[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 27595-27600]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Marchant). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized until midnight.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to 
address my colleagues and the people in this country.
  There are some important issues before us, as there always are in 
this Congress, and sometimes I have a little difficulty sorting between 
which of those issues it is that I would like to speak to my colleagues 
about, Mr. Speaker.
  Tonight, I would like to address the subject matter of the future of 
this country, the future of the Middle East, the future of this global 
conflict, this assault on Western civilization that comes from radical, 
militant, Islamic extremists, the will of the United States of America, 
Mr. Speaker, to stand up and defend the cause that our Forefathers have 
fought so hard for and to preserve not just our freedoms which are 
essential and worth the struggle and worth the sacrifice, but our very 
safety and lives are at risk, Mr. Speaker.
  We need to understand this war that we are in. We need to understand 
our enemy, and as I listened to the debate here on the floor a couple 
of weeks ago on a Friday when we debated the resolution to immediately 
pull out of Iraq, it occurred to me that there were a lot of people 
actually on the floor of this chamber, Mr. Speaker, that I thought did 
not have a long-term view for the future of the United States of 
America or the free world for that matter.
  I want to raise a point, and I want to then continue to illustrate 
that point. I have brought in a picture and a poster to help with that 
point.
  This is not the number one villain in all of Iraq or all of this war 
against radical, militant extremists, but this is Muqtada Al-Sadr, who 
is actually a Shiite leader, an individual we have heard quite a lot 
about. He got into the military business and brought his militia to 
bear against U.S. and coalition military forces and Iraqi military 
forces and with mixed results I think we can say at best.
  I made a number of trips over to Iraq, and what we do is we go into 
Kuwait and then usually leave very early in the morning to go into Iraq 
in the morning. In the evening, I was sitting there, and I had turned 
on my television set in the hotel in Kuwait and turned it to Al Jazeera 
TV because watching Al Jazeera TV tells me a lot about what people are 
seeing in the Middle East and across the Arab world.
  As I watched that television, it was Arabic audio, but it had English 
I call them subtitles. On that date, which was June 11, 2004, this 
particular CODEL, I watched the television and saw Muqtada Al-Sadr come 
on there, and I heard him say in Arabic, with the English subtitles 
underneath, just what you see here, Mr. Speaker. He said, ``If we keep 
attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq, the same way that they left 
Vietnam, the same way that they left Lebanon, the same way that they 
left Mogadishu.''
  Now, what does that mean? It means that the word has been spread 
throughout al Qaeda world that Americans do not come and stay till it 
is over, that they will pull out, and that we are not committed to this 
cause. He would like to convince his followers and those he would 
recruit to be his followers that Americans are prepared at any moment 
to pull out of Iraq.
  That is far from the case, Mr. Speaker, and this is the cause where 
we must stay, and we must carry this message across this world to our 
coalition partners, to our soldiers that are over there, those soldiers 
that have just not too long ago celebrated a Thanksgiving in foreign 
soil again, and again to our allies but especially to our enemies.
  This language, this statement, that Americans do not stick to it, is 
a thread that goes through many of the writings and the statements of 
al Qaeda leaders. I believe I can find that in a Google search in words 
phrased a little bit differently but the same meaning, out of Osama bin 
Laden, out of Zawahiri, out of Zarqawi, and that coupled with Muqtada 
Al-Sadr.
  That message has been sent. It keeps getting sent. It is echoed out 
off Al Jazeera. That means whoever is watching Al Jazeera hears this 
message. Many of them believe this message that America is not going to 
stay until the job is done.
  We had a debate on this floor, Mr. Speaker, and that vote took place 
in the fall of 2002. It authorized the President to use force to 
enforce the United Nations resolutions, all for a good cause. That is 
how a free Nation should do this. We should have a free debate, and it 
ought to be an open debate. The people in this country should engage in 
this debate and carry their message to their Members of Congress and 
let that echo in these chambers, Mr. Speaker, and it did in that 
debate.
  The resolution after the vote went up, and it was a solid majority to 
give the President the authority to enforce those U.N. resolutions and 
to use force, if necessary, to bring Saddam Hussein in line. In fact, 
it is the policy and was the policy of this Congress to establish a 
regime change in Iraq. We had our debate. When debate is over and there 
is a majority vote that prevails, then the people in this chamber need 
to abide by that decision.
  If we pass a law in here, we do not go out and say, okay, I am going 
to ignore that law and undermine that law. We live by that decision. It 
is a majority decision. There is nothing more important than when you 
have men and women in uniform, put their lives on the line, and you do 
so by a majority vote and you endorse it, you do not want to see people 
undermining that effort. Undermining that effort indexes directly with 
this statement by Muqtada Al-Sadr.
  Mr. Speaker, I will pick that up in a moment and carry some more 
details of this, but I want to take the privilege of yielding to the 
gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. King), my friend, the first of the 
Caucus States, the first in the Nation primaries.
  Mr. BRADLEY of New Hampshire. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very 
much for yielding.
  I would like to thank you for your leadership and your willingness to 
talk about what is a very important issue for the future of our country 
and for the future of the Middle East.
  Like you, I have traveled to Iraq on two occasions, and I have seen 
both the problems that our troops are confronting there, but I have 
also seen the progress. I think it is important when we talk about Iraq 
that we have a balanced perspective and we look at both those problems 
and the progress.

