[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 11436-11443]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         30-SOMETHING DEMOCRATS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to address 
the House of Representatives and also the American people on issues of 
importance. A part of our democracy is being able to provide 
information to the American people so that they can make the right 
decisions at the right time when they are given the opportunity. Also, 
to hopefully have an opportunity to speak to our colleagues about some 
of the issues that are facing this Congress and the American people, 
that they can also make the right decision at the right opportunity and 
at the right time.
  We have more opportunities, the American people do, to make major 
decisions. They get an opportunity every couple of years as it relates 
to the House of Representatives, and in many cases every 6 years as it 
relates to the other body. But every 4 years they get an opportunity to 
vote for the leader of the free world, the President of the United 
States; and it is important that we understand exactly what is going on 
in our country, what is going on in the world.
  This is an hour, Mr. Speaker, that the minority leader, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), has put together for our 30-
something Caucus that we have on the Democratic side on the aisle. The 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is my co-chair as it relates to our 
working group.
  We have a number of members, some 14 Members of this House, that take 
time out every week to come to the floor. We have an opportunity to 
talk about issues that are facing young Americans and also middle-aged 
Americans and older Americans, because when we start talking about 
education, we start talking about health care, we start talking about 
jobs.
  I think it is important we talk about Iraq. It is also important to 
all Americans, but we try to make sure that we be able to give voice to 
those individuals that are young parents and those individuals that are 
going into college and even young people that are looking to go to 
college to make sure that they have a great opportunity to do what they 
have to do.
  I am so glad that my good friend from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is here with 
me, who is just an outstanding gentleman. We both serve on the 
Committee on Armed Services together, and we sit next to each other, 
almost next to each other, but we are there on the same level on the 
bottom row.
  I thank the gentleman for being here.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much.
  Over the past week, we had a break. We normally are doing our 30-
something event on Tuesday nights, but we are here on Thursday night 
tonight, and we are going to take a little different twist here. 
Normally, we talk about issues that are facing young students, young 
people trying to make their way in the workforce.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Can I just, when the gentleman mentioned that, 
because we need to get into what we are getting ready to discuss right 
now, but I know the gentleman has a couple of e-mails. If we can just 
take 5 minutes and talk about this voter suppression issue.
  As you know, over the last couple of weeks we have been getting phone 
calls and e-mails about students throughout the country going to 
supervisor of elections offices and being told that they cannot 
register to vote there. Those students that are now in summer school, 
students that would like to go into the fall and be able to have the 
opportunity to vote in the primary elections in many States and also in 
the general election. They are being told that they can not register to 
vote in that State because they are not a permanent resident. But, as 
you know, in 1975 the Supreme Court said you can register. It is legal.
  So we got a response back from a number of people saying this has 
happened to me, and we asked them to go to rockthevote.com.

[[Page 11437]]


  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Rockthevote.com to help with voter suppression 
across the country. It will inform you about whatever your situation 
may be locally.
  I just brought a couple of these that I wanted to read, because we 
are going to, obviously, move to another topic. We received a couple of 
e-mails that we pulled out here, one from a Luther Lowe from the 
College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and one also 
from Alleyn Harned from Columbus, Ohio, who lives in Delaware. I am 
going to read a couple of paragraphs out of the e-mail we got, because 
most adults will say why are kids not participating and being active in 
the process? There is youth voter apathy.
  I just want to read these. This is Luther Lowe from William and Mary. 
``Rather than sit and watch our local representatives make laws which 
are unfair to young people, I decided to participate in my local 
democracy. I applied to register to vote at Williamsburg which required 
I also fill out a detailed two-page questionnaire in addition to the 
normal form. One week later, I received a notification of my 
registration denial. The reasons? I was claimed on my parents' income 
taxes. I drove a car owned by my mom who lives in Arkansas. According 
to the local registrar, I should have been voting in my parents' 
hometown. The problem with that is I have never voted in my parents' 
hometown. I voted for Al Gore from my boarding school in high school. I 
spend less than 2 months a year in Arkansas, so why should I be 
participating in local elections there? With the help of a local 
attorney from the ACLU, I fought back. It was only after two lawsuits 
that I was able to register on a technicality that I am a member of the 
Virginia National Guard and Governor Mark Warner is my primary 
commander in chief.''
  Give me a break. Here is a kid that wants to participate in the 
system, and he has got to hire a lawyer from the ACLU to get a right to 
vote from the university.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. And he is a National Guardsman.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And he is a National Guardsman. The kid loves his 
country, loves the State of Virginia, has not been in Arkansas all that 
much, and they are trying to limit his right to vote.
  I think that is the perfect example of why we are doing this, why we 
want to keep doing this, and slowly, over time, allow us to at least 
communicate to the young people of this country that sometimes it is a 
little bit of a fight. It should not be, but let them know that there 
are people here working on this for them.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. It is just amazing that you have to sue. I mean, 
it is amazing that you have to sue to participate in democracy.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It would be funny if it was not so sad.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. And the level of insight that went into the 
letter he received from an official office of saying not only do we 
think you do not reside in this State but you have your mom's car, and 
the last time you voted you were in another State. It is very, very 
important that Americans understand that we have to fight day in and 
day out, even within the borders of our own country, to make sure that 
our voices are heard. And young people they are getting it handed to 
them right now not only by the Federal Government but the State has to 
do the same thing because we have cut our commitment to them.
  We will talk about spending money and spending irresponsibly. But I 
cut the gentleman off. He was about to head down a path that we are 
fully prepared to talk about this afternoon. But I want to encourage 
our listeners and watchers to go to rockthevote.com. I understand we 
are going to do some things in the 30-something Caucus to make sure 
that does not continue to happen.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We will move on a little bit to the topic that we 
have been talking about a lot in the Committee on Armed Services and 
also been talking about a lot in Congress; and, obviously, the 
President of the United States has been talking about this a great 
deal.
  Notice the picture that I have next to me. The gentleman on my far 
right, on the gentleman's far left, is President George Bush II. And on 
my near right here is Mr. Chalabi, who was the main informant, the main 
intelligence gatherer for the United States of America in leading to 
the war in Iraq.
  The reason why we are going to talk about this is because some people 
may be asking, what are two 30-somethings that primarily have been 
focused on long-term debt for the country, increase in the deficit, 
annual deficits that we have in this country, student loans and college 
debt for students, debt for the country, debt for students, job access, 
outsourcing, we have talked about a lot of these issues, why are we 
going to talk about the war?
  I think, and I know the gentleman knows this, that there has been 
nothing that has damaged this country fiscally or with our political 
bank account more than the latest war in Iraq. I was against the war, 
as I am for full disclosure for the American people, for a lot of 
reasons that we are talking about today.
  And I see that there are some young students that are up in the 
gallery now, so we actually have a live audience here. Why should they 
care about what is going on in Iraq?


