[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 27732-27739]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McCaul). 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 
address this Chamber and appreciate the opportunity for some dialogue 
with my colleagues from the other side of the aisle and particularly 
Uncle Bill from Massachusetts whom I did yield to the last time when he 
asked me, and so we have a little engagement going.
  I think it is constructive dialogue that we have. I know we disagree 
often. We are looking for the best thing for this country all together, 
Mr. Speaker, and disagree with the method of how we get there, and 
sometimes we disagree with our definition and analysis of how we 
approach these things.
  So to begin my hour, Mr. Speaker, I would like to address some of the 
concerns that were raised in this previous hour, many of which I did 
not hear in great detail, some of which the philosophy I heard ad 
infinitum here one or 2 hours a night after our session every week for 
the last months.
  One of the issues that came up, Mr. Speaker, was the issue of weapons 
of mass destruction, and yes, I have been to Iraq. I have been there 
three times. The last time there was I came back the latter part of 
August, and I make it a point to go to the places where some of the 
other Members of Congress have not gone. I make it a point to find 
soldiers there, generally I ask for Iowans, anybody here from Iowa. We 
sit down and talk, and I meet with people all the

[[Page 27733]]

way up the line to the top brass and also to the U.S. ambassador, 
representatives of the Iraqi government. I have tracked this through 
the history of the liberation of Iraq and on through to this point that 
we are today.
  It saddens me a great deal, Mr. Speaker, to hear some of the leaders 
of the party on the other side and a very small number of people on my 
side of the aisle who have lost their faith, lost their faith in their 
own judgment, Mr. Speaker. In fact, we had this debate here in this 
Congress in the fall of 2002, and this Congress voted by a solid 
majority to endorse the President's authority to use force to enforce 
the resolution of the United Nations in Iraq. Those resolutions had to 
be enforced, Mr. Speaker, and without that, there would have been no 
teeth whatsoever to the United Nations.
  Our President did that. We knew that was going to be the case. We 
knew when the debate took place in this Chamber that there was going to 
be a majority decision. I would like to think when we meet here to have 
these debates, Mr. Speaker, that we stick with the decision of the 
majority. That is the will of this body. When the will of this body is 
reflected and the will of the Senate is reflected and that resolution 
makes its way to the White House, where statutory legislation the 
President signs it, if it is a resolution the President takes account 
of the judgment of the House of Representatives and the judgment of the 
Senate. The judgment of the House and the judgment of the Senate was to 
endorse the President, the commander-in-chief, and grant him the 
endorsement of Congress to use authority to enforce the United Nations 
resolutions, particularly 1441. The President did that.
  There is a long argument as to why he did not have an alternative, 
and our troops went into Afghanistan. Our troops went into Iraq and 
liberated 50 million people, and they are grateful today, 
extraordinarily grateful today, to have that opportunity to be free.
  If anyone doubts that, look back in your mind's eye to last January 
when the Iraqis went to the polls to elect their interim parliament. 
Eight to 8.5 million of the Iraqis went to the polls to vote, and they 
voted and they dipped their finger in the purple ink. They proudly and 
they, in fact, defiantly marched out of there with their purple fingers 
in the air. When they were threatened with their very lives for going 
to the polls to vote in that January, there were 108 attacks on the 
polling booths in Iraq by some suicide bombers, all terrorists, trying 
to intimidate the entire country from voicing their voice of freedom, 
their voice of directing their national destiny through their elected 
leaders. Yet, they went to the polls and defied all of those threats 
and, in fact, upset the predictions from the other side of the aisle, 
Mr. Speaker.
  So the people that did not have faith that there could be legitimate 
elections in Iraq saw them happen, and those people that were so 
invested in failure, that they could not abide admitting that there was 
a success, began to explain it away.
  Well, we had kind of an election, kind of a legitimacy came out of 
the mouth of John Kerry. So how much more legitimate can you get when 
people defy a threat of death to go for their first time and vote for 
the first time in their lives, and legitimately, their argument can be 
made the first time in all history on that piece of real estate. They 
had that courage to take advantage of that opportunity, and they voted 
in greater numbers in percentage-wise than Americans did in the 
presidential election.
  Yet, we had people over here that said, well, it is a kind of 
legitimacy; it really is not a real election; we really do not know how 
many people that did not participate that would have if somehow or 
another they believed in the process, had more courage or been less 
threats on their lives. Yet, they voted in greater numbers than 
Americans did, and they call it kind of a legitimacy. That was January.
  October 15, by then this new parliament has written a new 
Constitution, another milestone, a milestone that set on the calendar a 
sequence of events that need to take place in order to take Iraqis who 
lived under tyranny, of murderous torture and tyranny, once that is 
taken, the resources of the country, and focused it on building palaces 
for themselves and glorifying their own leadership of Saddam Hussein, 
at the very expense of the people, a country that spent less than 50 
cents per person per year on health care, did not let the girls go to 
school, that did not allow freedom of speech or press or religion, a 
country where you could not own a satellite dish or there were not free 
newspapers or there was not a television station that did not project 
the very opinion of Saddam Hussein himself, that, today, on a very 
short period of time of liberation, which really took place in the 
latter part of March of 2003, now nearly every home, everybody in Iraq 
has access to satellite TV, which is access to the world.
  I flew over up in Kurdistan up at Kirkuk, and I looked at the 
difference. I was over Mosul in October of 2003 and looked down. Two 
out of three homes had a satellite dish. I flew over the suburbs of 
Kirkuk up in Kurdistan, and I saw homes there. At each one of the 
neighboring homes were typical, about two stories, flat roof, many of 
them had three satellite dishes on one roof. All of those dishes would 
have been illegal just 3 years ago, Mr. Speaker, along with the mobile 
phones that are there, the cell phones that now are replete all across 
Iraq.
  There is something like, and I get conflicting numbers, somewhere 
between 100 and 170 new newspapers, some of them printing the real 
truth where none of them printed the real truth when it was under 
Saddam's regime. New radio stations that have grown to significant 
numbers out there, and television stations, the media has gotten out to 
the people, and some of it is the truth. It is not all the truth. We 
all know it is not all the truth in this country.
  One thing we have is the check and balance on our mainstream media, 
who has a certain desire to destroy our effort over there is the 
bloggers and the Internet. They do tend to get the truth out, and they 
are a check and balance. In a free country, you will get that check and 
balance, but people on that side of the aisle do not have that faith in 
this new freedom that 25 million people began to realize and appreciate 
in Iraq, that began the latter part of March of 2003, that freedom the 
Afghanis have known for a little while before that.
  Afghanis that had not gone to the polls ever in that place on the 
globe now have, and they have freedom, and certainly there are 
uncertainties. Yes, they have enemies. A Nation that has really not 
known anything but war is not going to be at peace just overnight, and 
Iraq's had it share of strife. There will be more ahead of us.
  We have lost 200 Americans in Afghanistan, and we have lost more than 
2,000 Americans in Iraq, and their sacrifice is great value. It has 
great meaning and it is profound, and their conviction and their 
demonstration of courage and their leadership and their sacrifice will 
echo throughout the ages, Mr. Speaker.

