[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19740-19742]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter) is 
recognized until midnight.
  Mr. McCOTTER. Madam Speaker, I would like today to give not a novel, 
certainly not a unique overview of what I think some of the things we 
need to do to help win the battle of Iraq constitute. Again many of 
these things are being done, but I just want to try to put it forward 
as a comprehensive exposition of what we need to do to win. I think 
that there are three key areas involved in this struggle along all 
fronts upon which we have to continue to press: democracy, the economy 
and, of course, the military.
  In terms of diplomacy, I believe everyone understands that the key 
now is the holding of free elections on time in Iraq. The U.N. has 
agreed with this, and while their support is welcome, it remains 
tenuous. We should encourage all member states of the U.N. to rise to 
the challenge of democracy in Iraq and provide the necessary personnel 
to defend the monitors and help these elections go forward. For as we 
know, what is going to happen is that the terrorist counterattack on 
democracy in Iraq will escalate. They will do everything they can to 
derail these elections. Yet that violence and terror in and of itself 
should not be enough to deter us and certainly should not deter the 
Iraqi people.
  And as for the naysayers who claim that absent a perfect election in 
Iraq, it cannot be deemed a representative success, I would just like 
to ask those detractors to ask themselves why we demand more from the 
Iraqi people in a civil war than we demanded from ourselves in our own 
American civil war; because all one needs to do is to look at the map 
of 1864 to see that the States in rebellion did not participate in 
Abraham Lincoln's reelection. Yet I highly doubt that anyone today can 
say that it was not a representative election nor an election that was 
worthy of the American people.
  In terms of the economy, one of the things that we face in Iraq 
clearly is the passive-aggressive resistance of the Iraqi people. After 
years of oppression, after years of being terrorized and after seeing 
so many international promises fall away, it is very difficult for them 
to stand up and fight on their own without the assurance that the 
United States and our coalition partners will be behind them. But it is 
also important to remember that while we provide them the possibility 
of a transformational change from tyranny to democracy, we must always 
remember that in any representative political system there is also a 
transactional

[[Page 19741]]

element; for it is one thing to profess ideals to an oppressed people 
who have been newly liberated, it is another thing to provide concrete, 
tangible benefits to the populace to show them the investment in their 
future.
  I think that one of the things that we have to do in Iraq is build on 
the town council model. We have to take a bottom-up approach, a 
grassroots approach to reconstruction in Iraq. We have to have and 
invest full decision-making authority into town councils, tribal 
leaders, religious leaders, and other community organizations that have 
been set up, let them determine what infrastructure projects in their 
area must be worked upon, let them figure out the processes by which 
they will come to these determinations and let them have control of the 
money to implement these decisions. These are very formative, basic 
steps along the road to a transition to democracy and to building 
lasting institutions upon which the Iraqi people can build.
  I also think that in conjunction with the grassroots approach to the 
local control of the decision-making and the implementation of those 
decisions is that we should adopt an Iraqi oil fund similar to the one 
that we have in the State of Alaska. The Iraqi oil fund would take 
portions of the proceeds from the sale of Iraq's oil, place it in a 
fund and distribute it per capita to the people of Iraq.
  The benefits of such a model, which we have seen in Alaska, will be 
also readily apparent in Iraq. It will provide a direct economic 
benefit to the people of Iraq, showing them the stake in their future. 
It will provide an immediate jump-start to the Iraqi economy and get 
them up to the average per capita spending that is expected to start 
any semblance of a stable economy. I think we should also use it as 
spur to register adults to vote in the upcoming elections, for if one 
is not a registered voter, one cannot receive the benefits of the Iraq 
oil fund.
  I think that this will also prove to help uproot terrorists because 
no terrorist will be eligible to receive the per capita annual 
appropriation from the Iraqi oil fund. This will also, in turn, I 
believe help the Iraqi people further their efforts to defend their oil 
infrastructure and further their efforts to uproot the terrorists who 
would disturb it because the money would be being taken out of their 
mouths. It would be taken out of their children's mouths. In short, it 
would be an intolerable situation for them to allow to continue.

