[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16603-16609]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           COMMEMORATING 9-11

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without prejudice to the resumption of 
legislative business, under the Speaker's announced policy of January 
3, 2001, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today America is reflecting on the 
events of 9-11, as we should; and it is a time to remember. It is a 
time to remember those who lost their lives and to remember those, like 
the firemen and the police, who gave their lives trying to save others. 
It is a time for rage, as we have heard, and a time for reflection, a 
time for pride and a time for anger. What it is not, however, is a time 
for mourning. That time is over.
  Today, I join with all of those who solemnly commemorate this 
anniversary. Heartfelt commemoration, I suggest, is not enough. We must 
consider not just what happened a year ago, as we have been hearing for 
the last hour; but instead we must find and discover and talk about and 
we must make determinations about why 9-11 happened.
  As a Nation, we are now engaged in a historic global conflict with a 
vile enemy who slaughters innocent people by the thousands and then 
makes sanctimonious references to God. Talk about blasphemy. I do not 
know if bin Laden is dead or alive; but I do know that when he dies he 
will burn in hell, and it is our job to get him there as quickly as 
possible.
  Our President laid down a battle plan that brought the liberation of 
Afghanistan and will soon rid the world of threats like that of Saddam 
Hussein. This is a result of 9-11 one year ago, but it did not start 
one year ago.
  The first order of business is for us to recognize that the murderous 
attack on us in New York and at the Pentagon was not an act of God, nor 
was it a natural phenomenon. It did not just happen; nor, let me add, 
was it just a case of bad luck.
  The slaughter of our fellow citizens need not have happened. It was 
something that would not have happened had certain people done things 
differently, had certain government policies been different, had 
certain Federal agencies and Departments been given different marching 
orders. In short, 9-11 need not have happened, and it is imperative 
that the American people look closely at the policies, the systems, and 
yes, the people which led to 9-11 to ensure that something like this 
never happens again.
  What policies am I talking about? Let us start with the fundamentals 
or, if you will, the fundamentalists. Of the 19 hijackers on 9-11, 16 
were Saudis or held Saudi passports. America's relationship with Saudi 
Arabia is complex but not as unfathomable as some would have us 
believe.
  In the Cold War, we worked closely with the Saudi royal family; and 
to be fair, they were our loyal allies. They helped us finance anti-
Communist projects that were of immense importance to our national 
security in the days when the Soviet Union was spending billions of 
dollars to bury us. Saudi help was vital on a number of fronts so there 
was reason for us then to be grateful; and, yes, there is reason today 
for us to be grateful.
  What they did to help us in the past, however, does not excuse what 
they are doing today that threatens us. Times have changed, and 
dramatically so. If our policy towards Saudi Arabia does not change 
significantly, there will be a heavy price to pay in the future, if we 
have not already paid enough.
  Relying on low oil prices and on Saudi largesse for special Cold War 
projects left us dependent upon them, and who is them, who are we 
talking about? We are talking about the royal family, the royal family 
of Saudi Arabia that is autocratic and over the years has become fat 
and incompetent and in many ways cowardly. However, again, they helped 
us defeat an enemy intent on destroying us, Communism. So we paid 
special attention to the Saudis.
  Instead of pushing for democratic reform and human rights, we let the 
Saudis, and because of their influence much of the Muslim world in 
general, we let them off the hook in our push for democracy and human 
rights.
  In the short term, it makes sense. In the long term, it has had a 
dramatically bad impact, negative impact.

[[Page 16604]]

Young people in that part of the world have suffered under despots and 
crooks; yet we Americans in that part of the world continually talk 
about stability, when what we should be pushing for is democratic 
reform and the opening of closed societies.
  Entrenched regimes, royal and secular, have been brutal and corrupt. 
Is it any wonder that young people in a large chunk of the world turn 
to Islamic fundamentalism as their idealistic alternative? In their 
corrupt world, radical Muslims have been the only ones offering a 
morally based alternative, but radical Islam is not a positive force. 
It is tyrannical, arrogant and malevolent.
  Right here we should note that most forms of religious extremism are 
equally reprehensible and that radical Islam should not be singled out. 
Although limited to a few loud voices, a drumbeat started right at 
September 11 to paint all Muslims as the enemy of the United States and 
of the West. That drumbeat started the moment those planes hit the 
World Trade towers; but thanks to our wise President, we did not 
succumb to a strategy of hate.
  bin Laden wanted us to retaliate against Muslims in general, which 
would have polarized hundreds of millions of people against us, many of 
whom would have ended up supporting bin Laden and his terrorists as 
their saviors. As I say, we did not fall into that trap.
  By the way, just to put things in perspective, in the decade leading 
up to 9-11, Muslim people saw their fellow Muslims being ethnically 
cleansed, raped and murdered in Bosnia by thugs calling themselves 
Christians. They saw their fellow Muslims repressed and murdered by the 
tens of thousands in Kashmir by people who called themselves Hindus and 
cut down in the Middle East by the Israeli Army. Hundreds of thousands 
of non-combatant Muslims have lost their lives due to the actions of 
governments controlled by people of other faiths. So from their 
perspective, Islamic people are no more terrorists than others.
  In the West, all we see is the frightening picture of planes flying 
into buildings and suicide bombers blowing up Pizza Huts in Israel. So 
the first policy we need to change is that which has us tolerating 
dictatorship and corrupt governments in Muslim countries in order to 
maintain stability. Working with Russia, which is now our friend and 
trying to build a democratic society, let us break our dependency on 
oil from unfriendly and democratic and undemocratic anti-Western 
governments. Let us seek out reformers in the Arab and Muslim world. 
Let us demand free elections and freedom of speech and press as well as 
religious tolerance in those Muslim countries.
  Back to Saudi Arabia. Over the last 2 decades, the Saudi 
establishment has dealt with the rise of their homegrown religious 
extremists by ignoring them, giving them a free hand overseas and by 
sending them to Afghanistan.

