam Speaker, that a war would be like a prize fight 
and you would go for 10 rounds, or if it is a championship battle, 
maybe 15 rounds, could be 12, and when the round is over, the bell 
rings and the fight stops, and we come home on a date certain, at a 
time certain, without succeeding in a victory? That is an amazing and 
astonishing thing, and anyone who is involved in a guerrilla warfare of 
an insurgency against the United States will know all they have got to 
do is go underground, hole up and wait; when American soldiers are 
finally gone, whether lifted off of the U.S. embassy or whether they 
happen to be deployed out of their troop ships or flown out in jet 
airliners, they would know that then the enemy would have that 
battlefield to themselves.
  The point made also by Mr. Shadegg, we came in uninvited, we cannot 
leave uninvited. That is a profound statement that should be in the 
conscience of all of us, and we have made progress. We have made 
significant progress.
  The attitude of the Iraqi people I thought was good 3 years ago or 
even 4 years ago, and I do understand that their attitude is betting 
better and better, but they are also nervous that we are not going to 
stick it out.
  But if we should leave, there is no doubt things will get worse; and 
the worse that I would describe, Madam Speaker, is I do not think this 
is necessarily the worst-case scenario, but I will describe this as a 
likely-case scenario, and that is, right now Iran is fighting a proxy 
war against the United States. They are doing so in Iraq. They have 
been funding and supporting two large Shia militia. One of them would 
be Sadr's militia and the other one is the Badr Brigade. They have been 
supporting anyone who will increase the chaos and the disorder in Iraq. 
They have not only been funding them and supporting them and they have 
been putting munitions into Iraq that are used against American service 
personnel and against Iraqi military security personnel. That has gone 
on for at least 2 years that I know of and it has gone on intensively 
and finally came out in the press a little over a month ago.

                              {time}  1530

  Iran is fighting a proxy war against the United States, and those who 
attack the United States and provide munitions and funding and training 
have a sovereign sanctuary to retreat to and hide in, and that is Iran.
  I know of no example in history where you have had an insurgency that 
was funded by a sovereign sanctuary nation that has been protected from 
the assault of the troops that have been attacked out of that nation, 
and that prevailing side has always been the side that had the 
sanctuary, not the side that gave sanctuary.
  I am opposed to giving sanctuary in Iran to them so they can fight 
their proxy war against the United States. If we have enemies, they 
cannot be hiding behind national boundaries. We must regard them as 
enemies wherever they are. But if we do not prevail in Iraq, and the 
pervasive influence that has taken place there by the Shi'a from Iran 
is imposed in the southern part of Iraq and also in Baghdad as well, 
which it surely could be controlled by the Shi'as, that would allow 
Iran in the aftermath with their hegemony to control 70 to 80 percent 
of the Iraqi oil.
  If Ahmadinejad has control of 70 to 80 percent of the Iraqi oil, and 
about two-thirds of the real estate in Iraq and ultimately maybe more 
than that, his coffers get flushed full of cash. As the cash flows out 
of his treasure chest, he starts putting more and more money into his 
war chest, and that war chest becomes more and more nuclear capable, 
accelerating their development of nuclear weapons, weapons, in the 
plural, multiple plural, and means to deliver them, which means more 
and more missiles to put nuclear warheads on them, not just to threaten 
Israel, which Ahmadinejad has sworn to annihilate.
  He has also sworn to defeat and annihilate the United States. Those 
missiles would not be constrained to just having the range to drop into 
Tel Aviv, but they would have soon the range to get into Western Europe 
and, not much later than that, the range to reach the United States.
  This is a nation that has a suicidal tendency and a belief that they 
are called upon by Allah to annihilate the infidels. Infidels happen to 
be anyone who doesn't agree with them on their religion.
  So think, Madam Speaker, in terms of a Middle East that is controlled 
by Ahmadinejad and the mullahs in Iran. They set on the Strait of 
Hormuz. If they have that valve, they will have