                Announcement By The Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair reminds Members not to make 
references to visitors in the gallery.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Why should we talk about Mr. Chalabi? Why should we 
talk about his relationship to President Bush? Why should we talk about 
his relationship to Vice President Cheney?
  This gentleman stood up in the gallery during the State of the Union 
address as a friend of the President of the United States; and now we 
see in the paper today, from CNN's Inside Politics, Condoleezza Rice is 
now downplaying the relationship that this administration had with Mr. 
Chalabi. And she says, we had a relationship with Mr. Chalabi's Iraqi 
National Congress just like we have relationships with a number of 
Iraqi organizations devoted to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
  That is not true. It is not just like every other relationship they 
had, because this gentleman was sitting in this gallery during the 
President's State of the Union address which, as we know, it is an 
honor to be recognized here in this Chamber, whether it is legally or 
illegally acknowledged. But he was acknowledged as a friend of the 
administration.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Well, obviously, he has represented himself as a 
friend of the United States. But there is a big discussion about him 
giving away the fact that we had Iran's secret codes and to be able to 
get intelligence on what they are doing inside Iran. Now that is major. 
That is major. That is just another investigation that is going on.
  But how much did we pay him a month? Does the gentleman remember that 
number? Was it like $365,000 a month? I believe that that was the 
number that they had. And if I can, I pulled my credit card out last 
time. I pulled it out of my wallet, and my wife said, do not pull that 
credit card out. And I told her I was using it as a prop.
  But with a little help from my graphics people, when we start looking 
at this we are looking at really $477 billion, which is $4.7 trillion 
dollars in debt right now. And this is, of course, the U.S. Treasury 
that this money is coming out of.
  So not only did we pay for a double spy to be able to share 
information with Iran, had a relationship, a very close relationship 
and family ties to Iran, which I must say that day in and day out we 
are trying to do what we can to make sure that we play down the nuclear 
threat in the region, but we paid him. We paid him almost $400,000 to 
provide this information.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. $400,000 a month.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Almost $400,000 a month. It is between 375 and 
400. But when you are dealing with a $4.7 trillion deficit, it seems 
like individuals that are in control of this House or the White House, 
they are not really concerned, or the Pentagon.
  Now, I must say that it is important for us to remember that our 
credibility

[[Page 11438]]

is at stake and American troops' lives are at stake. Any time we say 
that some folks stand behind our troops, we stand with our troops. And 
I will tell you right now that it is important that this information, 
that is bad information that we are getting from this gentleman, and 
also he is turning around and sharing our secrets with Iran. This is 
serious business, and this is nothing to play around with.
  Just because we point these issues out, some may say, they are just 
being political. Let me tell you something. The lives that will be lost 
because of the information that has been shared with Iran and the 
information that we need to be able to fight the effort against 
terrorism, when it puts our troops' lives at stake, no one stops them, 
insurgents do not stop them and say, hey, let me ask you a question 
before we explode this improvised bomb here. Are you a Republican, 
Democrat or Independent?