                              {time}  1530

  Their extremists are called Wahabis. Those folks are on the outer 
limits of Islam. They are the ones who insist that women must cover 
themselves from head to foot. Now, that is okay if women voluntarily 
accept this religious mandate. Instead, however, the Wahabis act as if 
they have the right to control everybody, even those who do not accept 
their particular view, claiming to have an infallible insight about the 
wishes of God. They beat women with sticks if so much as their ankles 
are showing. They feel free to commit violence against people of other 
faiths and to prevent anyone with a different belief in God, even other 
Muslims, from worshipping and living their lives as they see fit.
  This is the most radical of all Muslim sects. Instead of standing up 
to this religious gangsterism, the Saudi royal family allowed them to 
establish their base of operations in Saudi Arabia and to export Wahabi 
radicalism throughout the world, with the help, of course, of billions 
of petrol dollars.
  One of the places not just influenced but under the control of the 
Wahabis was Afghanistan. The Taliban was not an indigenous religious 
sect of Afghanistan. That is the mistake so many people make. They 
represented a transplanted Wahabism. Transplanted from? Where else. 
Saudi Arabia.
  These crazies did not represent the character and/or the values of 
the Afghan people. The Afghan people are devout in their faith but they 
are not fanatic. They pray and are grateful to God, but they do not 
feel compelled to have everyone else pray, much less feel compelled to 
compel that everyone else pray just like they pray.
  I have seen this tolerance firsthand, even in the most desolate 
regions of that distant land. Years ago, 14 or 15 years ago, actually, 
I was in Afghanistan with a mujahedin unit, the mujahedin being the 
fighters against the Soviet occupation. During long treks across the 
desert, the small group of mujahedin fighters I was with would stop and 
pray five times a day. They would get on their knees and they would 
pray, and they would thank God for everything that they had. I might 
add that they had little. We did not even have a good clean glass of 
water, much less the provisions of food that could keep people healthy. 
Yet these people were grateful for everything.
  It caused me reason to pause to think that here in the United States 
we have so much and how rarely people think about how grateful they 
should be for what we have. But here were these people, under attack by 
the Soviets, on their knees praying. But there were many other people 
in the surrounding area and with our group. About half of them were not 
part of the praying during those prayer sessions. They stood there.
  What impressed me is that those who were praying felt perfectly 
comfortable. They were fulfilling their obligations to God but did not 
feel threatened by these others who were not praying and who were not 
compelled to participate. That was the essence of the Afghans. Grateful 
to God, devoted to God, but not fanatics who were trying to suppress 
other people into some sort of religious dictatorship.
  The Taliban in Afghanistan, of course, was totally different than the 
type of attitude I am talking about. And it was not a result of the 
susceptibility of the people to the Taliban's form of Islam as much as 
it was a result, meaning the Taliban's ascension to power, was not a 
result of what is naturally in the Afghan people's hearts, but instead, 
I believe, the result of a deal between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and, 
unfortunately, the United States.
  It, of course, goes back to the Cold War, when the United States was 
helping the Afghan freedom fighters in their struggle against the 
Soviet army that occupied their country. The Saudis were helping, too. 
Now we helped, and we can be proud of that. The Saudis were also 
helping, but as I discovered, it was not quite that simple.
  As I was hiking through Afghanistan with that mujahedin unit heading 
towards the battle of Jalalabad, which was one of the last battles the 
Soviets participated in in Afghanistan, we came across an encampment of 
white tents. These were very expensive tents. There were off-road 
vehicles there. The people were well fed, well clothed. And I was told 
by my mujahedin fellow freedom fighters to keep my mouth shut and to 
speak no English because this was an encampment of a crazy psychopathic 
killer, a Saudi named bin Laden, and bin Laden would kill all of us if 
he knew there was an American with the group because he hated America 
as much as he hated the Communists.
  And much of the support that the Saudis gave to the Afghan freedom 
fighters was right there. It was actually bin Laden and his group there 
fighting against the Russians. And that was their contribution to 
Afghanistan in the fight against the Soviets.
  Well, after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, after the 
mujahedin victory, instead of helping these people rebuild their 
country, and we can be proud we helped them fight off the Soviets with 
giving them the weapon systems they needed, but we did not help them at 
that point rebuild their country. In fact, America simply walked

