[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 25664-25671]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  THE PRESIDENT, AND THE WAR ON TERROR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fortenberry). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be 
recognized, and as I get organized here, I would point out that I have 
had the privilege to listen to this dialogue here tonight. I know that 
this group comes to the floor nearly every night, and that shows a 
certain kind of tenacity, and I appreciate that effort they put into 
this. But I wanted to just start down the list of some of the things 
that I heard and address some of the remarks.
  I happen to have seen a poster that I hope was not presented here, 
because I believe it would have challenged the mendacity of the 
President, and I believe that would have been out of order here in 
these Chambers, Mr. Speaker. So I hope that kind of poster is never 
presented. But I will say that I have heard that challenge made in a 
number of different oblique ways.
  I have looked into the eyes of this President, and I think there is a 
distinction that should be made in a very clear way to the people here 
on the floor every night, the 30-something Group and all the Members of 
this Congress, Mr. Speaker, and the people in this country, and that is 
there is a difference between a mistake and a lie.
  I look back on a Presidential campaign, and I remember the face and 
the voice of Charlton Heston as it came on television over and over 
again. He said to the previous President over the airwaves of 
television, ``Mr. President, when you say something that's wrong and 
you don't know that it's wrong, that's a mistake. When you say 
something that's wrong and you know that it's wrong, that's a lie.'' 
That distinction seems to be lost amongst many of the Members of the 
minority party in this Congress.
  And by the way, I would not concede that the President has made a 
statement that was even wrong, let alone a mistake, and certainly a 
long ways away from a lie. When you look into the eyes of this man we 
have as our commander in chief, you see those eyes look back at you 
with conviction. You hear it in his voice, you can see it in his 
bearing, and you can see it in his actions.
  I would like to go back to an event that maybe was not designed to be 
spoken about necessarily in public, but I think it speaks well of this 
President, so I want to mention it at this time.
  A few Members of Congress were invited to the White House for a small 
luncheon. It was on a Monday noon, and I recall it was the Monday noon 
after the Columbia had gone down on Saturday. It was a hard time for 
all of us. We saw our space program go up in flames, along with the 
lives of the brave men and women that were up in space. We knew that 
our NASA program was going to be suspended for a good, long time.
  Thankfully, we are back on track, at least to some degree.
  I was surprised that the President had gone ahead with the luncheon 
that day, because I believed he would be taking care of so many issues 
that he would not have time to sit and talk with us, but he did. There 
were maybe 15, 20 people in the room, a few of the President's closest 
staff and about 10 or so, maybe a dozen Members of Congress, myself 
among them.
  As we sat around the tables and had our lunch, the President got up 
and stood at an old, rickety, wooden podium, a podium not as stable as 
this one. I wondered if it was really quite suitable for the White 
House. And as he leaned on the podium this way and that way, he went 
through the whole

[[Page 25665]]

spectrum of issues that we were concerned about at the time, Mr. 
Speaker.
  He talked about the impending operations in Iraq. He talked about our 
national security and al Qaeda, and about September 11. He talked about 
the overall budget and the tax cuts that we needed to stimulate this 
economy. And he talked about education. Now, remember, we had not gone 
into Iraq at that point. It was speculated about certainly, but we had 
not gone in at that point.
  As he got through the education cases, he said, just a minute. I want 
to back up a minute and I want to tell you this with regard to Iraq. My 
critics have me wrong on Iraq. The media has me wrong on Iraq. There is 
only one person that orders our men and women into battle, and that is 
the person that hugs the widows and the widowers of those who do not 
come back home.
  I will never forget the tone of his voice, the look in his eye, and 
the look on his face. He told me afterwards that to finally give that 
order, he knew it was going to be hard, but it was a lot harder when 
the time finally came that he had to make that decision and give that 
order.
  I look at this entire operation in this view of the war in the Middle 
East and in this war against terror and this war against militant 
Islamic extremism, and I will always see those eyes and hear that tone 
in his voice; and I will always understand that this is not a President 
that would give an order that would put anyone in harm's way and do so 
for any reason other than a profound conviction that it was necessary 
for the protection, the preservation, the future of the people in this 
country and the destiny of the United States of America. Never would 