                              {time}  2115

  It is going to echo a long ways into the future in a way that never 
would have happened if we had receded from this challenge; if we had 
listened to the people on the other side of the aisle that wrung their 
hands and thought we should not have gone to Afghanistan but could not 
figure out how to say we should not, and so only one Member voted 
against going into Afghanistan, and that is all.
  But we sit there, having lost more than 200 Americans in Afghanistan, 
and do not hear a peep out of this side. What is the distinction 
between Afghanistan and Iraq? The difference is between 1,800 American 
lives. All sacred in my mind. All precious American patriots in my 
mind. All deserving their legacy for which they paid the ultimate 
price. All of them deserve our very best, Mr. Speaker. All of them 
deserve for us to keep the faith, to keep the honor, to keep the 
pledge, and to keep the commitments that were made in this Chamber in 
the fall of 2002 when a significant majority voted to endorse giving 
the President the authority to use force if necessary, and when this

[[Page 27734]]

Chamber established a policy of regime change in Iraq.
  Now we are hearing it from the other side, over and over and over 
again relentlessly. And what is it about? I will submit this: it is 
about politics. It is about such a hunger and such a lust for power it 
would tear down the very destiny of the United States and put our 
American troops at risk because they want to be in the majority. They 
want the Presidency and they want the majority in the Senate and they 
want to change the face of America and send us down another direction 
that is against the will of the American people.
  But why? Why would someone put our troops at risk for political lust? 
I do not understand that, Mr. Speaker. I look back in history and I 
wonder when, when has there ever been a precedent where the well-being 
of America, when disagreements that we have had in this country did not 
stop at our shores; when we did not have political campaigns that 
focused on our economy, on our domestic life and the future of America, 
but joined together to support our military operations overseas when at 
time of war.
  How many of the people over here are saying wrong war, wrong place, 
wrong time? Howard Dean says a war that cannot be won. John Kerry said 
wrong war, wrong place, wrong time. Teddy Kennedy said it is a scheme 
cooked up in Texas. Do they not think that our enemies listen to them? 
Do they think that our enemies know what we know about them, that they 
really are not the spokesmen for the foreign policy of the United 
States of America?
  They are the naysayers, the critics, and the gadflies. The majority 
of the American people understand this. We voted in this Chamber when, 
and I will say the Murtha amendment or the Murtha resolution came up on 
the floor of this Congress, and that resolution said we should pull out 
of Iraq immediately. That was the recommendation that was made across 
the aisle, or at least by the news media. It was not verbatim to the 
resolution drafted by the individual. We debated that in this Chamber 
for 3 hours; and when the 3 hours were over and we debated the rule and 
we debated the resolution, at the end of that 3 hours, Mr. Speaker, the 
vote went up and three Members of the United States House of 
Representatives voted to immediately pull out of Iraq. Everyone else, 
Mr. Speaker, voted to stay the course, voted to support our troops, 
voted to defend their mission and ratified the authority and the 
direction that has been given to our military by their Commander in 
Chief, our President of the United States, George W. Bush.
  Those are the facts. Yet night after night after blessed night the 
team comes down here and relentlessly assaults the integrity of the 
administration, rearranges the facts of history, and seeks to dupe the 
American people, believing that somehow or another if they can erode 
the confidence of the American people, they will not have any 
alternative but to accept these people as their leaders. It is a 
frustrating thing to watch. But it would be even more extraordinarily 
frustrating if I did not have so much confidence in the American people 
and in their judgment.
  History has shown that in times of difficulty and in times of strife 
the American people have risen up together and that their judgment is 
sound. They believe in the principles, the Constitution and individual 
rights, and in freedom; and they know that freedom is not free. They 
know intuitively that if we are going to support our troops we must 
support their mission. We cannot separate the two.
  We cannot say to a soldier or a marine who puts on that helmet and 
puts on that uniform and salutes that flag and then goes out and puts 
their life on the line, that we are for you, but we are against your 
mission. We can never ask someone to put their life on the line if we 
do not support their mission.
  And we have asked them to do that. And duty and honor and country 
says that they do that, and they do that proudly. But when we look them 
in the eye, we know it is a dedication. They take their share of the 
risk. And when the grim reaper visits some of those homes, it is a sad 
time. And I draw my strength from those families and their belief in 
this country and in our freedoms and in our patriotism. It is stronger 
than the belief that we find in the average American household because 
they understand.
  One of the reasons they understand, I think, is because they have 
also imparted those values to their sons and daughters who have gone 
forth to protect our freedom. When that call has come for them, they 
have stepped up, and we owe them. We owe them 100 percent full support. 
We owe them all we can that is due them if we are to respect their 
memory. We have to give our level best as they fight to preserve these 
freedoms.
  Yes, we fight that out on the floor of the House of Representatives, 
Mr. Speaker; and we fight it out in the debates that take place in the 
coffee shops, in the workplace, in our churches and schools, and in our 
homes across this country. But I want the young people to understand 
that there are certain fundamental truths that we have to stick with; 
and one of them is that if we are going to support the troops, we must 
support their mission. We cannot have it both ways.
  We cannot have our cake and eat it too. We cannot undermine their 
mission and say that we support them. And when we argue that somehow or 
another there could have been a better plan, and we Monday morning 
quarterback and look back over 3 years and say, gee, knowing what I 