[[Page 16605]]

away and let them sleep in the rubble. We did not even help them dig up 
the land mines that we had given them to defeat the Soviet army. And so 
little young kids, little kids from Afghanistan have been blowing off 
their legs ever since. And they cannot even treat their young people 
because they do not have the medicines to do so because we have not 
been there to help.
  There was an agreement, however, as we left. It was probably not a 
formal agreement; probably just an understanding to let Saudi Arabia 
and Pakistan oversee that region. So we walked away from Afghanistan 
and the entire region. Instead of insisting on a government that 
reflected the will and values of the Afghan people, we left them in the 
hands of the Saudis and the Pakistanis.
  For several years, there was chaos and fighting. Not as bad as 
before, but there was fighting that continued, and the Saudis then 
unleashed their ace in the hole. We had left, but the Saudis had been 
preparing for this eventuality. The term Taliban means student and 
refers to those who spent most of the war against Soviet occupation not 
fighting the Russians. That was a whole different group of guys. That 
was the mujahedin. No, the Taliban were in schools, so-called religious 
schools, in Pakistan. Later, they emerged from these schools seemingly 
out of nowhere, but in fact trained, armed and financed by Saudi Arabia 
and Pakistan.
  Within 6 months, they had conquered over two-thirds of the country, 
including Kabul, the capital city. But just as it was in Orwell's 
Animal Farm, vicious dogs were surreptitiously nurtured and then 
suddenly unleashed to do the bidding of pigs.
  Just a reminder: Many pundits fail to understand the difference 
between the mujahedin and the Taliban. The former fought the war 
against Soviet occupation troops. That was the mujahedin. The latter, 
the Taliban, arrived on the scene much later. And in the end, the same 
mujahedin who helped defeat the Soviets were our allies in this last 
year in driving the Taliban out of power. The mujahedin, the good 
people of Afghanistan, have stood with us twice. Let us pledge that we 
will not walk away from them again. Let us help them rebuild their 
country.
  Let the record show that I had spent a year trying to prevent the 
Taliban from coming to power at that time. My goal right after the end 
of the war with the Soviets was to try to bring the old King Zahir Shah 
back from his exile in Rome. Zahir Shah was one of the most beloved and 
pro-western of his people. He was anxious to serve as a transition 
leader that would lead his country to a new political system that was 
based on democratic elections; on ballots instead of bullets. As I say, 
he was an honest, kind man, with a good heart, and respected by all the 
people of Afghanistan.
  Instead, the king was pushed aside, or should I say he was kept on 
the sidelines. And I might add that our own State Department played a 
major role in ensuring that this positive alternative did not come to 
power. Instead, the Taliban assumed power with the acquiescence if not 
the support of the Clinton administration. Knowing there was nothing 
more I could do, I hoped for the best. I tried my best to try to 
prevent the Taliban from getting into power. Now they were there, our 
government seemed to be going along with it, so all I could do is sort 
of hope for the best.
  However, within a month or so, the tyrannical ways of these religious 
kooks made it clear to me and to everyone that they had to go. Yes, it 
was clear to me, but I take that back, it was not clear to everyone, 
because the Clinton administration could never seem to come to that 
conclusion, that the Taliban had to go. In understanding who should be 
accountable for 9-11, we must understand that the State Department, 
under President Clinton, was never anti-Taliban. Our State Department, 
probably under the President's direction, undermined those efforts 
aimed at undermining the Taliban. So those of us who were anti-Taliban 
found ourselves the target of the State Department rather than having 
the State Department target the Taliban for their misdeeds.
  In several personal instances I was involved with helping obtain 
medical and humanitarian support for people in the areas of Afghanistan 
that was not yet under Taliban control. I was thwarted by our own 
government. I was thwarted by our own State Department. NGOs with aid 
for Afghans who were in areas that were controlled by the Taliban, on 
the other hand, had no trouble with our government. They had some other 
troubles that, of course, the Taliban gave them themselves, but our 
government was perfectly happy to have NGOs operating in Taliban-
controlled areas but stopping people like myself who were trying to 
help those people in areas that were opposed to the Taliban.
  In mid 1988, however, even with this tacit support from the Clinton 
administration, the Taliban were incredibly vulnerable. They had 
overextended themselves in an invasion of the northern part of 
Afghanistan, and many of their best, if not most of their best, 
fighters were captured, along with huge amounts of war supplies. The 
road to Kabul was open. And who interceded to prevent the collapse of 
the Taliban at this pivotal moment? Who pulled their chestnuts out of 
the fire? President Clinton, personally.
  At this moment of maximum Taliban vulnerability, the White House 
dispatched Assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth and Bill 
Richardson, then our United Nations ambassador. They flew to northern 
Afghanistan and convinced the anti-Taliban forces not to attack and not 
to retake Kabul, but, instead, to accept a cease-fire and an arms 
embargo.
  This is at the moment, and I cannot stress this more forcefully, it 
was at a pivotal moment. The Taliban could easily have been defeated. 
The Northern Alliance was willing to accept a return of King Zahir Shah 
to lead a transition government. Instead, under the direction of the 
Clinton White House, these two top U.S. Government officials, Assistant 
Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson, 
arrived on the scene to convince the anti-Taliban forces to stand back. 
And we thus saved this fanatical, anti-western regime from being 
destroyed and being defeated.
  This later led to a dramatic defeat of the anti-Taliban forces. The 
cease-fire lasted only long enough for the Saudis and the Pakistanis to 
fully rearm the Taliban. And the arms embargo that Bill Richardson and 
Rick Inderfurth talked about, was only effective against the anti-
Taliban forces, which are the people called the Northern Alliance. 
Think about that. We talked them into a cease-fire, which lasted only 
long enough for the Taliban to rearm. We talked them into an arms 
embargo, which was only an arms embargo against them.
  Again, this was one of the major turning points that led to 9-11. 
Later, the Taliban, with their supplies replenished, went on the 
offensive and turned their country into a staging area for terrorism. 
So the Taliban ended up, with the Clinton administration's somewhat 
blessings, of taking over all but a sliver of Afghanistan. That 
portion, of course, that little sliver, was under the command of 
Commander Massoud, who stood alone in the Panjir Valley, a hero against 
the war on the Soviets. Now he was all that was left to resist the 
tyranny of the Taliban.

