[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19728]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             WAR ON TERROR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, in just a few short days, the American 
people will make a decision that will determine the future of our 
Nation for at least the next 4 years and maybe for the next four 
decades. We find ourselves in a situation where more and more Americans 
are losing their health insurance, more of our retirees are in fear 
that their retirement benefits will be reduced or eliminated, more of 
our young people are finding it increasingly difficult to afford a 
college education, more of our senior citizens are finding it 
impossible to buy the medicines they need, and, sadly, more and more of 
our American troops are losing their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and 
literally thousands of our troops have been and continue to be wounded 
in that war.
  We find ourselves with the situation in Afghanistan where the Taliban 
is reconstituting its authority and power and we face the situation 
where long after our country was attacked by the terrorists, the 
mastermind of those attacks that took the lives of our citizens in New 
York and Pennsylvania and here at the Pentagon in Washington, the 
mastermind of that attack, of those attacks, Osama bin Laden, is still 
on the loose. We know not where he is. He is seldom mentioned. Yet the 
President claims that we are winning the war on terror when the major 
terrorist has not been apprehended and continues to be free to plan the 
next attack whenever or wherever that may occur.
  The President spoke at the Republican Convention for 63 minutes, 
quite a long time, and yet he never once mentioned the name of Osama 
bin Laden. Osama bin Laden, the man who orchestrated the attacks upon 
our country. Osama bin Laden. Not Saddam Hussein but Osama bin Laden. 
It is almost as if the President has forgotten how to pronounce that 
name. I point this out for I think a very legitimate reason. As long as 
the person who was responsible for attacking our country is still on 
the loose, has not been apprehended, is it not reasonable to assume 
that the American people would conclude that we are still threatened by 
this man? That regardless of what we have been able to claim in 
Afghanistan, we have failed in the primary mission?
  The President told us shortly after September 11 that Osama bin Laden 
could run but he could not hide. Those were the President's words. He 
can run but he cannot hide. The sad truth is that he ran and he has 
successfully hidden and this night he is somewhere planning the next 
attack. Symbolically, he is the hero to the terrorists. And as long as 
Osama bin Laden is on the loose, the terrorists can say they have not 
yet defeated us.
  I get a little tired of hearing the rhetoric that is coming from the 
White House, that is coming from Secretary Rumsfeld and occasionally 
from Colin Powell, although he tends to be a little quieter about it. I 
get a little tired of hearing from Vice President Dick Cheney that 
things are going well, that we are winning in Iraq. The fact is that 
much of Iraq is off limits to our soldiers. They are called no-go 
zones. Our soldiers cannot go there. Well, they can only go there if 
the Iraqi interim governmental leadership wants them to or says they 
should, and in those cases they may wander into those no-go zones. They 
tell us we are going to have elections in January. Yet with much of 
Iraq off limits, I wonder, and I think it is a legitimate question to 
ask, how can we have elections when we cannot even enter large cities 
in Iraq?
  The President needs to come clean with the American people. He needs 
to tell us the truth. We are capable of dealing with the truth. We are 
not capable of dealing with misleading deceptions and what I consider 
manipulation and deceit on the part of this administration.

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