[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 26037-26042]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                INTELLIGENCE ISSUES AND THE WAR IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Inglis of South Carolina). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. King) is recognized for the remaining time until midnight.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized and the 
opportunity to address the House tonight and until tomorrow begins I 
understand.
  First, I would speak to this issue that we have heard as the 
conclusion of my friends and colleagues from the other side of the 
aisle, however optimistic they may not be in their presentation to the 
American people on a regular basis.
  As I go through some of the things that are in front of me and I 
listened to the allegations that have been made that somehow the 
President has manipulated the intelligence and led this Nation into war 
because there never were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I 
will point out that I flat out reject that statement. It is not 
possible to prove a negative in the first place, and a rational person 
would understand that from the beginning.
  Additionally, we know that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass 
destruction. We know that he used them 1 time.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that we know that he did 
have weapons of mass destruction because we provided, during the 1980s, 
the means for the development of those weapons to Saddam Hussein.
  Members of this administration, former Secretary of State Colin 
Powell, the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, they clearly knew because 
they were involved in assuring that the means to develop weapons of 
mass destruction were provided to the Saddam Hussein regime.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would point out 
that I will not concede the accuracy of that, and I do not because I do 
not have that evidence and I have not seen that. I acknowledge the 
gentleman's statement for the honorable individual he is, and I would 
point out that we can concur then that Saddam had weapons of mass 
destruction.
  In fact, President Clinton made that statement in 1998 very clearly 
and unequivocally, and my point is that either Saddam Hussein used his 
last canister of mustard gas on the Kurds and simply ran out of 
inventory or else those weapons of mass destruction still have to be 
someplace, and he constructed then an elaborate ruse to dupe the world 
and dupe seven or eight or nine different countries on the 
intelligence.
  I point out President Clinton's statement: Other countries possess 
weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. This is December 
1998. With Saddam there is one big difference; he has used them. The 
international community has little doubt then, and I have no doubt 
today, says President Clinton, that left unchecked Saddam Hussein will 
use these terrible weapons.
  Again, 1998, Mr. Speaker, and allegations here on this floor and 
around this country are that somehow President Bush has manipulated 
intelligence and apparently misrepresented this to the American people, 
and the implication is also that he has duped these people that have 
made these statements, including former President Bill Clinton and a 
number of other high-profile people within his administration.
  The allegation would then have to hold true that somehow the governor 
of Texas, now President Bush, found a way to dupe the national leaders 
to somehow manipulate and maneuver hundreds of billions of dollars 
worth of national intelligence to produce these kinds of results.

                              {time}  2315

  It is simply a ludicrous position to take. It will not hold water, it 
is not logical, it is not rational, and the more the American people 
hear about this, the more they begin to think about it, the more they 
begin to understand it, the less they are going to believe these 
allegations.
  I would also point out that the individual who has had his 15 minutes 
of fame and then some, the erstwhile ambassador who was sent by the CIA 
to go to Niger to investigate the question as to whether Saddam Hussein 
was seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger, that individual, of course, 
we know as the husband of now publicly discussed Valerie Plame, at her 
recommendation. As we understand, he was sent by the CIA.
  He had not been in Niger in 20 years. He was not a weapons expert 
like his wife may have been. But he went there, and he came back and 
gave one story to the New Republic Magazine. He gave another story 
under oath to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which 
thoroughly eviscerated his viability and his credibility.
  So the statements that were made for publication for the fame did not 
hold up under oath, did not hold up under scrutiny. One thing we are 
confident of is that erstwhile ambassador who went on a mission to 
supposedly represent the United States, Joseph C. Wilson, the 
individual who went over there for the CIA, if one is on a mission in a 
foreign country for the CIA, one would think that they would have some 
level of integrity they would have to hold up, have some level of 
confidentiality that they would have to hold up. One would think that 
if they went on a mission, a secret clandestine mission, first, that 
they would be qualified; second, that they would maintain that level of 
secrecy and confidentiality, that they would come back and report back 
to their superiors and it would be an accurate report and it would be 
precise and it would be credible and it would hold up under oath.
  That report, alleged to have been delivered in print by one Joseph C. 
Wilson, erstwhile ambassador, was not delivered in print. It was 
delivered verbally, and the verbal report that we have the notes of and 
the knowledge of, Mr. Speaker, is a verbal report that indicates that 
the Iraqis were seeking weapons of mass destruction, yellow-
cake uranium in Niger. It indicates the very thing that he alleges 
today was not true.