                              {time}  1700

  Are you a male or a female or are you black or are you Hispanic or 
what have you? Are you partisan or Christian? Are you a Jew? They do 
not ask that question. They just carry out the act.
  So we have decisions that are being made in the Pentagon, and I must 
say we have got to get to the whole resignation of the CIA Director, 
Mr. Tenet, and also what is not happening as it relates to Mr. 
Rumsfeld, who is kind of hard to find these days; but at the same time 
some of the bad decisions are still being made at the highest levels of 
the Pentagon. Everyone wants to get to the bottom of things, but no one 
wants to get to the top of it.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman is passionate 
about this. I think your performance on our committee has been a 
passionate performance, and I think it is important for the young 
people who are watching it or the C-SPAN viewers who are watching this 
to understand at how much of a disadvantage the next generation is 
going to be because of the acts of today, the amount of credibility 
that we lost in the world, the amount of negotiating power that we have 
lost in the world; and I am going to give a couple of examples and tie 
this into something that we were talking about before a few weeks ago.
  We were talking a lot about China stealing our manufacturing in the 
United States of America, how we are losing the manufacturing base in 
this country, and the majority of these jobs and companies are moving 
to China, exploiting the labor and human rights and everything else. 
How does that tie into this?
  Because of the political capital that we have been expending on Iraq, 
we cannot deal with a greater threat, which is North Korea, which has 
increased their nuclear arsenal by 400 percent in the last 3 years. So 
because we are so bogged down in the Middle East right now, we have to 
ask China to deal with North Korea for us, and therefore, we cannot 
play tough with China on manufacturing. So this has helped us not to be 
able to deal with the erosion of the manufacturing base. It is the same 
with the oil prices.
  OPEC is now saying they are going to turn the spigots on. We are not 
sure. We will believe it when we see it, but we have to ask Saudi 
Arabia to help us with our problems in the Middle East and Iraq, and we 
cannot talk tough with Saudi Arabia for the gasoline prices. So we have 
put ourselves at a weak bargaining position with China, weak bargaining 
position with the Saudis to deal with the oil crisis and the gas crisis 
in this country.
  I want the American people who work two jobs and deal with their 
grandparents and their parents and people are sick and they are sending 
their kids to school, who do not have time to digest all of this, and I 
want them to understand that we have made bad political moves, and we 
hire Presidents and hire Members of Congress to put us in good 
political positions.
  I heard many Members on the other side talk about Thomas Jefferson. 
Well, we bought the Louisiana territory. That was a good political 
position. It put the country in a good position. NASA put the country 
in a good position. For us to just sit here and watch our country be 
put in a weak position, a weak bargaining position, a weak negotiating 
position, all in the process of pulling out the credit card and 
dropping $200 billion in the Middle East, which now we have to stay and 
win, no one's arguing that, we have to support our troops, and I know 
we both voted for the Defense authorization bill. So this is not 
pacifist. We do not want any war ever, and we are going to support the 
Defense spending in this country, the Defense appropriations. We both 
have voted for that.
  All we are saying is bad decisions have been made and they have been 
made because we have been taking advice from a con man who has conned 
everybody for the last 25 or 30 years in the world, who was found 
guilty of 30-some counts in Jordan, fraud, embezzlement, has been 
running around the Middle East and running around Europe over the past 
years. Everyone knew the reputation of this man; and he just told this 
administration what they wanted to hear, and they bought it hook, line 
and sinker; and now we are stuck.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, let me just say this. I saw our con 
man on ``Nightline'' with Ted Koppel, and he said that he wanted to 
come before the Congress and address the Congress. He was willing to 
come to a congressional hearing. I am to the point that I will send him 
a ticket because I really want to see this one.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We will pay for the bus fare.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, as you know, some of our troops 
secured the perimeter while Iraqi police went in and raided his office. 
This is the man we just cut payment off to in the last 30 days.
  Also you mentioned outsourcing, and I just want, as it relates to 
this war and as it relates to the fight that we have tried to put on in 
the Committee on Armed Services, of making sure that our troops still 
get the things that they should have gotten when they first went in, 
armor, up-armoring Humvees, making sure that they have the things that 
they need to have so they do not have to write home and say, Mom, 
Honey, can you send me some equipment, can you send me a bulletproof 
vest. I mean, all of these things that the U.S. military is supposed to 
provide but did not have on hand because we went at this war in haste.
  You mentioned something about outsourcing, and I want to tell you, I 
think maybe at this juncture, maybe 4 years into the business of trying 
to run the country, that one would understand past mistakes. Well, it 
seems like the White House is at it again.
  The White House announced yesterday, led by President Bush, that they 
just gave the largest technology contract for passport screening, the 
largest contract in the history of the Department of Homeland Security 
to a Bermuda company, a company that has turned in its U.S. passport, 
moved to Bermuda to skirt paying Federal corporate taxes to be able to 
help this country run. Those jobs have also been encouraged and will 
continue to stay offshore of the United States of America to be able to 
provide the very jobs that individuals are looking for.
  I must be able to share with you that unless some amazing magic trick 
happens in the next 5 months, this President will be the first 
President in a very, very, very long time that has not gained not one 
net job, one-plus net job for U.S. citizens or individuals that are 
here in the United States of America. I just want to make sure that we 
understand. The American taxpayers are paying $10 billion, okay, that 
is with a capital B, for the passport inspections to a company that has 
turned its own U.S. passports in and their bank account is offshore.
  Yes, I am a Democrat; but you know something, there has to be a 
change, and when I said in the opening that the American people have to 
make a decision on when they get the opportunity, it is up to us to 
make sure they have good information. This is not the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Ryan) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) saying, hey, 
what can we write to