know now, this is what the President should have done then. It does not 
help the cause.
  When my colleague from Massachusetts seeks to discuss these issues in 
open hearings, I will not deny his right to ask for that. In fact, I 
will not deny a congressional right to have those kinds of open 
hearings. But I will say that it is not constructive for us to have 
these discussions out in the open. It is constructive for us to have 
these discussions behind closed doors, to reach a consensus and 
determine if we need to look further into any of these issues.
  Mr. Speaker, we have seen $200 billion get poured into a country for 
military support and reconstruction efforts, and by the way, the 
reconstruction efforts were the smallest part of all of that. As I 
mentioned to Mr. Delahunt, I have been there to review the construction 
that took place in Iraq, $12.5 billion done by the Army and the balance 
of that, $18.5 billion, that was done by other entities there, 
including the Seabees and others, subcontractors that were put 
together.
  I looked at the roads and the sewers. I looked at some of the bridges 
and the streets and the water lines. I have looked at the generating 
plants. I went up to Kirkuk to see the mother of all generating plants, 
725 tons of generator and turbine, two pieces bolted together which 
came across 1,057 kilometers of open desert and came on a caravan with 
other components of that mother of all generators which was over a mile 
long.
  That generator, Mr. Speaker, had to arrive at that location out in 
the countryside near Kirkuk, Iraq, without a bullet wound in it. 
Because a bullet wound into the windings on that generator would have 
incapacitated it. But it arrived there safe and sound. They took a big 
crane and set it into place, the generator. They took the same big 
crane and set the turbine in place and then bolted them together. 
Several hundred Iraqi workers began to scurry around and put the pieces 
together of this mother of all generating plants.
  Now, we are told that this is far too dangerous a place for people to 
invest capital, for them to develop anything or put any commitment into 
energy. But in that area, for all those months that they constructed 
that huge generating plant, and after coming across 1,057 kilometers of 
desert, and after they had to rebuild and reconstruct eight bridges to 
get the strength there to cross those bridges with that caravan, 
throughout all of that, there was one little attack by insurgents, and 
that was fairly feeble, which resulted in one wounded person from a 
little bit of shrapnel.
  There was not a wall built around this generating plant. There is not 
a trench. There are not terraces pushed

[[Page 27735]]

up with soldiers behind them all. There are not tanks dug in. They do 
not have Blackhawks hovering over this generating plant 24 hours a day. 
It is not sitting there rimmed with armed guards. Sure, it has a little 
security, but it is not ringed with armed guards. It is out in the 
countryside near Kirkuk, up in an area where the Kurds live.
  And throughout all of that, there sits that generating plant, the 
mother of all generators, pumping electricity into Kirkuk, pumping it 
into the surrounding communities. That can be a model of the energy 
that is unleashed into that part of the country. And I might add that 
if this were a highly dangerous area, an area that you could not 
control the security in it, then would there be a 12-inch natural gas 
pipeline that runs on the surface of the ground down to that generating 
plant that runs the turbine that turns the generator? Would that not be 
a highly sabotagable natural gas line? And would they not take that up 
every night, if they could?
  The reason for all that is that those folks up there are not 
interested in that. And 14 of the 18 provinces in Iraq are not 
interested in that kind of violence. They have a sense of security. 
They are building for the future. The children play in the streets. The 
families plan for their future. They go off on vacation. They go up to 
the lake and go swimming, like you and I do. Many places in Iraq have a 
normal, normal life. People on this side of the aisle would not want 
you to know that.
  Many do not want Americans to know that during Saddam's regime he was 
killing his own people at an average rate, Mr. Speaker, of 182 a day. 
Now, this was a tough day in Iraq, Mr. Speaker, but I cannot remember 
the last day in Iraq that there were 182 people that died at the hands 
of violence. Every day that goes by there are another 182 Iraqis that 
are alive that would not be otherwise if Saddam were in power.
  He is on trial today, and in a few hours they will gavel in in a 
courtroom in Baghdad, and he will be back under trial again. They are 
putting together a record, Mr. Speaker, a record of the atrocities that 
were committed under the regime of Saddam Hussein.
  I have met some of the people that were victims of those crimes. The 
other night I sat down in a coffee shop for 3 hours and talked with a 
young lady from Kurdistan. She had grown up there in that region, 
within an hour of Kirkuk. She has a friend, a friend that survived 
Saddam's gassing of Halabja where 5,000 Kurds were killed: men, women, 
and children, the most innocents of civilians.
  We have all seen the pictures of civilians lying there dead, gassed 
to death, a mother holding her child and families lying there dead. One 
of this young lady's friends is an individual that escaped from that 
gas, that gassing death at Halabja and lived to tell the story.
  As she told me the story of that friend, I asked her if she believed 
that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Ladies and 
gentlemen from the other side of the aisle, I challenge you to try to 
convince that young lady of that. No weapons of mass destruction, when 
5,000 of your neighbors are dead, when one of your friends has escaped 
the gas? How would you convince someone who had lived through that that 
it did not exist, because we did not find huge warehouses of gas, huge 
warehouses of chemical weapons, huge warehouses of biological weapons? 
Because we did not find a nuclear bomb affixed to the tip of a missile 
that had the capability of going to Tel Aviv? Would that have been 
enough? Or Washington, D.C.? Would that have been enough not to have 
detonated?
  I submit, Mr. Speaker, that the people on this side of the aisle have 
so much political capital invested in failure that they cannot abide 
victory. In fact, I challenge the people that will come out here on 
this floor in another 40-or-so minutes to define victory for me. Define 
victory for the American people.