                              {time}  1545

  This is where bin Laden makes his official entrance. Behind the 
scenes, his foreigners, his radicals, had been there and been the 
Taliban shock troops for a long time. They murdered anyone and everyone 
who got in the way and ran roughshod over people all over Afghanistan. 
bin Laden had already declared war on the United States, and had 
already killed military personnel and bombed U.S. embassies. The 
Taliban permitted them to use their country as a base of operations.
  Yes, the Clinton administration repeatedly demanded that bin Laden be 
given up or at least kicked out of Afghanistan. Yet there they were 
using all of these words making demands, yet they never seemed to care 
enough to help Massoud or help any of the others who wanted to resist 
the Taliban.

[[Page 16606]]

  So what was the Taliban leadership to think? Well, of course they 
thought that the United States Government really did not mean what it 
was saying. They believed it was simply posturing for domestic 
political consideration. This is like when the Clinton administration 
went to China and demanded human rights reform and then never put any 
type of force behind that demand.
  So our government made it clear to the Taliban by our inaction to 
support anyone who was opposing the Taliban that our demands on them 
actually were just made for public consumption here, and that we were 
actually more concerned with our deal, whatever that deal was, with 
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and that we were more concerned with that 
than anything going on within Afghanistan, including bin Laden. Why 
would the tough guys in the Taliban think that we cared about human 
rights abuses, about their treating women like cattle, about their 
harboring of terrorists like bin Laden, and about their rejection of 
even a consideration of free elections of any kind when we were not 
doing anything about it? We did not, as I say, support Massoud; and, in 
fact, when several of us tried to help those resisting the Taliban, it 
was our government, the State Department, that got in our way.
  Let us be fair about it. If that is the impression the Taliban got, 
we should admit it. Our government at that time was not serious about 
democracy, human rights and such in Afghanistan. We were not serious 
about their form of government or even their harboring of bin Laden 
because our government in that administration did nothing.
  What all this means is that if we stray too far from our basic 
principles as a country, it is going to end up hurting us. If we stray 
too far from the fundamental principles that make us Americans, a love 
of liberty and justice, a belief in the democratic procedures to guide 
men, and permit people to guide their own destinies and secure their 
own destinies through election processes, if we ignore these 
principles, it will come back to hurt the United States of America.
  Over the years, I complained over and over again; and I will submit 
for the record quotes of mine that warned America that we must act 
against the Taliban. I did this for years.
  Well, obviously there was another policy. I am just a lone 
Congressman. I do not make policy. I try to influence policymakers. But 
my warnings, repeated warnings, were not heeded.
  Well, who was responsible for the policies that left the Taliban free 
from domestic rivals, the policy that left them free from outside 
opposition, that left them free from the pressure to democratize and 
respect human rights? Who was responsible for these policies? How about 
Madeleine Albright? How about President Clinton? They could not get 
themselves to endorse any meaningful action against the Taliban even 
after we had been attacked in Saudi Arabia, blowing up our military 
bases there, our military installations, our living quarters there, or 
the blowing up of U.S. embassies in Africa.
  Furthermore, there is ample evidence that in the last administration 
they passed up promising opportunities to take out bin Laden. I, for 
example, several years ago during the Clinton administration contacted 
the CIA to let them know that I had an informant who knew exactly where 
bin Laden was, that he was out of Afghanistan, and that he was willing 
to pinpoint bin Laden for them. I gave them my contact's phone number. 
They never called. After a week, I called my friend back and said, Did 
the CIA get with you? No.
  I went to the CIA again and explained that this person had impeccable 
credentials of knowing what was going on in Afghanistan. They would get 