                              {time}  2320

  There is no question that today was a very difficult day for the 
Iraqi security forces, as the suicide bomber killed over 40 police 
recruits, and the U.S. Marines that were killed on Friday by an 
improvised explosive device. We see those problems every night on our 
TV, but what we do not see is the progress that is being made.
  There was a show on one of the major cable networks on Saturday 
night, and I would urge anybody that wants to see a very balanced 
picture of what is going on in Iraq and much of the progress being made 
to try to watch that show. It spoke of the sacrifice that our troops 
are making and their commitment of courage, of valor, of sacrifice, of 
willingness to defend the values of our country, the democratic values 
and the ability for myself and my colleague tonight to be able to 
debate this issue, to be able to debate it with our colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle.
  And we should have a debate in this country about the policy of it. 
But what is also important to remember is that we must support our 
troops and to support their mission that is so critically important. 
Much of the debate we have had in this country, Mr. Speaker, revolves 
around the strategy of how we bring our troops home and bringing our 
troops home to a job well done. There are two critically important 
elements I want to talk about tonight, because that strategy is in 
place, and if it is going to work, we need to follow through on it.
  Number one is the continued movement toward democracy in Iraq. On 
December 15, there will be the third major

[[Page 27596]]

election. We saw the election in January, where nearly 8 million Iraqis 
went and defied the terrorist threat of reprisals and killings and 
murder to vote, to elect an interim parliament. And then more recently, 
we saw, again, millions of Iraqis go to the polls and ratify a 
constitution. There was a good political debate in both of these 
instances, but the constitution was ratified and an interim parliament 
was chosen. Hopefully, on December 15, a permanent parliament is going 
to be chosen.
  When that happens, that move to democracy, the Iraqi people, much as 
we have for over 200 years been able to make these kinds of decisions, 
they will have given birth to an Iraqi democracy. Yes, it will be 
different from ours in many fundamental ways, but it will be a 
government that they have created and it will be a government that will 
lead them through the religious, the tribal, and the ethnic differences 
that are so much a part of their culture that need to be resolved and 
have to be resolved through a democratic process.
  Now, our troops, those men and women who we see every day on TV and 
we hear about from e-mails at home, from letters coming back, they are 
doing a fantastic job of moving the country toward that democracy. As I 
said, there are problems, there is no question about that, but there is 
major progress going on. Hopefully, on December 15, we will see another 
watershed that will lead to the political solutions that will enable 
the Iraqi people to finally put behind them the murderous legacy of 
Saddam Hussein, the violence, the many human rights abuses, the 
barbaric nature of his regime. Hopefully, this move to democracy will 
enable that to happen.
  Equally important, and a very necessary part of the strategy for 
being able to bring our men and women home is the continued growth of 
the Iraqi security forces. The first time I was in Iraq was November of 
2003 and we went to Baghdad and we went to Tikrit, and to Kirkuk. 
Kirkuk is what I want to talk about for a moment, because it is an 
ethically mixed city in the northern part of the Sunni triangle, and 
certainly an area where there have been some problems over the years.
  In November of 2003, we met one of the first groups of Iraqi-trained 
police officers that were actually in the very beginning stages of 
starting to provide the security so necessary for their country, and 
they were one of the first batch of recruits that had gone through the 
training process and were in uniform, and were going to confront the 
threats of terrorism in their country. They indicated to us in the 
clearest possible language that they knew that they would be the 
subject of attacks. And as they said to us, they were willing to shed 
their blood, as they have done so many times, to help rebuild their 
country. That was November 2003.
  In April of this year, April of 2005, I had the opportunity to go 
back to Iraq a second time. At that point in time, there were 150,000 
Iraqi security forces, army, border guard, police, and a work in 
progress, obviously. We had the opportunity to meet with several Iraqi 
women leaders who told us of the improving characteristics of the Iraqi 
security forces in April.
  There have been many news reports about the difficulty of training 