[[Page 26038]]

  Yet this seems to be some kind of allegations by the other side, if 
they like what they hear, are enough for them to say this is confirmed 
and absolute proof; and rational, thinking Americans know better. 
Critical thinking Americans know better. In fact, this President would 
not use any language in a State of the Union address or any other kind 
of speech unless he knew that it had been thoroughly vetted, it was 
reliable. And it was, by the way, vetted and reliable and delivered 
into that speech on January 28, 2003, in these Chambers from just in 
front of where the Speaker is right now when the President gave his 
State of the Union Address.
  Those now infamous 16 words that are alleged to have been untruthful 
to the American people start out with ``we have learned from the 
British'' that the Iraqis have been seeking uranium from Africa. Now, 
``we have learned from the British'' is true. That is a fact, and no 
one has challenged that fact. ``We have learned from the British that 
the Iraqis are seeking,'' that qualification precludes any of the rest 
of that statement as long as the rest of that statement is consistent 
with what we have learned from the British; and to turn that into 
something that is now called a lie is disingenuous and dishonest to the 
American people.
  I reminded the body here last week, last Wednesday night, that there 
were commercials that were run across this country on television in the 
1996 Presidential campaign. There were issues there about integrity and 
honesty in that Presidential campaign. Charlton Heston went on 
television, and he said, looking into the camera, ``Mr. President, when 
you say something that is wrong and you do not know that it is wrong, 
that is a mistake. But, Mr. President, when you say something that is 
right and you know it is wrong, that is a lie.'' That is the 
distinction between a mistake and a lie. That distinction has not been 
recognized by the other side of the aisle, and it is willfully being 
ignored.
  I will not concede that a mistake was made. I think the words in that 
State of the Union Address are precisely accurate. I think the British 
would concede that point today. I think any rational, critical thinking 
person would concede that point today, Mr. Speaker. But this has been 
twisted and warped to the point where it is jeopardizing our national 
security, and that is why I am on the floor here tonight.
  I have been over in the Middle East a number of times. The last time 
I came back was August 20 of this past summer. I have been there with 
our men and women in uniform when they are strapped on with helmets and 
bullet-proof vests. I have been in and ridden in and inspected some of 
those armored vehicles that have been hit by enemy fire, hit by IEDs. I 
happen to have inspected an armored Humvee that was hit by a rocket and 
an RPG almost simultaneously. It rolled off the road upside down, and 
the four American soldiers that were in that armored Humvee walked away 
and were on patrol the next day thanks to the armor that is there.
  I have been to Fallujah, I believe a year ago last May, where the 
Marines were bolting on armor then and preparing for battle that was 
ahead. So we have accelerated the production of our armor for all of 
our vehicles there. Some of them are not armored. They stay on the base 
where they are safe. But almost all of our vehicles that go out 
anywhere where they are in danger are fully armored, top, bottom, and 
sideways, with bullet-proof windows in them. We have done a fantastic 
job to ramp up the construction and development of armor and done a 
pretty good job.
  We were not ready for this. The Humvees were not designed to go into 
combat. They were not designed to drive over IEDs. They were not 
designed to take direct hits from RPGs or rocket fire. In fact, they 
were not designed to take hits from AK-47s. They were not a combat 
vehicle in the beginning of those operations. So we had to adapt to the 
circumstances that were there.
  We began sending steel over there, and it was cut and fitted and it 
was bolted on or welded on, and our military went right to work as 
quickly as they could to get as much armor up as fast as they could. We 
started our factories up here. We took an existing production line and 
multiplied its production capability by at least 10 times to get our 
armored Humvees out in place and to put the armor on our trucks and to 
get ready.
  Now we do send out convoys that are fully armored on a regular basis, 
and it has been a long time since we have exposed significant numbers 
of vehicles or American soldiers out there in vehicles that were not 
armored, Mr. Speaker. So this argument that it is something other than 
that I think is specious, and I do not think it is based on fact.
  The statement that the President made about the irresponsible 
statements when people undermine our military efforts, I will go 
further than that, and I will relate an incident for me a year ago last 
June, about June 17. I was in a hotel in Kuwait waiting to go into Iraq 
the next day early. I turned on the television to Al-Jazeera TV. As I 
watched that television, it was Arabic audio and it was English 
subtitles, and on that television came Moqtada al-Sadr, a big black 
beard, and as he spoke in Arabic, the English subtitles came on 
underneath on the screen, and the subtitles said, ``If we keep 
attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq the same way they left 
Vietnam, the same way they left Lebanon, the same way they left 
Mogadishu.''
  Listen to that echo in the ears of Moqtada al-Sadr, and we know that 
his voice was echoing in the ears of our enemy, the people we call the 
insurgents on our nice days, the people who are sitting somewhere in a 
mud hut or a stone building and they have some 155mm rounds. They have 
got explosives. They have got detonating devices. They have got 
shrapnel built into this, and they are making improvised explosive 
devices. They are watching their new satellite dish TV.
  Some of the communities there in Iraq have more than one satellite 
dish per household. They were illegal when we first came into Iraq, but 
every Iraqi today has access to satellite TV. Every Iraqi today can 
watch Al-Jazeera TV. And on Al-Jazeera TV, they would see these kinds 
of scenes of Moqtada al-Sadr saying, ``If we keep attacking Americans, 
they will leave Iraq the same way they left Vietnam, the same way they 
left Lebanon, the same way they left Mogadishu.'' And the enemy who are 
making improvised explosive devices see that on television. It 
encourages them. It causes them to build more bombs, not less. It 
causes them to plant more bombs, not less. It causes them to detonate 
more bombs, not less. It causes them to have more courage, more hope, a 
stronger spirit to fight our American soldiers because of the words 
that came out of Moqtada al-Sadr.
  Now, imagine how encouraging that is to our enemy over in Iraq, and 
many of them are not Iraqis. In fact, most of the enemy, I understand, 
are not Iraqis but imported fighters from other countries. Imagine how 
encouraging it is when they see on their Al-Jazeera TV, when they hear 
the voice and see the face of a quasi-leader of the United States of 
America, someone from the floor of Congress, someone from the floor of 
the United States Senate, someone who is doing a press conference out 
on the steps of the Capitol, someone who is doing talking head 
television, someone who says, wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, get 
them out of there, Mr. President, we need to get out of Iraq. Imagine 
how much encouragement that gives to the enemy. And what is the enemy 
going to do? They are going to recruit more. They are going to build 
more bombs. They are going to attack more Americans.
  I reject the idea that one can say they fervently pray that the 
troops come home and they support the troops. I reject the idea that 
they can support the troops and reject their mission. Mr. Speaker, if 
you are for the troops, you are for their mission. And if you are 
against the troops, you are against their mission. But these things are 
inextricably linked. They cannot be separated.