[[Page 11439]]

make it seem like we are right. This is straight out of the White 
House, and this was yesterday. It is not last week.
  I encourage Americans, if you can, I do not have any stock in Time 
Warner, but please get this Time magazine that I am holding here, and I 
encourage Members of the Congress to grab a copy of this Time magazine.
  I get Time in my office, and of course, the issue on obesity in 
America, I need to read that story, too, because I need to put down a 
few things. But there are a number of issues that we have been talking 
about in the Committee on Armed Services that I would like to talk 
about if we would have a public hearing for a change to be able to 
share with the American people about what is happening to our troops, 
what is happening for our troops and to be able to share with the rest 
of the world that we do care about the good, bad, and ugly that goes on 
in America, and we are able to address it.
  I will tell you, I will continue and with your voice and other folks' 
voices, and I am so glad I was on this morning on the Washington 
Journal, on C-SPAN, with one of our Republican colleagues who concurs 
that we should have hearings about what is going on in Guantanamo Bay, 
Cuba, our base where we are detaining insurgents, the al Qaeda 
individuals that are providing us the very information that we need to 
be able to save American troops' lives. I want to talk about the drug 
issue in Afghanistan that is also putting American troops' lives at 
risk.
  So we cannot sit here and say, well, let us pass another resolution 
supporting the troops. No, we should not pass another resolution 
supporting the troops. The troops already know that we support them. We 
support them. There is no question. There is no great mystery in the 
Congress about who does not and who does support the troops. Everyone 
does.
  The 5-year-old kids that are walking around in this building, if you 
ask them do they care about our military, I guarantee you nine times 
out of 10 and 99.9 percent, you are doggone right, I do. I look up to 
them. They are heroes and sheroes. They are in the community; they 
serve. They are Reservists that have been in Afghanistan and Iraq and 
other areas and the Horn of Africa where we are fighting the issue of 
terrorism.
  Let me share with you a few things in the Time magazine this month. 
This is very interesting. It has a picture in here of children that are 
playing in front of a painting of the famous picture in Abu Ghraib 
prison where the individual has the wires hooked up to him, and I think 
it is important for the Committee on Armed Services and this House of 
Representatives, to the majority, that not only we get to the bottom of 
it, I am sick and tired of looking at sergeants and privates. We are 
going to hold them accountable. We are going to court-martial. We are 
going to put them in jail, but how do we get to the culture of how the 
individuals felt comfortable in doing this? By us addressing the issue 
all the way up to the top, okay, and it is important that we do that.
  I am talking about the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who I 
did in committee thank him for his service to the country. He was a 
Member of this Congress, a two-term Secretary, serving his second term 
as Defense Secretary, but there becomes a point when you say, you know 
something, maybe I need to allow someone else to lead at this point, 
when we gave inaccurate information about weapons of mass destruction; 
when we gave inaccurate information as it relates to what is going to 
happen after the shock-and-awe campaign that was misleading; when we 
gave information of the fact that we were ready equipment-wise to go 
into Iraq for a year and 15 months, going on 2 years, all of our troops 
would have what they need.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, and that 
intelligence was based on information that they were getting from 
Chalabi, who is a known criminal. I mean, you are taking the country to 
war on intelligence, none has been true yet. We repeatedly hear: 
Saddam's ties to 9/11, treated as liberators, the whole list, use the 
oil revenue, whole list. All of that intelligence was wasted on 
information that we were getting from this guy. That is what is 
frustrating to me.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, let me just share with you a bid-
for by the Defense Department, some $360,000 on a monthly basis.
  I tell you the reason why we will not have hearings here in the 
House, public hearings, about what is going on in this war is that no 
one has the right answers for what has actually happened today. Forget 
about the argument of yesterday. Let us talk about today.
  There was a point when the Secretary of Defense could not answer in a 
straight way how many U.S. troops we had on the ground. Mr. Secretary, 
well, we have maybe, the indicators say maybe, you know, the rotation. 
We do not need to hear that. The American people need to know more 
about what is going on with this war.
  Also, in Time magazine, I must add, Halliburton. So after all, now 
this e-mail appears because the cream will rise to the top, or the 
truth will, that Vice President Dick Cheney did have something to do 
with the no-bid contract and Halliburton. It is not the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Meek) report. Check out Time magazine, and here it is in 
black and white, an unclassified letter that was sent to the highest 
levels.
  Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said, one of his superiors said it is fine, 
go ahead, move on it, it is being coordinated by the Vice President's 
office.
  Let me share something with you. This is not small stuff. It is huge. 
The whole outing of the CIA agent. This is huge. We had a young lady in 
harm's way, and in this White House somewhere she was outed, and then 
the President goes and talks to an attorney. It is not a good sign.
  So I want to say that the American people have to really pay 
attention to what is going on. We are far beyond Democrat and 
Republican right now. We are far beyond that. American lives are at 
stake, and by the fact of us having these hearings, letting not only 
the world but the American people know that we are going to address 
prisoner abuse and that we are not going to allow it to happen because, 
guess what, we are not them. We are not the terrorists. We are not the 
insurgents. We are not individuals that are parking cars in front of 
buildings waiting on those cars to explode.