the Iraqi security forces, but to hear it from actual Iraqi women 
leaders, a couple members of parliament, an ambassador, ministers in 
the interim government that the Iraqi people were beginning to trust 
and work with the Iraqi security forces, was very compelling to us.
  We also heard the same information from General Patreas, who was 
responsible for the training, the arming and equipping of the Iraqi 
security forces. What he told us is that they were starting to be able 
to develop a command and control structure. They were beginning to be 
able to operate independently without being embedded with American 
forces, having American forces as backup, and that process was 
continuing. It is clearly a work in progress. Today, there are over 
210,000 Iraqi security forces, and the process is not done.
  The point I am making is that starting in November of 2003, when I 
first was there, to April of 2005, and then today, those Iraqi security 
forces are making tremendous progress. Yes, it is not perfect. There 
are continuing issues that have to be dealt with, but the progress is 
measurable and quantifiable and is receiving the trust and the support 
of the Iraqi people, real people that we talked to, people who had had 
their lives threatened, who had had their lives disordered by the 
regime of Saddam Hussein.
  As you know, there are 18 different provinces in Iraq. Fourteen of 
them in the north and in the south, primarily, are largely stable. Yes, 
continuing with some problems, but generally stable. The problem areas 
are that Sunni triangle around Baghdad to Tikrit, Fallujah, and Kirkuk, 
and those are the problem areas that both the emergence of the Iraqi 
security forces as well as the move toward democracy, as that grows in 
Iraq and thrives and the Iraqi people are buying in to the changes, the 
positive changes, it will enable them to put behind them the legacy of 
Saddam Hussein as well as some of these tribal ethnic and religious 
problems.
  This is the critical element that Americans need to know is in place 
and is making progress; that the Iraqi people and our forces are making 
that progress every day. Is it dangerous? Is it difficult? Absolutely. 
And our troops there at great sacrifice. Over 2,000 of them have indeed 
paid the ultimate sacrifice to make this happen, but they continue to 
be extremely dedicated to their mission.
  I had the opportunity to address a group of marine reservists who 
were being activated on Saturday before they ship off to training and 
then to Iraq, and their commitment to making this happen was certainly 
very present for all of us that were there, their family members and 
their leaders. And I salute this Bravo Company from my home State of 
New Hampshire and the men and women from our country who have given so 
much to provide not only for our security, but to improve the situation 
in Iraq.
  We have further to go, there is no question about that, but every day 
I believe we are continuing to make progress. It is difficult progress, 
there is no question about that, but December 15 will be a watershed. 
The Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces will continue to 
improve. Those two elements are what will allow our men and women to 
come home having achieved success in Iraq, with a job well done, as we 
will all say to them as Americans supporting their mission.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for offering me the opportunity to 
speak here tonight.

                              {time}  2330

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to team up with Mr. 
Bradley and help direct our Presidential candidates on to South 
Carolina, too, in about another 3 years. I appreciate you turning this 
tone over to the tone of the progress that has been made in Iraq. We do 
not hear about that very often, and Mr. Bradley brings to mind some 
issues I would like to add to that tally.
  Two elections already this year in Iraq, one in January that elected 
the interim Iraqi Government and the one in October which was for the 
referendum that ratified the Constitution. We have heard the Iraqis 
cannot hold elections. There will not be enough safety, they will not 
be legitimate. And all of those criticisms got rolled out.
  In fact, I would take us back to the first election after the 
liberation of Iraq that I know of, and Mr. Bradley mentioned General 
Petrais who commanded the 101st Airborne that went in there in March 
2003, and he liberated the region of Mosul and approximately three of 
the provinces up in that area. That was March.
  I was in the region of Mosul in the fall, and I met with the governor 
of Mosul and the vice governor of Mosul, and one or two other officials 
of that region. How can you have a governor and vice governor of Mosul? 
They were not appointed by General Petrais. It was interesting, the 
governor sat at the head of the table next to the vice