[[Page 26039]]

  We cannot ask an American soldier to go in this country or overseas, 
risk their life, perhaps give their life on a mission that we do not 
believe in. We would not send them on a mission we do not believe in. 
We would not ask them to do that. It would be the most dishonest, 
disingenuous thing we could do as the United States Government in 
Congress and the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief 
to order men and women into a theater of battle and not support their 
mission.
  When I talk with the families that have lost a loved one in this war 
on terror, it is a sad time, and that price they have paid cannot be 
felt unless we ourselves have had that loss, but we can empathize with 
them. We can pray for them. We can sympathize with them. We can try to 
understand. But invariably those that I talk to, those that I meet 
with, will tell me they want their son or their daughter's life to have 
meaning. They want that sacrifice to have meaning. And they will say do 
not give up on this mission. My son believed in what he did. He 
volunteered for this mission. Let us have meaning. Let us have freedom 
for the Iraqi people. Let us have freedom for the Afghani people.
  By the way, while I bring that up, what is the distinction between 
Afghanistan and Iraq? Why do I not hear from the other side of the 
aisle ``get your troops out of Afghanistan''? The statement is never 
made. We forget about the naysayers that were here before we went into 
Afghanistan and before we liberated the Afghanis. There were plenty of 
naysayers. They said we cannot go into that part of the world. No one 
has ever been able to be go into that part of Afghanistan or even 
Afghanistan at all and be able to liberate, invade, occupy because the 
terrain is so difficult, that Mujahideen are such tough fighters.
  So 2 months after September 11, the American military were in there, 
coalition forces were in there, and we still heard the naysayers. But 
as the operation got wrapped up, as there was more security and more 
safety and votes coming along in Afghanistan where people had never 
voted before on that particular piece of real estate, they did so and 
they have done so twice. They have done that because of the American 
soldiers giving them that liberty. But the critics essentially shut up 
about Afghanistan but not about Iraq.
  Is the difference the number of lives, Mr. Speaker? Is the difference 
that 200 Americans have lost their lives in Afghanistan and 2,000 
Americans have lost their lives in Iraq? If that is the difference, 
then I would challenge the left, the pacifist left, the people who have 
difficulty figuring out how they are going to support the troops and 
oppose the mission, and if they were rational, they would admit that 
that dichotomy could not be accepted or tolerated. They cannot seem to 
draw the line on what the difference is between Afghanistan and Iraq, 
200 lives versus 2,000 lives. If the number of lives were the 
difference, then they should tell us from their position how many are 
enough. How many lives would they spend to free 25 million Afghanis? 
How many lives would it cost to free 25 million Iraqis?
  And, yes, the price has been high, and it has hurt. And it will hurt 
far more if this job, this task, is not completed, if this freedom that 
has been so hard fought and won is allowed to go back to a state of 
tyranny where a dictator would take over in Iraq and where we would see 
a center for Islamic terrorism for al Qaeda.

