[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 16965-16967]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         9/11 COMMISSION REPORT

  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, the report from the National Commission on 
Terrorist Attacks upon the United States will be coming out today. 
There has been some dribbling out of information about what that report 
might contain, but we are not going to know for sure the full content 
of that report until we get a briefing. I am excited that a good 
portion of the report is

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going to be released to the public. I am always of the belief that we 
need to have an open dialog about issues and where there are 
shortcomings so that we can come up with the answers and solutions that 
will serve us best.
  I do not think any one group of people or even one individual has all 
the answers. So I think the more dialog we can get as a result of this 
report, the better. But I do think it serves us well to think about 
where we are today, and how it is we got to where we are.
  The President came into office about 3\1/2\ years ago. He was elected 
in 2000. He had not even been in office a full year when all of a 
sudden we had 9/11. What has emerged is that we have a serious problem 
with terrorism.
  Historically, if we look back through the 1990s, we see that there 
was an emerging problem, which many of us did not recognize as serious 
as it turned out to be, and most of us did not realize that a series of 
events would eventually culminate into 9/11 and eventually a finishing 
off of the war with Iraq. There was a pattern, in looking back.
  By the way, it is always easy to look back and say we should have 
done this and we should have done that, but it is much more difficult 
to be prospective and say this is the information that is before us and 
this is what is going to happen in the future.
  What was happening in the 1990s was a persistent pattern of boldness 
in the size and the number of terrorist attacks that were occurring 
throughout the world. They started with car bombs, and we still have 
car bombs today. Then they added attacks on embassies. We had an attack 
on the Khobar Towers. We had an attack on the USS Cole. We had planes 
bombed by terrorists. We had a partially successful attack from 
terrorists in New York, and then all of a sudden it built up to the 
ultimate, which was the 9/11 attack in this country which brought down 
the Twin Towers in New York, and there was also an attack on the 
Pentagon, which is the first time this country had been attacked on its 
own soil since Pearl Harbor.
  This was very much an awakening for the Congress, as well as the 
American people. This President should be commended for rising to the 
challenges of 9/11, and I think we have the right President in office 
at the right time. He sent a strong message to the world that was 
important to send, and that message was that we are not going to 
tolerate terrorism, and if there are any other countries that are going 
to support terrorist attacks, either directly or indirectly, they are 
going to be considered part of the problem as we resolve these issues 
related to terrorism.
  As a result, he had to take some very strong stances. We had to take 
some very strong positions.
  Eventually, what evolved is that Afghanistan was the center. The 
President dealt first with Afghanistan. Afghanistan was pretty much the 
center of a lot of the terrorist activities. The Government had been 
taken over by the terrorists. Afghanistan as a country was being used 
as a training ground for terrorists who were exporting terrorism 
throughout the world.
  Today, Afghanistan is now a democracy, moving toward more freedom for 
its people, and getting terrorism under control. It has some challenges 
with economic growth, but I think President Karzai has done a 
tremendous job. This all happened because of strong action by this 
President in moving forward.
  We saw that many of these terrorist groups, al-Qaida, for example, 
had their origins in Saudi Arabia. We saw many terrorist groups that 
were raising money through Saudi Arabia. Today, Saudi Arabia has 
recognized the problem and taken some very strong actions. They are 
working with the United States to control terrorism within their own 
country.
  We have Libya and Muammar Qadhafi, who was exporting terrorism and 
actually attempting to develop a nuclear weapons program in his own 
country. Now he has backed off and said, look, we want to work with the 
United States. He has come out and publicly opposed terrorism. He has 
given up his nuclear program. The nuclear inspectors can now go into 
his country and look for nuclear materials.
  We have made remarkable progress in Afghanistan. I know we have 
remarkable progress in Saudi Arabia. We have made remarkable progress 
in Libya. Even in North Korea we seem to sense more willingness on 
their part at least to sit down with the United States and negotiate 
with the United States on how it is we can move toward a more peaceful 
environment.
  Finally, that brings us to Iraq. I think that is another remarkable 
achievement for this administration. Even though there are some 
differences of opinion about how this should have been handled, the 
fact is a large majority of the Senate, working with the President and 
working with the United Nations, realized terrorism was a problem and 
Iraq was a part of this problem.
  The President decided to invade Iraq and Saddam Hussein. It was a 
good decision. I need to remind Members this war started actually 
before then. It started under his father, the first President George 
Bush. The first President George Bush had to deal with an invasion by 
Saddam Hussein into the country of Kuwait. He soundly defeated Saddam 
Hussein. Saddam Hussein agreed to sign a treaty and in that treaty he 
agreed to allow inspectors into his country. He agreed to many 
provisions that were being stipulated by the United Nations. He agreed 
to certain no-fly zones.
  We attempted to enforce those no-fly zones as he was constantly 
shooting at our planes. After the first conflict, Saddam Hussein 
ignored what he had agreed to with the first President George Bush. 
Then we had the United Nations inspectors going in and looking for 
nuclear materials, weapons of mass destruction, and they were kicked 
out of that country.
  The Congress and the United Nations all agreed this was an unstable 
situation and something needed to be done with Saddam Hussein. So 
George Bush, who is now our President, made the right decision in 
saying we need to go into Iraq and we need to deal with this unstable 
situation because it is a persistent threat to world peace. If we do 
not deal with the problem now, it is only going to get worse with time. 
I have to say this President has done a great job. He has the support 
of the American people.
  Now this national commission on terrorist attacks upon the United 
States is going to reveal some shortcomings and we are going to need to 
address those. Our Nation has a leader who has made it clear that 
winning the war on terror is the defining moment for the civilized 
world.
  Since September 11, 2001, President Bush has taken some bold steps to 
ensure the safety and security of the United States, specifically 
against terrorist organizations and the nation states that support 
them. Specifically, since President Bush has taken office, the United 
States, under his leadership, has overthrown two terrorist regimes, 
rescued two nations and liberated over 50 million people, captured or 
killed close to two-thirds of known senior al-Qaida operatives, 
captured or killed 45 of the 55 most wanted in Iraq, including Iraq's 
deposed dictator, Saddam Hussein, who is now sitting in jail, hunted 
down thousands of terrorist and regime remnants in Iraq, disrupted 
terrorist cells on most continents and likely prevented a number of 
planned attacks. This is an astounding record of accomplishment for our 
commander in chief and his national security staff.
  We also have to recognize the phenomenal job of our men and women in 
our military services. They have been phenomenal and I do not think we 
can repeat that enough. We are very fortunate to have their dedication 
and commitment, not only of the men and women who are serving in these 
services, but their families and their communities back home who 
support them.
  The United States went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq risking 
significant loss of life and treasure to protect our way of life. Our 
goals are clear and twofold: Destroy the nexus of terrorism and weapons 
of mass murder that personify the two ousted regimes and create in 
their stead stable democratic states able to participate in the modern 
world community.
  We succeeded in our first goal, having killed or captured 
perpetrators and