[[Page 27597]]

governor, and General Petrais sat at the side of table, and he was 
giving deference to the elected leaders. The governor and the vice 
governor, and I do not know how many other officers were elected in May 
of 2003, but there were free and fair and open elections in Mosul. The 
governor was a Sunni and the vice governor was a Kurd. You could tell 
by the way that they worked and cooperated and laughed and did those 
things that they worked together comfortably. At the time in Mosul, it 
seemed like it was very much back to normal.
  I point out that the first successful election was in May 2003, and 
since that time there have been a number of elections in Iraq. The 
milestones established early in this process, at that point it was 
liberation first and it was martial law to stabilize the security in 
the country, get a handle on the looting but put the military law in 
place, and then shortly after that we established the CPA, the 
Coalition Provisional Authority. That was headed by Paul Bremer, who 
ran that region then, as Coalition Provisional Authority had, for quite 
a long time. But there was another milestone that was set on the 
calendar and that was the following June.
  Not recalling the specific date, but before that date by 2 days we 
handed over the control of Iraq to a civilian government before the 
targeted deadline to do so. We established the dates for elections and 
set the milestones to elect an interim parliament, and the voice of the 
people would then write and draft the Constitution, present the 
Constitution to the people of Iraq, and then the people of Iraq would 
have the opportunity to vote and ratify the Constitution. Each one of 
those milestones was met or exceeded by the Iraqi people at the 
direction and cooperation of the coalition forces.
  Now, you may think that is not such a difficult task, you simply open 
up the polling booths and hold an election. In order to have a 
legitimate election, you need to have voter registration. You want 
people to have an opportunity to vote and only vote once. It has to be 
safe to travel to the polls, and you have to maintain the 
confidentiality of their vote and the integrity of the tally of the 
ballots and the reporting process.
  An election has no value in a free country if the people who are 
being represented by those elected in the election, if the people do 
not have confidence in the process. But they had confidence in Mosul in 
May 2003. They had confidence in the process in January of this year 
when they elected their interim government. It was not as safe in 
January as it was later, but there were 108 different places attacked 
by the terrorists when they elected their interim parliament, but still 
the turnout for that election was greater than the turnout for the 
Presidential election for the President of the United States.
  We saw millions of Iraqis proudly waving their purple fingers in the 
air, proud that they voted. In fact, the fear factor was supposed to 
set in and cause people to stay home and not vote, but instead they 
voted. They voted with a proud and a free and a patriotic and, in fact, 
a defiant attitude, waving their purple fingers in the air and saying 
they directed their national destiny when they waved their fingers.
  But 108 of those polling booths were attacked by terrorists on that 
day. That did not deter the Iraqis. They went on without interruption. 
No one has challenged the legitimacy of the election. It was a 
legitimate election. That was January. On October 15 when the 
Constitution that was drafted by that interim parliament, and it was 
hard fought and there were many tough decisions to be made, and to 
reconcile the differences between the regions in the country, the 
resources in the country and the differences between the religious 
factions that were there and the tribal factions that were there was a 
very difficult thing.
  How do you divide up the resources of a country so all of the people 
benefit from those resources when you have that proprietary notion that 
because the oil is underneath the soil in one region, it should not be 
shared with people of another region that does not have oil underneath 
their soil?
  They came to an agreement on that, and the known and developed 
reserves are distributed equally around the country with exceptions to 
put extra resources in those regions where they have been at a greater 
disadvantage, and it is going to take greater resources to get them up 
to speed. But, essentially, the language in the Constitution calls for 
taking existing resources and providing kind of a parity so the Iraqis 
can benefit almost equally.
  But that Constitution that was so hard fought, the one that down to 
the last minute they were changing some language in it so they had the 
best chance of getting it ratified in the referendum, on October 15 of 
this year they ratified their Constitution.
  Now, one might say, so Iraq has gone through these milestones and the 
milestones of liberation in March and April of 2003, and the milestone 
of martial law converting into the Coalition Provisional Authority 
under Paul Bremer, and then handing it over to the Civilian Provisional 
Authority, and then having the elections that elected the Iraqi interim 
parliament and then having the referendum that ratified the 
Constitution on October 15, one might say what is all of that about.
  Well, all of them together were required sequentially to get to the 
point where they are today: poised to have an election of a new 
parliament in Iraq, a new parliament that will be established upon the 
Constitution that the people have ratified in their referendum last 
October 15. The new parliament that will be seated shortly after those 
elections of December 15 will be a parliament that truly represents a 
sovereign nation of Iraq.
  When they seat themselves at the United Nations and the 
representative that is appointed to represent Iraq in the United 
Nations, they will be the most legitimate government represented in the 
United Nations of the Arab world that is there because they will be the 
ones that are elected by a free people. The voice of the representative 
from Iraq will actually be the voice of the people of Iraq.
  That is a misconception that many of the people in the United States 
of America have about the United Nations themselves, the idea that the 
United Nations is a voice of the world, that it is a free and 
democratic global forum where we can resolve all of our differences, 
when in fact many of the countries represented are not free countries. 
They do not allow their people to have freedom of speech, press, and 
religion. They do not allow their people to step forward and voice 
their opinions. In fact, some of those countries will cut their tongues 
off for doing that, but they have a voice for their dictator sitting at 
the table of the United Nations.
  This will be an Arab country, Iraq, which has a free and duly elected 
government that sends a representative to the United Nations that will 
be more representative of the people of that country than any other 
Arab country represented in the U.N.