                              {time}  2330

  It would clearly be there if we pulled out of there today. I would 
wager if you put this up for a ballot to the Iraqi people and asked, do 
you want the United States and the coalition forces to pull out as fast 
as they can, that ballot referendum, I believe 95 percent would say, 
no, we would like to have the Americans leave not real soon, just soon 
enough to get control of our country.
  That is moving along at an acceptable rate. I will not say I am happy 
about the speed. It is a tough job. The infrastructure in Iraq has been 
depreciated and dilapidated over 35 to 40 years of neglect. So there is 
old equipment that does not function very well. Parts and materials to 
keep it in shape, many have to be manufactured. The oil fields need new 
wells and distribution systems. They need to get their refineries up to 
shape. They need a distribution system that will get that oil out of 
the country so they can get some cash coming back in.
  But Saddam Hussein, when he was in power, was killing an average of 
182 of his own people every day. Every day on average. Hundreds of 
thousands of them have been found in mass graves. The 800,000 Swamp 
Arabs that were there before Saddam Hussein decided they were an enemy 
of the state were decimated down to 220,000. Some escaped. In the end, 
about a fourth of the population of Swamp Arabs in the area of the 
wetlands, Saddam Hussein dried them up in order to take away their 
livelihood and way of life. That area is twice the size of the 
Everglades, and that way of life was destroyed by Saddam. We have 
reconstructed about the size of the Everglades, and the Swamp Arabs are 
starting to repopulate. But that is one-thirtieth of Iraqi population 
doing what they can.
  The argument that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass 
destruction, and now we hear from the gentleman from Massachusetts that 
he did, what did he do with them? Where did they go? Matter can neither 
be created nor destroyed. Saddam Hussein said, I have those weapons of 
mass destruction. He defied 17 U.N. resolutions stretching back to 
1990. We know from September 11 that we cannot wait until a threat is 
fully developed.
  The question still remains, we do not know, we do not know how large 
the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were. We just know he had 
stockpiles. He used them. We do not know what happened to them. But the 
King rule of physics is everything has to be someplace. So where are 
they? There is no evidence he destroyed the weapons of mass 
destruction. But due to Saddam Hussein's obstruction, the materials 
once declared by the Saddam regime were never accounted for, even 
though he declared them.
  I also want to point out that in October 2002, a bipartisan majority 
of Congress authorized President Bush to use force if necessary to deal 
with the continuing threat posed by Saddam Hussein. We also had a 
national policy that Congress endorsed of regime change in Iraq.
  All of these things were consistent with the will of the people of 
America, as debated and voted on in Congress. H.J. Res. 114 stated that 
by continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and 
biological weapons capability, and actively seeking a nuclear weapons 
capability and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations, those 
were the activities going on by Saddam Hussein.
  And the intelligence of countries that concurred with ours. The 15 
members of our intelligence community in this country, and additionally 
some of the other countries who concurred with our intelligence were 
Great Britain and France. France opposed our operations there, 
concurred with our intelligence. Germany opposed our operations and 
concurred with our intelligence. Russia same story: concurred with our 
intelligence, opposed our operations there.
  What do those three countries have in common? The answer is those 
three countries were three of the most vocal opponents to the 
liberalization of Iraq. I said at the time that the decibels of their 
objections to the liberation of Iraq can be directly indexed to their 
interest in the oil development contracts that they had access to that 
they designed with Saddam Hussein prior to the beginning of our 
operations of the liberation of Iraq.
  They had a vested interest in the oil in Iraq. They had contracts 
signed with Saddam Hussein, which of course were nullified by the 
liberation of Iraq. Come to find out after the fact, it was not just 
legitimate oil contracts that had them all in a dither; it was also the 
Oil-For-Food fraud campaign that was replete through those three 
countries, a number of others besides, and through the United Nations 
itself. Also, the U.N. Security Council echoed