                              {time}  1715

  We do not gun down innocent people. We are the United States of 
America. We have to uphold the history and the integrity that our 
veterans have put forth in foreign lands and in this country of being 
men and women of honor and integrity. For individuals in shirts and 
ties to make decisions and then anyone that questions their decisions 
is considered helping the terrorists or being on the other side is 
really far beyond anything that I can remember. So I think it is 
important that the American people pick up that magazine.
  Also, there is an article here talking about how we are in full 
retreat on our Iraq policy. But I think it is important that we 
understand that outsourcing in the White House is still going on, some 
of the bad decisions that are going on in the Pentagon, decisions that 
are being made and putting America's troops' lives at stake so that 
this Congress has to rise up. The chairman of the Committee on Armed 
Services in the other body is being criticized by his colleagues, 
Republican colleagues, for having open hearings about what is happening 
wrong in Iraq. Something is fundamentally wrong with that. His having 
those hearings may help save American lives.
  So I think it is important we have this open government. No one wants 
to give away secrets, but it is important to share this information 
with the people and the world to protect America's interests.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, one of the things I think we need to 
add on to what my colleague just said, as we welcome our good friend 
from the great State of Alabama here with us, is that after 9/11, and 
we all have agreed that 9/11 was an intelligence failure. Everyone has 
agreed on that, regardless of party. So if you are in a position of

[[Page 11440]]

power where you are about to go to war and you know that your 
intelligence apparatus has just failed the country completely, you 
would think that you would ask a million more questions. Not a hundred 
thousand, a million. And you would think you would be shaking the 
intelligence community left and right to try to get accurate 
information. Instead, we were relying on a con man to get the 
information that we wanted to hear.
  So what I do not understand is why, after a major intelligence 
failure, you do not try to rectify that problem by having and assuring 
that you have good intelligence. Not to make a minor decision, but to 
go to war and to send 140,000 troops to war. Why are you not making 
sure we have good intelligence?
  I think that is something that maybe in many ways Members of Congress 
did not ask enough questions, the media did not ask enough questions, 
that we were not confrontational enough as to what the Iraqi policy was 
going to be.
  We have been talking here for a while, so I would like to yield to my 
colleague, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis).
  Mr. DAVIS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio, 
and I am always glad to see my friends from Florida and Ohio with all 
the promise that you all represent for this institution.
  Let me just share an anecdote with you and then talk about that for a 
moment. I was in rural Alabama, in my home district, about close to 
exactly a year ago now. It was mid-June of 2003. And I had the honor of 
being the commencement Speaker at Judson College in Perry County, 
Alabama.
  I remember a woman walked up to me after I had done the commencement 
speech, and she had tears in her eyes. I made the reasonable assumption 
that she was tearful because her child had graduated that day and they 
were tears of happiness. She walked up to me and said something that 
has stuck in my mind for the last year.
  She said, ``Mr. Davis, I have a husband who is in Iraq right now as a 
member of the Alabama National Guard, and our daughter did graduate 
today. My husband, her father, could not be here because he is serving 
our country.'' And then she went on to say, and she said it brokenly, 
in the midst of her tears, she went on to say, ``Every morning I get up 
and I turn my television on CNN and I see the little crawler at the 
bottom of the screen, two Americans killed, three Americans killed.'' 
And she said, ``Every morning, when I see that, something just jumps up 
from my stomach to my throat, and I remember that they always notify 
the next of kin before they make a release of the names. And that gives 
me relief for a moment. But until I see those names, I always have the 
lingering sense of dread.''
  That is what she said to me. Mind you, that was a year ago. That was 
before what has happened in April, it was before what has happened in 
May of this year, it was before Fallujah, it was before another 300 
some Americans had lost their lives. That woman still gets up every 
morning, and I suspect if I ran into her tomorrow it would be the same 
conversation.
  When you talk about Alabama, when you talk about one of the 
conservative States in this country, there is a myth in this city that 
people have made up their minds about the war. There is a myth in this 
city that people who live in the Alabamas of the world have made up 
their minds. Let me tell you, people in my State and I think people all 
around the south are searching for some wisdom. They are searching for 
some guidance. They want enough humility from this city and from the 
institutions of power in this city to recognize that we are struggling 
and we are trying to find our way.
  These are not easy questions by any stretch of the imagination. We 
know the basics. We know that we have a significant investment of 
forces in a faraway land and that we are losing our men and women. We 
know that we have made a commitment, and we know that we are not a 
country that shirks from commitments once we make them. At the same 
time, we know that there are so many uncertainties. On June 30, there 
will be a transfer of power. We do not know what that transfer of power 
will beget.
  As I have told so many people who live in my district, there should 
be no expectation on July 1 that soldiers will be drawn down, that 
large numbers of soldiers will leave. We do not know what will happen 
if this new government of 33 people is attacked or falls under siege in 
the next 6 months. We do not know what will happen if Iraq has 
elections and they elect a government that is hostile to the United 
States and we are invited to leave. What would we do at that point? 
What are our interests at this point in Iraq? Or to put it more 
basically, under what circumstances will we stay and under what 
circumstances will we begin to think about going?
  Those are the questions that the people that you represent in south 
Florida and the people you represent in central Ohio and the people I 
represent in west and central Alabama are wondering about today. They 
are searching for a little bit of humility and a little bit of 
guidance.
  There are two labels that get tossed around in this town a lot, pro-
war and anti-war; and it strikes me that this, of all conflicts, this, 
of all foreign policy crises, may be a little too subtle for those 
simple terms.
  Like you two gentlemen, and almost all of our colleagues, I spent 
Monday attending Memorial Day events. And on Monday morning in 
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I had a chance to stand as close as I am to you 
right now in proximity to the widow of a gentleman who died in Iraq. 
His whole family was there. And something occurred to me. What do you 
say to a woman in that circumstance?
  She really did not want to hear from me about politics. She really 
did not want to hear about Bush or Rumsfeld or Tenet. I do not know if 
she wanted to hear anything about policy or matters of state at all. 
But I do know that she wanted a little bit of comfort, a little bit of 
solace, a little bit of understanding.
  There are so many families like that. That is what they want from us. 
They want some sense that we empathize with their pain.
  And we do. There is not a one of us who sits in this institution who 
does not 100 percent support the men and women who are fighting there. 
Because at this point they are not fighting for a policy. They are 
fighting for survival. They do not pick up The New York Times to see if 
Bush is up or Kerry is up. They are simply trying to stay alive for a 
few more hours. And a lot of them, by the way, are younger than we are. 
We are three of the youngest people in this institution. A lot of these 
people are far younger than we are.
  So the terms pro-war and anti-war, what do they mean? We have 
questions in this country, and what we need right now is a little bit 
of candor, and what we need is a little bit of direction. We have to 
get past this obsessive focus on personalities.
  I, like most of you this afternoon, watched the news reports on 
George Tenet. I do not know the outgoing CIA Director. I do not know if 
you all do or not, but I do not know him. This does not seem to me to 
be about George Tenet. It did not seem to me to be about Condoleeza 
Rice when my fellow Alabaman testified before the 9/11 Commission. It 
did not seem to me to be about even Don Rumsfeld when we saw the 
excesses that happened at those prison camps. It is about something 
larger: What kind of country are we? What kind of values do we have? 
And how do we operate our institutions to reflect those values? Those 
are questions that are deeper and more abiding than anything that we 
are debating from day to day in the halls of public opinion and in the 
halls of this Congress.
  So I would just say that what the people need from the President of 
the United States is enough humility to acknowledge that even the 
President does not know all the answers.
  We are close to the 60th anniversary of Normandy, and I do not know 
how many of my colleagues know the story of the letter General 
Eisenhower wrote. General Eisenhower, as he was contemplating sending 
thousands of young