that order come unless it fit that standard, unless it fit that very 
high standard and that qualification.
  The order was given. And it seems as though there are a couple 
hundred Members in this Congress that do not understand this war 
against terror, as we define it, and this war against militant Islamic 
extremism, as I define it.
  I would point out, Mr. Speaker, that this battle that is going on in 
Iraq right now is a battle. It is not a war; we are at war with an 
entire group of people who are philosophically opposed to us, and we 
have known that for a long time.
  We did not do anything to offend their sensibilities, not to such an 
extent to justify losing 3,000 Americans in the attack on the Twin 
Towers and the Pentagon and on the plane that went down in 
Pennsylvania. That was an unprovoked, sneaky, stealthy, I guess I would 
say a pretty well strategized attack on American people. We had never 
had that loss of life on our own shores in the history of this country.
  That should epitomize the level of the hatred that is embodied in the 
people who are pledged to kill us. Yet I still hear from the other side 
of the aisle that somehow, if we would just pull our troops all back 
home to the shores of the United States of America, plant more flowers 
around our bases, and ask them how can we better understand you, can we 
sit down and have some kind of an encounter session, can we somehow 
feel or emote in some other way so we can connect with the people 
pledged to kill us.
  I do not believe you can negotiate with people like that. They want 
to establish their caliphate across this country and across this world. 
Their number one enemies are capitalism, coupled with Jews or 
Christians. I think they actually prefer Jewish capitalists first, 
probably Christian capitalists second, but anybody that is not like 
them, even other Muslims. If you look at the death loss around the 
world, I think you will see that al Qaeda and their colleagues have 
killed really more Muslims than they have any other category.
  But, Mr. Speaker, they hate us worse than they hate the other 
Muslims, because some of the other Muslims are sympathetic. In fact, 
many of them are sympathetic, and that is another part of the problem. 
But we have seen the terrorist cells in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, 
and we went there and settled that question.
  And, by the way, for the first time in the history of the world they 
had free elections on the soil of Afghanistan, Mr. Speaker. It was an 
astonishing accomplishment, something never accomplished before in 
their history.
  We went there so quickly and were successful so quickly that most 
people in this country do not remember the voices of the naysayers, the 
voices of the people that said no one has ever gone up the Khyber Pass 
and not been slaughtered. No one has ever been able to go into 
Afghanistan and invade or liberate and occupy. It is impossible to 
bring freedom to people that have never experienced freedom before. The 
American military cannot do what has never been possible before in the 
history of the world.
  It came from this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, over and over and 
over again. And it was only muted when it was clear that there was a 
full victory established in Afghanistan. And when we saw the elections 
come up, we had at least 750 Iowa Guardsmen on the ground in 
Afghanistan protecting the voting booths, protecting the travel routes 
to and from the voting booths to make sure that there would be free and 
fair elections in Afghanistan. It was astonishing accomplishment, an 
accomplishment that came about because of the vision of George W. Bush, 
because of the courage, the training, the tactics and technology of our 
U.S. military and because of the selfless sacrifice and risk that was 
taken by our men and women in uniform.
  Mr. Speaker, those men and women in uniform went to war as the single 
highest quality military ever to take the field in any war, and I am 
including this entire war against the militant Islamic extremists in 
Afghanistan, Iraq, and whatever theater we might be in right now and 
not know about, or whatever theater we will be in in the future and 
find out about sometime down the line.
  The reasons for that high quality are many. One of them is that we 
have a strong mix of our National Guard people. These volunteers had a 
little more age on them, probably more gray hair in this military than 
we have ever had before in a foreign war. But this is a day when we 
have high technology. It takes a lot of technology and a lot of 
training to be able to manage that technology.
  Our National Guard and military Reserves are seasoned to the point 
where they bring their professionalism from their walks of life into 
their military, and when they are deployed overseas they perform 
extraordinarily well. Couple that with an outstanding active duty 
force, all of them volunteers, because everyone who has gone to war has 
gone as a volunteer, that does something for the spirit. That does 
something for the esprit de corps, as they say in the part of the world 
that is in flames now, which would be France. And I may get to that 
subject matter before this hour is over, Mr. Speaker.

