[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 16]
[House]
[Pages 22165-22170]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               IRAQ WATCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kline). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. 
Hoeffel) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to start another of the Iraq 
Watches that we have been conducting for the past 2 months or so. The 
first night of each week that we are in session, a group of us come to 
the floor to talk about Iraq, to talk about the fortunes of our 
fighting forces and our relief workers who are toiling in that country. 
We talk about the problems that we see, we suggest changes in our 
national policy, we ask questions of the administration and seek 
answers, both for the Congress and for the American people. I have been 
joined each week, and I will be as well tonight, by the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. 
Abercrombie) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel). We have 
often been joined by other Members. We would welcome all Members of the 
House to participate tonight or in future Iraq Watches. Democrats and 
Republicans are welcome to participate during this hour of discussion.
  Mr. Speaker, recently the President has sought $87 billion for fiscal 
year 2004 to pay for our military operation and reconstruction 
activities in Iraq. That number is larger than rumored a couple of 
weeks ago, caught most Members of Congress by surprise, although we 
knew a big request was coming certainly, on top of the $79 billion 
requested and approved last April for fiscal year 2003. Many of us feel 
that we need more information from the administration at this point 
before dealing with this supplemental request for $87 billion for 
activities in Iraq. No one in this Congress wants to do anything that 
hurts the troops in the field. Of all the things going on regarding 
Iraq, the diplomacy, the reconstruction, the comments about weapons of 
mass destruction, the comments about our allies, the activities of the 
Ambassador, Mr. Bremer, of all the things happening in Iraq, the only 
truly good thing is the behavior of the troops. Our young men and women 
in uniform have performed brilliantly during the period of time when 
active warfare was under way and during the period of time after 
victory was declared by the President but the guerrilla war has 
continued and over 100 Americans have been attacked and assassinated by 
those guerrilla warfare tactics in Iraq, the men and women of the Armed 
Services have really performed brilliantly and have done all Americans 
proud. So the issue is not whether we support the troops in the field. 
We all do. Of course we do. And we also want to make sure that we live 
up to our commitments, that we see this challenge through. Some of us 
who engage in Iraq Watch, such as myself, voted in favor of the 
military authority sought by the President last fall. Some of us voted 
no. But all of us understand, now that the military activity has 
occurred, we have an obligation to see this process through. We cannot 
cut and run. We cannot leave Iraq with no functioning government. We 
cannot leave a vacuum, a power vacuum that would allow the bandits and 
the bad guys to resume power using the weapons that they have and once 
again subjugate innocent Iraqi civilians. But in the face of this very 
large request for $87 billion, about two-thirds of which would go to 
our military operations and about one-third of which would go to 
reconstruction costs, many of us in Congress feel that we need more 
information from the administration.
  I would put into three categories the questions that we have and the 
information we are seeking: The first is simply more information on the 
cost of our activities, the length of time that the military operations 
would be expected to continue, the length of time that the 
reconstruction would last, accurate information regarding the 
whereabouts of the weapons of mass destruction, the casualty lists of 
American soldiers wounded and otherwise incapacitated in Iraq. We need 
more good information about what is happening over there, and we need 
the full truth about the problems and the bad information that is 
happening there. The administration has not been as forthcoming as most 
of us would like it to be over the past 6 months. And now that an $87 
billion request has been made for the upcoming fiscal year, this is the 
time surely for President Bush to come clean with Congress, to level 
with the American people, to provide answers to these questions, to 
provide as much information as possible regarding not only the current 
activity in Iraq but what he foresees coming down the pike in terms of 
cost, timetable, manpower needed, resources needed, what the prospects 
are for being joined by allies and friends. We need more information.
  Secondly, related to that but I think a second category, we need a 
specific plan for what will be happening in Iraq, really in two parts. 
One for the internationalization, if you will, of the activity there 
and the second half of the plan would be how to get Iraqis back in 
charge of Iraq. In order to internationalize the operations, we need to 
turn to our traditional friends and allies, to international 
organizations such as the United Nations, perhaps NATO, to seek their 
support, to seek their manpower, to seek their dollars and their 
resources to help rebuild Iraq, to help empower the people of that 
country economically and to bring a new government and a new freedom 
and democracy to the Iraqi people. I do not believe America should try 
to do that alone. I do not believe we have got the resources to 
adequately do that when we are facing the huge budget deficits that we 
already face in this country. We need our friends and allies to be 
involved. Of course we all remember the virtual stiff-arm that the 
President gave to our friends and allies in the run-up to the military 
activity in Iraq. There was an arrogant unilateral approach to our 
diplomacy, what I called at the time a cowboy diplomacy that indicated 
to our friends and allies that we did not need their help, that we 
could go it alone, that they should get out of the way, particularly 
the old Europe, as the Secretary of Defense characterized it, and allow 
us to do our thing without a lot of hassle from our pesky allies. Of 
course it is those ``pesky allies'' that we are going to now, that the 
President is seeking support from, that the President is hoping by 
going to the United Nations that he can attract into what seems to be a 
quagmire in Iraq.
  So we need a plan here. We need more than the President saying, we're 
going to go to the U.N. and seek their support. We need to know how 
that support will be put together, how much of it we need, how much of 
it we have a realistic chance of securing, what it will take to get the 
United Nations fully engaged. It seems to me that one thing it will 
take is to allow the United Nations to do its job as a peacekeeper and 
a reconstructor and a redeveloper of nations, as a nation-builder, if 
you will. Because that is what the United Nations is there for, to 
nation-build, a concept that was disparaged by the President when he 
was running for office but a concept that he now embraces, although not 
by name, as he is urging that America, virtually alone, undertake 
nation-building in Iraq. Most of us would like to see this process 
internationalized. We need to see a plan from the President to figure 
out how to do it, how long it will take and how much it will cost.
  The second part of the plan we need is to determine how to get Iraqis 
back in charge of Iraq. It will not be easy to

