[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 17678-17680]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. DAYTON. Madam President, I thank the senior Senator from Alaska 
for making possible my opportunity to speak tonight on a trip to Iraq I 
took last week with several of our colleagues as members of the Senate 
Armed Services Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee, led by the 
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, who is an 
extraordinary leader of the committee. I do not know if his age is 
classified or not, but at his age, the kind of energy, the kind of 
determination, the kind of enthusiasm and leadership he showed was just 
extraordinary. It was a privilege to be on this adventure with him and 
Carl Levin, our ranking member, who celebrated a birthday as we were 
traveling over there. The two of them set a sterling example for the 
rest of us to follow.
  Then we met with the real superstars who are in Iraq: the men and 
women of our Armed Forces. I cannot say enough about the respect and 
admiration I have for those mostly young men and women from all over 
this country. They have performed superbly well. They have redefined 
the words ``patriotism'' and ``courage'' for this Senator. I am truly 
in awe of their skill and their performance under the greatest of 
danger, and their resolve, which continues to this day.
  They are proud of what they have accomplished, as they should be. 
They achieved a tremendous military victory in 3 weeks' time, and now 
they are doing their utmost to preserve that victory while these other 
factors get resolved, and that is what I wish to address my remarks to 
this evening.
  Stalwart as they are, those men and women pretty much asked all of us 
one question: ``When are we coming home?'' I did not have the answer. 
The military command with whom we met in Iraq did not have the answer. 
The Secretary of Defense yesterday did not have that answer. And that 
uncertainty, as well as the demands that are placed upon them--the 
risks, the dangers, and the pressures in this god-awful environment 
with temperatures 115 degrees in the afternoon, sweltering heat, and 
soldiers dressed in flack jackets, heavy helmets, patrolling, doing 
what they must do, knowing they are now increasingly targets of Iraqi 
resistance. It is a gruesome situation they are enduring on behalf of 
our country and on behalf of the commitments they have undertaken. As I 
say, they are performing them incredibly well.
  When we met in Baghdad with U.S. Ambassador Bremer and with the 
commanding general of the U.S. forces, General Sanchez, we asked what 
they thought was the course that had to be followed, and they both said 
independently the same thing: The United States had to stay the course 
in Iraq and keep its presence there until success was achieved.
  We asked, What constitutes success? They each said three things. 
First, that Saddam Hussein and his sons must be found and removed 
permanently from Iraq.
  Second, that law and order must be restored to that country.
  And third, that a successor government, an Iraqi government, 
hopefully a democratically reelected Iraqi government, will be able to 
replace the U.S. civilian command and begin to run that country 
successfully.
  The first objective, the elimination of Saddam Hussein and his two 
sons, should have been accomplished already. It must be accomplished 
very soon, and I believe it will be accomplished very soon. It is 
impossible to overstate the terror he strikes in the souls of the 
people of Iraq. People literally quiver when his name is even 
mentioned. They refuse to say anything about him. They do not even want 
to mention his name or respond to questions about him.
  The new local leaders we met with in Kirkuk talked softly, and when 
his name came up, they talked so softly they were barely audible. It is 
as if they wanted to recede into the woodwork and become invisible, 
rather than be subjected to this man's cruelty and tyranny.
  We heard stories about unspeakable cruelty orchestrated by him or his 
two sons, such as the soccer games played in their Olympic stadium 
where the members of the losing team would be taken below and tortured 
and then executed for losing a soccer game. Or even if someone scored 
the winning goal and it cost one of the son's his bet, that player 
could be taken down below and tortured and executed. To think of living 
one's life under those kinds of horrific circumstances at the whim of 
this insane, cruel, and demonic man and his sons.
  We visited a mass grave site where a couple thousand bodies have been 
exhumed, the ones not identified and taken away by their Iraqi brothers 
and sisters. There are thousands of those grave sites, we are told, all 
over the country.
  There is reason to believe that when those three men are permanently 
gone, unmistakably gone, identified clearly by the Iraqi people as 
bodies that are never again to rule Iraq, that more and more of the 
citizenry will come forward and will be willing to take that crucial 
first step toward allegiance with the United States but, more 
importantly, allegiance with their own future, with their own 
autonomous Iraq that they can create and run themselves.
  After that first goal has been achieved, the other two, bringing law 
and order to this country and installing a successor government that is 
going to be viable over the months that