[[Page H2388]]

the valve at the Strait of Hormuz to control what goes in and what goes 
out, which amounts to 42.6 percent of the world's exportable oil 
supply. That is easily enough to make them filthy rich and easily 
enough to affect the world's economy if they crank that valve down and 
shut down just a valve, it is a figurative valve, shutting down the oil 
exports going out of the Strait of Hormuz. They would control all of 
the Middle East if this happens. Then this Nation would go into a 
recession, probably a depression.
  If that happens, that reflects back to China, because China also is 
out there on the world market doing all that they can for the oil that 
they need, and they are dependent on the U.S. economy. The United 
States and China would be the big losers. Russia and Iran would be the 
big winners. Iran for obvious reasons; Russia because they have a lot 
of oil.
  That explains why Putin has taken a hostile position against the 
United States. He wants things to go that direction in Iraq. He wants 
us out of there. He wants the Iranians to take over in Iraq because 
that helps his world dominance and that helps his power base. That is 
an equation that I don't believe is considered by the retreatniks that 
are writing these line items of micromanagement into this supplemental 
appropriations bill, this, I believe, it will come out to be an 
unconstitutional supplemental appropriations bill.
  I would be happy to recognize the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman. You hit upon one of the keys or 
at least one of the major concerns or arguments that I have over the 
idea of our colleagues that we can withdraw from Iraq and it will end 
the war.
  You touched upon the fact that radical Islam teaches that they must 
kill all infidels. I make the point that, look, I understand the desire 
of people who want us out of Iraq to end the war and end the killing 
and to not have American troops on the battleground dying each day. I 
want that as well.
  The question one has to ask is, is that a viable strategy? A lot of 
people think back to the Vietnam War and say, well, look, we ultimately 
made a decision that we couldn't win the Vietnam War. Indeed, as your 
discussion earlier in this hour pointed out, there were Members of this 
Congress who decided we want out of Vietnam; we are going to cut the 
funding back; that will bring us home.
  Some could argue that with the help of this Congress, we did cut off 
funding for the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War did end. I would 
suggest for thoughtful Americans looking at this today, we are in a 
very different world. To my knowledge, and I have asked this of a 
number of people, I know of no incident ever where any North Vietnamese 
leader had announced that, if we finished in Vietnam and left Vietnam, 
that would be insufficient. I know of no Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, 
leader, Communist Vietnam leader, even leader of Communist China at the 
time, who said, as soon as we defeat the Americans in Vietnam, then we 
will take the fight to them in the United States.
  That is a very, very, very, very different circumstance than we have 
here. Read Osama bin Laden. Read Ayman al Zawahiri. Read any of the 
leaders of the radical militant Islamic movement in the world of the 
leaders of al Qaeda, now thought to be reforming in the mountain areas 
of Pakistan and reasserting itself in a more cohesive fashion; they 
have made it clear. They don't want us just out of Iraq. Their goal 
isn't, if the Americans will leave Iraq, the war will end. They have 
never said that. What they have said over and over and over again is, 
we intend to kill the great Satan.
  You talked about Ahmadinejad. He has given speeches in which he 
envisioned a world in which there is no Israel and a world in which 
there is no United States. How does one unilaterally declare peace? I 
think that is a fair question; could we have said at some point during 
World War II, you know what, we are losing soldiers in France, we are 
losing soldiers in the Netherlands fighting this battle, let's just 
quit, and the war will end? Or had Hitler said, I am going on, I am 
going forward, my plan is an Aryan domination of the world?
  This is a different circumstance. The leaders of this radical, 
militant, jihadist movement have said, we must confront the infidel. As 
you just explained, they define it: Anybody who doesn't believe and 
practice Islam the way they believe it and practice it must be killed.
  I think by announcing, as this proposed supplemental bill does, and 
the language of it clearly states, we will leave Iraq by August 2008 no 
matter what. We have to think about the message that sends. That is a 
very clear message. That message is, if you are Osama bin Laden hiding 
somewhere in Pakistan or on the border lands between Pakistan and 
Afghanistan, and you hear that message, and you know he is paying 
attention, and he has heard that message, what do you think? If you are 
Ayman al Zawahiri and you are his chief lieutenant and you hear that 
message, it is very clear: Hang tight, lay low, go to the cities 
outside of Baghdad, keep your profile low, kill a few people on the 
side as you are going, but don't worry about it, because, in a handful 
of months, maybe as early as next January, but, according to this 
measure that the Democrats announced earlier this week, no later than 
August 2008, the Americans will withdraw from Iraq, gone, finished, out 
of here.