[[Page 22166]]

do that. Iraq does not have a tradition of self-government. It does not 
have a tradition of democracy. I believe that all people in the world 
are capable of self-government. I think all Members of the Congress 
believe that, but those that do not have a tradition of it, those that 
have dealt with powerful elites in their country that have abused 
average citizens, recognize that they need assistance. They need 
assistance building the institutions of liberty and democracy, 
institutions like a free press, institutions like a free and 
corruption-free court system, institutions such as a civil society, 
documents like a Constitution, a written Constitution that all members 
of a country, all groups within a country have a stake in and have a 
role in determining. All these things have to be accomplished in Iraq 
and we need to know how to do that, how to build these institutions of 
liberty.
  We need to know a timetable: How long is it likely to take to get 
Iraqis back in charge of Iraq? What will it cost? How much support do 
we need? How much training must there be? How much do we need to expand 
the existing interim governing committee that has been created? Who 
else needs to be involved in establishing that group, to give it more 
credibility and a greater representation from all segments of Iraq? So 
we clearly need, after we get more information from the President of 
the United States and after he develops and gives us a plan for both 
the internationalization of the reconstruction and how to get Iraqis 
back in charge of Iraq, the third thing that we need is an exit 
strategy, when can we leave, how long must we stay and how much will it 
cost us to do the things that are needed?
  As I said at the outset, all of us, whether we voted for or against 
the war in Iraq, understand now that we have conquered the nation. In a 
rather crude phrase, we now own the nation. We cannot walk away. We 
have a moral obligation to see this situation through, to make sure 
that there is a stable and representative and hopefully democratic 
government in Iraq before we leave or the Western powers leave. But we 
also need to know from the President before we vote this $87 billion 
what that exit strategy is and how long he thinks it will take and what 
standards we want to accomplish in achieving the status that would 
allow us to leave. And how will we measure our progress toward that 
date when we can leave? We have to know where we are going in order to 
get started. At least I would recommend that. It seems like an awful 
lot of what has happened in Iraq got started without knowing where we 
are going and we should not allow that to continue any further. Keep in 
mind, this war was waged at a time of our choosing and it would seem to 
me that the American military and the administration would have done a 
better job with the planning for both the war and the postwar 
activities. One thing Congress has not done well regarding Iraq in the 
last year is require that information to be divulged and the plans to 
be articulated and the exit strategy to be set forth. The one great 
power Congress has, the one great constitutional power is the power of 
the purse. We control the pursestrings. We determine how much money is 
spent. That power ultimately, slowly but ultimately brought the Vietnam 
War to a close a generation ago. We must exercise that power of the 
purse now, responsibly, in a way that is true to American ideals, that 
keeps our commitments to the people of Iraq but nonetheless that 
clearly sets forth our constitutional requirements and obligations to 
control the pursestrings, to make sure we know how American taxpayer 
dollars will be spent and make sure that those dollars are spent 
pursuant to full information from the White House, a plan from the 
White House on how to internationalize the reconstruction and how to 
put Iraqis back in charge of Iraq, and, finally, spending money 
pursuant to an exit strategy.