[[Page 26040]]

the congressional assessment of the threat posed by Iraq. Even the U.N. 
Security Council agreed with our intelligence: there was a fair amount 
of fraud going through the Oil-For-Food program.
  I have to point out George Galloway, as a Brit, was apparently 
profiting significantly from Oil-For-Food, and his wife had a number of 
six-figure checks deposited in her checking account; and the facts are 
coming home to roost in the case of Mr. Galloway.
  So the objections to the liberation of Iraq, many of the countries 
that objected had a conflict of interest. That vested interest reminds 
me of Barbara Conable's famous statement of hell hath no fury as a 
vested interest masquerading as a moral authority.
  That is what we heard prior to the liberation of Iraq. We know Saddam 
Hussein had sufficient time to shuffle his weapons of mass destruction. 
They could have buried or spirited them out of the country.
  By the way, Iraq is a country where everybody digs holes. It looks 
like one big prairie dog village. That countryside has a lot of open 
holes and a lot of things buried. We found a fully operational MiG-29 
buried in the desert in Iraq. That is a whole lot bigger than you would 
need for a stockpile of the weapons of mass destruction. Did we find it 
because of intelligence or we had a metal detector or because somebody 
had good instincts, or because we had some scientific way to fly over 
the top and notice the difference in the terrain? Or did somebody tip 
us off to find that fully operational MiG-29 buried in Iraq?
  Mr. Speaker, no, we found it because the wind blew the sand off the 
tail fin. If there had been weapons of mass destruction inside that 
plane, if it just filled the cockpit, that would have been plenty 
enough to convince even the skeptics on the other side of the aisle 
that the weapons of mass destruction are not really the question that 
is before this country or the world, but a red herring that is designed 
to throw the American people into a frustration with the decision-
making process and the effort to convince Americans that things are 
going badly there.
  Whenever we lose an American, that is something going very, very 
badly. Whenever we have Americans exposed to enemy, we will have 
casualties, Mr. Speaker. But when we look objectively at what has been 
accomplished in Iraq, when we objectively look to see that there were 
milestones set on the calendar, the effort over there has met or 
exceeded every single milestone.
  Certainly the liberation of Iraq came around a lot faster than 
anybody thought it would. I point out to the American people that the 
city of Baghdad, about 5 million people, is the largest city in the 
world, ever in the history of the world, to be invaded and occupied by 
a foreign power. It happened in the blink of a historical eye with an 
extraordinarily small number of casualties for a city that size. No one 
quite believed on that Thursday, an American armored column had gone 
into Baghdad, driven in and came back out, and the enemy had given up 
the ghost and essentially disappeared.
  But that is what happened. They met that deadline. They set a new 
milestone for armored columns going across the desert and for the 
liberation of 5 million people. They were way ahead of the agenda, the 
targeted timetable.
  And then we set up the CPA, the provisional authority under Paul 
Bremer. The idea was to establish a functional government in Iraq and 
be able to pass that over to the Iraqis so they could govern 
themselves. This began in March of 2003. March 22 was the date Baghdad 
was liberated.
  I happen to know, since I was in Mosul sometime after that, that 
General Patrais and the 101st Airborne that liberated Mosul, they held 
open and free elections in May of 2003. They elected a governor and 
vice governor and put together a government of the people by the people 
and for the people, a Kurd, and I am not sure actually of the religious 
definition of the other individual, but I watched them interact with 
each other and I watched them do business. They brought a businessman 
that could speak English. They were optimistic about the city of Mosul.
  In fact, when the 101st Airborne left Mosul and deployed after their 
year tour of duty, the Iraqis took a boulevard, a broad boulevard in 
Mosul. And I only saw one street sign in all of Baghdad my first trip. 
Most everything had been looted and stripped for the metal. The one 
street sign in Baghdad was a street named Jihad. So they left that up 
and tore down the other street signs.
  Go over to the city of Mosul and I did not notice any street signs 
there, but I have a picture of a street sign in Mosul, that sign is 
101st Airborne Air Assault Division. They named that street after the 
101st Airborne. And this was not something put up by the 101st Airborne 
unless they had the same difficulty with spelling that the Iraqis had. 
They misspelled ``division'' and they misspelled ``assault.'' That 
makes it genuine in that effort.
  I am quite proud of the way the Iraqis responded to the Americans. I 
am proud of the way they respond to them in most of the areas of Iraq.
  Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to fly over Fallujah, where we have 
had as much conflict as anywhere, and see people come out into the 
streets and wave and smile. They come out and wave because they are 
grateful to Americans for giving them a chance at freedom.
  But this message that the American people are getting that the 
credibility of the administration is not there disappoints me a great 
deal. It undermines our American troops. It does give aid and comfort 
to the enemy. It encourages the enemy to attack more Americans. It is 
costing American lives.
  When people come to this floor of Congress, when they step out into a 
press conference, when they speak on the floor of the Senate, they are 
viewed as quasi-leaders of the United States of America. This 
encourages our enemies. When I see a soldier anywhere in America, 
particularly in my district, serve their second tour of duty, and they 
lost their life defending freedom in their second tour of duty, it is 
infuriating to me because I believe if we stuck together as a Nation, 
if we stuck by the deal and the agreement that this Congress has when 
we have our vote on the floor of this Congress, when the vote goes up 
and men and women go to war, you stand with them, you stand beside 
them, you support them with everything you have. That means, yes, 
bulletproof vests; yes, armored Humvees; and, yes, support and 
equipment and training and tactics and technology and great leadership.