                              {time}  2340

  And so this is a huge milestone coming up December 15. But for a lot 
of other reasons too. Now the Iraqi people can start to direct their 
national destiny. This really is the milestone that allows that to 
happen. And I have traveled over to Iraq three times. The last trip in 
was in August, and I asked to go down into Basra where I believe we 
were the first congressional delegation to visit the coalition forces 
down in that region. General Dutton commands the forces there. He is a 
British general. And I stood in one place with soldiers in the 
coalition forces that represented Romania and The Netherlands and 
Denmark and Australia and Great Britain and Poland. I am sure I am 
missing one or two others. Put them in a group and took their picture 
because they really did represent the coalition forces.
  And down in that region, there the largest oil reserves are down in 
that region around Basra and we reviewed that and then went up to 
Kirkuk, as the gentleman from New Hampshire had mentioned, that he had 
been up

[[Page 27598]]

there earlier during this conflict. And there, I saw places where oil 
seeped to the top of the ground. There was so much oil that I could 
drill a well and hit oil on it because I would hit the oil before I 
started to drill. But there needs to be a lot of oil that is developed 
in Iraq in the south around Basra and in the north up around Kirkuk and 
those distribution lines and refineries and the export systems have got 
to be set up so that they can get some cash flowing back into that 
country. This milestone of a truly sovereign Nation with a duly elected 
parliament that will select, that will elect themselves a prime 
minister so that they can move and act and build on the future of the 
country is an essential milestone. And it has taken blood and treasure 
to get to this point, and it will take blood and treasure for a while 
beyond this point. And it has been a price that has been painful to 
pay, but it is also a price that has freed 25 million people and it has 
the opportunity for Iraq to become the lone star nation that inspires 
the entire Arab world, inspires them to freedom and that freedom that 
becomes contagious like it did in eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall 
came down in 1989, November 9.
  Freedom echoed across eastern Europe and almost bloodlessly and in 
almost the blink of a historical eye, Mr. Speaker. And I do not expect 
that kind a change to take place in the Middle East that fast, but we 
are seeing those yearnings for freedom and yearnings for democracy. We 
have seen Libya give up their weapons of mass destruction and openly 
show that they are were further along on their process of developing 
nuclear than one had ever imagined. Our intelligence did not get that 
one right either. And intelligence, by the way, is never perfect, and I 
do not mean to be critical of our intelligence. It is the inspiration 
that Iraq was becoming a free nation, that American and coalition 
presence in that region comprised a threat that might have deposed 
Qadaffi, I think was his motive to turn his nuclear cards over face up 
and drop and eliminate any weapons of mass destruction.
  We have seen Lebanon for the first time since 1979 throw off the yoke 
of Syrian occupation and move towards freedom. And we have watched some 
things change in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt. So it is happening, Mr. 
Speaker. There is progress that it is being made and the inspiration 
that is there, the inspiration of a free Iraq is an important 
inspiration.
  But 108 of those polling booths were attacked in January of 2005. And 
the following October, the security situation in Iraq had improved so 
much that that number became 19 polling booths attacked as opposed to 
108 just the previous January, 10 months before.
  So that is an indicator, I think, Mr. Speaker, of the progress that 
has been made in Iraq. There are a number of other indicators and some 
of them are, we need the cooperation for intelligence of the Iraqi 
people. And so what are we getting for tips? Where are they coming 
from? We are finding about 50 percent of the improvised explosive 
devices, about 50 percent. Almost all of those IEDs are being found 
because of tips from the Iraqi people. The tips that we were getting in 
March, 483 in the month of March of 2005. In April, 1,591, it has grown 
five times better, a little greater than that, just from March to 
April. That is the sign that they have more confidence, that they can 
take the risk, that their country needs them to weigh in and put their 
neck on the line to give tips that will protect the lives of American 
and coalition forces. So March, 483, April of 2005, 1,591, May of 2005 