  You have just announced to Osama bin Laden: Hang on, hold tight. In 
August, the Americans will abandon Iraq. In August, the war will end, 
and you will have control of Iraq, assuming the Iraqis can't defend 
themselves at that point, and you can take this war forward wherever 
you want to take it forward.
  I don't understand the mindset of that. I understand the mindset of 
somebody who says, end the war tomorrow, let's bring them home. That is 
safe. If that's the choice of the American public, if that's the choice 
of the majority in this United States Congress, that is something, get 
them home and get them home tonight because they are safe.
  But announcing that they will leave as of almost a year and a half 
from now, and between then they fight for what, is something I just 
can't understand. I do believe that Osama bin Laden and Al Zawahiri 
will understand that message.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Arizona. I reflect upon 
the last time we fought this enemy, and the first time that I know that 
we fought this enemy goes clear back into the early part of the 1500s, 
and I pick it up in a book called, ``Christian Slaves, Muslim 
Masters,'' when the Corsairs, Barbary pirates, would set upon the 
merchant marines that were sailing around the Mediterranean; they also 
raided the coastlines from Greece all the way up along the coast, 
Italy, France, Spain, up to England and as far north as Iceland.
  Iceland itself was the furthest, most northerly venture on the part 
of the Barbary pirates, who pressed 400 Icelanders into slavery, took 
them back to the Barbary Coast on the north shore of Africa and put 
them into slavery, where they died faster than any of the other slaves. 
But all together the history totals up about 1.25 million Christian 
slaves pressed into slavery by the Barbary pirates. This was just in 
the 1500s.
  Now, the first shooting war we got into in the United States began 
right after the end of the violence in the Revolutionary War. We 
finished, the battle was over, and 1783, here in this country, we had 
the protection of the French flag for our merchant marine at that time 
on the high seas; 1784, we lost the protection of the French flag when 
we had won our independence. Between that period of time and our 
Constitution being ratified in 1789, the protection of the French flag 
left us.
  So, from 1783 was when hostilities ended with Great Britain; 1784, 
the Barbary pirates fell upon our merchant marine ships, pressed our 
soldiers into slavery, and we had to build a Marine Corps and a Navy to 
go on and take on the Barbary pirates who were negotiated with in 1786 
by Thomas Jefferson and by Ben Franklin and by John Adams. Jefferson 
brought a report back to this Congress, and that report is clearly a 
document within the history of this Congress.
  It can be found in a report that is delivered over here in the 
Library of Congress, where he said that he had tried to negotiate with 
the Muslim leader at

[[Page H2389]]

the time, and he asked: Why do you attack us? Why do you kill us? We 
have no quarrel with you. We have had a peaceful posture with regard to 
you, and yet your whole regime sets upon us in the high seas.
  The answer he got back was, Allah commands that we do this. He 
commands that we attack and kill you, or press you into slavery until 
you either pay homage or adopt and convert to our religion.
  That report comes back from Thomas Jefferson. Those are the same 
circumstances that we are in today, just a few, couple 300-plus years 
down the line. Jefferson's analysis was, how do you negotiate with 
people who have a religious belief that they need to kill you in order 
to be saved? In fact, in Jefferson's report, the world of Islam over 
there, the Barbary pirates at the time said that anyone who was killed 
attacking the infidels would surely go to paradise.
  He understood them. That is why he bought a Koran, was to do his 
oppositional research. That is what we are up against today, the same 
thing. If we don't understand our enemy, if we don't understand nosce 
hostem, which is a Latin term for, ``know my enemy,'' came out of 
Romans, then we have the kind of appropriations bill that would have 
all these strings tied in such a way as the President can only deploy 
unprepared troops, and then it sets up some standards for that. If we 
need to defend ourselves, we couldn't do so unless we met this standard 
that is created by the other side of the aisle.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. This bill presumably also requires the Iraqi 
government to meet the key security, political and economic benchmarks 
established by the President in his State of the Union address. That 
was January 10.
  Mr. TAYLOR. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from 
Mississippi.
  Mr. TAYLOR. It is interesting, since you were talking about history 
and since you have been using this quote, and I knew this before the 
gentleman got here, but the last time, to my recollection, that the 
United States Congress has cut off funds for troops in the field and 
demanded they be taken out of someplace was in November of 1993. It was 
a motion written by a gentleman from New York, a Republican by the name 
of Ben Gilman. It was brought to this floor by a Republican by the name 
of Jerry Solomon, and it instructed the Clinton administration to get 
troops out of Somalia.
  I just think that is important to add, in a historical context, that 
this has happened before. In fact, Members through the Republican party 
have led the effort to get the troops out of a Muslim-dominated country 
within the last couple of decades.
  I do want to remind the American people that you were not here for 
that. I was. I had to do a little research to remember the exact set of 
circumstances, but I do think it is important to add to this debate.