                              {time}  2245

  When will it end and how will we know that it has ended? I call upon 
the President to give that information to the Congress in order for us 
to cast an educated vote on his request for $87 billion.
  At this point I have been joined by the gentleman from Massachusetts 
(Mr. Delahunt), my colleague and senior member from the House Committee 
on International Relations and an eloquent member of the Iraq Watch. I 
welcome the gentleman.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, good evening, and I thank the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) again for being the driving force 
behind our weekly efforts to raise questions that we believe have to be 
answered to educate the American people and to educate Members of 
Congress as to what direction prospectively we should undertake.
  I think for a moment, though, we should go back and review our 
earlier call to the President to agree to an independent commission to 
examine the intelligence that was the basis for American military 
intervention into Iraq because there continue to be questions raised by 
senior members of the administration, and if the gentleman will 
remember, our insistence on an independent commission was to 
depoliticize such an effort. I think we had discussed here one evening 
the possibility of the commission that was chaired by two former 
Senators, one a highly-respected Republican from New Hampshire, Warren 
Rudman, and another former Democratic Senator from Colorado, Gary Hart. 
They chaired a commission which tragically foretold almost in a way 
that eerily predicted the tragedy that beset America on September 11 
and the need to address it.
  I think it is important to note that that particular commission filed 
its report some 8 or 9 months before September 11. In fact, I think the 
exact date was on February 15, and unfortunately no action was taken on 
that particular report. I do not mean to suggest that it would have in 
any way forestalled September 11, but I guess the answer to that 
rhetorical question is that we will never know if we had acted earlier, 
both Congress and the Bush-Cheney Administration.
  But in any event, that independent commission, for example, would 
address such questions as to the purported links between al Qaeda and 
Saddam Hussein. I believe that most Americans that are conversant with 
the intelligence have reached the conclusion that there is absolutely 
no evidence whatsoever that would link al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein and 
that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with September 11. Was he an 
evil tyrant, a despot that wreaked havoc on his people? Of course. I 
think there is unanimity among the American people and Members of 
Congress on both sides of the aisle that, yes, the world is better off 
by having Saddam Hussein out of power. But I think it is important not 
to just simply accept the fact that there is linkage between al Qaeda 
and Saddam Hussein because, again, most intelligence reports and 
intelligence analysts have been very clear that no such intelligence 
exists.
  However, this past weekend, I do not know whether the gentleman had 
an opportunity to hear the Vice President again suggest, not directly 
but suggest, that somehow Saddam Hussein was behind September 11. He 
raised the issue, for example, of the ring leader, the operational ring 
leader of al Qaeda and its attack on September 11, an individual by the 
name of Mohamed Atta as having met a senior Iraqi intelligence agent in 
Prague, Czechoslovakia, when our own FBI has indicated that there are 
documents that establish that Mohamed Atta was, in fact, in the United 
States during the time involved. And what I found particularly 
disturbing is that that senior Iraqi intelligence officer whom it was 
alleged that Mohammed Atta of al Qaeda met with in Prague, 
Czechoslovakia in April of 2001, 4 or 5 months before September 11, he 
has been captured. He has been captured by the American military, and 
media reports indicate that he refuted the claim, that he was very 
clear, he never met with Mohamed Atta. And all intelligence analysts 
that have spoken on this particular issue or have had conversations 
with Members of Congress indicate that there is no basis in fact for 
that allegation, and yet the Vice President,

[[Page 22167]]