[[Page 17679]]

will follow, is going to be even more challenging. Right now, U.S. 
forces are seeking out and training, putting into place some 60,000 to 
70,000 police officers all over Iraq.
  This is a monumental undertaking of its own, to screen out the wrong 
elements, those who were involved before in the Baath Party or secret 
police, and put them now in charge of law and order all over that 
country, law and order that is desperately needed because right now it 
is the U.S. troops who are required to patrol to reconstruct the peace, 
guarding public property which, we are told, if something has any value 
at all and is not being guarded, it will be quickly stolen, looted. 
While our troops are standing guard or patrolling, they are exposed 
targets. Increasingly, they are the targets of murderers who are 
seeking vengeance and trying to drive out our forces.
  In fact, the day after we left Baghdad, a Minnesota soldier was 
killed, PFC Edward Herrgott from Shakopee, MN. He was 20 years old. He 
was killed, murdered really, by a sniper as he stood guarding the 
Baghdad Museum. Some of that hostility is being orchestrated by forces, 
some rumored to be by Saddam Hussein himself trying to retaliate 
against the United States military for the victories that were 
achieved, but some of it is also said to be caused by the lack of 
improvements that have failed to be made in the basic services upon 
which Iraqi citizens depend.
  There is an article in yesterday's New York Times and I ask unanimous 
consent that it be printed in the Record at the completion of my 
remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. DAYTON. Let me read a couple of excerpts because this is really 
the crux of where I think we have fallen behind in our effort and 
where, until we do make up that effort and start showing some visible 
success, our troops are going to have an increasingly difficult time 
and increasingly become targets of hostility and reaction and where 
they are going to be bound to that country longer than they would need 
to be.
  It describes the city of Abu Ghraib which is just west of Baghdad. It 
says:

       The constituents' woes came down to the essentials. They 
     had no power, and thus no clean water. Their local elected 
     leader was besieged with all of these requests for basic 
     necessities of life.
       Mr. Dari could do nothing for the man who, lacking 
     electricity, stayed up all night fanning a sick child, 
     nothing for the 5-year-old child who was left legless by 
     unexploded ordnance that detonated, a sight that caused him 
     to weep. He could do nothing for the multitudes complaining 
     of cars, weapons or relatives taken by American forces, other 
     than give their names to the Americans. He could do nothing 
     for those lacking drinking water or waiting for food rations.
       ``What do you tell the people--have more patience?'' he 
     asked rhetorically. ``Till when?''

  This local Iraqi leader went on to say:

       ``Conditions have never been worse,'' he said bluntly. 
     ``We've never been through such a long bad period.''

  The city has had only 1 to 3 hours of power a day in recent weeks. 
Drinking water cannot be pumped without electricity so people have to 
take their water from dirty canals. As I said before, when we were 
there, the temperatures in the afternoon were 115 degrees. I was told a 
couple of days before we arrived it had reached 130 degrees. If there 
is no electricity for air conditioning and other cooling, there are 
serious problems.
  Crime, rare under the old government, is rampant. The leader said 
that when he first met with the Americans he told them that they did 
not have much time to meet the expectations of the citizenry, and that 
he believes time is almost up. Yet, as of the other day, neither he nor 
the American colonel in charge of the troops there had ever had contact 
with the American-led civilian administration ostensibly governing 
Iraq, even though this man, Mr. Dari, oversees an area that is home to 
900,000 people.
  It is an impossible situation for our service men and women to be 
trying to uphold civil order in a foreign country with virtually no 
interpreters available to communicate with citizens, when they are in 
that state of frustration and agitation.
  We met yesterday with the Secretary of Defense in the Armed Services 
Committee, who pointed to progress that has been made in this respect. 
I am sure that there has been progress in certain areas, but there is 
not enough progress being made in these nonmilitary efforts. They are 
not occurring in enough places in the country to take hold among the 
citizenry. And where they are occurring, at least from what we saw on 
our trip, it is the U.S. and British troops who are performing these 
nonmilitary services.
  For example, in Kirkuk, which is north of Baghdad, U.S. forces 
conduct raids at night against what are believed to be enemy cells of 
resistance, and then by day they are hauling away thousands of tons of 
accumulated garbage, old garbage, and repairing rundown schools. The 
British troops with whom we met in Basra, in southern Iraq, are 
rebuilding a hospital. They are doing wonderful work, but that is not 
what they are there to do.
  To ask them to be engaged in military activities, policing the 
streets of these cities, doing repair work or hauling away old 
accumulated garbage in their spare time, which they have done, is just 
really senseless. It is overburdening them. It is unfair to them, and 
it means that not enough of these nonmilitary projects, economic 
rehabilitation, social rehabilitation programs, are underway or visible 
anywhere in Iraq for the citizens of that country to see that they have 
hope for a better future.
  They expect the United States of America, which they view as 
omnipotent because we came in and swept their military aside and 
occupied those cities and the country, to deliver services as basic as 
electricity or running water, and when we cannot do so and when the 
conditions are markedly worse than they were under Saddam Hussein, we 
have a very serious problem with the reception there. Our troops, our 
young men and women, are literally going to pay for these failures with 
their lives.
  I was recently told about a story of a company in Ohio that makes 
hospital surgical beds. They were willing to send as many of these 
surgical tables over to Iraq as could be used--such as for the 5-year-
old legless boy who needed surgery--to save lives and be recognized as 
having come over from the United States of America to help dress the 
wounds, literally and figuratively, that exist there. The company is 
still waiting to hear back from the Deputy Secretary of Defense's 
office regarding that offer to donate and transport, at their expense, 
these hospital facilities.
  If the United States can bring in, as we have because we must, tent 
cities with electric generators, with sewage disposal systems, with 
portable toilets, why can't electric generators be brought in that will 
produce some of the electricity that these cities need so that they can 
again appreciate the benefits of what we have brought to them, not only 
the liberation of spirit and soul and body, but also the ability to 
function as they must and move forward as they must?
  I urge the administration that the same efforts be made, with the 
same intensity of effort, the same--not quite the same funding but 
considerable effort be made--to bring about this renovation.
  Ultimately, that reconstruction is going to take decades. It is the 
responsibility of the Iraqi people to undertake it and to pay for it, 
but in the short run, in the immediate sense, those projects are not 
going to occur unless the United States is the initiator, provides the 
leadership, and provides the initial financial resources. If we do not 
see a plethora of those kinds of improvements overall, if we do not see 
children who are outside playing with soccer balls donated by American 
children who sent them over there, we do not establish that basic 
connection, then we are going to be there far longer than we should be 
and longer than anybody over there now wants us to be. We are going to 
suffer casualties far greater than we should.

