[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 21673-21674]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                REGAINING FOCUS ON THE WAR ON TERRORISM

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, tomorrow the Nation will bow our heads in 
prayer as we remember those who perished 2 years ago. As we close our 
eyes to remember those who perished in the World Trade Towers and the 
Pentagon and in the quiet field in Pennsylvania, we cannot help but 
recall the graphic images of the attacks that shocked the American 
psyche, the smoke, the fire, the pain, the falling towers. The courage 
displayed on television sets on September 11, 2001, brought all 
Americans to the scene of those attacks.
  Our Nation united to fight those who were responsible for those 
terrible acts. Since then, our Armed Forces swept through the rugged 
terrain of Afghanistan, deposing a government that directly aided Osama 
bin Laden in his mission to attack America by any means at hand.
  In the days following the attacks, Congress acted swiftly to provide 
essential funds for this military response. The appropriations 
committees in both Houses acted without delay. But we also included 
increased moneys for homeland security and the reconstruction of New 
York and the Pentagon.
  But today our fight against terrorism has lost a good deal of its 
focus. Our homeland security efforts are underfunded. The Department of 
Homeland Security is a bureaucratic catastrophe. The White House has 
prioritized tax cuts over protecting our airliners and securing our 
ports.
  Through carefully worded rhetoric, the administration has morphed the 
image of America's most wanted man from Osama bin Laden to Saddam 
Hussein. It is as if the President has forgotten the name of the 
mastermind of

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the attacks that killed 3,031 in New York and Washington on September 
11, 2001; the attacks that killed 17 sailors on the USS Cole on October 
12, 2000; and the attacks that killed 224 U.S. and foreign nationals in 
bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998. 
The name of that man is not Saddam Hussein. It is Osama bin Laden, the 
elusive terrorist who this administration so rarely bothers to mention 
by name anymore.
  The President has now stated that the war in Iraq is the central 
front on the war against terrorism. But it was our invasion of Iraq 
that has turned Iraq into a staging ground for daily terrorist attacks 
against our occupation forces. If we are serious about protecting our 
country from terrorism, it seems to me that the central front should be 
the war on al-Qaida.
  If we are serious about protecting our country from terrorism, should 
not the central front be the war on al-Qaida? For that matter, isn't 
the violence between Israelis and Palestinians actually the root of 
much of the terrorism in the world? Why isn't reaching a lasting peace 
agreement between those two peoples the central front on fighting 
international terrorism?
  But at the White House, the subject of terrorism now means the 
subject of our invasion of Iraq. The President waves the bloody shirt 
of 9/11, and then subtly shifts the conversation to Iraq. The only 
problem is that the President's attempts to tie Saddam Hussein to the 
9/11 attacks have no basis in fact. There has been no evidence of such 
found to date. By speaking of al-Qaida in one breath and Iraq in the 
next, the President has devised a construct for confusing the American 
people about the real threat to this country. And his strategy has 
worked. According to a Washington Post poll, 7 in 10 Americans believe 
that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11 attacks. That was not 
the case. There is no evidence that that was the case.
  Amidst the confusion of the American people, it was the stated policy 
of White House adviser Karl Rove to use the war against terrorism for 
partisan electoral advantage. The White House rode that political 
bandwagon right through Congress in October of 2002, securing a war 
resolution in the weeks just before a major election. The bandwagon 
then bypassed the United Nations, alienating our friends and allies, 
and charged right into Baghdad, powered by a national security strategy 
that brought the first use of preemptive war in the history of our 
Nation.
  Soon Congress, we understand, will be formally presented with a 
request for $87 billion in additional funding for the war. The White 
House would prefer to call this massive spending bill the ``terrorism 
supplemental.'' Don't fall for that, I say to my colleagues. I say to 
the American people, don't fall for that. The American people should 
not be misled by these word games. The spending in this proposal has 
little to do with protecting the American people from terrorism.
  This request should be called what it is: the second Iraq 
supplemental appropriations bill in less than 6 months. It is a budget-
busting, deficit-enhancing $87 billion on top of the $103.3 billion in 
additional funds that Congress has already provided to the Pentagon 
since September 11, 2001. Including this new spending for Iraq, the 
budget deficit for next year can be expected to exceed $550 billion. 
How are we going to pay for this mistake that we have made in the 
Middle East?
  I expect to support the funds that are needed for the safety of our 
troops, but I will not rubberstamp every spending request that comes 
down the pike. This $87 billion package needs to be carefully examined. 
Congress is not an ATM that will spit out cash on a moment's notice.
  I have questions. I am sure that my colleagues, most of them, 
certainly, or many of them, have questions about the $20 billion in 
nation-building funds that are contained, or will be contained, if we 
understand correctly what we read in the newspapers and what we hear in 
other areas of the media with respect to the President's request. The 
formal request has not reached Congress as yet, of course. But initial 
indications show that the administration intends to go beyond repairing 
the damage to Iraq's infrastructure and attempt to build a modernized 
country from the ground up.
  Congress needs to ask questions about this plan. There has actually 
never been a debate in Congress about postwar Iraq. Before we approve 
of this spending, we must know how long this nation-building plan will 
take and how the costs will be shared among our allies.
  I have some questions about the funds that will be requested for our 
military. The administration announced this week that it is extending 
the deployments of our National Guard and our Reserves in Iraq. Many of 
these citizen-soldiers are already exhausted from back-to-back foreign 
deployments. The National Guard cannot perform its important homeland 
security missions if it is half a world away. We are headed towards 
serious problems with recruiting and retention if this administration 
thinks that it can keep the men and women of the Guard and Reserve away 
from their families and their jobs for 12 months, 15 months, or even 18 
months on each deployment.
  Most importantly, this $87 billion Iraq supplemental--remember, it is 
not a terrorism supplemental, it has nothing to do with terrorism here 
in this country--this Iraq supplemental could be the first installment 
in what the President's advisers describe as a ``generational 
commitment'' to building democracy in the Middle East. I do not recall 
a single word in the President's case for war in which he said that the 
war in Iraq would be the beginning of a decades-long engagement in that 
volatile part of the world. The American people ought to hear an 
explanation of what it means to have a ``generational commitment'' to 
nation building and perhaps regime change in the Middle East.
  Tomorrow, the American people will pause to remember those who lost 
their lives 2 years ago. I will long remember that fateful day, as will 
every Member of this Senate and every person within the range of my 
hearing. I cannot forget the toll exacted on Americans in those 
attacks, nor will I forget the courage of the firefighters and the 
police who rushed into burning buildings, nor will I forget those 
ordinary people on that airliner who fought back against its hijackers. 
Those people very likely saved this Capitol from another terrible 
attack, and, along with the Capitol, saved the lives of many of us who 
are in this Chamber today.
  But when Members of Congress return from the memorial services, we 
have serious work to do in addressing the crisis in Iraq and in our 
fight against terrorism at home. We will soon be presented with a 
request for $87 billion to carry out the administration's occupation 
and nation-building plans in Iraq.
  Let us take a good look at those plans. Let us be prepared to ask 
questions about them. There is no reason why this request will have to 
go sailing through Congress in a day or a day and a half or 2 days or 
3. We need to ask questions. The administration should be prepared to 
make its case and be prepared to answer questions.
  It is not disrespectful to ask questions. It is not unpatriotic to 
ask questions. Members of Congress should not be intimidated. They 
should not be cowed. They should not be afraid to ask questions. The 
people of America are not here to ask questions. The students in our 
schools are not here to ask questions. We are here to ask questions.
  Let us not act with the same haste and impatience that led our 
country to begin that war nearly 6 months ago.

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