[[Page 11441]]

men to their fate, wrote a letter that was meant to address a failure, 
a failure that he personally might not have survived. And the letter 
said something to the effect that this is my responsibility alone. If 
there is an error that has been made, it is my error.
  That seems like more than 60 years ago. It seems like light years 
ago, sometimes, in this town. Because as you two know very well, 
sometimes we occupy a town where ``I am sorry'' is the last thing 
people will say. ``I am responsible'' is the last thing people will 
say. Or, at best, ``I take responsibility'' is what you say and not 
what you do.
  So I think as we move deeper into this election year, as we 
contemplate the loss of life in Iraq, we all need to find some way to 
appeal to the better angels in our nature and some way to be true to 
our spirit and our values. And if we do that, we will find our way 
home, literally and figuratively. We will find our way to a policy that 
works for our country, a policy that is oriented in the best of our 
instincts.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my 
colleague.
  The gentleman brought up General Eisenhower and spurred thoughts in 
my mind of the gentlemen of that day, of the Churchills and the 
Roosevelts and the Eisenhowers and the larger-than-life figures that 
participated in the greatest conflict. You just cannot help but to 
compare them to what the behavior is today. However, it just cannot be 
compared.
  If we look at how Roosevelt handled himself and when we look at how 
Churchill not only stood up and gave his great Nation an enormous 
amount of confidence at a time when no one thought England would be 
able to stand tall, the big contrast I can recognize with Churchill and 
President Bush is in the preparation that Churchill gave and the 
leadership that London gave their people before anything was happening. 
This is going to be a long struggle, but in the end it will be our 
finest hour. We are not going to surrender. Churchill just kept saying, 
we are not going to surrender. If you take it, you are going to take it 
by us being knocked senseless onto the ground, was one of the great 
Churchill quotes. The preparation.
  In this country, I think it was the exact opposite. We are going to 
be greeted as liberators. It is going to be great. Do not worry. It 
will be a drive-by war. We will use their oil. They are going to love 
us and hand us roses.
  Yet when you look at the monumental figures of that era, who, like 
the gentleman said, kind of raised everybody's eyes up and tried to put 
the institutions in line with the values of the country, I really did 
not see that during this.
  Mr. DAVIS of Alabama. And the difference is, if the gentleman will 
continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, it strikes me that in the 1930s and the 
1940s the leaders of the world had a fair amount of confidence in the 
people that they served. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had a 
certain belief that the people they served were capable of rising to 
the occasion and that they would respond to candor and common sense.