to him, but they did not. A week later they still had not called. Then 
I went and complained to the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee 
on Intelligence, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), whom I respect; 
and I told him what happened.
  The next day he had a meeting in this building with representatives 
of the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI. It was the bin Laden task force. I 
told them what had happened and that my friend could pinpoint bin 
Laden, and that he had been ignored for 2 weeks. They would get to it.
  Guess what, a week later my friend still had not been contacted. By 
then the trail was cold. But when I went to the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Goss), it got action and my friend was called. He said it was a 
lackadaisical call. It looked like it was a pro forma call.
  Does that sound like an administration committed to getting bin 
Laden? No. Let the record show there were numerous opportunities to get 
bin Laden and not one was exploited. The government of Sudan tried to 
give the U.S. a complete file on bin Laden and his whole gang. 
Madeleine Albright personally turned that down.
  I know of a situation at the Defense Intelligence Agency where a 
young analyst felt there was a lack of information about Afghanistan 
and that lack of information was threatening to our national security. 
She wanted to get the information. She wanted to go up to Massoud's 
territory and find out what was going on because we did not know what 
was happening in Afghanistan. She was denied, and she had the gall on 
her own time, on her own vacation time, to go there to Massoud's 
stronghold to try to get that information. I think someone like that 
should get a medal. Instead, she was fired.
  I personally asked the general who then headed up the DIA not to fire 
her. She got the ax anyway. By the way, there is no indication that the 
DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, warned anybody about the attack 
on 9-11, even though the murder of Commander Massoud 2 days prior to 
the attack in New York should have set off alarm bells. Of course they 
had fired the one person who was conscientious about Afghanistan. They 
had fired that person for being too conscientious, over the objection 
of a Member of Congress who pleaded that that was the type of 
responsible behavior we needed.
  I say this because the death of Commander Massoud had a special 
significance to me. I had known Commander Massoud for many years, even 
before I went to Afghanistan in 1988. During my time in the White 
House, he sent his brother to me; and we continued a communication 
through third parties over the years. He was a man I deeply respected. 
He was a hero; not to say he did not make mistakes. Certainly he made 
mistakes, and he did some things wrong. But over years of fighting, 
everybody makes mistakes. But Massoud was a hero. He was a giant of a 
man.
  Mr. Speaker, 2 days before they attacked us, they murdered Massoud. 
It took the wind right out of my lungs. I had been to his stronghold 5 
years before. I visited him in the mountains of Afghanistan. Our 
friendship was close, and I respected him. We worked out an agreement 
to have King Zahir Shah return and that Massoud would support that if 
the King would lead a transition government and have honest elections 2 
years later. He was willing to support that, and then the Taliban 
killed him.
  After I had gotten myself together after his death, I knew that it 
must be because they are going to attack the United States. That is why 
the Taliban killed him, so we could not have anyone to turn to, to 
rally behind in our counterattack. So the next day I called the White 
House. I asked to speak to Condoleezza Rice, and I wanted a meeting 
with her and the National Security Council because there was an attack 
that would soon befall the United States of America.
  They got back to me, and said, Congressman, we take your opinions on 
Afghanistan and elsewhere very seriously, but we are very busy. Can you 
come tomorrow? The earliest we can fit you in is 2:00 tomorrow. I woke 
up on 9-11 expecting to have a meeting with Condoleezza Rice and the 
National Security Council at the White House to warn them that there 
was an imminent attack planned on the United States and to take 
seriously any possible threat that they saw. Unfortunately, at 8:45, 
the planes began crashing into the buildings in New York.
  So here we are. One year ago our country was blind-sided, attacked 
without warning, resulting in the