                              {time}  2310

  I think that we would also see a quelling of some of the 
sectionalism. I think we would begin to see that oil, rather than a 
divisive force amongst the regions of Iraq, could then be used as a 
means of unifying them and perhaps give them a greater semblance of an 
Iraqi national identity.
  As we have seen throughout the history of Iraq, oil has often been 
used as the dictator's tool for fueling his oppression of his people. 
If this oil fund is written into the Iraqi constitution, not only will 
it hasten the adoption of an Iraqi constitution, it will safeguard 
against one individual being able to rise up and usurp control of the 
oil funds because truly the oil will belong to the people, and I 
believe the people will jealously guard this right under their new 
constitution.
  I think it will also do one other thing: It will make the people less 
susceptible to any attempts by the terrorists or any future dictator to 
prey upon their impoverishment by offering them blandishments or other 
remunerative items in return for their loyalty to a new regime or to a 
new movement.
  I think from the United States' point of view it will do something 
very important: It will belie the perception amongst much of the Middle 
Eastern population and amongst some of Western Europe and amongst some 
of our own population that the United States is there to take the oil, 
for we are not. The oil belongs to the Iraqi people. What more 
tangible, palpable way could that be proven than by having this put 
into their constitution?
  I also believe it has another tangential benefit: that the United 
States, by being willing to help the Iraqi people establish an oil 
fund, the oil fund will stand in stark contrast to the Oil for Food 
scandal that was operated by the U.N. which was perpetrated on the 
people of Iraq and in which many corrupt politicians in both the U.N. 
and in Iraq benefited at the expense of the poor Iraqi people.
  I think that finally under the economy, we have to look at debt 
forgiveness. It is one thing for world powers or other members of the 
world community to claim that a free and stable Iraq is not their 
problem to the point where they will send troops to help win this 
battle, but it is another thing to say that they will not forgive the 
debts they incurred dealing with Saddam Hussein to help further the 
goal of Iraqi prosperity on the road to democracy. If we think about 
it, every country that has sold weapons to Saddam Hussein and has 
outstanding debt on the basis of those weapons is asking the newly 
liberated Iraqi people to pay the debt for the guns and the weapons 
that Saddam Hussein used to kill and torture them into submission. I 
think that is an inhuman request of any government, and I think that 
unless the world powers that sold these weapons are prepared to forgive 
these debts, I think it is morally justified by the Iraqi people to 
repudiate any debts incurred by Saddam Hussein's regime for the 
acquisition of weapons, be they conventional, be they weapons of mass 
destruction, or be they dual-use technologies or any instrument of 
oppression that he applied to his people.
  Militarily I think that we have to hone our military and our 
intelligence to a fine precision. I think we have to prioritize the 
three threats that we face in Iraq at the present time. They are, one, 
I think the foreign terrorists clearly, followed by the Baathists and 
the Sunnis, many of them who are operating with the foreign terrorists, 
and of course the radical Shiia Iraqis who have come back from the 
shelter of Iran. I think that these are prioritized by order of 
importance for the long term.
  The foreign terrorists are there to drive the Americans out. I think 
that over time, the Baathist remnants that currently have a marriage of 
convenience with them, should the Americans be thrown out, the 
Baathists and the Sunnis will then immediately turn upon them, which 
will lead to a blood bath in the short run and could further incite a 
civil war. We have to start with the foreign terrorists and the 
Baathists in a simultaneous effort to eradicate them from the terror 
that they are perpetrating on their country.
  Third, we must then face the threat from the radical Shiia movement 
personified by the radical cleric Moqta al-Sadr. And it is important to 
remember that at the outset of the Iran-Iraq War, in Saddam Hussein's 
mind he was fighting a defensive war, for after the Khameni regime 
attained power through the Iran revolution, they immediately began 
destabilizing the secular Baath regime and targeting members of the 
Baath government for assassination and terrorizing them to undermine 
the Sunni-Baathist secular party and replace it with the Shiia 
revolutionary government modeled upon Iran.
  These people were then forced from the country by Saddam Hussein, 
where they were sheltered in Iran for decades. They have been 
returning, and as they return, let there be no doubt that the incidents 
we see in Najaf and in other areas of the south have been perpetrated 
in many ways by these people who have come back to continue the quest 
to establish an Iranian mullah model upon the people in Iraq.
  The tactics that we see from all three, predominantly the terrorists 
and the Sunnis, of course, are very similar to those that were 
perpetrated by the Colombian cartel drug lord, Pablo Escobar, for, in 
short, he utilized a private army to terrorize and destabilize the 
Government of Colombia, and he used largesse to the population to in 
many cases buy their loyalty or at least their silence and submission. 
As for the largesse that is handed out, if we can refer back to the 
economic model that I laid out, I think that will be very helpful in 
preventing that type of temptation by the Iraqi people.
  In terms of his private army and in terms of the efforts to 
destabilize the Iraqi government, they are very similar to what the 
Colombian drug lord

