[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 7361-7364]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              THE BALKANS

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I returned from Albania just a few hours 
ago. This is the third time I have made such a trip. I went over to see 
whether or not the beliefs I have developed over the last 7 months were 
true, and I came back, really, very convinced that they in fact are 
true.
  For one thing--I have been saying for quite some time--even though 
the President denies it, the President has planned all along to send 
American ground troops into Kosovo. I am prepared to document this.
  I want to put my remarks into four categories: One is the 
administration's approach to this war that we are about to get in; 
secondly, the cost in terms of both national security and dollars; 
third, refugees; and fourth, what our troops are in right now.
  Before I do that, I want to go back and review a couple of remarks I 
made on March 23, just a month ago, to put it in proper perspective.
  A month ago, I stated that I felt if we did not try to put a stop to 
this, we would, in fact, be in a protracted, bloody long war. This is a 
war in which we do not have national security interests.
  A lot of people say, ``Well, we do have national security 
interests.'' I know this is a relative term. You can argue it, I 
suppose, but the people who are really knowledgeable on this are 
convinced that we do not have national security interests at stake.
  Henry Kissinger said:

       The proposed deployment in Kosovo does not deal with any 
     threat to American security. . . . Kosovo is no more a threat 
     to America than Haiti was to Europe.

  I further went into the conclusion that if, in fact, we do not have 
national security interests, it is the humanitarian motivation which is 
getting us involved in this war. We are concerned about it, and I want 
to get into some detail about that.
  There are some things I have discovered in the last 3 days. However, 
a month ago I mentioned that if this is the case and if we are 
concerned about humanitarian problems that exist all around the world, 
why are we not concerned about the 800,000 who have been killed in 
ethnic strife in Rwanda, the thousands who have been killed in 
Ethiopia, the 140 civilians killed by paramilitary squads in Colombia, 
including 27 worshipers slain during a village church service? Why is 
there no outcry for United States involvement in these obvious 
humanitarian situations where far, far more people have been brutally 
murdered than in the current Kosovo crisis?
  Let me share with you, as I did back on March 23, a couple of 
paragraphs from an article in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune. 
This was written on January 31, 1999. This was just a few days after 45 
people were killed in Kosovo. Let's keep that in mind when putting this 
in the proper context, Mr. President.
  I am quoting from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune:

       But no one mobilized on behalf of perhaps 500 people who 
     were shot, hacked and burned to death in a village in eastern 
     Congo, in central Africa around the same time. No outrage was 
     expressed on behalf of many other innocents who had the 
     misfortune to be slain just off the world's stage over the 
     last few weeks.
       Why do 45 white Europeans rate an all-out response [from 
     the administration] while several hundred black Africans are 
     barely worth the notice?
       While U.S. officials struggled to provide an answer, 
     analysts said the uneven U.S. responses to a spurt of 
     violence in the past month illuminates not just an immoral or 
     perhaps racist foreign policy, but one that fails on 
     pragmatic and strategic grounds as well.

  So now the President wants to send the U.S. military into Kosovo. 
Keep in mind, when we talked about this 1 month ago, he was still 
denying that he was going to send troops, and yet now we find out in 
the recent meeting which was held by NATO in Washington that they are 
doing an update strategy--an update strategy, Mr. President. That means 
perhaps an update of what we have previously said was our position on 
sending in ground troops.
  I have to say, the whole purpose for me to be on the floor right now 
is to say I know there is no way to stop this. Once American troops are 
on the ground in Kosovo, we will all support them and do everything we 
can for the American troops. It will be the same situation we faced in 
Bosnia. We will not be able to turn this around. That is when it 
becomes protracted and without an end.
  I will recount a trip I made to Kosovo recently--it was in January of 
this year--to find out what Kosovo was really like at that time. Keep 
in mind, Kosovo is only 75 miles across and 75 miles long. It is a 
place that has been in strife and civil war since 1389.
  As I was going across Kosovo, I had a couple of experiences. One 
experience I had was seeing two dead bodies. These were obviously 
soldiers. When we turned them over, we saw that they were not 
Albanians; they were Serbs. They had been executed at close range by 
the KLA.
  We went on a little bit further. I saw on the map something called a 
``no-go zone.'' I said: I would like to go in to see what it is like. 
They said: You can't do that; it is occupied by the KLA, the Albanian 
military, and they will kill anybody who comes in. They don't care if 
you are a United States Senator or someone from the press. Nonetheless, 
you will be dead if you go in there.
  We did not go in.
  Then we rounded another corner. There was a rocket-propelled grenade, 
an RPG-7, that was aimed right at our heads. They put it down, and we 
went over and found out they were Albanians, not Serbs.
  I am saying this, and I said this back on the 23rd of March, for a 
specific reason, and that reason is that while Milosevic is a bad guy, 
he is not the only bad guy in that conflict which is taking place.
  There is one more thing I will mention with Henry Kissinger that I 
mentioned back on the 23rd of March. He said:

       Each incremental deployment into the Balkans is bound to 
     weaken our ability to deal with Saddam Hussein . . . .