                              {time}  2130

  Let us hear what is the upside of this. I hear a relentless drumbeat 
of pessimism night after night after night. The pessimism is so deep 
and so dark, I could not wake up in the morning and face myself if I 
thought the world were really like that. What is victory, Under 30 
Group? How would you define victory? And I will submit that they will 
never, Mr. Speaker, define victory because the investment in defeat is 
so great and the fear of victory is so great that they know as soon as 
they define victory, they will not be able to raise the bar again and 
again. They will not be able to redefine victory again and again and 
again. They will not be able to challenge the wisdom of this 
administration and continually give us a pessimistic viewpoint that 
causes so many people in this country to lose faith on where this 
Nation is going.
  I will define victory. Victory was defined by this administration, in 
fact, more than 2 years ago. It was defined shortly after the Iraqis 
were liberated in March and early April of 2003. Our President laid 
these principles out clearly. It was already defined in advance, and 
now I can back up and I can tell you the sequence of events.
  You liberate the Iraqi people, do so militarily. Our troops did that 
in a miraculous way. Even though detractors said you do not have enough 
troops to do that, Colin Powell had over half a million, you are going 
to do it with less than half, how can you hope to do so when you are 
going up against one of the largest armored militaries in the world? 
How can you go across the desert with your own armor in a fashion that 
has never been done before? How can you attack a city and liberate that 
city that is larger than any city that has ever been invaded and 
occupied by a foreign power in all of the history of the world. It will 
be another Stalingrad, they said. But before we got to the Baghdad, 
about 3 days in we got hit with a 4-day sandstorm and then there we 
were all bogged down in this quagmire.
  It was said the Iraqis are the only people that can see in the sand, 
and here our troops were hiding. The argument is will be slaughtered by 
the Iraqis because they are desert fighters, and our troops do not know 
about that environment.
  Mr. Speaker, it turned out to be entirely different. The world found 
out that our airplanes could see through that sand and they could 
identify the Iraqi armored columns. The Iraqis had their heads in the 
sand and they were waiting that storm out. And a lot of them did not 
live to see the end of that storm because we had the ability to see 
through the sand and we hit their armored columns, and we knocked much 
of that out during those days. And when the sand stopped blowing, our 
armored columns started up again and they headed up to Baghdad.
  Mr. Speaker, it was the longest and fastest advance across the desert 
in history. They arrived in Baghdad almost in a sequential column 
between our Army and our Marine Corps from two different directions. On 
a Thursday they went in and drove around through Baghdad with a tank 
and a couple of armored personnel carriers and looked up at the hotels 
and buildings. Essentially they met no resistance to speak of. They 
came out of Baghdad and said we really have liberated the city, and 
they had. It is the largest city in the history of the world to be 
invaded and occupied and liberated by a foreign power. It is an 
astonishing accomplishment.
  Was there an effort then to go forward from that martial law period 
of time and establish a civilian government in Iraq, you bet. In Mosul, 
the liberation took place in March, and in May, they elected a governor 
and a vice governor from Mosul. They sat down and again to craft how to 
govern that region.
  I met with those people in October 2003. They were doing business as 
usual. It was already usual in Mosul. So we went from liberation to 
martial law to the civilian government. We went to the Coalition 
Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer. Under that we had regional 
elections in some regions. We put the people that lived there in power. 
That was another great milestone.
  Under the CPA, we had local governments that were functioning well. 
We

[[Page 27736]]