when interviewed by Mr. Tim Russert on Meet the Press, raises that 
issue again. I am sure there is confusion among the American people 
when they read well-respected journals, when they listen to thoughtful 
programs on these particular issues, and while not without some 
equivocation, the Vice President of the United States continues to use 
the Mohamed Atta meeting in Prague as a basis to establish a link 
between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Certainly.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I am afraid that there is very little 
confusion among the American people about that. Unfortunately, the 
polls show that two thirds of Americans believe that Hussein was behind 
9/11, even though as the gentleman from Massachusetts has correctly 
pointed out there is not a shred of evidence that Saddam Hussein, as 
evil as he is, there is no evidence that he was behind 9/11. But the 
administration has repeatedly suggested it. The Vice President's 
television appearance on Sunday was one of a long series of such 
suggestions. The President himself in his speech of a week ago wanted 
people to believe that stopping the terrorists in Iraq was part of 
dealing with the people that have led to 9/11, and it is a repeated 
theme of the administration, and it is a shame. I can only conclude 
that it is not only a misleading effort to make a false connection, but 
it is an intentionally misleading effort, and this is a tough 
situation. It is tough enough to try to find out what happened. It is 
very unfortunate that the American people have been fooled in that way. 
Hussein is bad enough. We should deal with him for his own evil record, 
and we do not need to fool people or to draw false conclusions, and I 
commend the gentleman for pointing out in great detail this problem.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, there was a 
report today, a front-page story in my hometown newspaper, the Boston 
Globe, and just let me read an excerpt. ``Multiple intelligence 
officials said that the Prague meeting, purported to be between Atta 
and a senior Iraqi intelligence officer by the name of Ahmed Khalil 
Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, was dismissed almost immediately after it was 
reported by Czech officials in the aftermath of September 11 and has 
since been discredited further. The CIA reported to Congress last year 
that it could not substantiate the claim while American records 
indicate Atta was in Virginia Beach, Virginia at the time, the 
officials said yesterday. Indeed, two intelligence officials said 
yesterday that Ani himself,'' this senior Iraqi intelligence official, 
``now in U.S. custody, has also refuted the report. The Czech 
Government has also distanced itself from its original claim.
  ``A senior defense official'' in this particular administration 
``with access to high-level intelligence reports expressed confusion 
yesterday.'' A senior defense official within the administration 
himself expressed confusion ``over the Vice President's decision to 
reair charges that have been dropped by almost everyone else.'' He 
said, ``There isn't any new intelligence that would precipitate 
anything like this,' the official said, speaking on condition he not be 
named.''
  But this underscores the need to have this independent commission. 
Again, the prototype is there, the Rudman-Hart Commission that did such 
an outstanding job in terms of depicting the threat of a terrorist 
attack against the United States months before September 11, statements 
like that that were made on Meet the Press create confusion. Let us be 
clear, there is no one, it would appear, in the administration other 
than the Vice President that would not agree that this piece of 
evidence has been discredited. Why create confusion? Let the case for 
the military intervention rise and fall on the facts. That is all we 
ask. And as we have said consistently among ourselves during the hour 
that we spend here, some of us supported the President in terms of the 
request for a resolution authorizing the military intervention. Others 
of us disagreed. But let us eliminate the confusion. Let us just get to 
the truth, the truth with no political overtones, the truth so that the 
American people can have confidence in the integrity of our 
intelligence. Let us not continue to reair, as the report in the Globe 
indicated, a piece of evidence that, yes, this administration relied on 
substantially as establishing a link that somehow Saddam Hussein was 
behind 9/11. I mean it is not right, and it is not fair to the American 
people. I mean prominent antiterrorism experts such as Vincent 
Cannistraro that many of us have observed on CNN and other news shows 
and is well-respected among his colleagues, he is a former CIA agent 
and I am quoting him, said that Cheney's ``willingness to use 
speculation and conjecture as facts in public presentations is 
appalling. It's astounding.''

                              {time}  2300

  Well, I do not know, but I do know this: this underscores the need to 
depoliticize as we go into a Presidential campaign a review of the 
intelligence in the information that led this administration to launch 
a war. And that received considerable support from Congress.
  Because today at a hearing in the Committee on International 
Relations, a subcommittee hearing on the Middle East, Undersecretary 
John Bolton stated that, relative to Syria, all options were on the 
table, including regime change. And that was the position of the 
President and the administration. He was testifying relative to Syria 
and its weapons of mass destruction. So I presume that includes a 
military option.
  Is this administration going to have any credibility if it goes 
before the international community and indicates that we will exercise 
that military option in the case of Syria? And what about North Korea? 
What about Iran?
  We have got to sustain our credibility. And the best way to do it is 
to have an independent commission comprised of prominent Americans 
whose credibility is unimpeached, who are not, as we all are, impacted 
or influenced by the politics of an election campaign, whether we be 
Democrat or whether we be Republican. The American people have a right 
to the unvarnished truth.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, before we introduce some colleagues that 
have joined us, I want to echo the gentleman's comments and join his 
call for an independent commission to review the intelligence that was 
collected and analyzed before we went to war and to review the use that 
that intelligence was put to.
  I can tell this House that I attended a briefing with about 20 
Members of the House, a bipartisan group on October 2, 2002, at the 
White House in the Roosevelt Room where George Tenet and Condoleezza 
Rice briefed this bipartisan group of Members.
  And the representations were made by those two leading members of the 
administration that with complete certainty they were sure that Saddam 
Hussein had an active weapons of mass destruction program, that he had 
an active biological weapon component, an active chemical weapons 
component, that he was restarting a nuclear component, that he was 
quite likely to be giving these weapons to terrorists and the rest. And 
there was no uncertainty expressed whatsoever.
  We have now learned, as reports have been declassified, that the 
White House was being told in a September, 2002, Defense Intelligence 
Agency report and in an October, 2002, National Intelligence Estimate 
that there was great uncertainty among the intelligence agencies, 
including Mr. Tenet's CIA.
  The parts that had been declassified have been reported in the press, 
phrases such as ``no credible evidence existing of an Iraqi chemical 
weapons program.''
  I have read those reports that the House Permanent Select Committee 
on Intelligence has made available to Members that have not yet been 
declassified.
  While none of us are free to quote what we have seen, we can talk 
about our conclusions. And just as the published reports have 
indicated, what I read was full of uncertainties, expressed 
hesitations, ``we are not sure