                              {time}  2345

  But it means support the mission, Mr. Speaker. You cannot ask a 
soldier to go to war and tell him that you do not support their 
mission. And so the pessimism that abounds that seeks to undermine the 
presidency here and seeks to establish a majority in the House and the 
Senate in the upcoming election is all about negativism. It is all 
about dragging down our foreign policy. It is all about trying to prove 
to the American people that the administration has not been successful.
  But each milestone that is reached in Iraq, handing over the CPA of 
Paul Bremer's over to the temporary civilian government, that happened 
2 days early. And then they had elections, and the elections were there 
to put people in temporarily into their temporary parliament and the 
temporary parliament got together and they agreed on a constitution and 
the constitution was rolled out on time. And they had an election to 
ratify the constitution, Mr. Speaker, all in an extraordinary amount of 
time.
  The United States of America declared its independence July 4, 1776; 
and yet we did not get our Constitution ratified until 1789, 13 years 
later. Now it took a while to earn our freedom, I grant, and the war 
was long, and it was bloody, and it was costly, and it was brutal. We 
have our freedom, and we have our Constitution. In fact, the Iraqis 
have their constitution far sooner than the American Constitution has 
been established, and it is ratified by a full vote of the Iraqi 
people.
  Now, about 1 month from today, the Iraqis will go to the polls, and 
they will

[[Page 26041]]