needed to get the head of this government put back on again, and that 
was Paul Bremer's job to do that. He knew that we needed to hand over 
that authority to a Civilian Provisional Authority in Iraq. That 
happened in June. The date was set, but unlike most of the milestones 
for any other effort in history, the Iraqis and the American military 
did not just meet that deadline. Generally they get delayed, delayed, 
delayed, but they beat the deadline by 48 hours and took over control 
of Iraq with an interim civilian government from Paul Bremer and the 
CPA. Another milestone reached, Mr. Speaker.
  And that milestone went on. As the interim Iraqi government began to 
put the pieces in place so they could begin to get some connections 
between Baghdad and the rest of the country, and it was their job to 
prepare for an election. That election took place in January. That 
elected the interim government, and their number one job was to craft a 
constitution. Between January of this year and October 15 of this year, 
they crafted a constitution. It was a tough task. A lot faster than we 
crafted our Constitution here in the United States of America. This 
Constitution that I carry by my heart every day I have a jacket on for 
a pocket for it, it was a struggle to get our Constitution established. 
We had a Constitutional Convention.
  We had an effort for ratification. Essentially it happened in 1789. 
We had a Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, so 13 years and 
several months later, we had a constitution ratified by the people. We 
have not been in Iraq anywhere near 13 years, and I do not expect the 
effort is going to take anywhere near that long.
  It was a struggle to establish this constitutional republic that we 
have in the United States of America, and it is a struggle to establish 
a free government in a region of the world that has not had one before. 
But the Iraqi people stepped up and reached each milestone and crafted 
a constitution. Now 108 polling places were attacked by terrorists in 
January in the election that elected the interim government, the 
interim parliament that crafted the constitution.
  By October 15, 2005, the election that ratified the constitution that 
was drafted by that interim parliament, there were 19 attacks on 
polling places as opposed to the 108 that took place in January. That 
is a measure of progress, Mr. Speaker.
  We look throughout Iraq and we measure progress after progress. But 
now we are sitting here with a ratified constitution and our interim 
parliament and an election coming up December 15. Of all of the 
milestones that have been laid out in this sequence that I have talked 
about, liberation, local elections, establishment of the Coalition 
Provisional Authority, an election to elect the interim parliament 
whose job it was to run the country, a constitution, you add all those 
things all up, and this election on December 15 is more important than 
the others by far because this election puts in place a parliament in 
Iraq that truly represents the people. It will be the voice of the 
people and it is a certified voice of the people. It will be, among the 
Arab world, the most legitimate voice of any Arab people in the world.
  I would submit there is only one place where an Arab can go for a 
fair trial outside of Iraq, and that might be Israel. We are watching a 
fair trial take place in Iraq today, and that will be the second place 
in the Arab world where a person can go to get a fair trial. When this 
election takes place on December 15, 2005, several days from now, it 
will put in place a parliament that is elected by the people of the 
sovereign nation of Iraq. They will select a prime minister, and they 
will then be more legitimate than any other Arab nation that sits at 
the United Nations.
  And the sovereignty that comes from that and the consent of the 
people that empowers their representatives in almost the same fashion 
as we consent as people to empower representatives here, will give this 
government the authority to move quickly and decisively down the paths 
of progress.
  I am hearing naysayers. I am hearing detractors. Why? Why when we are 
roughly a week from time we are going to have a certifiable, sovereign 
nation of Iraq that has the ability to sit down and negotiate oil 
development contracts with some of the most effective oil companies in 
the world, to come into this country that is rich with resources, so 
rich with resources that oil seeps to the top of the ground, and I have 
seen it, Mr. Speaker.
  So rich with resources that more oil wells need to be punched in and 
more pipelines need to be laid and refineries built, and the export of 
the wealth of Iraq will pour the capital back into that country, and we 
will see that economy start to grow and multiply and flourish. Why do 
we hear these negative comments and detractors? Do they not know that 
our soldiers over there want and need their support? That the people 
that watch al-Jazeera TV see these voices as quasi American leaders. 
They see these as people that are directing the policy of the United 
States of America. They do not understand that the Commander-in-Chief 
is not listening to this every night. Thankfully he is not listening to 
this every night, and I hope he is not.
  The Commander-in-Chief has to lead us down a path without regard to 
public opinion. He will take into account our judgment, but the destiny 
of this country is more important. If the mainstream media and the 
relentless drumbeat on the floor of the House takes the confidence of 
the American people down so low that they have lost their will, it is 
the job of the President of the United States to step up and take the 
debate to the American people and do the fireside chats in this modern 
technological world, lift our spirits up and give us the facts. I am 
here to help him do that.
  He has given us some of these fireside chats and speeches. He 
understands, as I understand, that our freedom, our freedom depends 
upon our soldiers, yes, but it also depends upon our will. There is 
something that is a universal truth throughout all of history and that 
is a war is never over until the loser realizes they have lost. That is 
a fact, Mr. Speaker. War is never over until the loser realizes they 
have lost.
  If you are down in the dumps and you are losing your soldiers and 
troops and you are losing your ability to combat a battle, losing your 
munitions, losing the funding network, you are really down and out, 
there would be some people in this country that think that I am talking 
about the American or coalition forces, and I am talking about 
Zarqawi's people. They are down and out. They can barely put together 
enough munitions to conduct any kind of opposition. They do not have a 
lot of logistical support. They are hiding in caves and cowering in mud 
huts in places throughout Iraq, and they are going out one or two every 
day dying for their cause, dying for a lost cause.
  Mr. Speaker, I will submit that the people on the other side, the al 
Qaeda people, the Zarqawi people, they have it pretty tough where they 
are right now. A lot of them are dead. Perhaps 75 percent of their 
leadership is dead. We decapitated the number 3 man in Afghanistan 
within the last week.
  They have been writing letters back and forth from Zarqawi to Bin 
Laden. We know they are short of resources. One of them asked, could 
you kindly send me $100,000. Zarqawi wrote a letter a while back that 
said in this country we do not have any place to hide. This is not 
Vietnam. They do not have any mountains. They do not have any forests 
to hide in. The only place they can hide is in the homes of the Iraqis, 
and Iraqi homes that are willing to hide al Qaeda terrorists, he said, 
are as rare as red sulfur.
  Red sulfur does not mean a lot to us here. I submit it is quite rare. 
Red sulfur fits in the category of maybe as rare as hen's teeth or 
chicken lips or frog hair. It is a rare commodity. He draws the 
distinctions between Vietnam and Iraq: No mountains to hide in, no 
forests to hide in, and the homes they have to cower in where Iraqis 
are willing to house them are as rare as red sulfur, rare as chicken's 
teeth, rare as chicken lips, rare as frog's hair.
  So they feel that taste of defeat. When they are about ready to give 
up,

[[Page 27737]]

we can take the tone of that letter some months ago, and have to think 
they are very close to the end.
  Then we hear the voice from the other side that says we cannot win. 
Howard Dean, This war cannot be won. The esteemed gentleman, the 
ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, This war cannot be won.
  In the same debate he said, Our military has accomplished their 
mission, bring them home.
  Was not their mission to win? And how do you define your exit 
strategy? Victory, Mr. Speaker. That is how we define the exit 
strategy, victory. There is no other exit strategy. In fact, I would 
submit why would you want to leave.