[[Page 22168]]

about this,'' ``we are not sure about that.'' But that is not at all 
what the administration figures were telling Congress in private 
briefings or to the American people in public statements, repeated as 
recently as Sunday, as the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) 
said, the Vice President repeated.
  So we need a bipartisan, independent commission to study the 
intelligence and its usage before the fighting started in Iraq, because 
it is hard to conclude anything other than the Congress and the 
American people were not told the full truth; that we were told things 
existed with complete certainty, that the administration was telling 
them that, when in fact when they were making those claims there was 
great uncertainty.
  I would like to ask the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) to share 
a few words.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  I was standing here listening to the gentleman, and I am thinking to 
myself, these are very serious accusations; that this administration, 
this President, his staff, were not fully candid with the American 
people, and consequently we find ourselves in a situation where today 
the polls tell us that a vast majority of the American people believe 
that Saddam Hussein was in some way responsible for what happened on 
September 11, 2001. There is no credible evidence to support that 
conclusion. The President needs to say so.
  I watched Vice President Cheney on television this past Sunday. I was 
stunned that even at this time, after the evidence is so crystal clear, 
he is still holding on to these, what I would consider, fabrications. 
The American people I think can be trusted with the truth. But without 
the truth, the American people simply do not know where to go for the 
truth or who to believe.
  Now, I was listening to the two of you earlier in my apartment, and I 
wanted to come over and share something that I think is relevant to 
this discussion, at least in a tangential way.
  Earlier today, I was over on the Senate side participating in a 
House-Senate joint committee meeting of the Committee on Veterans' 
Affairs. The national commander of the American Legion gave testimony 
to us today, and he told us what we all know, that we are underfunding 
VA health care by $1.8 billion.
  Now, I think it is relevant, because the President has recently come 
to us and he has asked for $87 billion additional, on top of what has 
already been appropriated for fiscal year 2003. $87 billion.
  As the gentleman has said and we all believe, we will do whatever we 
must do to care for our troops, to make sure they have adequate 
equipment and protection, and I understand $300 million to $400 million 
of that request from the President is to perhaps purchase body armor 
for our soldiers, armor that I think they should have had a long time 
ago, because, as I shared not many nights ago on this floor, I got a 
letter from a young soldier in Baghdad saying that the men in his group 
were concerned that they had cheap armor that was incapable of stopping 
bullets; and they wondered why they could not have the best protection 
possible under the circumstances.
  But, anyway, of this $87 billion, a large part of it will go to 
providing for our troops, and we want to support that; but 
approximately $20 billion, my understanding is, approximately $20 
billion is for the reconstruction of Iraq.
  The question that I think the American people should be asking the 
President and this Congress is what are your priorities? Why is it so 
easy to ask for multiple billions of dollars for Iraq and for the 
rebuilding of Iraq, when we are underfunding our most basic needs here 
at home, veterans health care, by $1.8 billion?
  If there are veterans listening, they may think Strickland can't be 
telling the truth. This President would certainly not take such a 
position with VA health care. I would just encourage them perhaps to 
contact their veterans service organizations, the VFW, the American 
Legion, the Disabled American Veterans, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, 
the Vietnam Vets. All of these groups know what is happening to VA 
health care.