                              {time}  2200

  I want to speak highly of the people who went to Afghanistan. We have 
lost 200 Americans in Afghanistan, liberated 25 million people. That is 
a legacy for the world and a legacy that the United States is leaving 
there for them to pick up as they earn their freedom.
  Why is nobody saying, Pull your troops out of Afghanistan? Can their 
troops not handle the security? Can Afghanistan run their country 
themselves? Why is no one on this side of the aisle addressing that? 
Why are they not saying, Get the troops out of Afghanistan, or Kosovo, 
for example.
  Mr. Speaker, the President that ordered the troops into Kosovo 
promised the world that our troops would be back from there in 1 year. 
I have to go back and check the calendar, but I know it has been over a 
decade; I expect it is 12 years. They are still there. No one on the 
other side of the aisle is saying, Bring the troops home. No one is 
saying the President previous to our current President Bush, no one is 
saying, He did not tell the truth to the American people when he 
ordered troops into Kosovo and said, They will be back in a year. But I 
would submit that the accuracy of this President exceeds the accuracy 
of that statement.
  So we have troops in Afghanistan, and 200 Americans have lost their 
lives

[[Page 25666]]

there. One of my constituents was lost there, the son of a friend of 
mine. I stop at his grave, and I commemorate him and all of the 
soldiers we have lost from time to time. That is how I symbolize his 
loss, it is how I remember everyone.
  I remember the freedom in Afghanistan and the pride that the 
remaining troops had when they came home, how his father led them all 
in with a big American flag on the back of his motorcycle, and how the 
highway was lined with American patriots who stopped, took off their 
hats and saluted that young man that had given the ultimate sacrifice 
and helped free 25 million Afghanis, and no one is saying, Let the 
Taliban grow their ranks or let al Qaeda go back into Afghanistan. No 
one is saying, Bring them home, Mr. President. What is the difference 
between Afghanistan and Iraq?
  I think the people that are critics of the operations of Iraq ought 
to draw a distinction between Afghanistan and Iraq. I believe from a 
national strategic standpoint they are one and the same. They are not 
the same by the numbers of casualties. By those that say, We have 
reached the 2,000 death casualty list in Iraq, bring them home, that is 
too many casualties, none of those people had the courage or the 
foresight or the conviction to make an announcement as to what was a 
tolerable number of casualties to free another 25 million people.
  No one was willing to speculate how many lives they would be willing 
to invest of American patriots to preserve and protect the lives of 282 
million Americans. No one is willing to say it is not worth risking a 
single American life to protect 282 million Americans. No one is 
willing to look back in history and say, I wish we had not stepped in 
and defended ourselves in Korea or World War I or World War II, I wish 
we had never fought the Civil War to free the slaves or fought the 
Spanish American or Mexican American, or I wish we had never fought the 
Revolutionary War.
  None of those people that say that risking a single American life is 
never worth it is willing to go back and unravel history. They would 
not be standing on the floor of this Congress if not for the lives of 
the brave men who have gone before us who have carved out our freedom 
from the jaws of tyranny.
  That brings us back to 1898. I recall a speech by President Arroyo of 
the Philippines here in Washington, D.C., at one of the hotels. My wife 
and I went to that dinner and sat and listened to that speech. I 
believe I was the only Member of Congress that was there to hear the 
speech, the rest was downtown people and other Representatives.
  She was not speaking to the faces of Congress, she was speaking to 
Americans. She saw that group as a few hundred Americans that had gone 
to dinner to listen to her keynote address. But President Arroyo said, 
Thank you, America; thank you, America, for sending the United States 
Marine Corps to the Philippines in 1898. Thanks for their sacrifice, 
thanks for liberating us. Thank you for establishing that stability and 
establishing a stable government in the Philippines and allowing us to 
be a free people.
  Thank you for sending your missionaries over to the Philippines that 
taught us Christianity. Thank you for sending 10,000 American teachers 
over to teach the Filipinos reading, writing and arithmetic. Thank you 
for teaching us your language because we learned English, and today 1.6 
million Filipinos leave the Philippines and go work anywhere else they 
want to in the world, and send that money back to the Philippines 
because they have a command of the language that is universal in the 
commercial world. All of these blessings have come from the freedom 
that came to the Philippines as part of the Spanish American War, I 
will say.
  Now we have a friend over there in the Philippines. Now we have a 
people that speak English, who are engaged in commerce. And because of 
that, a people who understand democracy and a constitutional republic. 
That is an example of what happens when you are willing to take a risk, 
when you understand that this mantle of freedom is not something you 
can wear lightly, and it is not something that comes without 
responsibility.
  There were people that believed that prior to September 11 and, in 
fact, even after September 11 that we did not have a responsibility to 
the rest of the world, that we could just retreat back to our own 
shores, our own borders, run the United States of America, disregard 
the rest of the world, not do any trade treaties, not engage in any 
foreign conflicts. If we were not at risk, we should not be involved in 
anything else going on in the world.
  But we know what the history of the world is. In fact, I take you 
back to the years that built up to World War II, and I want to compare 
that to the war we are in now against terror and the militant Islamic 
extremists.
  We are having trouble today connecting the idea that you can have al 
Qaeda that is run out of perhaps the mountains in Pakistan, 
Afghanistan, up in that region. So al Qaeda is there, and some of the 
other sympathizers that are around the world. There are a whole number 
of different splinter groups, groups that are in Iraq and Indonesia. We 
have seen these attacks around the world, and we know there are cells 
all around the world.
  We know there are second-generation Pakistanis that set off bombs in 
the subway in London. We have first-and second-generation Middle 
Easterners, both North Africans and Middle Easterners, mostly Muslim, 
probably all Muslim, that are running all over the streets of Paris as 
I speak, burning approximately 1,000 cars a day, and buildings, and 
attacking the very facilities designed for them.
  So how is that Saddam Hussein could have been cooperating with Osama 
bin Laden when bin Laden is an Islamic fundamentalist and Saddam 
Hussein is a secular Arab and a Baathist and a Sunni? They could not 
get along, surely, because they are not motivated by the same things.
  We forget about this thing that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. 
Well, we are the enemy of those enemies. It is easy for them to be 
friends, whether you are secular or a fundamentalist. In fact, Saddam 
had the entire Koran written inside a mosque with his blood. It is kind 
of hard to be secular when you give that much blood to be written 
inside a mosque.
  So he kind of joined himself with his blood with Osama bin Laden. 
There is a philosophical connection. You do not have to be on a e-mail 
list and distribution tree from Osama bin Laden to be wired in with the 
philosophy worldwide. So this network rolls around here. People can 
work autonomously. The bombers in the subway in London may or may not 
have had direct orders from Osama or Zarqawi or whoever else the 
leaders might be.
  The people that are out running in the streets of Paris today, I do 
not think each one of them gets their daily marching orders from on 
high. It becomes spontaneous after awhile. You get a sympathetic 
support and a kind of synergy that grows and a philosophy that 
connects. And they start to think, if they can cause this trouble, so 
can I. If they can blow up this embassy, I can blow up the USS Cole. 
And if Ramzi Yousef can go in and strategize the first bombing of the 
World Trade Center, the next person can come along and figure out how 
to fly two planes into there and take it down. It does not have to be 
one command person sitting at the top distributing all of this.
  Now going back to World War II, and that is that people in those days 
prior to World War II had a little trouble connecting how it could be 
that a national socialist, a Nazi like Hitler, could be connected with 
and allied with a Fascist like Mussolini in Italy. That did not quite 
fit. People said they are not philosophically connected. And we had the 
civil war going on in Spain, and people did not put it together as any 
kind of axis powers. There is no genesis of the axis of powers.
  Furthermore, how could, for example, the Soviet Union be allied with 
and make any deals with Hitler because they really are not 
philosophically connected. One is a Nationalist-Socialist and the other 
is a Socialist or a Communist, take your pick. And I say, if you take 
people's freedom away at the

