[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17344-17346]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         9/11 COMMISSION REPORT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) 
may continue not beyond midnight.
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to touch upon a couple 
of points that the gentleman from New Mexico brought up. One of them I 
think that is fascinating is the fixation in this country to try to 
split hairs between what is a collaborative tie between Iraq and al 
Qaeda or what is, I suppose, called a casual tie between Iraq and al 
Qaeda. Or whether or not because al Qaeda may or may not have been 
involved in Iraq to a great extent but other terrorists were, it still 
was unjustified.
  It seems to me, and I can only speak for myself on this, if a 
terrorist kills me, it is not really going to matter to me whether he 
was al Qaeda or whether he was some other group that was housed in Iraq 
or anything else. It is going to seem to me that, assuming I am looking 
down as opposed to looking up, I would ask the question why nothing was 
done. Have we become that legalistic in this country, that formalistic, 
that blind to the reality around us that we do not understand that if a 
dictator hates you and a terrorist hates you and they have ties, it 
does not bode well for you?
  I think that is just something that has grated on me for quite some 
time, how we tend to intellectualize things without seeing the reality, 
behind the sophistry of the arguments. It is much like the approach 
that many wish to take towards terrorism. Many in this country believe 
that you can cleanse the criminal by deeming it political. A murder is 
a murder. Kidnapping is kidnapping. Extortion is extortion. It is an 
inherently, intrinsically evil act. The goal for which one engages in 
the intrinsically evil act does not change its nature, does not justify 
it.
  So when we hear many in the international community trying to justify 
the actions of the terrorists based upon years of colonial occupation 
by European powers, I reiterate European powers, or we hear that there 
are underlying root causes, many of which are valid root causes but no 
justification for the act of terrorism, we have to be clear in our 
minds, because as I said before, every single American today is under 
attack from the terrorists. The act of killing our fellow citizens or 
kidnapping and killing our fellow citizens or kidnapping and killing 
other citizens of this world is designed to prey upon our minds, so 
that we believe that we cannot prevail, that we tend to doubt that 
people wish to breathe free, that they wish to love their children, 
that they wish to grow old, that they wish to savor the gift of life 
from our Creator.
  Some would have you believe that there are people in this world that 
are unfit for democracy, that they would say they can never take to 
this forum, that it cannot be imposed from above. I believe that the 
thirst for democracy, the thirst for freedom, comes from within, and 
that what we as a Nation have done is created the conditions in which 
their own yearnings can be expressed and their own futures be 
determined, and then can they live in freedom. I think that if you come 
from that perspective, it is easy. It is difficult to miss the reality 
in Iraq which proves my point about the terrorists trying to prey upon 
your mind. There are 25 million people in Iraq.
  The reason the terrorists are engaging in individual suicide 
bombings, in individual kidnappings, is because you do not have 
millions of Iraqis fighting with their new government to return to the 
days of Saddam Hussein.

                              {time}  2340

  We do not see organized armies of Iraqis out in the field en masse 
trying to overthrow the transitional government and replace it with a 
terrorist regime. What we see every day in Iraq is what we try to do 
here: Iraqi citizens trying very desperately to live normal, happy 
lives. They want to take their children to school.
  Let me just stress this. In this country when people take their child 
to school, they generally feel safe that their child will be in a 
stable environment, will be educated, will return to their loving arms. 
Put oneself in a position of an Iraqi parent today, and the gentleman 
from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) and I were there at the time of the so-
called days of national resistance when the first place they put the 
fliers threatening to kill people were around the schools so the 
parents would not take their children to school. We see an Iraqi 
parent, they have to take their child to school with the threat of 
terrorism around them every day in a magnitude we have yet to 
experience. We see them dropping them at the schools, under threat of 
death for doing so, and then praying that their child comes home to 
them.
  And yet many in this world will say that these are people unfit for 
freedom. They are no different than we are. I think it was President 
Kennedy that put it best: We all inhabit this small planet. We all 
breath the same air. We all cherish our children's future, and we are 
all mortal.
  To our fellow human beings in Iraq, we cannot offer condescension. We 
cannot offer derision. We must continue to offer assistance so that 
they can breath free, so that their internal thirst can commence upon a 
quest for freedom in their lifetimes.
  And probably one of the things I will always remember from Iraq, as 
we were leaving, we were getting on the Black Hawk helicopters to leave 
the Green Zone for the final time. It was Halloween, and there was an 
American soldier with a small Iraqi child, maybe 8 or 10, and he had 
little Dracula fangs he was playing with and smiling at the American 
soldier. That to me expressed the hope for Iraq, that that child who 
has been inoculated, who has been given an opportunity to go to school, 
whose parents have a chance to seize his freedom, that child is the 
future of Iraq, and we cannot turn our back on that child.
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments 
again.
  And, Mr. Speaker, I would note that during this week we were allowed 
and privileged to hear the Deputy National Security Adviser. He 
commented that much of Iraq is still very stable. Always when the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter) and I were in Iraq at the end of 
October and the first of November, it appeared that about 75 percent of 
the country was very stable, that there were areas of difficulty in 
Fallujah, Mosul, that there were areas of problems but that most of the 
country was doing exactly what the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
McCotter) said. People were trying to live normal lives.
  As we drove up and down the highways, it was obvious that we were 
Americans. We had American flags on the convoy. We had armored 
vehicles. We were in armored vehicles, and yet there were no signs of 
obvious dislike or distrust of the Americans. People just seemed to be 
living their lives. Occasionally we would give waves. No