                              {time}  2310

  It just troubles me that we seem so willing to ask for so much for 
Iraq and for other places around this world and yet we are neglecting 
the most basic needs at home. And surely, if we are going to set 
priorities, we should put the American needs first and other needs 
second or third or fourth.
  So I just wanted to point that out. I think it is appropriate that we 
ask the administration these questions: what are you going to do with 
that money? And one more thing before I stop. Mr. Speaker, before this 
last request for $87 billion, a lot of money had already been spent in 
Iraq, and my understanding is the Halliburton Corporation, the former 
employer of Vice President Cheney, received an unbid contract in the 
range of $1.7 billion. I think it is appropriate that we ask the 
President to commit to us that if we approve this funding that he has 
asked for, that none of it, absolutely not a dollar of it will go to 
corporations, Halliburton or any other corporation under an unbid 
process. The American people need to know that the tax dollars they pay 
and the money that is appropriated for these needs are spent wisely, 
and we ought to have an open, transparent process. No more of this 
unbid contract stuff that leaves us wondering, at least I am wondering, 
whether or not there was some deal, whether or not there was some 
sweetheart arrangement that enabled this company or some other company 
to get access to large amounts of American tax dollars without having 
to go through a competitive bidding process. I think that is the least 
the administration can do, is to make that commitment to us.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleagues allowing me to participate 
tonight. I will stick around and listen to what else is going to be 
said here. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments, as 
always. We have been joined by our colleague, the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Inslee).
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be here. I just want to relate 
to my colleagues a couple of communications that I was very impressed 
with that I got in the last 2 days. The first was from a letter from a 
marine who is from Colfax, Washington, who was very early in the 
operation in Iraq, who is now recovering in Colfax after he was 
involved in an incident where a tank basically slid off a road and came 
down and crushed and killed the Marine standing right next to him and 
totally crushed this Marine's leg. They thought they were going to have 
to take it off. He has kept it, and he is now trying to get some weight 
back on it and he is recovering. It was a remarkable letter I got from 
him because he talked with great pride about his service. He talked 
about his feeling for the Iraqi people, and he talked about the 
importance of the prayers and condolences he has received from all over 
the country. He got letters from all over the country helping him get 
through this time of crisis. And it was really heartening just trying 
to read this letter in the midst of what we have been talking about, 
about substantial controversy about what happened in Iraq, to read a 
letter from somebody who felt so proud of his service and is still in 
the recovery mode. Our prayers and thoughts are with him. And I will 
not mention his name because he is a humble person, so I will not 
mention his name tonight.
  The second communication was on absolutely the opposite end of the 
spectrum of at least how I viewed the communication, and that was a 
communication from the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who went 
to Iraq a few weeks ago and toured Iraq. He was asked in Iraq, Mr. 
Secretary, what did you find about the weapons of mass destruction upon 
which you based a war, upon which you sent thousands of Americans, 
hundreds of whom are never going to come home and many,

[[Page 22169]]