                              {time}  2145

  I certainly want the Iraqis to take over the defense of their own 
country, and that is our administration's policy, and it is one that I 
support. There are over 210,000 Iraqis in uniform that are trained, and 
you will hear again from this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, that 
there is only one battalion that is combat ready. One battalion. Maybe 
there was a time there was only one battalion, that there was not one 
American in that was truly combat ready that had the logistical support 
that they could go out and engage in combat without cooperation, 
coordination with American troops and American know-how and American 
logistics and American ingenuity and ability. Maybe one.
  Mr. Speaker, I would submit to you that 30 to 40 percent of the 
Iraqis that are in uniform, trained, equipped, ready for combat, having 
the courage to defend their country, 30 to 40 percent are engaged and 
ready to engage; and some of them have some American advisers there, 
and these people on this side of the aisle argue that disqualifies them 
from defending their country. I wonder what the mothers and the fathers 
and the wives think when they have an Iraqi soldier that is killed in 
the line of duty and they are told by the floor of the United States 
Congress that they were not really qualified for combat, they really 
were not ready to defend their country.
  Mr. Speaker, these people are ready. They have the courage. And many 
of them are ready for combat. Many have been in combat. Most of them go 
in combat with American soldiers, and it is a good thing for us to 
have. I would not want to say there are 210,000 Iraqi troops with 
uniforms and equipment and training and they are all ready to go into 
combat right now and all we have to do is just turn them all loose, Mr. 
Speaker, and they can all go into combat and at the same time, same 
day, same night American troops come back to their home bases, to their 
wives, their husbands, their sons and daughters and their parents. I 
wish they could, Mr. Speaker, but that would not be prudent. It would 
not be wise and it would not be good policy.
  It would not be good policy not to have an American involvement there 
to go through a transition, a transitional period, Mr. Speaker, that 
provides for a gradual transfer of power so that the Iraqis that are 
willing and eager to defend their country are handed over those reins 
of responsibility in a fashion that ensures success. So maybe sometime 
ago there was only one battalion that did not have any American 
involvement. About that same time that you heard the remarks about one 
battalion, one Iraqi battalion that did not have any American 
involvement, at that time we really did not have any American bases 
either that were under the control of the Iraqis.
  But since that time, we have 20 bases that have been handed over to 
the Iraqis to manage, 20 military bases. Have you heard that from the 
other side of the aisle? Have you heard that the Iraqis have taken over 
the control of 20 bases? Because we have confidence that they can 
provide the security and the logistics out of those places and dispatch 
their troops, take care of the communications, food and housing and 
training, all the munitions and equipment, the logistics that take 
place there and provide the security in the region.
  Twenty bases the Iraqis have today that they did not have when the 
allegation was made that there was only one battalion that was combat 
ready. So you get a real twisted view here, because we have people that 
get out of bed every morning and they scour the television, they scour 
the newspapers, and they scour the Internet trying to find the most 
negative that they can so they can bring this down, hustle down here 
and trot out onto the floor of the House of Representatives, Mr. 
Speaker, and begin to inform the American people of the most 
pessimistic view point, not always substantiated, by the way, but the 
most pessimistic view point possible because they want to dispirit the 
American troops.
  Well, that is some of the effect, only our people are so courageous 
and they do not listen to you all that much. But they are sure, in a 
word, encouraging our enemies. Osama bin Laden, Zarqawi, Zawahiri, 
Muqtada Al-Sadr, all of those people. They believe that the Americans 
are going to lose their will; and if we lose our will, so will the rest 
of the coalition forces. Last night I put a poster up here on the floor 
that showed a picture of Muqtada Al-Sadr, big old blow up of his 
bearded face, and the quote beneath his face that I heard come out of 
al-Jazeera TV in Kuwait City. The quote was, he said it in Arabic, I 
watched the English subtitles, 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.
  Now, if you are an enemy, and you are dispirited like Zarqawi was 
dispirited when he wrote the red sulfur letter, and you hear that quote 
out of one of their leaders, by the way that same quote has come out 
of, in similar language has come out of the mouths of all four of those 
leaders that I have talked about, Muqtada Al-Sadr, the non-al Qaeda, 
the Shiite leader who is actually I will call him a revolutionary in 
some fashion. But Zarqawi, Zawahiri, bin Laden, Muqtada Al-Sadr, all of 
them have made statements that you will find out there on the Internet 
that says the Americans have left in the past. They have pulled out of 
places like Vietnam, Lebanon, Mogadishu. They will pull out of Iraq. 
Just persevere, blow yourself up one more time, get your 72 virgins, 
turn yourself into smithereens, take a few people with you if you can 
and you will be adding to this cause somehow and some of the rest of us 
will figure out how we can come in here and create this civil war that 
will split this nation into three different section.
  What is the future for Iraq if we let that happen? Think about it for 
a minute. What is the alternative? What is this idea that was presented 
by the chairman of the Democrat National Committee that we ought to 
evict ourselves from Iraq and pull ourselves out of there and go 
someplace where we are wanted. Did you ever know there was a need for 
an army or you were really wanted? Anybody ever invite you all in there 
and say, gee, we like you folks. Why do you not come in here and stay 
because we like the way you spend your money downtown. Actually, there 
is a place in Germany like that. They are glad to have us. But that is 
not a reason to send an army there. An army goes a place generally 
where you are not wanted to free the people that are under the tyranny 
of those who do not want you there.
  But Mr. Dean has advocated that we pull our troops out of Iraq and go 
to another Middle Eastern country where we are more wanted, and then we 
can fight Zarqawi from there. Boy, you know, Zarqawi, I wonder if he is 
writing those press releases for Mr. Dean. That is what I would want if 
I were Zarqawi. I would be trying to convince Americans, get your 
troops out of here. Why do you not go someplace where you are wanted, 
and then Zarqawi would be free to turn Fallujah into an armed camp, to 
turn Ramadi into an armed camp, to turn Tikrit into an armed camp, to 
turn all of the Sunni Triangle into an armed camp and pull in money 
from around the rest of the Arab world and bring in and arm all the 
troops and recruit more al Qaeda and turn it into a training camp, and, 
yes, develop more weapons of mass destruction, both gas, biological to 
get the money.