select a new parliament, and this will be a sovereign nation when that 
new parliament is seated. It will have all the legitimacy of any nation 
that sits at the United Nations today. Iraq will be fully, fully 
legitimized. The vote of the people will seat the members of 
parliament. They will select a prime minister and their leaders and 
that legitimacy that is there takes them to another level.
  But this is an astonishing thing. This is far, far more freedom, far, 
far closer to establishing a functioning rule of law than has ever been 
seen in that part of the world before. And the inspiration for the Arab 
people all around Iraq that see that a nation like Iraq can have 
freedom, when people breathe free, they give inspiration to others who 
see them breathe free and out of that yearning will bring them to the 
streets like it did in Lebanon.
  The Lebanese reached out for their measure of freedom, and that is 
part of the inspiration of Iraq, and it is part of the inspiration of 
Afghanistan. It is part of the inspiration that this President has laid 
out in an articulated way to the world, the inspiration that we have 
been attacked by enemies from without. We did nothing to provoke them. 
They attacked us and killed approximately 3,000 Americans on September 
11, 2001. And we went to Afghanistan and liberated 25 million people, 
and we went to Iraq and liberated 25 million people. Fifty million 
people that had not been free before in any substantive way are free 
today. Those two countries can become and I believe will become the 
lodestar nations, the Arab nations that can be the inspiration for the 
rest of the Arab world.
  The habitat that breeds terror is a habitat that breeds poverty, 
ignorance, jealousy and hatred. That is the environment that is being 
exploited by the wahabis and the madrassas that are teaching this 
hatred in the young people. And the pressure that comes on those 
countries from the measure of that kind of hatred, they are being 
taught that, somehow or another, it is part of this age-old philosophy.
  I really do believe that if you would scramble up all of our cultures 
and all of our people and erase our institutional memory and toss us 
into a totally new environment in a random way, some of us would wake 
up in the morning and think, huh, my glass is half full, and I am going 
to go to work and see if I can fill it up the rest of the way. And 
others, they look at their glass and say mine is half empty and that 
fellow over there, he is seeking to fill his glass. If he were not 
doing that, mine would fill spontaneously. That is the class envy, 
jealousy, hatred that comes.
  It has always been this conflict between freedom and communism, 
freedom and fascism, freedom and national socialism, and freedom and 
militant Islamic extremism, all the same kind of class envy jealousy, 
the hatred that comes from the idea that if somehow other people were 
not industrious and did not earn a profit, somehow those resources of 
the world are finite and they will flow at random to other folks who do 
not quite try so hard or have the technology or have not developed the 
education. But this spirit of entrepreneurship and free enterprise will 
establish itself in a strong way in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
  In fact, I gave a speech to the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce. I did 
not know they had a Chamber of Commerce. We pulled into Baghdad at the 
al Rashid Hotel, and they asked me if I would give a speech to them. So 
I said yes I would.
  It was about 3:00 in the afternoon. Walked in there, and they were 
getting ready to introduce me, and I said introduce me to the 
interpreter first. That is going to be really helpful. And they said, 
no, we do not have an interpreter. You do not need an interpreter, Mr. 
Congressman, because they all speak English here at the Baghdad Chamber 
of Commerce. About 56 to 58 of them sitting at the dinner tables.
  So I gave them a little speech, and you could tell they understood 
English. They laughed at the right time, and they smiled at the right 
time, and they clapped at a time that I thought was appropriate anyway. 
I was quite encouraged at the level of interest in developing a culture 
of free enterprise in Iraq.
  When that speech was over, I needed to get on to the next meeting, 
but it was an instantaneous cluster, huddle like, actually. They had to 
eventually just pull me out of this huddle. We were passing back and 
forth business cards and writing notes and trying to find a way to 
connect with the inspiration of free enterprise that is embodied in 
almost every American that walks the streets of Baghdad or Iraq. They 
look to us to be leaders in a lot of ways, not just military but on 
free enterprise capitalism perspective, and as they continue to develop 
that their economy will grow.
  It takes a level of integrity and morality to have a functioning free 
enterprise system. It works on trust is why. As that trust gets built 
and established in the culture in Iraq, it is going to be a stronger 
and stronger economy. As the free enterprise economy flows out in 
Baghdad and the other cities in Iraq and connects itself with the new 
thing that will come, that will be available for the Iraqis after 
December 15, when they are a truly sovereign nation in control of all 
of their own assets, then they will be able to sit down and negotiate 
or have competitive bids for the development of the oil resources in 
Iraq.
  They must have that. They must have outside capital, foreign capital 
and foreign technology and foreign know-how, and a lot of it should be 
and hopefully is American technology capital know-how to pour into 
Iraq, to go out and punch in hundreds of new oil wells and new 
pipelines and distribution systems and refineries so that that oil can 
pour out of that country and the money can pour in.
  Another allegation that comes from the other side of the aisle, Mr. 
Speaker, is that somehow we did this all for oil. But oil is something 
that you can purchase on the open market around the world. We did not 
go in there to steal anybody's oil. We went in there to protect that 
oil for the Iraqis.
  It is absolutely clear that the oil resources of Iraq belong to the 
people of Iraq, and we protected that, preserved that, and we are 
keeping our pledge with the Iraqi people. They will develop the oil 
resources with foreign capital and, when that happens, then the cash 
will flow into the economy and it will multiply itself over and over 
again. And Iraq becomes the lodestar Arab nation that brings freedom to 
that part of the world.
  Like, as the European, the eastern European nations saw, an echo of 
freedom go across eastern Europe when the wall went down on November 9, 
1989, I believe we will see an echo of freedom go through the Arab 
world, probably not as dramatically, probably not as quickly, probably 
not as bloodlessly. But I believe we will see a free Arab people some 
time within the next generation.
  At that point, the habitat that breeds terrorists will disappear. It 
will not be the culture that can create that kind of a thing. And I 
mean that two ways. But the culture of freedom does not produce a 
culture of terror. In fact, free people never go to war against other 
free people. This country has never gone to war against another 
democracy, another group of people that had an opportunity to go to the 
polls and select their leaders and their national destiny. That is 
another known fact that does not seem to get out on the other side of 
the aisle, Mr. Speaker.
  So I am optimistic about the solutions there. I applaud the 
President's vision and having the courage to step in and take the 
initiative to free 50 million people, 50 million Arab people, to give 
them an opportunity. And those people will be our allies, by the way, 
for a long, long time to come in a part of the world where it is pretty 
important to have those kind of allies.
  As I listened to some of the other laments that were here earlier 
this evening, the discussion about the Budget Reconciliation Act, the 
people who are critical of that, of the Deficit Reduction Act that we 
brought some $53 billion to come out of the proposed spending up until 
the year 2010, not enough, but a start. A half of 1 percent of our 
budget is all that amounts to,