up to 1,740 tips in that month, in June 2,519, in July 3,303 tips, and 
in August, 3,341. This trend is a fantastic trend line that shows that 
the Iraqi people see the future and they are committing themselves to 
helping save and protect the lives of the American soldiers. This goes 
on.
  There is more and more good news. And Mr. Bradley talked about 
210,000 Iraqis in uniform that are trained or in training to defend 
their own country. And that is what needs to happen. Of that 210,000, 
there are quite a lot of battalions that are really combat ready. We 
keep hearing that there is only one battalion that has no American 
advisors in it and that can operate in a combat situation, Mr. Speaker, 
without having U.S. support.
  Well, I do not know that we want to be in that situation where we do 
not have any U.S. involvement in combat battalions in Iraq. There is 
too much at stake there. And we have handed over 20 bases that were 
coalition American controlled that now it is all Iraqis that control 
those 20 bases. And at least a third of the battalions that are there 
are ready for combat. And a lot of them are engaged in combat. And they 
are going in with American forces. And so the question of whether they 
are totally 100 percent independent, it is just a moot point. And the 
question of what is our exit strategy, when are we going to leave, you 
know, when the previous President sent our troops into Kosovo, he told 
America they would be out in a year. I never hear that from the other 
side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, as to this is the longest year.
  I think this year is over 3,000 days long, and we are still waiting 
to get the troops out of Kosovo. Well, no one raises that issue because 
the situation is stabilized there. And American casualties are not 
zero, but they are very, very low. And I support our efforts there to 
provide peace in that region. But look around the world, Mr. Speaker. 
We have troops in nearly every place that they have been engaged over 
the last 60 to more years, and those troops remain in Germany. They 
remain in Korea. We have other troops in other locations around the 
world because we need them there strategically.
  And so, you know, when are we going to get out of Iraq? Why would we 
want to leave? Why would it be our goal to go there and pull the troops 
out, especially if it risked the goal of the mission entirely? And I 
heard Mr. Bradley address the importance of supporting our troops and 
their mission. And I want to emphasize that, Mr. Speaker, that you 
cannot send a soldier off to war, ask him to defend your freedom, put 
his life on the line for you, and then say, I support you, soldier, I 
am with you, but I do not like your mission. You cannot ask somebody to 
put their life on the line and tell them you support them but you 
oppose their mission.
  And that is what I am hearing over here. That is what I am hearing 
from the liberal news media. That is what this fellow right here, 
Muqtada al-Sadr hears. It is what Osama bin Laden hears, it is what 
Zawahiri hears, and it is what Zarkawi hears. They hear I am with you, 
troops. I think you ought to be home but I do not support your mission, 
and if something happens to you, then you know, you were a casualty of 
a failed and flawed mission. Not true. This is, I believe, one of the 
most noble things that the United States of America has ever done.
  Many, many times we have sent our soldiers off into foreign lands and 
here in this city, Mr. Speaker, if one would go down to the Korean 
Memorial and there in the sidewalk, etched in that stone in the 
sidewalk is a message at the Korean War Memorial that says, our country 
honors the men and women who answered the call to defend a country they 
never knew and a people they never met. A very profound statement 
etched in the sidewalk there at the Korean Memorial. It definitely 
reflects the sacrifice of the Korean war. It reflects, I believe, Mr. 
Speaker, the character of the American people, the American soldier and 
marine. The history of this country has always been to reach out and 
promote our freedom.
  I think about a speech that I heard here in Washington, D.C. a couple 
of years ago about this time of year. It was given by President Arroyo 
of the Philippines, and as she delivered that speech, it was in a hotel 
downtown and I was not before a Congressional delegation. I may have 
been the only Member of Congress that was there. But I point this out 
because she was not speaking to Congress. She was speaking to a 
gathering of people that showed up for a dinner in a downtown hotel in 
Washington, D.C. and we went out of respect and her message was that 
she said, thank you America,

