[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 19008-19009]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                STOP THE $2 BILLION AIR WAR ON IRAQ NOW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, the Christian Science Monitor newspaper had 
a lengthy article yesterday about Iraq and the fact that we are still 
regularly bombing there.
  The Monitor reported: ``The air mission has been expensive. It costs 
about $2 billion a year and occupies about 20,000 soldiers, 200 
aircraft, and 25 ships.''
  The Monitor also said the U.S. air war ``has not loosened Saddam's 
grip on power and is being questioned by U.S. lawmakers.''
  About 1 year ago, the Associated Press ran a lengthy story describing 
our continued bombing of Iraq as a ``forgotten war'' because most 
Americans did not even realize we are still bombing. They still do not. 
Here we are spending an average of almost $6 million a day regularly 
bombing Iraq, and most Americans do not even realize this one-sided 
``war'' is even still going on.
  What a waste. What are we accomplishing? Probably just the opposite 
from what we should be trying to do. Probably the only thing our 
bombing has accomplished is to keep Saddam Hussein in power by making 
the U.S. so unpopular in Iraq. These people were our allies in the 
1980s. They could be our friends once again if we would stop bombing 
them.
  Iraq is no threat whatsoever to the U.S. unless we continue to bomb 
them for so long and so much that they are forced to send terrorists in 
here in acts of desperation.
  The Monitor article yesterday also said this: ``But beyond Britain, 
Washington lacks enthusiastic international support in its crusade 
against the Iraqi leader. Baghdad claims that the U.S.-led sanctions 
are leading to mass malnutrition and unusually high rates of infant 
mortality.''
  Several reports have said that our sanctions over the last 10 years 
have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. How 
would we feel about a country that was doing this to us?
  The top of the front page of the Washington Post a couple of months 
ago had a headline which said: ``Under Iraqi Skies, a Canvas of 
Death.'' The subhead said: ``Town of Villages Reveals Human Cost of 
U.S.-led Sorties in ``No-Fly'' Zones.''
  The story, a very long one, told of several children who were named 
in the story who were killed in different U.S. bombing raids.
  The lead paragraphs told this story: ``Suddenly out of the clear blue 
sky, the forgotten war being waged by the

[[Page 19009]]

United States and Britain over Iraq visited its lethal routine on the 
shepherds and farmers of Toq al-Ghazalat about 10:30 a.m. on May 17.
  ``Omran Harbi Jawair, 13, was squatting on his haunches at the time, 
watching the family sheep as they nosed the hard, flat ground in search 
of grass. He wore a white robe but was bareheaded in spite of an 
unforgiving sun. Omran, who liked to kick a soccer ball around this 
dusty village, had just finished fifth grade at the little school a 15-
minutes walk from his mud-brick home. A shepherd boy's summer vacation 
lay ahead.
  ``That is when the missile landed.
  ``Without warning, according to several youths standing nearby, the 
device came crashing down in an open field 200 yards from the dozen 
houses of Toq al-Ghazalat. A deafening explosion cracked across the 
silent land. Schrapnel flew in every direction. Four shepherds were 
wounded. And Omran, the others recalled, lay dead in the dirt, most of 
his head torn off, the white of his robe stained red.
  `` `He was only 13 years old, but he was a good boy,' sobbed Omran's 
father, Harbi Jawair, 61.''
  I repeat, what would we think about a country that was doing this to 
our children.
  The Post story said that ``a week of conversations with wounded 
Iraqis and the families of those killed . . . showed that civilian 
deaths and injuries are a regular part'' of this air war.
  The Monitor story quoted one man as saying ``Iraq does not even have 
the means to pose a threat to its neighbors,'' and it is certainly not 
a threat to us.
  Saddam Hussein forced us to take action in 1991 because he had moved 
into Kuwait and was threatening Saudi Arabia and the entire Middle 
East.
  But we now know that much of what he was doing was saber rattling. 
His military strength was greatly exaggerated as we found when many of 
his best soldiers began surrendering to anyone they could, even CNN 
television news.
  Saddam is a very bad man who has been responsible for horrible things 
happening to his people. I am convinced that the only thing keeping him 
in power and keeping his people from revolting and throwing him out has 
been our continued bombing.
  We should never send our troops to foreign battlefields and 
especially start bombing people unless there is a real and legitimate 
threat to our national security or a very vital U.S. interest at stake.
  This administration, Mr. Speaker, has deployed troops to other 
countries more than the six previous administrations put together. This 
administration bombed a medicine factory in Sudan and bombed 
Afghanistan and Kosovo and Iraq. The timing of the start of these 
bombings was usually at a time when the President was having serious 
personal problems or, in Iraq's case, the eve of his impeachment.
  They say that those who hate war the most are those who have actually 
been in one, fighting on the front lines in a shooting war who have 
seen the horror of it and thus want to do everything possible to avoid 
it.
  Perhaps it is because almost no one in this administration has 
actually fought on the front lines of a shooting war that they have 
been so cavalier about or so quick to bomb people. Whatever the reason, 
the situation is not the same as it was in 1991. We need to stop this 
$2 billion air war now.

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