[[Page 17345]]

overtly aggressive actions were taken toward us. Small kids sometimes 
waved and gave us the thumbs up. But that is the picture now of Iraq 
now under the transitional government, that people are trying to get 
out and live their lives, and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
McCotter) pointed out very well that while we were there they brought 
in fliers and showed us that these days of national resistance, if they 
take their child to school, they will either kill them or blow the 
school up. People still were selecting to send their kids to schools. 
About 50 percent of the school kids went that day with those difficult 
threats about them. Different fliers announced, Do not go shopping, Do 
not go into the business district today or we will kill you there. And 
yet the Iraqis, in trying to live normal lives, normal lives where they 
could expect to come and go, normal lives of freedom, the things that 
we take for granted and have somewhat become complacent about in this 
country that they are doing under the threat of death day in and day 
out.
  So to find this transitional government operating actually quite 
well, we were actually able to hand the power over to them a couple of 
days early, and in fact many of the ministries were operating even 
before the handover date. By a couple of weeks they had already been 
operating. So we find the stability of the transition to be remarkable, 
and what we are finding also, according to this Deputy National 
Security Adviser, is that the Iraqis are buying more into the need for 
them to be out on the frontlines, and as they provide security in their 
neighborhoods, as they provide border security, they are able to do it 
better because the United States is not under the tremendous pressure 
that the international community would bring, and the Iraqis do not 
face that same pressure either. The Iraqis can act more decisively. 
They can act with more abruptness. They can act with far more 
retribution than what the Americans could do, and there is an 
acceptance in the international community when the Iraqis act in that 
fashion.
  So, Mr. Speaker, if this country will maintain its resolve, if both 
sides of the debate will begin to discuss the actual truth instead of 
what they would like to be true, then, Mr. Speaker, we can win this war 
on terror.
  One of the things that I think is very critical is for the media to 
begin to discuss it truthfully. The media has had it correct back as 
far as 1999. Many in the news media were publicly reporting the ties 
between Iraq and al Qaeda. It was only under President Bush, when they 
decided that they wanted to be against him, that they wanted to 
discredit him at any cost, that the media began to change their story. 
Mr. Speaker, I would hope that the media would take a look at the 9/11 
Commission, that they would put that beside the Senate Select 
Committee, which had many of the same findings. I would hope that the 
news media would compare it to the Butler report on British 
intelligence and begin to report the truth, that this is indeed a war 
on terror, that this is indeed the war on terror that is going to 
determine the outcome of world history.
  Mr. Speaker, the media had it right back in 1999. Newsweek Magazine 
ran an article on January 11, 1999, entitled Saddam + bin Laden? It 
read in part: ``Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting 
terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas, 
assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network. U.S. 
sources say he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some 
who may be linked to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile accused 
of masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last 
summer.''
  Mr. Speaker, ABC News on January 15, 1999, also had a report in which 
they acknowledged the links between Iraq and al Qaeda, and yet now they 
are claiming that there is no link. But on January 15, 1999, ABC News 
said: ``Intelligence sources say bin Laden's long relationship with the 
Iraqis began as he helped Sudan's fundamentalist government in their 
efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.'' This according to ABC 
news. It goes on to say that ``ABC News has learned that in December an 
Iraqi intelligence chief named Faruq Hijazi, now Iraq's Ambassador to 
Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Three 
intelligence agencies tell ABC News they cannot be certain what was 
discussed, but almost certainly, they say, bin Laden had been told he 
would be welcome in Baghdad.''
  Those findings are similar to the findings of the 9/11 Commission 
that I reported on earlier in this discussion tonight.
  Another well-reported article and news source, NPR reporter Mike 
Shuster reported in an interview with Vincent Cannistraro, who was the 
former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center.