[[Page 25667]]

point of a gun, you are a Communist. Stalin was a Communist.
  You look across and you see that the revolution was beginning to form 
itself in China, culminating in 1949. And looking at the Japanese, they 
invaded Manchuria and wound down the coast of China. They invaded 
Singapore. How in the world could the Imperial Japanese have something 
in common with the Nazis in Germany and be tied with an axis power 
effort of the Fascists in Italy? And how does it work with the Soviet 
Union in the middle that really has a little bit of trouble figuring 
out who their friends are and who their enemies are?
  All of that was an unfathomable equation to most people until 
September 1, 1939, when the Soviet Union, and I will say the Russians, 
and the Germans carved up Poland. It did not last very long. It was 
over in a matter of 3 weeks.
  Then they began to see maybe they can find a way to cut a deal, shake 
hands and make a treaty. So World War II began. As it began, we did our 
best to stay out of it. We did a lend-lease program, and we tried to 
help the Allied powers.
  The British essentially were standing there without a lot of help. 
The Australians were with them from the beginning, and then the attack 
came on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese. As soon as that happened, as 
quick as administratively it could be done, Hitler and Germany declared 
war on the United States.
  Now it all starts to fit together. We know it from the historical 
perspective because we have seen it unfold. Now it makes sense. Now we 
do not even ask the questions: What are the philosophical differences 
between Nazism, Fascism, Japanese Imperialism, and the Communism that 
was Russia at the time? How did they all get together?
  Well, if you have a common interest, you can be joined together. This 
common interest of opposing the United States, this great Satan that 
they declare us to be, is plenty enough to join together the people 
that danced in the streets when the Twin Towers were hit on September 
11, 2001, plenty enough to bind them together.
  We should understand by now this enemy far better than we do, and it 
is predictable what is taking place in France right now. And I do not 
remember if this is the 12th or 13th night of riots going on in France.
  The population of France, perhaps 10 percent, is Muslim. These people 
have come from North Africa and the Middle East. France opened up their 
doors and said, Let us have an open border policy. We will make a place 
for you.
  I am starting to hear they did not make jobs for them, but I am not 
sure that is the government's job. I do not think government can create 
jobs. You have to set the structure and let the private sector do that, 
and we recognize the French have a different view.
  What I saw were probably hundreds and perhaps thousands of radical 
Middle Eastern, North African Muslim demonstrators running all over the 
place with Molitov cocktails, torching buildings, torching cars and 
trucks, attacking schools and libraries and churches. Yes, churches. 
You will listen to CNN for a long time before you will hear ``church 
burned in France.'' And you will listen to ABC, NBC and CBS a long time 
before you will hear the words ``church burned in France.''

                              {time}  2215

  In fact, we will listen to them for a long time before they will say 
``Muslim youth'' torch anything in France. They will say ``youth,'' 
``disgruntled youth,'' ``unemployed youth,'' ``disenfranchised youth.'' 
But they do not want to say ``Muslim youth attack France.''
  So what do the French do when they are being attacked? Essentially we 
could define it as a civil war going on there right now. Had I been 
Jacques Chirac, I would have declared martial law a long time ago. I 
would have put the French troops out into the streets. I would have 
established a curfew. I would have had people on the rooftops with 
infrared sniper rifles. We would have said looters will be shot on 
sight. Anybody with a molotov cocktail, we will try to shoot that 
molotov for you from the roof so you can experience what it is like 
when you are at the other end of that bomb.
  None of that is happening. They had their high-level meeting and put 
out some warnings; and as far as I know, they arrested 250 people or 
so. They have not done the hard things that needed to be done early to 
shut this off. So instead, 1,000 Frenchmen and women put the tri-color 
banner on and marched in the street for peace.
  Well, they have got a little trouble over there, Mr. Speaker, because 
we have an enemy that is not interested in negotiations. They are not 
interested in hand-holding. They are not interested in talking. They 
are interested in killing the people who are not like them.
  And, by the way, we are not guilty of doing something. We are not 
guilty because of something we have done or failed to do. We are guilty 
and deserve a death penalty by their viewpoint because of who we are, 
what we are, what we are born; and it cannot be rectified. So we cannot 
talk and negotiate with these people. This is really difficult for the 
French, Mr. Speaker, because when 10 percent of their population lives 
within them and among them and they are out there burning things, some 
of which you built and provided those facilities for them, day care 
centers, schools, libraries. Maybe not the churches. I do not think 
they are burning any mosques. I am pretty confident they are not. But a 
people that are determined to kill them, and yet there is no organized 
head from the top to the bottom. The French cannot go surrender to 
Osama bin Laden. They cannot find him. They cannot find Zarqawi and 
surrender to him. In fact, if every Frenchman held up a white flag, and 
I imagine some have by now, there is nobody to surrender to. They do 
not want us to surrender. They want to kill us. They want to take over 
Western Civilization. They want to destroy Western Civilization.
  And I happen to believe that Western Civilization, as civilizations 
go, has been a great gift to all the people in the world. I would be 
willing to state also, Mr. Speaker, that of all of the missionaries 
that have ever gone to Africa or to anywhere in the world, and God love 
them for all the work they have done and it has been a lot of good 
work, free enterprise capitalism has done more for the world, more for 
the well-being of humanity than all of the missionaries that ever went 
anywhere from a standard-of-living standpoint, from a medical care 
standpoint.
  I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that the investment of capital and the 
desire for profit has developed this technology that has raised 
everyone's standard of living. And the health care that we have, 
because we have research and development for pharmaceuticals, for 
example, for new surgery techniques, for preventative health care, most 
of that was driven as a desire to make a little money. Well, a good 
thing. A good thing that that happened. A good thing that we have a 
motivation in this country to lead the world in patents, lead the world 
in creativity. We have that because we have freedom. That all came from 
Western Civilization.
  Mr. Speaker, this is the Western Civilization that our enemy wants to 
destroy, this great gift to the world, this descendant that we can 
trace back to; and I will say Western Civilization has descended from 
the Greeks, the Age of Reason, the age where the Greeks sat around and 
analyzed and set up a structure that let them rationalize their way 
through and establish science, the beginning of the rationalization 
that has allowed us to develop technology. And the Greeks took great 
pride in their ability to reason. And there were philosophies and we 
can name many of them.
  Go back and look at these readings. They did not know a lot about 
science and technology then, but they established the theorem 
principles that have carried us through to this day, Mr. Speaker. And 
that Age of Reason that became the culture in Greece back in those 
years, 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, found its way into Western Europe in 
later years and established the Age of Enlightenment. The Age of 
Enlightenment, I have to say, centered in