[[Page 17680]]

  So I implore the President and the administration to undertake this 
effort with the same magnitude of skill and American know-how that 
succeeded so wonderfully militarily so we can bring our folks home.
  I yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

                [From the New York Times, July 9, 2003]

         For a Town Council in Iraq, Many Queries, Few Answers

                            (By Amy Waldman)

       Abu Ghraib, Iraq, July 5.--On a recent morning, the Abu 
     Ghraib town council was hearing the usual litany of 
     complaints, offering its usual mix of help and, mostly, 
     impotence in return. Overhead, a fan turned, but the air did 
     not.
       The constituents' woes came down to the essentials. They 
     had no power, and thus no clean water--could they get 
     generators? They had no security--could they get weapons 
     permits?
       If anyone could help them, it should have been the man at 
     the center of the scene, Dari Hamas al-Dari. In April, he was 
     selected by the local tribes to lead Iraq's first freely 
     formed town council after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Since 
     then, he has sat at a desk in a white robe and headdress, in 
     a room lined with men in tribal robes and Western dress all 
     looking to him for answers. He has not had many.
       Mr. Dari could do nothing for the man who, lacking 
     electricity, stayed up all night fanning a sick child, 
     nothing for the 5-year-old child who was left legless by 
     unexploded ordnance that detonated, a sight that caused him 
     to weep. He could do nothing for the multitudes complaining 
     of cars, weapons or relatives taken by American forces, other 
     than give their names to the Americans. He could do nothing 
     for those lacking drinking water or waiting for food rations.
       ``What do you tell the people--have more patience?'' he 
     asked rhetorically. ``Till when?''
       If America has natural allies in Iraq, they are men like 
     Mr. Dari. He attended the American Jesuit school in Baghdad, 
     then university in Frankfurt. He has lived in Europe and 
     speaks excellent English. He maintained his independence 
     throughout Mr. Hussein's rule, shunning the material 
     blandishments with which Mr. Hussein bought the loyalty of 
     many tribal sheiks.
       A part-time farmer and businessman, he is a member of the 
     sizable Zobaa tribe, which his brother leads. He welcomed the 
     Americans and has worked closely with their military 
     commanders in his area.
       So the impatience creeping into his voice and the 
     frustration lining his handsome face bode poorly for the fate 
     of the American-led occupation here--even if American 
     officials succeed in drawing Iraqis into a new national 
     leadership. There is no indication that Mr. Dari, who is 64, 
     would turn on the Americans. He is simply losing faith in 
     them.
       ``Conditions have never been worse,'' he said bluntly. 
     ``We've never been through such a long bad period.''
       Abu Ghraib--a largely agricultural area just west of 
     Baghdad that is also home to Iraq's most notorious prison--
     has had only one to three hours of power a day in recent 
     weeks. Drinking water cannot be pumped without electricity, 
     so people take water from dirty canals.
       The food ration system that functioned smoothly under 
     Saddam Hussein is breaking down, out here at least. Trucks 
     leave Baghdad laden with food, but it mysteriously gets 
     offloaded at markets along the way.
       Crime, rare under the old government, is rampant. Mr. 
     Dari's car was taken from him at gunpoint in Baghdad 
     recently. Four of his council members have been the victims 
     of carjacking attempts. And while the criminals are well-
     armed, the Americans are disarming the victims, taking 
     weapons while the weapons licenses they insist on are in 
     short supply.
       ``People here feel naked without their pistols,'' Mr. Dari 
     said, putting his own in a holster.
       In a time of rising discontent, Mr. Dari is the buffer 