[[Page 27599]]

thank you America for sending the Marines to the Philippines to 
liberate us and free us in 1898.
  Thank you for sending over your interests that taught us your way of 
life, free enterprise and the freedoms that you have and the 
constitutional structure that you have. Thank you for sending the 
missionaries to the Philippines where we learned Christianity, and 
thank you for sending 10,000 teachers to the Philippines.

                              {time}  2350

  She had a Filipino name for those teachers, and one day I will learn 
that name.
  Thank you for sending 10,000 teachers who taught us the English 
language, who taught us the American culture, who educated us, and 
today we have over 1.6 million Filipinos that travel elsewhere in the 
world that can get a job anywhere because the universal language of 
business is English and they make good money, and they send that money 
back to the Philippines in significant dollars. She is grateful. She 
made that message to the United States of America 103 years at least, 
probably 105 years, since the time that the Marine Corps landed on the 
shores of the Philippines in 1898.
  That is a profound message, and I believe the gratitude that I heard 
from President Arroyo will come from the mouths of the Prime Minister 
of Iraq 100 years from now. It will come here to the United States, and 
Iraq will have established this image, this vision, of a free Arab 
country; and I believe that the rest of the Arab countries will see the 
prosperity that comes and they will adopt that same kind of freedom 
hopefully through a peaceful change rather than a violent change. But I 
expect the people of Iraq will express their gratitude to our 
descendants 100 years from now.
  So a loss of 2,000 American lives in Iraq, painful, every one, a 
personal loss to every family, a real profound sacrifice on the part of 
every soldier and Marine. We have lost over 200 of them also in 
Afghanistan. I have heard nothing from the other side of the aisle 
about why it is right to be in Afghanistan and wrong to be in Iraq. It 
is just on their part wrong to be in Iraq, and it seems to be that the 
number of casualties is the measuring stick.
  So I would submit that it is time now for the people on the left side 
of the aisle to give us a number of how many casualties they are 
willing to sustain in Afghanistan before they say we ought to get out 
of there too. This is not a cause that is measured simply in direct 
relationship with casualties. It is far more important. It is far more 
timeless. It is far more profound. It is something that the echoes of 
this will flow throughout history.
  Beyond 100 years from now, the world will be a different place 
because of the nobility of the American soldiers and Marine Corps. And 
the voices of Muqtada Al-Sadr and Zarqawi and Zawahiri and bin Laden, 
those voices that are saying things like, if we keep attacking 
Americans, they will leave Iraq-Afghanistan, name your country, the 
same way they left Vietnam, the same way they left Lebanon, the same 
way they left Mogadishu. Those voices must be silenced. They must be 
silenced in this place at this time.
  I picked up a quote from the chairman of the Democratic National 
Committee, Mr. Howard Dean, and I listened to him campaign in Iowa for 
1\1/2\ years as he sought the Presidency and I heard some of these 
things then too. But in typical fashion he said, ``The idea that we are 
going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong.'' He 
said that to more than 150,000 Americans who are there in Iraq and the 
numbers of coalition forces that are there.
  And they hear that and he compares it to Vietnam. Even Zarqawi 
describes the difference between Vietnam and Iraq. He said there are no 
mountains to hide in in Iraq. There are no forests to hide in in Iraq. 
This is in a letter that he wrote, I think, a year ago last April. And 
he lamented that they cannot stay in Iraq very long because they do not 
have places to hide. And he said that the only place that they can hide 
and operate out of would be houses, the homes of the Iraqi people that 
would be willing to take them in and let them run their operations out 
of there, and that the Iraqis that would be willing to let them do that 
are ``rarer than red sulfur.''
  Now, I have been to a lot of places in that country, and I looked all 
over for red sulfur and I did not see any, and I asked some of those 
pilots that flew helicopters if they have seen any red sulfur, and they 
said no. No one I know has been able to identify that; so I am going to 
tell you that is pretty rare. I do not think there are very many Iraqis 
that are willing to let Zarqawi operate. In fact, there are a lot less 
of Zarqawi's allies. We do not hear these numbers, Mr. Speaker.
  We see the American casualties, the coalition casualties, and we see 
the Iraqi civilian casualties; but the numbers come down to how many of 
the enemy are being taken off the streets out of the operation, how 
many per day, per week, per month? And per month I can tell the 
Members, Mr. Speaker, that number, and the number was last brought to 
me in August of this year, I will say very close to 3,000 of our enemy 
are taken off the streets both in those killed and those captured, 
3,000.
  The Iraqi people are losing about 600 a month. We are losing about 73 
a month on average. A painful loss for all of us, but the enemy is 
losing more by far than we are, Mr. Speaker. And it is wrong on the 
part of Howard Dean. We are a long ways away from losing this war. 
Where he says that we are going to lose it is just plain wrong, that is 
just undermining the President, that is undermining our foreign policy, 
and it is undermining our military. And he identified it with Vietnam. 
I laid out the difference.
  He suggests that we redeploy our troops to Afghanistan because that 
is where we are welcome. Now, when in history has it been important to 
deploy troops to a place where the troops are welcome? It is nice to 
have them there for security reasons, but a strategic redeployment of 
troops because that is a place where they are welcome? And he suggests 
we ought to pull our troops all out of Iraq and take them to a friendly 
Middle Eastern country where they can have a strategic redeployment and 
they can be someplace where there is support for our troops there, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Another point that was made on this floor by the gentleman that was 
the purpose of our debate, he, Mr. Dean, both say that 80 percent of 
Iraqis want us to leave. Mr. Speaker, it is not 80 percent of the 
Iraqis that want us to leave. I do not know where that number comes 
from. I asked that question over and over again. We have had surveys 
over there that come a little bit different, but it depends on how they 
ask the question. Now, if we would ask the Iraqis someday sometime when 
they get full control of their country and they have safety and 
security and their freedom is established and the economy is flowing 
and they are not worried about enemies from without and enemies from 
within, they would like to have the last American soldier pull out of 
Iraq, maybe 80 percent would say yes, I think that would be a good 
idea.
  I think the responsible people in Iraq do not look forward to the day 
that American troops pull out anytime soon because they know that their 
future and their freedom is contingent upon American and coalition 
troops being there to guarantee it for now, as the 2,010 Iraqi numbers 
grow and increase and their training increases and their commitment 
increases, and, in fact, their courage has been increasing 
substantially too, and they do have the courage to fight for their 
country. I am hearing that from our generals over there now too.
  But I asked the question of the Iraqi people, if there is a 
referendum today, the same referendum that was on the floor of this 
House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker, that only found three Members of 
this 435-Member body that would vote to move our troops out 
immediately, if that referendum were laid out before the Iraqi people, 
the Iraqis that I talked to say that 90 to 95 percent would say stay, 
please stay, we are so grateful for our freedom. When