                              {time}  1545

  Mr. KING of Iowa. I also recognize you are a fair-minded 
Mississippian, and I appreciate that and the tone and the history that 
you have added. And perhaps on your walk across here, you might not 
have heard my remarks with regard to the Vietnam era and the 
constraints that were put on the appropriations bill then. And so I 
don't think that we are in disagreement on the precedence or the 
history. We may or may not be in disagreement on the constitutional 
aspects.
  And what I have done is taken a position that Congress does not have 
the authority to micromanage. And I was not here to put up a vote on 
that, but you can expect, Madam Speaker, how I would have voted had 
that been the case.
  But these micromanaging efforts, and this is a newspaper publishing 
information, would appear to require that the Iraqi government meet key 
security, political, and economic benchmarks that were established by 
the President in the State of the Union Address on January 10. Now, 
those were goals at that time. I don't speak for the commander in chief 
on that, but I know now that we are well passed January 10. On January 
10, there wasn't a plan that had been unfolded like the plan we are 
working on today. And you have to be flexible in a time of war. And to 
go back and pull things out of his speech and say, and we are going to 
tie you to that on appropriations, I think that does two things: I 
don't think that is prudent, and I don't think it is constitutional.
  Another one would be the Iraqi failure to meet these benchmarks would 
mean the beginning of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and will restrict 
economic aid to the Iraqis. Another case, Madam Speaker, of setting up 
a standard here in Congress, and the slow wheels of this Congress can 
creep along. And then we put something in place that would prohibit us, 
prohibit the commander in chief from being flexible in time of war.
  It goes on. Another standard would be, if progress toward meeting any 
key benchmark is not met by July 1, 2007; we will hardly get any 
legislation passed before then; a redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq 
begins immediately and must be completed within 180 days.
  Madam Speaker, progress towards meeting benchmarks, that is a gray 
line, not a bright line but a grey one. Well, we are making progress 
every single day, but I don't think the people that are drafting this 
legislation would agree that we are making progress every single day. 
So, therefore, by their judgment of this standard, that would mean that 
we begin pulling out July 1, 2007, just a few months from now, and may 
be even retroactive, because I don't think this bill can get out of 
this Congress by then.
  Another one says, if key benchmarks are not met October 1, 2007, a 
redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq begins immediately and must be 
completed within 180 days.
  It goes on and on. And, again, this is a huge, huge reach for 
Congress to get involved in the micromanagement of a war. There have 
always been consequences.
  And, by the way, the gentleman from Mississippi that raised the issue 
of the appropriations bill in the early 1990s Congress that said, get 
out of Somalia, if you look at the aftermath of that, I think it would 
have been far better for the United States had we stayed and had we 
completed the mission there; it would be perhaps done by now and not a 
place where there are terrorists pulling into that. There has been a 
long, drawn out war in that area since that period of time that has 
washed back and forth across that countryside. And part of it is 
because we lacked resolve. And part of that is shown right here in the 
words of Muqtada al-Sadr.
  So, Madam Speaker, I would bring up one more point, and that would 
be, we have made progress there. And the progress that we have made, 
some of it is measured by construction projects that are completed. 
There has been a lot that has been said about things not getting done 
in Iraq, and I would submit that I have been over there a number of 
times but twice specifically to review the construction projects that 
have been initiated and in progress and completed. And this shows in 
green the projects that are completed. Along that map, it is easy to 
see that we have got most of our work done. We are nearing the end 
really of all of them. The green are completed. The yellow is under 
construction, and the red are those that are planned but not started. 
Tiny little numbers under the red here. Big numbers under the green. 
Significantly smaller numbers than those that are under construction.
  We have gotten a lot of projects completed, Madam Speaker, and we are 
almost to that point where we can wrap up this work that started here 
in Iraq, that started out with $18.4 billion. We put supplemental 
funding in there. And then a final number, I can't speak to factually 
here on the floor, although it is significantly larger than $18.4 
billion. There has been a lot of infrastructure that has been picked up 
to speed. If you look around here on the edge, these are all border 
forts along the edge on the border between Iran and Iraq. That is also 
the case down along here with Jordan and Syria. We have fortified the 
border and put people there on the outposts. That has done a lot to 
slow things down, but it has not done enough to keep it from coming out 
of Iran.
  I have been to a good number of these projects. Some would be sewer 
projects in Sadr City, Baghdad, itself that began about 3 years ago. 
And under the