  Of course, this is the most critical thing we are dealing with. I 
happen to

[[Page 7362]]

chair the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness. This 
committee is in charge of all readiness issues and military 
construction, all training. Since this President took office, we have 
watched what has happened with our military and our ability to defend 
ourselves. I am going to elaborate on that a little bit later.
  The bottom line is, we are one-half the strength we were when he took 
office. I quantify that by saying one-half of the Army divisions, one-
half of the tactical air wings, one-half of the ships. We have gone 
down from a 600-ship Navy to a 300-ship Navy. And all these things are 
happening at a time when we do not have the capacity to fund and to 
logistically support another ground movement.
  A month ago, I went by the 21st TACOM. It is located in Germany. Its 
function is to logistically support ground operations. At that time, 
the 21st TACOM said they were at 100 percent capacity and could not 
take on any more responsibilities because they were devoting all their 
attention to Bosnia. The trucks were going into Bosnia from Hungary, 
taking everything necessary to keep that exercise going.
  I looked at the problem we have within the administration in the 21st 
TACOM. This President has cut the number of troops managing from 28,500 
to 7,300. They are operating with just a fraction of the number they 
had before, about one-fourth.
  I asked the question: If we get into something--at that time, we 
thought it was going to be Iraq; we didn't know about Kosovo at that 
time--if something happens and we need ground troops in Iraq, what are 
you going to do? That is in your theater, too.
  They said: We couldn't do anything. We would be 100 percent dependent 
upon Guard and Reserve. As we know, our critical operational 
specialities, MOSs, are failing in our Reserve and Guard components, 
and the reason is that we have had so many deployments under this 
administration that they cannot be expected to leave their jobs. A 
doctor can no longer expect to leave his practice for a period of 270 
days and go back and have any practice left. And the same thing is true 
with the employers around the country. So we have those serious 
problems. Again, this is from a month ago.
  And lastly, I mention, in a hearing before us, what the various 
generals had said. General Ryan, who is the Chief of Staff of the Air 
Force, said, ``There stands a very good chance that we will lose 
aircraft against the Yugoslavian air defense.'' The Navy Chief of Staff 
said, ``We must be prepared to take losses.'' The Marine Corps 
Commandant, General Krulak, said it will be ``tremendously dangerous.'' 
And George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence of the United 
States, reminded us that Kosovo is not Bosnia, and if we get on the 
ground there, their participants are not tired and worn out, they are 
ready and willing and culturally prepared to fight and to kill 
Americans.
  I mention that, Mr. President--that was a month ago--to get it in a 
context that helps me to understand where we are today. I want to 
mention, I am not saying this as a Republican; I am saying this as a 
Member of the U.S. Senate and as the chairman of the Senate Armed 
Services Readiness Subcommittee, with a responsibility to tell the 
truth about what is going on.
  The American people have not been hearing the truth. They have heard 
that the President does not want to send in ground troops, and yet we 
know he does want to send in ground troops. I have to say that the 
President of the United States, Bill Clinton, has a propensity to say 
things that are untrue with great conviction. And for that reason, I am 
afraid there are a lot of people who are afraid of this man, because he 
is so adept at getting the American people behind him.
  One of the things he has said that is not true is what he told the 
American people as to the reason why we were going to get involved. He 
talked about the history, and he said that this is exactly what 
precipitated World War I, and the same thing with World War II. I am 