many are going to come home to a disability they are never going to 
recover from. And his answer was stunning to me. He said, you know 
what? I was just too busy. I did not ask about that.
  Here is an official of the administration who sent our sons and 
daughters to war based on a premise which has obviously turned out to 
be false from the information we have today, who went to Iraq and who 
was apparently so embarrassed about this failure, this massive failure 
of intelligence that this administration was responsible for on 
multiple occasions, and he said he was too busy to ask about our search 
for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In fact, we have 1,500 people 
at least who have been scouring Iraq for months now to try to find 
evidence of weapons of mass destruction and have not turned up a gram 
of weapons of mass destruction.
  To me, this administration has some answering to do to the American 
people, and this body of the U.S. Congress has an obligation to get to 
the bottom of why this false information led us into a war. That is why 
I am proud to say I am one of the Members calling for a bipartisan, 
bicameral investigation, led by a prominent Republican, to find out why 
our sons and daughters were sent into war based on this faulty 
information. We have an obligation to get to the bottom of that, not 
only for our soldiers and sailors who are at risk, but for the future 
of our future security efforts.
  When we deal with Iran, when we face the challenge in Iran, which is 
a real nuclear threat, with a real nuclear program; in North Korea, 
which is a real nuclear threat with a real nuclear program, we cannot 
go to the international community under this cloud of suspicion. We 
must peel it away, we must get light, we must remove this wound to our 
Nation's credibility, and we need this commission to get that done.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to tell my colleagues I am just astounded by what 
I heard this weekend from the Vice President, realizing that it is a 
tough job that we are in. But I was just shocked and I want to quote 
what I am told he said. I did not see the interview, but I am told he 
said in part, he said, ``So what we do on the ground in Iraq, our 
capabilities here are being tested in no small measure. But this is the 
place where we want to take on the terrorists,'' meaning Iraq. ``This 
is the place where we want to take on those elements that have come 
against the United States.''
  After we have had 1,500 people scouring Iraq for months, and the 
intelligence service that reported to us that the two highest al Qaeda 
people we had in captivity told us they did not have anything to do 
with Saddam Hussein, because they did not trust him because he is a 
seculist and they are fundamentalist Islamists; the Vice President of 
the United States stands before the American people and said we are 
just going to go after al Qaeda in Iraq. Where is the shame? We have to 
get to the bottom of this.
  I want to make one more comment about what we are in right now. This 
is history, but it is something that we have to peel back to find out 
what happened, and that is where we go from here. I think there is some 
responsibility now. No matter how we got into this, there is a mess in 
Iraq. But I want to point out that the difficulty we face in mobilizing 
support for this is in part because of the administration's failure to 
level with the American people at the beginning about what this project 
was going to cost.
  I was just at a charity event and I ran into a gentleman who works 
for the American Society of Civil Engineers. He showed me this report 
card that the Society of Civil Engineers just did about the status of 
American infrastructure in this country, and they basically gave a 
grade to all of our infrastructure: our bridges, our roads; wastewater 
had a D, drinking water had a D, dams a D, solid waste, C plus, 
hazardous waste, D plus, energy, D plus. Basically, America's 
infrastructure, GPA, D plus, with a backlog of investment needs of $1.6 
trillion, $1.6 trillion to fix our electrical system and our roads and 
our bridges and our schools. But this President cannot afford to do it 
when he wants the taxpayers to shell out $20 billion for the 
infrastructure of Iraq, because he will not give up the tax cuts that 
have jeopardized our ability to move forward in this country. I yield 
to the gentleman.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, the estimates that we as Members of 
Congress were provided by the administration. If my colleagues 
remember, the head of the office of OMB, the Office of Management and 
Budget, which is an arm of the White House, informed us that the cost 
of the war was going to be $50 billion. Well, the truth, and this is 
what the American people have to understand, we are already at $166 
billion, and that is the down payment.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman remember that Lawrence 
Lindsey of the White House Budget Office lost his job when he suggested 
that the war in Iraq would cost between $100 and $200 billion? And as 
the gentleman says, that is exactly what it has cost to date, yet he 
got fired for telling the truth.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. But I would say to the gentleman, the truth is, that is 
a down payment.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. That is right.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. We are on our way, folks, we are on our way to $1 
trillion.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I will yield on that, to my good friend 
from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) and a member of Iraq Watch.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. The occasionally late, but always eloquent and 
passionate member from Hawaii.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, that is because we are bringing the hammer of 
inquiry down on the anvil of truth here, or the anvil of inquiry for 
sure.

                              {time}  2320

  The anvil of inquiry for sure. Part of what we are being asked to do 
and what you have been discussing tonight has to do with the new 
payment, the latest, I should say, the latest payment. But think about 
what happens when the Secretary of Defense says, oh, we are making 
progress, when the delegation from the Congress of which I was a part 
was the first to enter, actually enter Baghdad after the attack on 
Baghdad was over.
  Remember, they had a group went in and stayed at the Baghdad airport. 
They came in. We drove in. We came down that long road from the airport 
into Baghdad. The last delegation that just went had to be flown from 
the airport into the compound where Mr. Bremer is and where the troops 
are because they cannot go on that road any more. I remember coming in 
this road. I said, We are going to have to have 10,000 troops just to 
guard the road in from the Baghdad airport because you have the road 
and you have desert and that means you can come in. Remember, I called 
upon Thomas Edwards Lawrence, T.E. Lawrence, where is your spirit? 
Where are you now that we need you? Because you cannot guard that road. 
All it takes is a cell phone and a trigger mechanism to be able to 
attack these vehicles.
  So when you talk $66 billion or however you want to break this down, 
and I hope that we are going to break this down before we vote any 
money for this, we have to take into account you will need thousands 
and thousands of troops, longer and longer time at greater expense than 
even has been mentioned here tonight just to guard the road.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I do not know if you saw ``Meet the 
Press'' this last Sunday, but again the Vice President refuted the need 
that was expressed by the Army Chief of Staff, General Shinseki, that 
several hundred thousand troops were necessary to bring stability. We 
have what would appear to be a position that is intransigent, that is 
in denial, if you will.
  If I can for just one moment bring something up that I found 
particularly ironic, Secretary of State Colin Powell this past week 
visited Halabja, which is where some 5,000 Kurdish Iraqis lost their 
lives because of the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein. The 
Secretary asserted that in this little farming town nestled in Iraq's 
barren northern mountains, this was ample