     between occupier and occupied. It is a role that, 
     historically, has earned little appreciation. Recent attacks 
     on Iraqis cooperating with the Americans suggest that this 
     chapter will be no different.
       ``We are stuck between the Americans and our people,'' Mr. 
     Dari said of the council, which sits, for no salary, from 8 
     a.m. to 2 p.m. daily. ``And there were so many promises from 
     one side.''
       Some people are calling the council members ``America 
     lovers'' and traitors, he said, because they are working with 
     the Americans.
       ``He's caught in the middle,'' one of his American 
     partners, Lt. Col. Jeff Ingram of the First Armored Division, 
     acknowledged. ``He defends us a lot.''
       These days, Mr. Dari is warning the American more than he 
     is defending them. When he first met with them, he said, he 
     told them that they did not have much time to meet people's 
     expectations. That time is almost up, he believes.
       ``I'm not threatening you with another Vietnam--God 
     forbid,'' he said. ``I'm just trying to get help for the 
     people before something happens.''
       Something is already happening, of course. Out here, as 
     across much of Iraq, the attacks on Americans are stepping 
     up. Colonel Ingram said his company is being attacked at 
     least once a day, fortunately by men who are not very good 
     shots.
       Colonel Ingram blames the Iraqis for most of the area's 
     problems, saying it is they who have torn down the power 
     lines he fixed, they who are robbing one another. ``The U.S. 
     is not the problem, it's the solution,'' he said.
       But he too wonders about the slow pace of rebuilding. ``I 
     would have expected the U.S., the biggest country in the 
     world, to say here's the water purification system, here's 
     the big generator,'' he said.
       As of the other day, neither Mr. Dari nor Colonel Ingram 
     had ever had any contact with the American-led civilian 
     administration ostensibly governing Iraq, although Mr. Dari 
     oversees an area that is home to 900,000 people.
       So they soldier on alone, often seeking progress in vain. 
     The council tried to distribute generators found at a 
     Republican Guard camp to villages, but found that many of the 
     village ``representatives'' were driving out of the camp and 
     selling the generators. Others were being set upon by angry 
     mobs wanting the generators for themselves.
       American soldiers were deployed to keep order, but in the 
     heat and chaos their tempers frayed. They broke windshields 
     and cursed at Iraqis, further shrinking the reservoir of good 
     will.
       Mr. Dari said he received 10 to 12 complaints a day about 
     weapons, cars or relatives taken by the Americas. One man 
     came to report that American soldiers had taken away his deaf 
     relative a month ago for having a picture of Saddam Hussein 
     in his house, and that he had not been seen since. Officials 
     from an Islamic charity said the Americans had confiscated 
     their car and raided their office--the left both unsecured, 
     giving looters free rein.
       Then there are the small problems. The woman who is 
     illegally squatting in a government building (American 
     soldier told Mr. Dari they could not evict her unless she 
     threatened someone; property rights were not their 
     ``purview.'') The two council members whom the council 
     dismissed for corruption. The effort to find the American 
     commander with the authority to sign a contract for garbage 
     collection.
       Mr. Dari is just old enough to remember when the British 
     had an air base just west of here. They told Iraqis they had 
     come to liberate them from the Ottomans, he recalled, and 
     they stayed 40 years.
       ``I hope history isn't repeating itself,'' he said, and 
     pressed his temples as if hoping to make the impatient men at 
     both elbows disappear.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

                          ____________________