not a historian, Mr. President, certainly not the historian that you 
are, but I would say there are some historians around who have voiced 
themselves on this.
  Again, going back to Henry Kissinger, no one will question his 
credentials concerning the history of that region and that period of 
time. He said--and I am quoting now--``The Second World War did not 
start in the Balkans, much less as a result of its ethnic conflicts,'' 
totally refuting what the President told the American people. He goes 
on--and this is further quoting --``World War I started in the Balkans 
not as a result of ethnic conflicts but for precisely the opposite 
reason: because outside powers intervened in a local conflict. The 
assassination of the Crown Prince of Austria--an imperial power--by a 
Serbian nationalist led to a world war because Russia backed''--listen 
to this, Mr. President--``Russia backed Serbia and France backed Russia 
while Germany supported Austria.''
  That is exactly the same thing right now. If a person wanted to start 
World War III, based on the model that took place for World War I, they 
would do exactly what we are doing; that is, go in there and say to 
Russia and to China, who is with Russia, ``All right. We don't care 
what you say, we're going to get involved in a war here,'' and rub 
their nose in it.
  Let's keep in mind that China and Russia have missiles that will 
reach the United States of America, and they have every different kind 
of weapon of mass destruction put on those missiles. So it is just 
exactly the opposite of what the President said. That war started 
because the superpowers of the time took each side in a civil war that 
was taking place in what was then Yugoslavia.
  I have said several times that the President has not been telling the 
American people the truth in terms of ground troops and the number of 
ground troops that are going to be going in. I would like to quote now 
to try to validate what I have said. General Wesley Clark, who is the 
Supreme Allied Commander for NATO and our troops in Europe, said--this 
is way back in the beginning, 7 months ago--``We never thought air 
power alone could stop the paramilitary tragedy . . . everyone 
understood it. . . .''
  And just a week ago, Thursday, the Presiding Officer will remember, 
because he was sitting there, Secretary Bill Cohen, in whom I have the 
most respect, said, ``We would try diplomacy, and that's what 
Rambouillet was all about . . . we would try deterrence . . . but 
failing that, we understood that [Milosevic] could take action very 
quickly and that an air campaign could do little if anything to stop 
him.''
  So we have not just the experts in the field, the commanding general, 
but also the Secretary of Defense who said they have known all along we 
are going to have to send troops in. Obviously, they both work for 
President Clinton. And President Clinton knew it.
  I was a little disturbed last week when Joe Lockhart, in one of his 
press conferences, brushed off some questions, and then he volunteered 
without a question being asked--he said, ``Senator Inhofe is wrong in 
that we are in great shape. Our state of readiness is just as good as 
it was back in 1991,'' or words to that effect. And I have to say 
either he is intentionally lying or just incredibly misinformed, 
because, as I said before, we, right now, are one-half the troop 
strength that we were in 1991. I think it is a terrible disservice for 
Joe Lockhart and the President to try to convince the American people 
that we are more prepared than we really are.
  I would like to also mention that the President is breaking the law 
today. I was over there in just the last 3 days, and I went in there on 
a C-17. That C-17 had multiple launch rockets right there, all of them 
hot and ready to be fired--two of those, along with some two pallets of 
additional ammunition, a humvee, and additional troops.
  Troops are there right now within the sight of the border of Kosovo. 
And one of our most brilliant Senators, Senator Pat Roberts, had passed 
an amendment to the 1999 defense appropriations bill where he said that 
the President cannot deploy troops to--and