[[Page 16607]]

slaughter of 3,000 Americans. As I have just discussed, this represents 
a failure of policy and a failure of the people behind that policy, 
primarily those in the Clinton administration, not because of politics, 
but because they happen to be there at the time. Who knows if it would 
have been a Republican administration. It was George Bush who walked 
away originally and left the Pakistanis and the Saudis in charge of 
that region. But it was during the Clinton administration that the 
Taliban took over, consolidated their power in Afghanistan, and turned 
that country into a base of operations for anti-American terrorists. 
The American response is undermining those who oppose the Taliban.
  This leads me to my conclusion that our policy was part of an 
agreement with the Saudis and the Pakistanis to keep the Taliban in 
power. The attack, however, reflects more than a failure of policy. It 
reflects more than just that policy. The attack which was carried out 
by a terrorist organization, a terrorist organization that we had been 
told over and over again was the number one target of U.S. 
intelligence, that organization, the number one target of U.S. 
intelligence, was able to launch an attack of this scope and of this 
magnitude requiring millions of dollars and the coordination of 
hundreds of people against the United States. The number one target of 
U.S. intelligence was able to slaughter 3,000 Americans, to blind-side 
us. This represents a catastrophic failure of America's intelligence 
system; it is a failure of the DIA, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and the 
rest of the intelligence alphabet soup here in Washington, DC.
  We spend tens of billions of dollars every year, and the number one 
target of American intelligence is able to organize and pull off an 
operation of this scale. The magnitude of the screw-up boggles my mind.
  Now we know there were warnings. The BBC is reporting that just 2 
months before 9-11, the foreign minister of the Taliban was so upset 
about the terrorist plot that he had heard of that he sent an emissary 
to an American consulate in nearby Pakistan to warn the United States 
of a pending attack.

                              {time}  1600

  But no one listened to him. Then we know of FBI field agents who were 
pleading that attention be paid to the terrorist ties of certain 
students who were being trained to fly airplanes. These FBI agents were 
chastised for going around channels. They had to go through channels, 
but they were so concerned that the people in front of them were not 
acting, they tried to get the attention of Washington but were 
chastised for not going through channels and they were ignored. The 
list of failures goes on and on.
  I will just say that on 9-11, that something like that happened to me 
indicates the type of mindset we are dealing with, even after the 
attack. On 9-11, when the planes had already crashed into the 
buildings, I realized, everyone realized it was an attack from 
Afghanistan, based on the terrorists based in Afghanistan, and I called 
the king of Afghanistan. I wanted to know if there was anyone there 
protecting him.
  ``Do you have any police there protecting you?''
  ``No.''
  ``Are there any police outside your door?'' Remember, the king of 
Afghanistan is in Rome, exiled in Rome. ``Are there any policemen 
outside your door?''
  ``No, there aren't.''
  ``Are there any people inside your compound with you protecting 
you?''
  ``No.''
  I said, ``Is there anyone there with a gun to protect you?''
  He said no.
  I said, oh, my gosh, our number one asset, the one man who the people 
of Afghanistan could rally behind now that they have killed Massoud, 
only the king, Zahir Shah, was someone we could rally the people behind 
to counterattack against the Taliban, and he was hanging out there in 
the wind. He was totally exposed.
  So I talked to someone, a very high official in one of our 
intelligence agencies. I told him, and he said he realized the 
importance of Zahir Shah and he was totally exposed, and he was 
vulnerable. And, guess what? Five hours later I happened to talk to 
that same high level official again. I can tell you when I asked him 
about, well, Zahir Shah, is he under guard now, his response to me was, 
``You don't expect us to act that fast, do you?''
  Give me a break. Of course we expect our people to act that fast. You 
are within a phone call's distance of the Marine guards who guard our 
embassy in Rome. Our ambassador, or whoever was there, could have gone 
over and picked up the king or sent Marines over to protect him, or the 
agency has people in Rome, et cetera, et cetera.
  Instead, 5 hours later, after 3,000 of our people, at that time we 
thought it was 20,000 people had been slaughtered, but you do not 
expect us to act that fast, do you?
  The people in our intelligence community are, by and large, fine and 
dedicated people. I will tell you that right now. I respect them, but 
those individuals who may have my respect as people of good hearts and 
are patriots, they are now part of a bureaucratic behemoth.
  We are relying on what has become organizationally incompetent, a 
system in which individuals get fired for showing initiative, like that 
young analyst at the DIA, or they get reprimanded, like those FBI field 
agents, for begging attention on some pressing threat.
  We need to reform the system and make it better. To do so we need to 
hold those accountable who made errors and to change the structure and 
mindset. Most importantly, we need to change the structure and the 
mindset of our intelligence organizations. We cannot let the cloak of 
secrecy be used to shield the consequences of failure and incompetence.
  For that reason I voted for an investigation of 9-11, not just that 
it be done by our Congressional oversight committees. And I have great 
respect for those leading those committees and members of those 
committees, but I believe that it should be also the responsibility of 
an independent commission on the level of the Warren Commission and 
perhaps the commission we established after Pearl Harbor to get all the 
facts about this historical failure of U.S. intelligence.
  Let me stress again that I have tremendous respect for and trust for 
the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) and the others in the Permanent 
Select Committee on Intelligence here in the House, but a redundancy 
like we are calling for with an independent commission looking into the 
problem as well cannot in any way hurt. An independent commission could 
do nothing but contribute to the understanding of the idea pool that is 
needed to reform and to fix the system.
  This anniversary is with us today. We must commit ourselves to see 
that such surprise attacks will never again be successfully launched 
against the United States. We will accomplish this by making the 
changes in policy and the changes in personnel that are needed to keep 
our country secure.
  We must change the way we deal with Saudi Arabia. We must evaluate 
how we dealt with Afghanistan and admit that it was horrendously wrong. 
The people behind those policies, especially those people who are still 
in influential positions in the State Department and elsewhere, must 
understand that they bear a significant share of the responsibility for 
the death and destruction that fell on America one year ago today.
  The arrogant so-called experts, for example, who shoved aside exiled 
King Zahir Shah for years, they shoved him aside for two decades, 
claiming that he was too old to play a positive role in bringing about 
a better Afghanistan and peace in Afghanistan. They were so absolutely 
wrong. People in the State Department should find out who it was who 
pushed this idea that the Zahir Shah could not participate, and those 
people should be talked to, and those people should look in the mirror 
and think very seriously about what they did to contribute to this loss 
of American life.

