[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 24981]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           AMENDMENTS TO THE SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Speaker, I want to associate 
myself with the remarks of my colleague, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
DeFazio) who just spoke in the well and fully agree with him that we 
should have been given an opportunity to make the same kind of 
investments in America that we are prepared now and voting on to make 
in Iraq. I think we owe it to the American people. We owe it to our 
economy. We owe it to our families.
  Earlier, just a few minutes ago our colleague, the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. McDermott), spoke about the realities of the war taking 
place in Iraq and the real impact on the young men and women who are 
there fighting that war, fighting the continued hostilities that rain 
down on them on a daily basis, many, many times a day.
  He has, like so many of us, had the honor and the privilege to visit 
with some of our soldiers who have returned home in a wounded 
condition, in many instances in a severely wounded condition. Young men 
and women who are now amputees, in some cases multiple amputees, who 
have been received at Walter Reed Hospital for their care.
  When you meet these young men and women, you are honored to be in 
their presence. You are honored by their decision to take part in our 
Armed Forces. But we have not served them well with the plan that 
currently exists for postwar Iraq. We did not serve them well in the 
first days and weeks and the months since this ceasing of hostilities 
in Iraq with the formal fighting.
  And I would like to read a letter from a young man from my district 
who is part of a military police unit. He sent this letter to me after 
he talked with me on the phone from Baghdad. And I want to quote part 
of the letter beginning with, he says, ``Now, I feel it is my duty as 
an American to point out a few simple facts to the people who depend on 
me and my compatriots to be strong, reliable soldiers in the National 
Guard. First of all, often when my military police unit discovers large 
caches of weapons, 80 millimeter rockets, mortars, and rocket-propelled 
grenades, we are ordered to leave them where we found them, completely 
unsecure, waiting to fall in the hands of the enemy. The reason? There 
are not enough EODs, explosive ordnance disposal teams available. So 
dangerous weapons that are used to kill Americans are left just to sit 
there. Imagine how frustrating it is to walk away from the weapon cache 
as neighborhood children climb and play on it, hoping beyond hope that 
yours won't be the life taken by something in that pile.
  ``Secondly, it may surprise you that many of us do not even have 
bulletproof vests and that everyone in my unit is driving an old first-
generation Humvee, and, also, that does not repel bullets. My unit was 
on the ground in Iraq for a month without vests. Our communications 
equipment is archaic. Regular Army personnel have all of the up-to-date 
equipment, National Guard gets the leftovers.
  ``Our unit is now west of Baghdad living in a disgusting old prison 
that, among many other things, is an asbestos nightmare. Will there be 
health care available for those when we come home ill? Probably not 
since the Veterans Administration budget has already been trimmed by $1 
billion. I would be willing to bet that the officials who gave the 
thumbs up to extending the National Guard tours for 6 months to 1 year 
wouldn't have done so if they had been in Iraq facing the very dangers 
that we do every day. Morale has begun to go downhill pretty darn fast 
and we are likely to crash if the extension stays in effect.''
  That is a letter from a young soldier who puts his life in harm's way 
every day doing his duty as ordered by this country. One of the things 
he points out is that the National Guard units are now showing up in 
the theater of combat in Iraq with inferior equipment. Hopefully, 
tomorrow we will have made in order an amendment by the gentlewoman 
from California (Mrs. Tauscher) and myself that will take some of the 
money from the hunt for weapons of mass destruction because we add 600 
million new dollars to continue this quest where we found no weapons, 
we would take $300 million of that and transfer that to the National 
Guard so that no longer will we send these young people and these 
military police units that are from my district and from the West Coast 
to go into harm's way in a Humvee that is a first generation.
  The National Guard, which we are going deeper and deeper into calling 
up them, and the Army Reserve, ought to be able to go in with the same 
first-class equipment as the Regular Army. These are not second-class 
citizens. We are relying on them to do a job in Iraq. We rely on them 
to do a job in Afghanistan.

                              {time}  2350

  We rely on them to do jobs all over the world for the security of 
this Nation. They certainly are entitled to the care of this Congress 
by making sure that they have first-class and the same good equipment 
as the regular Army. We will have a chance to vote on this tomorrow.

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