[[Page 7363]]

 he named different places, which would include this area--unless eight 
different conditions were met. One was that we have national security 
interests; No. 2, why they are national security interests; No. 3, what 
is the mission; No. 4, what is the exit strategy; No. 5, what is the 
cost; No. 6, identify the cost; No. 7, how it will affect readiness; 
and there is an eighth one. He has not complied with any of these 
eight. I say just by sending them into Albania, he has already broken 
that law.
  The second area I want to get into is cost. In ``cost,'' I am not 
talking about just dollars but also national security.
  Because the President has decimated our defense budget, we no longer 
can defend America on two simultaneous, what they call MTWs--major 
theater wars. Ninety percent of the American people think we can 
because they have been told we can, but we cannot. We are not able to 
do that. We are one-half the force strength we were.
  In addition to that, we are handling all of these deployments. We 
have had more deployments in the last 6 years than we had in the 20 
years prior to that. In almost every case, they are being deployed in 
areas where we have no national security interests. So we are paying 
without any national security interest.
  I think it is very interesting to note that, of the great effort we 
have put forth in the air, which has been very successful in terms of 
our deployment and our ability and our equipment, a total of 480 
aircraft were used. Well, guess what, Mr. President. Three hundred 
sixty-five of those 480 were us, the United States of America.
  So we have Tony Blair standing up and making these great profound 
statements: ``We have to escalate the war.'' That is easy for him to 
say. We have 365 airplanes over there. He has 20. I will tell you, that 
is a pretty good deal. ``Let's go ahead and escalate,'' if you are Tony 
Blair.
  I have a problem with all these multinationalist things, obligations 
or obsessions, that this President has. In the case of NATO, we have 80 
percent of the effort right now we are paying for and yet we only have 
5 percent of the vote.
  General Hendrix is the commander in chief of the V Corps over there. 
The V Corps, Mr. President, has 50,000 troops. To give you an idea of 
the significance of what is going on right now with the deployment to 
Tirana, just south of the Kosovo border, where I just came back from--
where you have already been--he is there now full time. And what do we 
have? As of today, we have 5,000 troops--wait a minute--we have 5,000 
out of his 50,000, and he is spending all of his time there. Why is he 
doing that? I can tell you--and I am sure the others who have been over 
there are fully aware--the big problem is that the decisions on targets 
for our military aircraft are being made by committees. You have NATO. 
You have all these other countries that have to pass on targets. It is 
my understanding that even the President personally wants to pass on 
those targets.
  This is a big difference from the war in Kuwait in 1991. George Bush 
and the administration got together and said, we have a serious problem 
over there. We are going to have to take care of it. This is our 
mission. Colin Powell and General Schwarzkopf, you go out and do it. 
These people are experts. They are professionals. So is General 
Hendrix, but he is not able to do it on his own because these are 
committee decisions as to where they are supposed to be able to fire at 
their targets.
  I will just update for a minute. This is as of 2 or 3 days ago. We 
are just now approaching 400 sorties coming out of Ramstein Air Force 
Base. These are C-17s carrying our equipment. You go over there and you 
get on the ground where all of our troops are in tent cities. You see 
everything over there is American.
  I will also mention the cost of this and the three scenarios. One 
scenario is you just send the troops in as far as Kosovo, and that 
would be about 60,000 troops, according to what I found out over there, 
30,000 of which would be Americans. Or the next step, if we went all 
the way and took Belgrade, that would take 200,000 troops, of which 
half would be U.S. troops. Or if we wanted to destroy Yugoslavia 
altogether, it would take a half million troops, a quarter million of 
those would be Americans.
  I thought this was interesting because I found this out when I was 
over there. And I thought I had heard these figures before. The 
Heritage Foundation came out on April 21 and put down the cost of the 
three options, and I found that to be exactly what I found out over 
there. The only thing is, they went one step further. They included 
U.S. casualties and the cost. The cheap way, going into Kosovo, would 
cost from $5 billion to $10 billion--this is the United States cost--
and would take from 500 to 2,000 American casualties. The second, going 
into Belgrade, would be $10 billion to $20 billion. It would take a 
toll of 5,000 to 10,000 American casualties. The third, $50 billion to 
$60 billion, and that would result in 15,000 to 20,000 casualties.
  I ask unanimous consent to have a chart printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the chart was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                              GROUND TROOP SCENARIOS FOR U.S. MILITARY ACTION IN YUGOSLAVIA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                        Number of ground troops     Time needed to field   Time needed to execute
                                                required                    force                  mission                U.S. casualties ad cost
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Destroy All of Yugoslavia's Military  500,000 NATO troops,         6-8 months............  Open-ended............  15,000-20,000 casualties: $40 to $50
 Forces and Occupy the Entire          including at least 250,000                                                   billion in the first year.
 Country.                              Americans.
Seize and Occupy Belgrade...........  150,000-200,000 NATO         3-6 months............  1-2 months............  5,000-10,000 casualties: $10 to $20
                                       troops, including 75,000-                                                    billion.
                                       100,000 Americans.
Expel Yugoslavia's Forces in Kosovo.  50,000-70,000 NATO troops,   1-3 months............  4-6 weeks.............  500-2,000 casualties: $5 to $10
                                       including 20,000-30,000                                                      billion.
                                       Americans.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Mr. INHOFE. So we have that very serious problem.
  I will briefly, in the remaining time, talk about the refugee 
situation. The toll we have heard about in terms of deaths over there 
has been somewhere between 2,000 and 3,500. NATO is now saying 3,500; 
some are saying 2,000. Let's say 3,000. That means that 1 out of 600 of 
the Kosovar Albanians has lost his life, 1 out of 600. If you compare 
that--I have a ministry in West Africa. Three weeks ago, I came back 
from there. In the two countries of Angola and Sierra Leone, for every 
1 person who has lost his life in Kosovo, 80 have lost their lives in 
just those two countries alone.
  We knew this was coming. I am reading now from the Washington Post of 
March 31:

       For weeks before the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia, 
     CIA Director George Tenet had been forecasting that Serb-led 
     Yugoslavian forces might respond by accelerating ethnic 
     cleansing.