[[Page 27738]]

  We are watching what is happening over in Iran. Nuclear. Add that all 
together, take the advice of the chairman of the Democrat National 
Committee and pull our troops out of Iraq, go to an Arab country where 
we are more wanted so we can fight Zarqawi from there, Mr. Speaker? 
That does sound like something that has been put out by Zarqawi 
himself. And it would be the very worst scenario that we can imagine. 
We are there now. Zarqawi is at least under our thumb. We have him 
surrounded. We do not know exactly where he is, but we have him 
surrounded. So we have to stay there; we have to finish this job. And 
every time we squeeze them down a little more, a little more, it gets 
harder and harder, and Zarqawi gets ready to write a letter and to 
sound a little more desperate each time when he puts out a plea for 
help that goes to Osama bin Laden, who essentially has not had much of 
a voice in what is going on in this effort for a good long time, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Pull out of Iraq. Go to a place where we are more wanted in the 
Middle East to fight Zarqawi from there. Think what happens if we ever 
pull out of Iraq. If we pull out of there, and it is not clear to 
history that we have a victory, if we pull out on our own free will, if 
we redefine victory ourselves, history will define it anyway. History 
will define victory as the effort that prevailed. And we have said here 
is what we want: we want the Iraqi people to be in charge of their own 
country; we want them to have free elections; we want them to elect a 
parliament, which they will do December 15.
  We want them then from that parliament to elect a prime minister, set 
up a civilian government, a government that represents the people of 
the state of Iraq, a sovereign state, a sovereign nation. They will go 
sit at the United Nations, and they will have more credibility there 
than any other Arab nation, Mr. Speaker. That is our definition of 
victory, and it is going to take a while for the violence to disappear 
in Iraq. And the reason for that is, Mr. Speaker, that as I said 
earlier, a war is never over until the loser understands that they have 
lost. If we stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and tell 
our enemies that here is how you win, if we tell them we cannot win, 
but they have, some of them are going to believe us. I do not believe 
it. Some of the American people believe it. I do not believe it.
  I believe that Iraq is going to be a certified sovereign free nation 
on the date of December 15, and maybe it will take a little while to 
count the votes, and maybe it will take a little while to elect a prime 
minister, and maybe it will take a little while to gavel in that first 
parliament, and it will take a little while for them to get all the 
kinks out of their new government. And it will take a little while to 
get the enemy, the insurgents, purged out of that society.
  But as they see this inevitable march, this inevitable march towards 
freedom, the enemy will begin to understand that they have lost. When 
they understand that they have lost, then we will have victory because 
the rest of the principles are there. We have followed the sequence of 
liberation, Coalition Provisional Authority, interim Iraqi civilian 
government control, an elected interim parliament, draft the 
Constitution, put it on the ballot October 15, get a great turn out, 
ratify that Constitution, and now set an election for December 15. We 
are now a free people. Free people go to the polls again, and I predict 
they will go to the polls again in greater numbers than the percentage 
of the American people do, because people that have never had freedom 
cherish it even more.
  That will be the definition for victory, Mr. Speaker, when we see a 
free people that are controlling their own destiny and going to the 
polls and directing their own leaders. They have got their 
Constitution. It is ratified. They have a tremendous amount of natural 
resources, and some day very soon after December 15 they can sign a 
contract with one or a dozen companies that have the technology and the 
skills and the capital to develop that massive amount of oil that they 
have. It is theirs. It has been our principle that it has been their 
oil from the very beginning. Our Commander in Chief said that to the 
world. And, in fact, if you go read the Iraqi Constitution there are 
two references in there as to the possession of their oil, and it is 
their oil.
  And it is there for the Iraqi people, and the Constitution defines 
that it will be distributed proportionally in a fair fashion and 
equally across the country so that there is equal development of Iraq 
from that wealth. And soon, within 6 months I will predict we will 
start to see the oil export from Iraq. Right now, the only thing that 
is really exporting from Iraq with any kind of profits are dates, and 
it is about half the date crop that it used to be. That can be improved 
too.
  But when the oil starts to flow out, it is their oil, the profit is 
theirs, the capital comes in. And when you have capital that comes in, 
you know what you have. You have capitalism. And capitalism really is 
the solution to this. We have the military who are doing their job. And 
behind the military solution is the political solution which is taking 
place on December 15 in this election. And when that free parliament is 
established and they elect a prime minister, the next step is hand over 
some of this development to some people that will risk some of their 
capital to develop those oil fields so that capitalism can sweep into 
that country, sweep into that country and so the linkage of military 
solution, the political solution and the free enterprise capital 
solution all come to pass, all in their sequence, Mr. Speaker.
  When that happens, then we do have a definition for victory in Iraq. 
And we cannot expect miracles, and it is hard and it is bloody and it 
is costly. But they can become, and in fact I believe they are, the 
Lode Star for the Arab people. This inspiration that gets established, 
when people are cynics in the world think that because of what 
ethnicity you are, what tribe you belong to, what country you come 
from, what religion you might be, you cannot handle freedom, well, I 
agree with the President. Freedom beats and yearns in the heart of 
every person and all people yearn to be free.
  Now we have not gone to war and fought and handed them their freedom. 
They fought alongside us and some of that freedom they have earned, and 
they needed to earn it because it is precious and it has more value if 
it is them earning that freedom instead of us. But I believe this has 
been a very noble thing that we have done, Mr. Speaker; and I look 
around the world and I think throughout history, when has this country 
ever gone to war against another free people? I will say never. Never 
once in the history of the world has the United States ever gone to 
war, a clash of arms, against another free people, because we resolve 
our differences in open debate here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives and the Senate and across this country.
  And one of those things also that beats in the heart of all of us is 
we have a certain capacity for change in all of us.

