[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14070]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    CLOSING OF CIA'S BIN LADEN UNIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, the more President Bush entangles this 
country of ours in the Iraq occupation, the less committed it seems he 
is to the real national security threat we face, global terrorism, al 
Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
  Over the holiday weekend, when few people were paying attention, it 
was reported that the CIA has closed down ``Alec Station,'' its special 
unit that was charged specifically with tracking down and capturing Bin 
Laden.
  We've sure come a long way since the immediate aftermath of 9/11, 
when the President promised to get him, dead or alive. So much for 
Sheriff Bush. The tabloids are doing a better job of hunting down Tom 
Cruise's baby than this administration is at finding bin Laden. But 
this latest decision is of a piece with the Bush approach to bin Laden.
  In the fall of 2001, he had bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora, but the 
President let him get away by relying on local warlords rather than 
moving American troops in to finish the job.
  And a few months later, at a White House press conference, the 
President's cavalier approach to bin Laden was on full display. ``I 
don't know where he is,'' the President said. ``I just don't spend that 
much time on him. I truly am not concerned about him.''
  Well, 300 million other Americans are concerned, and they want to 
know why we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars to occupy and 
foment civil war in Iraq, but we can't maintain a single intelligence 
operation office devoted to apprehending the man responsible for the 
murder of thousands of Americans. And this from a President who has 
never missed an opportunity to wave the flag of 9/11, to exploit that 
tragedy in order to score political points and justify the reckless use 
of American power in Iraq.
  The evidence is clear. This President is not serious about fighting 
terrorism. If he were, he wouldn't have diverted energy and resources 
away from the struggle in order to chase this white whale in Iraq.
  Saddam Hussein, as we know by now, was not an ally of bin Laden's and 
was not a threat to U.S. security. But by invading Iraq, President Bush 
has turned that devastated country into a jihadist breeding ground and 
made all of us less safe. The Iraq war has created terrorists rather 
than stopping them.
  There is only one answer. It is time to bring the troops home and end 
the occupation of Iraq. Then we can redirect our resources, military 
and otherwise, toward finding bin Laden and pursuing a true 
counterterrorism strategy, a counterterrorism strategy that instead of 
invading countries willy-nilly, makes use of multilateral partnerships 
and strong intelligence capabilities.
  That, in addition to toppling the Taliban, would be the proper way to 
respond to 9/11. That would be the right strategy to meet the national 
security challenge of our time.

                          ____________________