[[Page H2390]]

first armored division controlling that, General Carelli, who is now 
the Corps commander there. I have been up here to the Kirkuk area where 
the mother of all generators sits there producing electricity 24 hours 
a day, every day, a gas-fired generator plant. There is work done all 
over this area. We have gone back and reflooded the swamps where the 
swamp Arabs lived that were dried up and drained by Saddam Hussein. 
They have moved back into that area. About 8,000 square miles were 
drained; we got about 4,000 square miles put back in. We have done a 
tremendous amount to improve the environment there in Iraq, and 80 
percent of the violence is confined to Baghdad and 30 miles within 
Baghdad. So why would we be concerned that we can't control this or we 
can't manage this?
  I would point out that, in 1944, on December 22 of 1944, the 101st 
airborne was surrounded at Bastogne, and the Nazis demanded that the 
101st surrender. And General McCollum's response was a retort, it was 
``Nuts.'' The Germans didn't know how to understand that, Madam 
Speaker. But what it meant was: We are staying here. We have got you 
right where we want you. You are all around us. We can hit you. We can 
fire and hit you in any direction.
  And the Americans underwent a relentless artillery barrage, but the 
response, the rhetoric, ``Nuts'' prevailed. And General Patton's Army 
was able to relieve the 101st Airborne. The 101st today contends they 
didn't need the help; they would have liked to just whip the Germans 
themselves.
  That was the spirit we had in this country and our fighting personnel 
in December of 1944. When they were surrounded, and it was hopeless, 
they said, ``Nuts.'' Now we have Baghdad surrounded and we have Baghdad 
penetrated, and all we have to do is maintain stability there, and we 
have people talking about surrender. And I think they are nuts, Madam 
Speaker, to talk about surrender with all of this investment in blood 
and treasure, to be so close to success and victory here, and to be 
waffling and go wobbly at a time when you need a spine and you need 
courage.

  To bring this supplemental appropriations bill with all of these 
strings attached that are designed to appease the 75 or 76 members of 
the Out of Iraq Caucus and the left-winged liberals here in this 
Congress, not because of their leadership on war but because of their 
position on other issues, I think, is a disservice to the American 
people. The American people know how important this is. And the fathers 
and mothers, the widows and widowers, and sons and daughters of those 
who have given their lives for Iraqi freedom and a safer future for 
Americans must be respected and honored.
  As the father of a son who was killed over there, a Gold Star father 
from California said to me, and his name was John, he said, ``It is 
different now. You can't pull out of there now, because that soil is 
sanctified by the blood of our children. You must stick with this 
battle and succeed and not lose your will.''
  As a major from Kentucky said to me the last time I was there, ``We 
appreciate your prayers. We have everything we need to do what we have 
to do. We have all of the weapons we need and the clothing and the food 
and the training that we need, and all of the support that we need. So 
when you pray for us, pray for the American people. Pray that the 
American people understand this enemy that we are up against. Pray that 
the American people don't lose their resolve. We will not lose ours.''

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