[[Page 19742]]

did. He is targeting the police. He is targeting the army. He is 
targeting the government, especially law enforcement within the 
government, including the judiciary and ministers. He is targeting 
infrastructure. He is doing that to continue to disrupt the supply of 
oil and continue the impoverishment and the suffering of the Iraqi 
people. And, of course, they are targeting civilians to generally 
terrorize the country.
  Finally, just as Escobar did, these are designed and geared as much 
towards inflicting casualties and wanton destruction as they are to 
influencing the media coverage of their action, and thus having a 
multiplying effect of their mass murder by bringing it to millions of 
homes across the globe.
  What we have to do to stop this is to understand these tactics and to 
ourselves adapt to the targeting of these institutions and these 
individuals and guard against them. We must also make sure that we rely 
upon the fledgling Iraqi army security forces and citizenry in order to 
root out their infrastructure and destabilize them in the very same 
manner that they are trying to destabilize the people of Iraq. We have 
to address their organization, root and branch. We can do that. I 
believe we have started to, and I believe we will continue to.
  We must also make sure that our coalition partners expediently and 
decisively strike back in troubled areas, whether or not the Iraqi 
national guard and security services are prepared, for in the final 
analysis, we cannot leave a Fallujah to be a hotbed of terrorism. We 
cannot leave Najaf and the holy shrines in Shiia Islam in the hands of 
a radical renegade cleric.
  It is my belief that the people of Iraq have had enough of this and 
that what they really need to see is a decisive stand to reestablish 
order in that country. And if we are not prepared to do that, every day 
we wait, there is an erosion of confidence in the Iraqi government and 
in the coalition, and another day's worth of despair that brings Iraqi 
people closer to a newly implemented dictatorship of terror.
  We must also make sure that we, the Nation that brought the world 
mass communication, fully engage in the battle of ideas and, yes, to 
use what is often thought a pejorative word, the battle of propaganda. 
We must get our message out to the Iraqi people. We must get our 
message out to the Arab world, and we must get our message out to the 
entire world. It is very critical that the people of Iraq see, through 
their newly bought satellite dishes, which were outlawed by Saddam 
Hussein, what freedom is doing and what the suffering and sacrifice of 
their own fellow Iraqis, notably the police and the military, who have 
been targeted for death, are doing to win that freedom.
  I think we must also press as quickly as we can here in the domestic 
front to come up with new technologies to combat the tactics, 
especially the roadside bombs, that are attacking our troops in the 
field.
  I think, finally, we must also make sure that we continue to empower 
American troops on the ground with the freedom to make combat 
decisions.

                              {time}  2320

  We must allow them to make these combat decisions free of political 
constraints in order to ensure that they come home to their loved ones 
with their mission accomplished.
  Madam Speaker, in the end, through military, economic and diplomatic 
means, we must press forward, because our enemy is not only the 
terrorists, our enemy is time; for while this is a battle of resolve, 
it is also a battle of reason, and the longer Iraq appears to be 
irrational and unreasonable and incapable of governance, the time ticks 
on our keeping our resolve.
  At the present time, let us remember that our task is far greater 
than that of the terrorists. The terrorists have the task of 
destabilizing a country. We and our coalition partners have the task of 
stabilizing it. The latter tasks is far harder. It will call upon our 
every ounce of commitment; it will call upon as well our every ounce of 
intelligence to come up with a rational plan to win this battle and to 
secure Iraq in the community of nations.
  To anyone, I would welcome their comments. Anyone who has any 
suggestions, I would welcome them, because, in the end, this is an 
exposition of what I hope to be a rough outline of a coherent plan. Not 
having possession of the absolute truth more than anyone else, I would 
like to know what other people think, because at this time in our 
nation's history we are not Republicans, we are not Democrats, we are 
not ideologues, we are all Americans. So let us see what we can come up 
with, and, as we always have, we will win.

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