                              {time}  2350

  Mike Shuster reports on NPR that Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go 
back some years to at least 1994 when, according to one U.S. Government 
source, Hijazi met with him when bin Laden lived in Sudan. According to 
Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin Laden to live in Baghdad to be nearer to 
potential targets of terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Some 
experts believed bin Laden might be tempted to live in Iraq because of 
his reported desire to obtain chemical or biological weapons. CIA 
Director George Tenet referred to that in recent testimony before the 
Senate Committee on Armed Services, when he said bin Laden was planning 
additional attacks on American targets.
  Mr. Speaker, the news media has had it correct in the past. I 
earnestly hope that they will return to the truthful reporting of the 
past and give this 9/11 report the hearing in front of the American 
people that it deserves. The American people need to know the truth, 
and the news media needs to be certain that the American people should 
and will know the truth, whether or not it comes from them.
  Mr. Speaker, again, I would begin my wrap up comments by saying that 
Mr. Berger's removing of documents from the archives absolutely appears 
to have been criminal contact. I would recommend that this body and all 
other bodies responsible look into these sorts of illegal activities, 
to bring this to the highest level of examination.
  Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that Mr. Berger wanted to take documents, 
some of which he has not returned, some of which supposedly have been 
destroyed. Mr. Berger needs to be held accountable for the illegal 
activities that he conducted while he was working with the Kerry 
campaign. I think, Mr. Speaker, that the Kerry campaign needs to also 
be very straightforward with the American people about their 
association with Mr. Berger.
  Mr. Speaker, I would offer one last time to yield to the gentleman 
from Michigan.
  Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico for 
yielding.
  I would just like to conclude with an observation and a question. 
When we last participated in special orders, I asked the question about 
where is the opposition's plan for dealing with terrorism? Where is 
their plan for reconstructing Iraq? Where is their plan essentially to 
protect the national security of the United States, whether they would 
delegate it to the United Nations or keep it where it remains, here in 
the bosom of the sovereign people?
  Well, I got kind of an answer, and I guess maybe this is what passes 
for planning these days, it seems to me more a statement of the 
obvious, that part of the opposition's plan was that they would, with 
sufficient evidence, preemptively take out terrorists.
  Well, I am glad that they concur with part of the President's plan. 
But that is not necessarily the in-depth approach that we need at the 
present time. Maybe the forthcoming week will show us more.
  My observation along those lines is perhaps more of a frustration, 
that many people today are saying that America needs international 
support if we are to stand with the Iraqi people. We all know we would 
enjoy international support. But what I find galling is they will then 
turn around and say they are most capable of building

[[Page 17346]]

the international support for the coalition to help reshape Iraq and 
help defend the United States. But, in the process of doing that, they 
have done something very interesting, is that they have denigrated as 
coerced, as distorted, as bribed, quote-unquote, the allies we have 
abroad as part of our coalition whose children, whose young men and 
women, are fighting beside our soldiers in Iraq and who are dying.
  Now, I am a liberal arts guy, I was not a math guy, but it seems to 
me that if you attack and denigrate your own allies, it is very 
difficult through subtraction to build a larger coalition, especially 
when one is going to rely on people who have adversarially tried to 
undermine the United States' effort and our coalition partners' efforts 
in Iraq. I am thinking of many people in the United Nations who during 
the Oil For Food scandal were not necessarily in the best position to 
tell Saddam Hussein, who they were in league with and making money off 
of, to try to follow the resolutions they passed regarding weapons of 
mass destruction.
  So I would just ask people to consider whether someone may or may not 
hypothetically be fit to be the Commander-in-Chief of the United States 
who, during a time of war, denigrates our allies and courts our 
adversaries. There is no simpler way to put that, because that is 
absolutely true. Ask yourself that question.
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank you for your 
tolerance in allowing us to speak tonight about this very important 
subject, that of understanding the tie between Iraq, al Qaeda and the 
international war on terror. It is the most significant thing that this 
generation faces. We are either going to leave the world more safe, or 
we can leave the world without freedom.
  Mr. Speaker, it is up to this body, it is up to this government, it 
is up to this President, and it is up to the American people. We must 
decide. We are going to decide this year which way we are going to 
pursue this particular war on terror.
  Mr. Speaker, I would request humbly that all of the citizens, all of 
the people throughout this country, and especially the people in this 
body, would give that discussion their fullest attention and arrive at 
decisions, so we can explain to the next generation that we took the 
responsibility and handled that responsibility wisely.

                          ____________________