[[Page 16608]]

  In essence, they kept the Taliban in power, because they prevented us 
from getting behind a positive alternative, whether it was Massoud or 
the others fighting the Taliban, or whether it was Zahir Shah. In 
essence, they kept the Taliban in power until 3,000 Americans were 
slaughtered by an attack that was launched from Taliban-controlled 
territory.
  We were attacked a year ago today, and over these last 12 months our 
military has been able to launch a counterattack that has dislodged the 
Taliban and sent them, along with their terrorist allies, the al Qaeda, 
running for cover and running to hide their heads.
  Our military has done a tremendous job. They did this in a landlocked 
country halfway around the world. This has been a magnificent victory 
for our country and for its military. To the degree that we sort of 
have questions about the need to restructure our intelligence system, 
we need to praise our military and make sure that we build upon the 
success of our military. They need certain amounts of changes, too, but 
we need to do that with the military. We can see the positive things 
they have done and build upon that.
  This has been a magnificent victory. If bin Laden is alive today, he 
is in hiding and he is spending all of his hours not trying to launch 
some attack on us, but instead he is spending his time trying not to be 
captured. He could be spending his time mapping out attacks on the 
United States. Instead, thanks to the expertise and bravery and courage 
and great job our military has done, we have bin Laden and his likes in 
hiding, looking over their shoulders, freezing their assets, not able 
to launch another attack of the magnitude that we suffered one year ago 
today.
  We have accomplished all of this, a tremendous accomplishment in a 
country on the other side of the world, landlocked. We did this with 
fewer than 50 American combat deaths. We dislodged the Taliban 
government from power, we destroyed the regime, we dislodged the 
terrorists, all with fewer than 50 American combat deaths.
  Yes, there have been some mistakes, and in every combat situation 
there are. If accidentally a house or area is bombed, if we bombed some 
of our friends accidentally, which has happened, we just need to admit 
that it was a mistake and help those people rebuild. They will 
understand, because the Afghan people are praising us as their 
liberators. We have fought beside the mujahedin again, the freedom 
fighters of Afghanistan again, to free their land from the Taliban 
tyranny. As I say, there have been mistakes, but compared to what has 
been accomplished, this mission gets an A.
  Let me note that I have two complaints. They are small complaints and 
the Afghan people will put up with them for now, but I think that we 
need to pay attention.
  Number one, I do not believe Karzai was the right guy to pick. He 
does not have a wide base of support in Afghanistan. When the loya 
jirga was held, we should have permitted the king to emerge, as would 
have naturally happened. I think there was some wheeling and dealing 
going on that led to Karzai's ascension, and the king could have been 
there. He was the natural choice.
  But I believe the Afghan people have good hearts and understanding. 
They know we are there to help them. They know there are political 
considerations. But they are demanding, of course, free elections in 2 
years, and that is what we should be doing, making sure that we keep 
that pledge and that there are free elections. And if they want to 
elect anybody, whether it is Karzai or a member of the royal family or 
whoever it is, they should have a right to do so. We should work with 
them and help to rebuild their country, and that will be one way to 
really defeat the Taliban and really defeat al Qaeda. The people of 
Afghanistan have looked at us as liberators.
  The other concern is about drugs. We have not eliminated the drug 
production in Afghanistan. The poppy crop was not destroyed. We have 
got to do so next year. That commitment has to be there. That drug 
money goes into bad hands.
  Finally, let us take a look at the challenge we have today and look 
ahead a year. The President has wisely suggested that now is the time 
for us to eliminate that threat that hangs over us and has hung over us 
for 10 years. We did not complete the job in the Gulf War. We left 
Saddam Hussein in power. That was the gift that George Bush, Sr., gave 
to us. George Bush, Jr., is going to make up for that. He has committed 
us to eliminating the dictatorial, fascistic regime of Saddam Hussein.
  We should not be weary of this. In fact, we should know that Saddam 