                              {time}  2200

  That change is within us. It is natural, and it is human, and it is 
described pretty much in the book ``The Case for Democracy'' by Natan 
Sharansky. He spent a fair part of his life in the gulag up in the 
Soviet Union, and he watched how there they struggled for their very 
lives and very survival. And the effort that came from them just to 
stay alive every day consumed almost everything that they did, and he 
thought that was the world that a lot of people lived in too, but that 
was a narrow thing that he was in at the time.
  When he was liberated from the gulag, he went to Israel, and he 
became a free person in a free society that had a democracy and open 
dialogue, and he went to the Knesset, and he watched that debate that 
was taking place there, and he saw that same energy go into the debate 
in the Knesset, sometimes arguing and debating and struggling over 
things that he saw as minutia because he had spent a lot of his

[[Page 27739]]

years on survival, and the same effort on survival was being burned up 
and consumed on minutia in a free country.
  And he concluded, and I think rightfully, that we all have within us 
this energy for change, this desire for change, and we will use that 
energy for a constructive change whether we do so in open debate and 
dialogue like we do in this country, like they do in Israel, or whether 
we use that same energy and desire, when we do not have this freedom of 
speech, to take it out on our neighbor, take it out on our enemy, and 
do so in a violent fashion and often in the form of terrorism. That is 
the habitat that breeds terror, the habitat that is anathema to 
freedom.
  So some years ago, shortly after September 11, we had a guest 
lecturer there at Buena Vista University, Storm Lake, Iowa. Benazir 
Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan. She gave a wonderful 
lecture, and it was fascinating. And afterwards we sat down and had a 
little one-on-one conversation, and I asked her a couple of questions, 
and one of them was what percentage of the Muslim world are inclined to 
be supportive of al Qaeda. How great in numbers are our enemy?
  She did not hesitate. In fact, her answer was so spontaneous that I 
concluded that she had answered that question before, and she said, Not 
very many, perhaps 10 percent.
  Well, not very many, perhaps 10 percent of 1.2 or 1.3 billion people 
is a whole lot of enemies, in my opinion. That is 120 to 130 million 
scattered throughout the world. We cannot attack all of them, and we 
cannot turn our military effort on all of them. We have to find another 
solution.
  So I asked her then how do we get to this point where we can ever 
define victory? What is victory going to be? How will we ever craft a 
victory given this global enemy we have that is committed to our death, 
people who believe that their path to salvation is in killing us?
  She said, You have to give them freedom. You have to give them 
democracy. You have to give them an opportunity for their future, and 
they will turn their minds, their hands, their hearts from hatred and 
killing towards their families, their neighborhoods, their communities, 
their mosques.
  That is the difference, and that is the climate that we need to 
create. That is that climate that is there in Afghanistan, and that is 
that climate that we are in the process of creating in Iraq. That is 
how Afghanistan and Iraq can link together and be the inspiration that 
shows the world that freedom can echo across the Arab world the same 
way it did across Eastern Europe when the Wall went down on November 9, 
1989. And that is some insight.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's embrace and 
affection for freedom. We all aspire to that.
  I think I might have misheard, but I guess what I am asking for, is 
the gentleman making the statement tonight that the invasion of Iraq, 
the reason that we invaded that country was to liberate that country, 
or did we have another rationale when we debated here in this Chamber 
about whether to invade Iraq?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, there were a 
number of motives, and I will concede there were other motives; but in 
the 60 seconds that I have left, I am not going to be able to address 
all of that.
  I will just say that, yes, liberation was part of that; and, in fact, 
I believe it is the broader vision, this vision that has been brought 
to this global effort by our President. I think he is a leading thinker 
on this in the world. Not a receptive adviser, but I think he is a 
leading thinker. And that is why I raise this issue. It is bigger and 
broader than weapons of mass destruction. It is bigger than many of the 
things that are discussed here on the floor of this House, and I bring 
this message here so that we can see the benefits of the sacrifice and 
the reason to carry on and the price if we fail to do so.

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