[[Page 27600]]

we come home, we expect our family to be there instead of wondering if 
Saddam has taken and spirited them away.
  I met with a Kurdish young lady who is here now on a scholarship, 
that has been here several months. She said up in that region around 
Kirkuk, every household that has boys has a crawl space for the boys to 
hide in when Saddam's henchmen came to conscript them into the 
military. She grew up with brothers and could not admit to the 
neighborhood that she had brothers because they would be conscripted 
into the military. The list goes on and on.
  The testimony that is taking place now in the trial of Saddam and his 
fellow henchmen that are there are bringing out atrocity after 
atrocity, Mr. Speaker. We will hear more about these atrocities as this 
trial unfolds. And when this trial is over and a new one begins and the 
history of Saddam's regime is written into the court records of those 
courageous jurists that put their lives on the line to provide a fair 
trial for a person whom I believe is a murdering tyrant, they need to 
be honored. They need to be respected. They need to put that in the 
history, and the American people need to watch it, Mr. Speaker. We need 
to all understand this, and we need to understand that when we speak up 
and we speak out and when we undermine our American troops, meanwhile 
posturing that we support them but not their mission, what happens is 
people like Muqtada Al-Sadr say on Aljazeera TV, ``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.''
  Never again, Mr. Speaker. This is where that stops. This is where the 
bright line in history gets drawn. This is where the legacy of the 
freedom that emanates from America is established in the Middle East 
and where the lone star of Iraq inspires the rest of the Arab world and 
eliminates the habitat that breeds terror.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the Members in 
the Chamber this evening.

                          ____________________