  Then when we asked Secretary Cohen about this, he said:

       With respect to George Tenet's testifying that the bombing 
     could, in fact, accelerate Milosevic's plans, we also knew 
     that.

  So they knew it. The President knew it, and the administration knew 
it. I have to say this--and this has not been observed by anyone so 
far--I interviewed these refugees just 2 days ago. When I interviewed 
the refugees, I found some very interesting things. They all said the 
same thing. They said that, in fact, they didn't have any problems 
until the bombing started. I was interviewed by a Tirana TV station, I 
think it was Tirana. It was Albanian, anyway. And they said, What is 
the United States going to do about all these refugees? I said, What do 
you mean, what are we going to do? He said, You are the reason we are 
here. You are the ones that bombed, and that

[[Page 7364]]

is what has caused the ethnic cleansing and the forced exodus.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 5 additional minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have to say one other thing about the 
refugees. The refugees, in spite of the fact it is a horrible thing 
that some 3,000 of them have lost their lives, still when you look at 
the refugees, I was shocked to find out, as perhaps you were, that they 
are very well off, considering they are refugees. Kids are all wearing 
Nikes and were very well dressed. They have the food that they need to 
eat. They seem to be in much better shape, certainly much better shape 
than the refugees in some other areas.
  Lastly, I want to mention the troops. Our troops are doing a great 
job. I just couldn't feel better about that. But I really want to get 
into this, because the New York Times said, on April 13, we are going 
into Kosovo, the middle of nowhere, with no infrastructure. They will 
be naked, an official told the New York Times.
  I went in there and I found that is exactly right. Our troops have 
just arrived there, and they are up to their knees, literally, in mud 
in a tent city. You have to keep in mind that Albania has some things 
that are very unique. First of all, it is the poorest country in 
Europe. Secondly, it is always listed as one of the three most 
dangerous countries in the world. And third, a guy named Hoxha came 
along right after the Second World War, and he actually declared, and 
it is still official policy, it is the only nation that has a declared 
policy of atheism. So we are dealing with that kind of people there, 
too.
  Then something happened in 1997. It is called a pyramid scheme. In 
1997, these poor Albanians, from this country in poverty, as poor as 
Haiti, revolted and they took over the military. When they did that, 
they took over all the weapons they had. What kind of weapons did they 
have? They had rocket-propelled grenades, RPG-7s. They had AK-47s. They 
had SA-7s, a shoulder-launched, surface-to-air missile that can knock 
down one of our Apaches very easily, and they had mortars. So here we 
have our troops who are there in the mud without any infrastructure 
protecting them and with all of this hostility around them. I might 
also add, I was sorry--I hate to even say this--that one of the units 
that came in there when I was there was the mortician unit, so the body 
bags have arrived.
  Mr. President, if there is ever a scene that is set for gradual 
escalation and for mission creep, this is it. I can see our Troops 
going in right now. When the President, who has already decided he is 
going to send in American troops, takes these troops and puts them 
across the border--and we were standing there watching these high 
mountains where the border is--if they go in that way, or they go 
around through Macedonia or some other way, and they have to take over 
Kosovo and get the Serbs out of Kosovo, that mission is going to creep 
into the Belgrade scenario, and then that will creep into the 
Yugoslavia scenario, and let's remember what the Heritage Foundation 
said in terms of American casualties.
  I will say this, and I am not enjoying doing this. There is only 
going to be one possible way to keep us out of a war, in my opinion, 
because the President is going to send in troops. Once our American 
troops get into Kosovo, it is irreversible. One way to keep that from 
happening is if the American people wake up and realize that we are 
getting involved in a war where we do not have any national security 
interests. We are getting involved in a war that is keeping us from 
adequately defending America in areas where we do have a national 
security interest such as Iraq or North Korea. Let us keep in mind that 
in Korea we still have about 367,000 troops and their families. This 
would greatly impair them. I hope we can have a concerted effort and a 
wake-up call to the American people to stop this President from 
starting this war that we will all live to regret.
  Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.
  Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The distinguished Senator from Kansas and 
Pennsylvania is recognized.
  Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Chair. I thank the Chair doubly for the 
double acknowledgment of representation, the distinguished Presiding 
Officer being the Senator from Kansas and this Senator having been born 
and raised in Kansas. If the sitting Senator from Kansas acknowledges 
representation of that State, I second the motion.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may speak for up to 15 
minutes in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________