[[Page 22170]]

evidence that former President Saddam Hussein's government possessed 
weapons of mass destruction and justified, and justified the U.S. 
decision to go to war. That occurred in 1988 and it was despicable. And 
what should have occurred was the international community should have 
responded at that point in time, convened a war crimes tribunal, 
affected the arrest of Saddam Hussein and brought him to justice for 
that.
  The President at that time was this President Bush's father, or 
rather in 1988 it was President Reagan. The now-Secretary of State was 
the then-National Security Advisor to President Reagan.
  I find such irony in that because it was many of the same individuals 
who approached Saddam Hussein to indicate that they were tilting 
towards the Saddam Hussein regime in its war against Iran. It is the 
now-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who is the special envoy who 
went and shook the hand of that thug Saddam Hussein in 1982. He was 
then taken off the terrorist list; Saddam Hussein was taken off the 
terrorist lists, and that opened up opportunities for the Iraqi regime.
  In 1984 full diplomatic relationships were opened between the United 
States and Iraq. In 1986, in 1986 we installed an embassy in Baghdad. 
The American people should know that. In 1988, in 1988 this heinous 
crime was committed against the Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja, and 
here we are some 15 years later hearing the Secretary of State suggest 
that this was the evidence, the predicate, if you will, to our 
intervention.
  Now, the story does not end there. The story does not end there. 
Because it was the President's father, the Bush administration 
according to a Congressional Research Report that blocked congressional 
action, that blocked congressional action to impose sanctions on Iraq 
for committing that crime against the Iraqi people.
  Let me read because I think it is important that the American people 
hear this. I have never heard it stated. This is our own Congressional 
Research Service, an independent body: ``In late 1988 after reports 
that Iraq had used chemical weapons against the Kurds, the Senate on 
September 9 passed by voice vote to impose financial and trade 
sanctions and severe restrictions on the transfer of technology to 
Iraq. On September 27, the House passed a bill by a vote of 388 to 16; 
but the bill was not taken up by the Senate. The bill would have 
prohibited sales to Iraq of any munitions-listed items and called on 
the President to place import and export restrictions on Iraq, end 
credit and loan guarantees, and oppose multi-lateral assistance to that 
country if Iraq did not stop using chemical weapons and agree to 
international inspections.''
  Similarly, in May through July of 1990, just before the first Gulf 
War, the administration helped block action or defeat several measures 
in both Houses that would have restricted U.S. sales credits, loan 
guarantees, insurance support in international lending institutions, 
and trade preferences for Iraq.
  The administration helped block action. Of course we knew that he 
used chemical weapons. In 1990 we knew. And what did we do about it 
then? We blocked congressional action, the then-administration blocked 
congressional action.
  So the irony of the Secretary of State being in Halabja and 
suggesting that that was the predicate for military intervention, what 
irony.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I want to posit 
a reason why the administration is trying to reach back for this, for a 
justification for this war. And the reason is they refused to recognize 
that they used false information to lead this Nation into a war, and 
they have two options at this point. One is to stonewall and search for 
any justification they have, and now they are focusing on something 
that happened in 1988 during the previous Bush administration or 
shortly before that administration.
  What they should be doing is embracing our approach, which is to find 
out why this happened. We think the President should be looking for the 
people in the administration and holding them accountable for why, when 
they find out why this happened.

                              {time}  2330

  He ought to be on our side trying to find out why the administration 
let down the American people, but no, no. Instead, they want to 
stonewall this. Stonewalling is not an answer to help this country move 
forward into how we are going to solve this problem, but it is an 
indication of what problem the administration has.
  This administration has always wanted to sugarcoat this war for the 
American people and think it was going to be roses and tax cuts for the 
whole way. It is about time the administration started talking the 
truth.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I think our time is probably at an end.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for joining me this 
evening. The Iraq Watch will be back next week.

                          ____________________