[[Page 25668]]

France. I will give the French the credit for that.
  And as the Age of Enlightenment developed, we saw the technology 
come. We saw some of the mass production come. We saw that, as that 
technology and that science took a step forward, took another step 
forward, Western Civilization had successfully manifested itself in the 
Age of Enlightenment in France just in time to be transported across 
the Atlantic Ocean and be established here in the United States of 
America where it found the most fertile ground it could have imagined 
because here we were in the United States establishing a free country, 
a free country unfettered by taxes, by regulation, by restrictions, by 
managed economies, by managed societies, where we let people go out and 
invest capital and the sweat off their brow and their labor and to grow 
technology at the same time and energize this manifest destiny and 
settle this continent in record time, lightning speed, fertile ground 
here in the United States for Western Civilization to establish itself.
  And, yes, we descended from Europe, but we are different than Europe. 
The difference is many of the people in this country came here to get 
away from the restrictions and the oppression that was there, both 
religious and otherwise. The royalty structure that was there kept 
people from really being free. The property right structure there kept 
people from owning and keeping property and passing it along to the 
next generation, they did not have the freedom that we have.
  One of the examples that would be, and I am speaking in of all the 
Europe, Holland today is probably the most liberal country in the 
world. They have euthanasia. They have abortion. They have legalized 
drugs, legalized prostitution. And they have their troubles too with a 
lot of Muslim immigrants that are there.
  But it is a whole different politic than the Dutch areas that I 
represent in northwest Iowa, where they are very conservative. They 
would not think of ending someone's life at the end of life. They 
believe in life being sacred from conception to natural death. Life is 
sacred from the instant of conception until natural death. They have a 
maximum number of churches, a minimum number of bars. They do not 
believe in illegal drugs. Those things that I have said that are all 
legal and open and open and part and parcel of the culture and 
civilization of Holland did not get transferred here to the United 
States because they left there to get away from some of those things. 
They knew what they wanted to get away from. They knew what they wanted 
to establish.
  That is just an example of the many people who came over here for 
religious freedom. They brought their standards with them. And the 
strength that we have in this Nation, Mr. Speaker, is a strength of a 
three-legged stool built here in this Western Civilization that we 
have.
  And I will argue this: that the strength comes from Judeo-Christian 
values, free enterprise capitalism, and Western Civilization. Science 
and technology and the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment and 
all of its descendants came over here where we had all of these natural 
resources and this unfettered free enterprise capitalism to join with 
this Age of Enlightenment and blossom this economy that was here and 
established more patents than any country had ever created, more 
creativity, more freedom, more opportunity, more economic growth. And 
all of that would have created an imperialistic Nation that would not 
have just been manifest destiny out to the Pacific Ocean, but 
imperialistic to dominate the rest of the world.
  What kept us from doing that, Mr. Speaker? Our Judeo-Christian moral 
values put the brakes on that kind of a robust desire to occupy or 
command or own the world. We recognize our responsibility for freedom. 
We recognize our freedom comes from God. We have a morality and a 
responsibility to restrain ourselves because of the Judeo-Christian 
foundation that is the culture of this country. No matter how one tries 
to secularize America, we have a Judeo-Christian foundation that is 
part of everything that we do. And that has been the restraint, the 
brakes that have held us back, that has caused us to try to project and 
promote our way of life to the rest of the world without imposing it on 
the rest of the world.
  Which brings me back, Mr. Speaker, to Iraq, Iraq where we have lost 
more than 2,000 Americans. 300 to 400 of them were not combat deaths, 
but they gave their lives for freedom and liberty just the same. And I 
have held some of those widows and looked them in the eye and prayed 
with them, the mothers, the fathers. It is hard, but they are some of 
the most patriotic people that I have met. And some of the most 
meaningful times I have ever had as a Member of this United States 
Congress have been standing in that living room, understanding and to 
some extent trying to take some of the pain away from a family.
  Mr. Speaker, Iraq is a country that is a cell. It is a place where, 
yes, there was al Qaeda; yes, Saddam did send agents around the world; 
yes, he did provide sanctuary for the first planner and strategist for 
the first attack on the Twin Towers; yes, he did send one of his 
security operatives, who was a colonel in the Iraqi military security, 
over to Malaysia. He was there. He was in the meeting that planned the 
second attack on the Twin Towers.
  Not only that, but there were al Qaeda training camps in Iraq. And 
whether or not there were massive quantities of weapons of mass 
destruction in Iraq, the President could not take that chance. We 
cannot take the chance of having hundreds of thousands of people there 
and an ability to fund this kind of enemy and someone who has 
continually funded terrorism around the world, give him weapons of mass 
destruction.
  And, by the way, a lot was made of David Kay's report when he came 
back to this Congress and reported. As I listened to the other side of 
the aisle, their interpretation was there were no weapons of mass 
destruction in Iraq; David Kay said so. And I read the report. It is 
kind of interesting sometimes when we read the actual text of something 
after we hear the interpretation. What I read in there was David Kay 
did not find mass quantities of inventory of weapons of mass 
destruction when he was there. He was not sure what might or might not 
have happened to them. He could not argue that they never existed. 
Certainly not. But in his report he did say that Saddam Hussein 
maintained the ability to reestablish his system to develop weapons of 
mass destruction and could do so within 2 weeks.
  And, by the way, it does not take a lot of bacterial germ agent to 
produce a lot of problems. And I would argue that if you give me $2 
million and put $1 million in one coffee can and $1 million in another 
coffee can and give me a posthole digger and send me to California with 
a GPS, I will go out there and bury those two coffee cans someplace in 
California and then come back out of there, let it rain, if it rains in 
California, and you go to California and look for those $2 million. 
There is almost no chance of finding that. And that is about what 
chance we had of finding some of the weapons of mass destruction. And 
we are continually digging up different weapons in Iraq that we stumble 
across. I read an article just the other day.
  But I would argue this to the people on that side of the aisle: we 
know Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He used them 
against Iran. No one argues that. He used them against his own people 
in Kurdistan and killed at least 5,000 people there, perhaps more. In 
fact, I met with the judges in the tribunal, and in a moment we will 
hear from the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess). Those three judges 
talked about, if I have got the number right, and I am going to ask Mr. 
Burgess to give us a precise number, but it was over 100,000 Kurds 
killed and slaughtered by Saddam. I do not know how many were by gas, 
at least 5,000.
  But I would argue this: either Saddam Hussein had significant 
quantities of weapons of mass destruction, and we know because he used 
them on Iran and on the Kurds and other places, either