                              {time}  1730

  Sometimes in this television sound-bite era that we live in, we do 
not have enough confidence in the people of our country. We have a 
mind-set that we cannot tell the people in our country full 
information, and that we cannot let them know a commitment may be a 
long one because they may not have faith. We cannot let them know the 
money is going to be three times what we say it is because they may not 
have faith. We cannot let them know all of these uncertainties because 
we fear they may not have faith.
  I have spent a fair amount of time in my life trying cases before 
juries, and I have won them and I have lost them; but I can confidently 
tell Members that every jury that I have ever appeared in front of I 
felt did the right thing in terms of what the facts were, whether it 
was what I advocated or not. I have that same kind of faith in the 
American people, that if we tell the American people the facts, I have 
confidence in our ability to apply those facts to policy and to apply 
our values to those policies; and maybe we need more of a sense of 
confidence. Maybe if the administration had had more confidence in the 
quality of our people, we would have had a clearer, more accurate path 
painted on where we are going in Iraq.
  We all know from the work both of you do, we know there is a reason 
why certain facts were not emphasized. What was the old saying from the 
movie, you cannot handle the truth, a movie back in the 1990s, there 
was a feeling and fear that maybe the people just could not handle the 
truth. I do not know about other Members, but I think they can.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure hearing the 
gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis) and what the gentleman brings to the 
table as it relates to philosophy and history. Part of our democracy is 
making sure we level with the American people, the good, bad and ugly. 
They need to know because they need to be able to prepare themselves.
  The President recently asked Americans to make the sacrifice that 
they made in World War II, make the sacrifice that they made in World 
War I and other conflicts, some of the great wars that have taken 
place; but it was a different approach to those wars. We planned; we 
made sure that individuals had equipment. We made sure that we had a 
strategy going in and coming out.
  There was a Senator from Missouri, a junior Senator during World War 
II. His name was Harry S Truman. He had a select committee that was 
dealing with contracting, dealing with the needs of World War II at 
that particular time; and he did what he had to do during a time of 
war. During the time of World War II, they had a number of hearings to 
make sure that the troops had what they needed and they were able to 
respond real-time to issues that were coming up during that war.
  For us to say, well, we do not have time to do that, we should not 
question the Pentagon about things that they are doing, we are muzzled 
as a Congress. Not to clear my conscience, not to say this needs to be 
said, but when the annals of history are reflected upon, I want to make 
sure that those of us on this side of the aisle, that we did everything 
that we could to give the facts as we see them printed in documents.
  A Pentagon report recently released said 25 percent-plus lives could 
have been saved if we had the right equipment at the right time.
  Mr. DAVIS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, that sparks another thought I had 
which I think is worth noting. There was another principle that those 
leaders had, and it was the principle of sacrifice. They had the moral 
authority and the willingness to say to this country this cause is so 
mighty, we have to sacrifice.
  Contrast that with about a year ago. We were here when all three of 
us very strongly felt if we were going to continue to have to pay the 
cost of the war in Iraq and have to bear that burden, maybe it was time 
to suspend the tax cut for just the top 1 percent of Americans, or 
maybe just for people earning more than $1 million, and pay for the war 
and occupation with that money. Now that is sacrifice. It is 
proportionate sacrifice. It is going to those most able to bear it 
instead of those least able to bear it, and you are saying that our 
cause is so strong and righteous we are going to come to the American 
people and ask them to forgo something. It would have meant something a 
year ago if the President had done that. If the President had come to 
the body and said, I care so deeply about this cause, I am willing to 
abandon one of my own programs, I am willing to walk away from this tax 
cut for people earning a million dollars a year or more, not because I 
want to, but because this is a time of sacrifice.
  That kind of inspiration I think would have moved this country and 
would have produced an overwhelming response from people on both sides 
of the aisle. But somehow we have entered a zone where we talk the 
language of sacrifice at Memorial Day events and events around the 
country, and we will talk the language again on the Normandy 
anniversary on June 6;

[[Page 11442]]