[[Page 26042]]

Mr. Speaker. I do not think it is very hard to step up and do a very 
small half of 1 percent trim, given the kind of spending that we have 
had.
  But the other side of the aisle does not offer $1 in fiscally 
responsible cuts, not one; and they do not offer one vote to support 
our fiscal responsibility, not one. Additionally, they demagogue the 
very things we have done that are responsible.
  The statement was made over here earlier tonight that we have cut $40 
billion from the student loans and that somehow it is going to come out 
of the students, their loans and their aid. Not. Not $40 billion from 
the student loans. The students are not going to notice any difference 
unless there is more cash available, not less, because we have made 
administrative changes, changes that affect the interest rates and the 
fees that are being charged by the lenders. This is not going to affect 
the students. This is reform. That is efficiency in government and 
efficiency in business.
  But you know the demagoguery again. If I was as pessimistic as this 
and if I had this philosophy, this argument that everything is wrong 
and you cannot trust your leadership night after night after night, I 
think I would swim to Cuba and try to find a place where I would be 
happy. That would be my advice to the people that are here every night 
tearing down the optimism of America, undermining the truth that is 
America and making it difficult for us to move forward into this bold 
and brave future that we need to.
  And, by the way, they have no confidence in our economy. I would go 
down through the whole list of economic indicators. We have had the 
longest period of consistent growth over 3 percent for 10 consecutive 
quarters. That is the longest since for the last two decades to have 
that kind of growth. Unemployment is down to 5.0 percent, when 5.6 is 
considered to be a pretty good position to be in. It has been 
ratcheting down. This economy has been creating more and more jobs. 
Nearly every economic indicator is stronger and stronger and stronger.
  That in the face of the negatives, that in the face of Hurricane 
Katrina. This in 10 consecutive quarters of growth over 3 percent is 
after we got hit by September 11 and the attack on our financial 
markets. It is after some of the business circumstances that were 
brought up short by this Congress, and I am pleased that they were, hit 
the markets as well. After people lost confidence in the markets, 
September 11 came and destroyed the financial industry. We still came 
back and recovered with 10 consecutive quarters of growth over 3 
percent, Mr. Speaker.
  So this is a strong and robust economy, and it is a credit to the 
Bush tax cuts, those tax cuts that we need to make permanent, the extra 
resources, the billions of dollars that we have in our Treasury today 
because we had the courage to cut taxes so our economy could grow and 
create jobs. That is the kind of vision that is sorely lacking on the 
other side. They are good at criticizing, but I am waiting for a 
positive agenda, Mr. Speaker.
  This idea that American soldiers should be, go off and fight without 
support for their mission has got to come back to the people who 
believe somehow they can support our soldiers but not support the 
mission, Mr. Speaker. So I just tell you that I am optimistic about the 
future of America. I know our economy is strong. I am optimistic about 
the future of our economy.
  I am watching a confirmation process begin over in the United States 
Senate for Judge Alito. I think he will be the individual that comes to 
the Supreme Court and begins a constitutional restoration process. I am 
looking forward to that. We must restore this Constitution. It has been 
eroded over the last 30 to 40 years with activist judges.
  The Kilo decision was the last straw for me and a lot of us. I agreed 
with the liberals on that. I will say that the gentleman from 
Massachusetts and I, whom we most generally disagree, he and I agreed 
and spoke essentially back to back here on the floor in opposing the 
Kilo decision. That is Mr. Frank from Massachusetts. When he and I 
agree on a constitutional issue I am going to say and oppose the 
Supreme Court, chances are the text of the Constitution ought to be 
respected.
  We will get back to that, Mr. Speaker, with this confirmation of 
Judge Alito. The corner needs to be turned. The American people need to 
be informed on how positive things are over in Iraq and that our 
economy is strong and we are going to move forward in a bold future 
with a bold agenda.
  We need to pass this reconciliation act so that we can offset the 
costs of Hurricane Katrina. I will do more. We need to drill for oil in 
ANWR. We need to drill for natural gas and oil on our Outer Continental 
Shelf and hand this future over to our children and grandchildren with 
oil supplies, good tax programs, a national security program, a whole 
package. So, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence tonight and the 
privilege to speak to this House.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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