[[Page 25669]]

he had those quantities or he used up his last can of mustard gas on 
the Kurds. Is there anybody over here willing to say they believe 
Saddam Hussein, out of all that inventory that he used against the 
Iranians and the Kurds, used up his last can of mustard gas and we just 
lied to America because we knew his warehouse was empty, but nobody 
else did, not even Bill Clinton, not Al Gore, not the Israelis, not the 
French, not the United Nations, not the United States, not Great 
Britain. Everybody's intelligence said the same thing. It was logical. 
It was rational. And now the ridicule that comes from the other side is 
an irrational ridicule, Mr. Speaker.
  And with that I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), who, 
by the way, last August joined with me over in Iraq where we saw some 
extraordinarily interesting things, one who performs so well for the 
people from Texas.

                              {time}  2230

  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for organizing this 
hour, for being here. I know the gentleman has been a little bit under 
the weather, and I was concerned about his voice holding up for the 
whole time, but I am so glad he was talking about this issue.
  Mr. Speaker, just the other day I pulled out the joint resolution 
from the 107th Congress. I would point out that the 107th Congress was 
the term before either the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) or myself was 
in Congress. This was the joint resolution authorizing the use of force 
in Iraq. It is really quite an interesting document. It is instructive 
to read through this document.
  To be sure, there is mention of weapons of mass destruction, but 
there is also a good deal of discussion of Iraq being in breach of its 
international obligations, failure to follow United Nations 
resolutions, oppression of their own people, using weapons of mass 
destruction against his own people and, perhaps very interestingly, the 
violation of Public Law 105-338 which was passed in a previous 
President's administration in 1998 where it was a sense of Congress 
that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to 
remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of 
a democratic government to replace that regime. That was passed in 
1998, and we had to wait until 2003 to have a President who had the 
courage to actually execute that. I am glad we have a President who had 
that wisdom, because I would not like to think of the world in 25 or 30 
years time had we not taken the effort that has been undertaken in 
Iraq.
  The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is quite right. We were in Iraq in 
August. It was my fourth trip there. Boy, big steps. Every time I go to 
that country, it is incredible the amount of work that has been 
accomplished, hard work in sometimes tough, tough climatic conditions, 
the weather is hot in the summer, cold in the winter, dusty all year-
round, and then of course the constant threat of danger from terrorists 
and insurgents who live in that country.
  But the actual quote that the gentleman was talking about from the 
judges, I think they were referencing the beginnings of the trial of 
Chemical Ali, the man who was responsible for the killing of the Kurds 
in Halabja, and he was accused of killing 180,000 Kurds. Chemical Ali's 
defense of that was, it was not one bit over 100,000, and I do not know 
why you continue to lie about it. So perhaps he will get his day in 
court soon. I hope that is true.
  Mr. Speaker, I had been on the Floor earlier tonight talking about 
the debate that we are going to have on the budget, and I know the 
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) has referenced some of those points. I 
do get so frustrated, and the group that was here the hour before us, 
continuing to vilify the productive sector of our society, the 
productive segment of our society that provides the tax revenue for us 
to be able to do all of those free market capitalism things that the 
gentleman from Iowa referred to, all of those things that we want to do 
that are good things for people who are less fortunate than ourselves. 
All of those things are made possible because of the productive segment 
of society. This angst over the $55 billion that was returned to the 
most productive segment in society in May of 2003, legislation that I 
voted for and I believe the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) voted for, 
this $55 billion they desperately want to have back. But what has that 
$55 billion that we passed in May of 2003, what has that given us? It 
has given us 262 billion additional dollars in tax revenue for fiscal 
year 2005, the fiscal year that just ended on September 30.
  So, Mr. Speaker, to get back the benefit of that $55 billion that we 
reinvested in the American economy, we would have to raise taxes, not 
that $55 billion, but you would have to double that and double that 
again to get the same number of dollars back to the Federal Treasury 
that the tax relief provided in May of 2003.
  I think one of the most telling things I have seen in the past 
several days as we prepare for the debate was a quote from Roll Call 
from just yesterday. This fall is not the time for Democrats to roll 
out a positive agenda, said a House Democrat aid. That is some of the 
most unfortunate language that I have heard since coming to this House 
a year-and-a-half ago. If the other side is so bereft of ideas, if they 
are intimidated or frozen by their leadership, if they are afraid to 
show up for the debate, then that is truly one of the saddest comments 
on this body and this country.
  Because we need their ideas. We need their enthusiasm, we need their 
participation. I think, Mr. Speaker, hopefully, over the days and weeks 
to come, we will see more of that. We will see more of a willingness to 
have and to engage in debate, and not just the talking points that are 
in the top drawer of your desk. We can have talking points read to us 
by a commentator on CNN. We do not need people to come down here and 
read their talking points, we need them to come down here where really 
it should be the free exchange of ideas. This should be the marketplace 
of great ideas in this country where they are talked about and debated. 
So I would welcome the opportunity if the other side would some day 
wish to do that.
  Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) has some other 
very important data that he wants to share with us, and I yield back to 
the gentleman.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Burgess), a person who has become a good friend, and such a good friend 
that he is over working at night in his office and he sees me having a 
little difficulty with my voice and comes over to help me out. That is 
the kind of camaraderie we have here. We have seen a lot of Iraq 
together, and we do see it through the same eyes, and I appreciate his 
4 trips over there and my 3 trips over there, and each time we are 
there, the troops appreciate it. But I can tell my colleagues that we 
appreciate them a great, great deal, and it is an honor to be with them 
at a time like that.
  There are so many pieces of subject matter, Mr. Speaker, that I 
really intended to talk about tonight, and as I got into the depths of 
this Iraq issue and this worldwide war we are fighting, militant 
Islamic extremists, I wanted to make sure that we defined our enemy and 
defined them accurately.
  There are a lot of places on this globe, and they are perhaps 16,000 
Madrasas in Pakistan alone, places where they teach a kind of 
fundamentalism that sets the framework, sets the foundation for them to 
turn that into an active hatred. France and Great Britain perhaps are 
higher populations and more concentrations and further along in the 
growth and development of the kind of societies that reject those who 
have accepted them. They have rejected assimilation, they do not want 
to live as French or British. In fact, many of them do not really want 
to live as Americans. So I am a great proponent of assimilation. I will 
not take up that subject.
  But I have 2 others that I would like to address here in the next 12 
or so minutes that we have here. One of them is I wrote down a list of 
the