Hussein has less support in Iraq than the Taliban had support in 
Afghanistan. Our strategy should be to help the people of Iraq liberate 
themselves from this monstrous regime headed by Saddam Hussein. The 
people of Iraq will be waving American flags and dancing in the street 
because we will help them build a democratic society. We can do so with 
the same strategy as we did in Afghanistan, work with Special Forces 
teams and air support. We can support those people who want to fight 
for their own freedom. It worked in Afghanistan, it will work in Iraq. 
We should not have fear and trepidation about getting rid of this 
threat of Saddam Hussein. He is, as George Shultz suggested, a 
rattlesnake in our front yard, and we should not wait until he bites us 
to cut its head off.
  Now we can move forward in Iraq and eliminate that threat, as we have 
eliminated the Taliban threat, and we can do so not by sending huge 
numbers of American forces, but by helping the people in Iraq, as we 
did in Afghanistan, to liberate themselves. That is what the challenge 
the President is giving us is. That is why we as Americans should 
always stand for those people who want to live in a free society and 
are willing with their courage and blood to fight for their freedom, 
but need our help logistically, need our air support, perhaps need our 
advice from our Special Forces teams.
  So, as we remember 9-11, let us never repeat that, by being proactive 
in the future. Where there are dictatorships and fascist regimes, like 
the Taliban, and if they threaten the West and the United States, we do 
not have to do this with all regimes that are dictatorial, but if they 
threaten us, let us work with the people who suffer with a boot on 
their face and with an iron grip around their necks, let us work with 
those people to help them free themselves.
  We have on the floor of the House of Representatives two pictures, 
one of George Washington, a great painting of George Washington, and a 
painting of Lafayette. Lafayette came here during the American 
Revolution to help us win our freedom. Let us not forget the French 
helped us win our freedom, and that people like Lafayette were heroes 
to early Americans.
  While we must serve that same role that Lafayette served to us, we 
must serve that role to those people overseas who long for liberty and 
justice. If we do so, we will be the light of the world. We will be the 
hope of all the young people in the Muslim countries who are looking 
for some people who believe in something, rather than people who are 
talking about stability and keeping the status quo.
  We need to be the ones who offer moral alternatives, and the morality 
we offer is democratic government and a respect for human rights, 
treating people decently. Our flag should stand for justice and hope. 
If we do, rather than the type of things we were doing in the 1990s 
with Communist China and the Taliban and all of these regimes, where we 
were not doing anything to make it clear that we honestly and sincerely 
believed these founding principles of our society, if we do that, we 
will be free and we will be safe.

                              {time}  1615

  There is a dynamic in this world between peace and freedom. Freedom 
tomorrow will bring peace. Just as we lived under the threat of some 
sort of war with the Soviet Union, the Soviet people, the Russian 
people were never our enemies. It was that system. As soon as we made 
it a fight between communism and democracy and stopped just supporting 
any dictatorship that was against the Communists,

[[Page 16609]]

the Communist system itself began to crumble in Moscow, and no one was 
more heroic in that fight against the Soviet dictatorship than the 
people of Afghanistan. They fought and they bled and they gave us a 
more peaceful and a freer world.
  We did not do what was right by them. We did not help them rebuild 
their country at that time; we did not stick with them. We left it up 
to the Saudis and the Pakistanis. We have a chance now to make up for 
that. But we must persevere in helping them rebuild their country; and 
that will cement peace in that region, because people will believe in 
us again. We need, again, to make sure that we become the force for 
liberty and justice and decent treatment for people all over the world, 
and that is where we will find America's security. Let us have the 
courage to do so. Our President has charted a wise course, and we 
should have the tenacity and the courage to follow this through now 
that we have learned after 9-11 that there are consequences to pay when 
we do not.

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