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supporters of the enemy terrorists. The courageous people of 
Afghanistan and Iraq are making remarkable progress toward adoption of 
constitutional reforms to secure momentum toward lasting democratic 
independence. Nevertheless, we still have work to do.
  The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Iraq's weapons 
of mass destruction clearly identified what we have all known for some 
time, our intelligence has not performed in as desirable a way as we 
would like and in some cases has raised some issues about some of the 
decisions we had to make in this Congress.
  As a former member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I say to my 
colleagues that few employees in the Federal Government are as 
dedicated as those who work for our intelligence agencies. They are 
hard-working individuals who believe their work is critical to our 
Nation's national security, and they provide us good information. As 
policymakers, we also have to recognize the information they give us is 
not always absolute. A lot of time it is a little bit of information 
here, a little bit of information there, and we have to put it together 
and say this is a likely event that is going to happen or this is 
likely what is happening. It is not absolute in many regards, and we 
have to treat it that way.
  I think that is the way the President treated it, and I think that is 
the way the Congress has looked at much of the information that we 
received right after 9/11 and how terrorism is affecting us. That is 
why it was so frustrating to learn our intelligence agencies did not 
connect many of the dots in regard to September 11 and again failed to 
provide reliable information on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction 
programs.
  We clearly have a considerable amount of work to do. As the Senate 
Intelligence Committee recommended, we need to improve the process by 
which analysts, collectors, and managers fuse intelligence and produce 
judgments for policymakers, but that is not new. We have been facing 
this problem for some time. I am glad we are taking it more seriously. 
We need to greatly enhance almost every aspect of the intelligence 
community's human intelligence efforts. We need to address the tendency 
to build upon the judgments of previous assessments without including 
the uncertainties in those assessments.
  I will note the Senate Intelligence Committee's report did conclude 
that the intelligence community's judgments regarding Saddam Hussein's 
government's link to terrorist organizations were reasonable. Equally 
important was the Senate Intelligence Committee's conclusion that the 
exaggeration of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction 
capabilities was not the result of political pressure.
  As we prepare for the 9/11 Commission's report, I think it is 
appropriate that we thank the people who served on the Commission for 
their service to this country. Their service will go a long way to 
helping our Nation prevent future attacks.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Talent). Who seeks recognition?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I rise to make remarks today on two 
important subjects with which we are currently dealing in the Congress.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.

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