[[Page 25670]]

things that I heard from the people on the other side of the aisle and 
I really only got to subject number one. The next one that I heard was 
energy.
  Mr. Speaker, there are many things we can do with energy in this 
country. We are not getting help from the Democrats. There is a strong 
segment of I will call them environmentalist extremists. I do not claim 
to be an environmentalist myself. I am a conservationist. I have spent 
my life protecting soil and water. I have built more terraces than, I 
said earlier tonight, than any Member of Congress; waterways, farm 
ponds, larger reservoirs. You name it, we have protected the water and 
also protected our soil and sent the rain drops down through the soil 
profile. I believe in all of that. I am one of the people that has been 
up to ANWR, and I challenge anybody here in this Congress out of the 
435, if you are opposed to going up there and drilling in ANWR and have 
not been there, to see the environmental success that has been 
established on the north slope.
  We began drilling up there with that entire operation in 1972. You 
could fly an environmental extremist over the oil fields in the north 
slope and they could look down from a thousand feet, and they would not 
know they were over the oil slope oil fields. They would say, where are 
the derricks? Where are the pump jacks? Where are the oil spills? Where 
are the pipelines? Where are the roads? Where are the electrical lines? 
Where are the distribution systems? Where are they burning off the gas 
here? How come I do not see an oil field below me, when you tell me I 
am right over the top of it?
  The reason is because there are no derricks, there are no pump jacks, 
there are no electrical lines visible, there are not any collection 
pipelines visible. All of this is underground. The pumps are all 
submersible pumps. When you fly over there and look at that, it is 
simply rock pad for a work-over rig. It is perhaps 50 by 100 or 150 
feet long of I call it limestone; it is probably not; say 3 feet above 
that swamp floodplain. There are ice roads to go in there in the 
wintertime and work on it only. The ice roads melt. There is no impact 
whatsoever on the environment, except caribou herds now have gone from 
7,000 in 1970 to 28,000 head today. So they have done pretty well. We 
should go up there and drill. God put the oil there. I could not think 
of a better place. I cannot improve upon that. Where would you have the 
oil if you cannot have it up there where nobody goes, or we cannot have 
it up there where nobody goes, where we can do that with almost no 
impact on the environment, and if we can do so with .04 percent, 4 
hundredths of 1 percent of a footprint on that region. Yet, where is 
our help over here from the other side of the aisle?
  Mr. Speaker, 406 trillion cubic feet of natural gas offshore in the 
United States. There has never been a natural gas spill that has 
impacted anybody's environment. It is just scientifically and 
physiologically impossible. The gas dissipates.
  By the way, there is natural gas bubbling up out of the ocean all the 
time. No impact on our environment, 406 trillion cubic feet, many times 
more gas on the outer continental shelf than there is on the north 
slope of Alaska. Where is our help over here to lower the highest price 
of natural gas anywhere in the world? And we pay that price, every 
American. If you want to help, let us do something proactive. They come 
to the Floor and every single night, negative, negative. I could not 
get out of belt if I felt like that. By the way, I do not believe that 
stuff anyway.
  The argument about outing a CIA agent, Mr. Speaker. I listened 
carefully twice through to the special prosecutor's presentation that 
did bring out the indictment of Scooter Libby. He did not make any 
allegations that there had been any CIA agent outed. It was the purpose 
of his investigation. He apparently did not discover that, or he would 
have brought an indictment for that. But if the special prosecutor 
cannot find it in 2 years, how can the 30-Something Group find it over 
here? I would like to hear some more details on that. By the way, I 
read Bob Novak's column too and he argued that it was a common known 
thing that there was a CIA agent that was married to the gentleman who 
went to Niger, and I am not talking about Joseph C. Wilson, our Member 
of Congress who is Joe Wilson from South Carolina, we call him the good 
Joe. But the Joseph C. Wilson that went via the CIA to Niger to look 
and see if Iraq was out there seeking to purchase yellow cake uranium, 
came back with a report that apparently conflicts his public testimony.
  By the way, if you are a CIA agent and you are being paid to go to 
Africa and investigate as to whether Saddam Hussein is trying to 
purchase uranium so that he can develop nuclear weapons, weapons of 
mass destruction, I might add, would that not be a classified report, 
or is that individual going to come back here and give a report that 
says, well, yes, there were some people negotiating to do business with 
Niger, but no, I do not think they are trying to buy uranium. I do not 
know what else he would buy there, and neither did he. But he makes 
that report, that when he disagrees with his own report, he makes that 
public? Why kind of an agent of the CIA would do that, and why are we 
not challenging that in this country? Why are we not going to wait 
until there is a trial and find out what really happened under those 
circumstances, Mr. Speaker. So it saddens my heart that these 
conclusions can be leaped to from the same people who would say that 
the impeached President was innocent until proven guilty. Talk about a 
culture of corruption. No, I do not believe it exists, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, looking at this clock, I want to bring up one more piece 
of subject matter here and it is of significant importance, especially 
to the Midwest, but all over this country, and that is the issue of 
methamphetamines.
  I want to point out on this chart, this is the Iowa experience. Mr. 
Speaker, we have some of the worst meth abuse in Iowa than of anyplace 
in the country. We have busted quite a lot of method labs. There are 
only a couple of States that can compete with us in the number of meth 
abuse labs that there are. We recognize that it takes some things to 
make methamphetamines, the worst illegal drug this country has ever 
seen. It takes pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, or a product called PPA. 
Those things are all available in the midwest. We have more experience 
with it than anybody else, Mr. Speaker. So we began addressing this.
  When I was in the Iowa Senate about 5 years ago, we did some things 
to take some of that off the shelf. We did not do enough. So in our 
first try, we found out that these people are creative and they will 
find a way around you. So they wrote some new legislation. I was not 
involved in that. But I want to commend the Iowa legislature and the 
governor for signing legislation into law that was enacted on the first 
day of June 2005.
  This red line on this chart, Mr. Speaker, here are the meth labs that 
were busted from the previous year, this year, for the same period of 
time, 2004-2005, meth labs running per month: 229, 185, 122, 127, 213, 
146. A law was passed right here, kind of at the peak of the meth labs 
being busted. March is a big month. And they began, the retailers began 
pulling the precursors off the shelf by April. By May, by the end of 
May, we had seen a dramatic reduction in the number of meth labs that 
were busted by our, I will say, very efficient drug enforcement people 
in Iowa.