we talk the language of sacrifice, but we run from the substance of 
sacrifice.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I just want to make sure, because I 
was on the floor last night with the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Cummings) and the Congressional Black Caucus, and I shared that I was 
at the World War II memorial with my mother and uncle, who is a Korean 
War veteran. They asked for all of the veterans to stand up. A number 
of them stood up. Those individuals that could not stand up, they put 
their hands up. I could not help but think ``America the Beautiful'' 
playing in the background, planes flying over, what was going to be 
their reality on Tuesday, when they go to the VA to try to receive 
services, the reality of calling for help and having to wait 6 months 
to see an eye doctor.
  When we start looking at how we treat our veterans and how we respond 
to them, the gentleman mentioned the deficit, and I am going to say we 
had this credit card made up. This is the U.S. Treasury credit card, 
Republican Congress. That is a big number, $477 billion. That is a lot 
of money. That is an awful lot of money. And we look at, hopefully, the 
expiration date is good through 11/04 so we can get a new majority in 
here to be able to do something truly about the deficit. I appreciate 
the gentleman's work on that committee and on the Committee on the 
Budget to talk about true fiscal responsibility. And I will say it is 
important on the Committee on Armed Services, on behalf of troops and 
what the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis) has just shared with us, 
families, we watch the news without even worrying about a family 
member, will their name scroll across the screen. Will they become a 
picture in the wall in the backdrop of a newscast. We have that 
privilege of not worrying, but we have individuals not based on the 
troop decisions, and many of the individuals on the ground, but the 
decisions that are made right here in Washington, D.C. that are 
endangering the lives of American troops.
  We are going to support them, and we want to make sure that they have 
the equipment that they need to have; but if we do not do our job here 
in this Congress in giving voice to the voices, giving voice to that 
Reservist and that family that the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis) 
talked about where the father could not see the graduation of his own 
daughter, but he is fighting for the very freedom she is celebrating 
right now.
  Do Members know why the President would not say, I am going to 
sacrifice one of my own programs? Because, guess what, he is never 
wrong. I am sorry to say it, he is never wrong. He never says, hey, I 
am wrong. The only thing he says, and we need to watch this word, and I 
need the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) to share some of the things we 
discussed earlier, but when we hear that somebody is doing a superb 
job, watch out.
  The President today said, George Tenet, and I must say after the 
President stood up here in the well and said we believe that Iraq has 
received the necessary materials they need to make a nuclear weapon, 
and then once we found out that was inaccurate information, he was 
prepared to throw George Tenet under the bus, and now he said he has 
done a superb job. That sounds like the same thing he said about his 
Secretary of Defense. It is not a personal thing, but it is an issue of 
decisions. Especially when you are appointed and not elected, you have 
to make the decision if the leader does not take the prerogative to 
make the right decision and say, you know something, thank you for your 
service. In an honorable way, we will give you a gold watch and we 
appreciate your service. But he is saying nothing at all. That is what 
inflames insurgence on American troops.
  I will leave it at that.
  Mr. DAVIS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, there is another historical point 
worth making. None of us were here, we were all too young, but we have 
all read about the Bay of Pigs in 1961 in Cuba. For some of the younger 
people listening that do not know what the Bay of Pigs was, it was a 
failed effort to invade Cuba back in 1961. Lives were lost, and it was 
seen as a dismal policy mistake. John Kennedy had every reason 
politically to say this was a plan conceived by the previous President. 
He had every reason to say that this was something my CIA director 
foisted on me, this was something I did not want to do, and the 
military pushed it down my throat. He could have fired a number of 
people.
  President Kennedy said something that is worth repeating. He said, 
``I am the responsible officer of the government. Defeat is an orphan, 
victory has a thousand fathers.'' That rings across the last 43 years. 
Defeat is always an orphan. It is something that happened. I did not do 
it; it happened. It is always something that no one wants to claim. 
Whereas victory, everyone wants to share in that and say, I did my 
part, you did your part.
  We come back again to the same place. What I think so many of our 
people want is enough humility from up high, enough humility from the 
throne that we can conceive the possibility of error.
  World War II is a wonderful analogy. We got some things wrong in 
World War II. The greatest President of all time, in my opinion, 
Franklin Roosevelt, signed the order that led to the internment of 
Japanese Americans. A Supreme Court that consisted of some of the 
finest jurists we have ever had approved that internment of Japanese 
Americans. We all know that was perfectly wrong now.
  If men as great as Franklin Roosevelt and Robert Jackson and Hugo 
Black could be that wrong, maybe it should occur to us today that some 
of the individuals who sit in circles in power today could be wrong. 
Again, there is a lesson about humility to be learned there.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I was just enjoying listening to the 
gentlemen talk. I want to clean up a couple of things that were 
mentioned. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) mentioned that now we 
want to make sure that our soldiers have the equipment that they need, 
we want to make sure that the vehicles are up-armored and they have the 
vests and the plates to go into the vests and everything else.
  We have gotten so caught up in the fact that we want to get it to 
them, we forget to ask, you are telling me we went to war and we did 
not have our troops properly equipped? Lack of preparation.
  In the Defense appropriations bill that we just passed out of the 
House, we reimbursed parents or whoever for people, parents who paid 
for vests for their kids. I mean, you have to be kidding me. We had to 
reimburse parents that paid for their protective vests for soldiers in 
Iraq.
  The general that testified about the prison abuse said that there 
were a couple of problems, major problems. One, lack of training. One, 
lack of supervision. To me, after almost 2 years on the Committee on 
Armed Services and a layman, civilian, lack of training and lack of 
supervision to me means we do not have enough troops there. If you are 
not training them properly, you do not have enough people to train; and 
if you are not supervising them properly, you do not have enough people 
to supervise. I think that is basic common sense to say this group has 
not prepared us for this war.
  One other thing I would like to say because some young people are 
probably sitting at home listening to this, remember as soon as 
President Clinton got in office, there were always investigations, 
investigating this, Travelgate, Nannygate, this gate and that gate. 
They were always investigating the man. Why? The House and the Senate 
were Republican. The White House was Democrat. We are now in a one-
party rule system. The House is controlled by the Republicans, the 
Senate is controlled by the Republicans, the White House is controlled 
by Republicans. I am not saying that they are always wrong, and I am 
not saying that we are always right. All I am saying is when there is 
one-party rule, we cannot subpoena people out of this House because the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) from the Committee on Government 
Reform is not the chairman of the committee.

[[Page 11443]]



                              {time}  1745

  If he was the Chair of the committee, we could subpoena some of these 
people who wear the suits and bring them before committees in the House 
and have them sit and tell us what happened and why and make sure we 
are starting to hold people responsible for their actions.
  That is just what I want to say to the American people, is you cannot 
have one party rule the whole government. It is unhealthy for the 
institutions; it is unhealthy for the country.
  There is no balance right now. There is no one overseeing what is 
going on. We get fed a line from somebody like this, and no one can 
stand up and question it. That is not a good way to run your country. 
This country was founded on all the different aspects, the branches and 
everything else, in order to bring some balance to these institutions 
we have.

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