                              {time}  2245

  And that May number went down from 42 in May to 29 in June, to 25 
labs only in July, to 12 in August, to 12 in September, to 10 in 
October, and then this is up until October 28. That is an 80 percent 
reduction in meth labs because we took the precursors off the shelf, 
except we made sure that moms that had kids that get sick in the night 
could go down to the convenience store or the grocery store and pick up 
enough pseudoephedrine to get those kids through the next day.
  And this is what you can buy in Iowa off the shelf today legally. 
This product right here, Mr. Speaker, is 360 milligrams active 
ingredient of pseudo-
ephedrine in this product that is by one

[[Page 25671]]

of our grocery stores, a good old home-grown Iowa chain grocery store. 
They private-label package this in a 360-milligram package because that 
is the amount that you can purchase for a single day in Iowa. And you 
can go out and do that the next day and the next day and the next day 
in Iowa, or you can go into the pharmacy, in either case, in a monthly 
supply you can purchase 7,500 milligrams. But in 1 day what I have on 
display back here, Mr. Speaker, is what I bought in a single day, and 
all but this from a pharmacy in Cherokee, Iowa.
  Mr. Speaker, this represents the pseudoephedrine that you can 
purchase at one stop, all of these behind me that you can purchase in 
one stop in Iowa. And that is plenty enough to take care of a family 
for a good long time.
  We have passed some legislation out of the Judiciary Committee today. 
Instead of limiting it to 360 milligrams a day, it limits it to 3.6 
grams or 3,600 milligrams a day. We have a 7,500 milligram per month 
purchase that we can do in Iowa, but that quantity needs to be 
purchased from a pharmacist who will watch that volume. The law that 
passed, the language that passed out of the Judiciary Committee today, 
that 3.6 grams a day will allow a meth cook to go and make 19 stops 
around through retail establishments. Now, they sign up each place. 
They give their ID at each place, but there is not a way to track one 
retail place to another. So they will go from place to place. They will 
do 19 stops. They will pick up perhaps 70 grams of pseudo-
ephedrine, go home and make an ounce of methamphetamine and they can 
get that all done all before noon.
  And that ounce of methamphetamine will last one addict 90 days, or 
their 1-day supply, and then they go sell the 89-day supply, go back 
again in the afternoon and produce another 90 days' worth of 
methamphetamine under law that came out of the Judiciary Committee 
today.
  We can do better. I have introduced the Meth Lab Eradication Act. 
These are the conditions that are part of it. We have set it to comply 
with Federal law. Schedule 5 drug, penalties are associated with the 
Schedule 5. This was so easy to adapt to in Iowa with regard to the 
retailers, the pharmacists and the consumers that the adjustment, 
according to the author, of this bill was simply pathetically easy. We 
need to do that in this Congress so we can eradicate meth labs in 
America.
  Mr. Speaker, I promised earlier tonight that I would solve all the 
world's problems in 60 minutes. And you know, in fact, it is possible, 
but I did not solve them all tonight. So I am going to pledge to come 
back and keep working on the world's problems in an optimistic, 
solution-oriented way. And I appreciate the opportunity to address this 
Congress.

                          ____________________