[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15248-15254]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      HONORING OUR TROOPS IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McHenry). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to be here on the House 
floor tonight to report to my colleagues and those who may be watching 
what I learned over the last long weekend. I was privileged to go with 
Chairman Pete Hoekstra of the House Intelligence Committee to Iraq. It 
was my first trip to Iraq. It was a very eye-opening experience, Mr. 
Speaker and Members, one that I won't soon forget.
  Before I get started talking about that trip and some of the lessons 
that I learned while we were there, I would like to start with a quote. 
And I will come back to this later. The quote is: ``Do not try to do 
too much with your

[[Page 15249]]

own hands. It is their war, and you are here to help them win it, not 
win it for them.'' I am going to come back to that quote later, Mr. 
Speaker, because I think it says so much about some of the things that 
we learned while we were in Iraq. Most importantly, I will come back 
and tell you who it was that originally said that.
  The first thing I want to say tonight, though, is an enormous thank 
you and congratulations to the brave Americans who serve the United 
States in uniform.
  When you get off the plane in Baghdad, you realize what they have to 
put up with, particularly during the summer. When the door opens on 
that plane, it is like opening the door of an oven. And there to greet 
you are bright young Americans, and they are in full uniform, helmets, 
heavy flak jackets. And I don't know what the temperature was, but it 
was the hottest I have ever experienced in my life. And those are the 
conditions under which our brave Americans do their business every day. 
And it is not just that they do it for 8 hours a day with long lunches 
and coffee breaks. The folks over there are working 12 hours a day and, 
in many cases, 7 days a week. And I don't think there is anything that 
we could say here in this Congress which would ever adequately express 
the thanks that we have for the sacrifices that they make for serving 
this country.
  I should also say a very special thank you to their families. The 
ones that I met and the ones that I was able to talk to probably had 
more to say about their families and wanted to make sure that they knew 
that they were okay and that they were doing their jobs and that they 
missed home. But more importantly, many of them said that they really 
felt that they were doing something that was important there.
  So I want to, first of all, just recognize the professionalism that 
we saw every step of the way. When we left Kuwait, we were flying on a 
C-130, and I was lucky enough to get the long straw, so I got to sit up 
in the cockpit. And the young people who were flying that plane, and I 
almost called them kids, because I don't think even the pilot was 30 
years old, but they were among the most professional pilots and crew 
that I have ever had the privilege to fly with.
  As we got closer to Baghdad, all of a sudden this young pilot and all 
the crew became very animated and they were paying a lot of attention 
to what was happening on the ground. And I quickly figured out what 
they were doing. They were looking for any puffs of smoke or anything 
that might be fired at the C-130 we were flying in.
  Finally, as we got closer to Baghdad, the pilot literally turned that 
big, fat C-130 into a dive bomber. And they make a special approach 
when they landed at the Baghdad airport. And in spite of that almost 
dive-bomb approach, he made an incredibly smooth and soft landing. And 
I want to thank him for that.
  But as I say, we had an opportunity to meet with a number of the 
folks who were serving over there. I am going to talk just a little bit 
tonight about one of those units, a National Guard unit from the State 
of North Dakota.
  What they do every day, Mr. Speaker, Members, is they go out on the 
roads, mostly at night, and they look for these IEDs, these improvised 
explosive devices. And they told us that since they have been there, 
and they have been there 10 months, they have found 562 of those 
devices that they were ultimately able to have disposed of so that they 
caused no damage to people or to property along the roads of Iraq.
  Forty-two of those explosives devices, however, went off while they 
were trying to work with them. Forty-two. In fact, I talked to one 
young man, I believe his name was Lynch, from North Dakota, and he had 
been involved in four incidents where the IED went off. And I really 
can't say enough about the people who do that kind of thing every day.
  As I say, there is no way that we in Congress, there are no words 
that we could offer here in Congress which could repay the debt of 
gratitude that I think we and the people of Iraq have to the brave 
Americans like that unit from North Dakota.
  We also had a chance to visit a field hospital there, and it was kind 
of ironic because one of the people that we met there was someone that 
I already knew. He was one of the top surgeons at the Mayo Clinic, and 
I am privileged to represent Rochester, Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic. 
Dr. Mike Yaszemski. And Dr. Yaszemski was there and had been in Iraq 
since about the Fourth of July, and he and some of the other surgeons 
told me that they had been up since 2:00 that morning, performing 
surgery on five folks who were involved with an IED that night.
  And later we got to go in and visit in the hospital there with some 
of the soldiers who had been treated. And one of them was more than 
happy to tell his entire story. And while they were pinning the Purple 
Heart on the sheet on his bed, he told his entire story and what it was 
like to go through one of these IED explosions. Perhaps the most moving 
moment, though, was, as he was telling his story, how the Humvee that 
he had been in had essentially been blown about 150 feet off the 
ground, and I can't remember whether it was he came down upside down or 
the Humvee came down on its side, but the vehicle was on fire, and one 
of his buddies, a private, said get out. You have got to get out. You 
have got to get out. And he said, well, I am paralyzed from the waist 
down. And he couldn't get out of the Humvee himself.
  Now, this was a fairly large guy. I would guess he probably weighed 
230 pounds. And he said that the private was a pretty small little guy. 
And here this private, when he realized that his buddy was caught in 
the Humvee and it was on fire and he hollered out that he was paralyzed 
from the waist down, he couldn't get out, this young private got in 
there and got him out. I don't know exactly how he pulled him out, but 
it was an amazing story. And this young individual wanted to make sure 
that before they loaded him on to one of the big transport planes, the 
C-17 to fly him to the hospital in Germany at Landstuhl, he wanted to 
make sure that he got a chance to say thank you to that private, 
because he said he saved his life.
  And as he told his story, we were standing around, and I know what I 
was thinking. I was thinking, gee, is he going to be paralyzed for the 
rest of his life?
  Well, thanks to the good work of surgeons like Dr. Mike Yaszemski, I 
am happy to report that that soldier is going to be able, as he laid 
there, he smiled and he says, ``I can wiggle my toes.'' And what a 
happy story it was for all of us in that room.
  And we owe such a debt of gratitude to the staff, including people 
like Dr. Michael Yaszemski from Mayo Clinic for the magic that they do 
and the hard work that they do and the dedication that they have every 
single day.
  You know, the U.S. military, I think, is unmatched in the world and 
perhaps in the history of the world in terms of the execution of 
conventional war. There is little doubt that we have no adversaries in 
the rest of the world who can match the firepower, the training, the 
technology and, most importantly, the professionalism of the Americans 
who serve us in uniform. No one can really challenge the United States 
in a conventional war.

                              {time}  1915

  But as we toured around Iraq and went to several of the bases and, 
more importantly, as we spent time in Baghdad, it became obvious to me 
that the security situation was not what I had expected. As a matter of 
fact, we had to fly in helicopters, Black Hawk helicopters, to fly from 
the airport into the Green Zone. And it had been my understanding that 
one time people who were coming to visit, like myself and the rest of 
our delegation, could actually drive into the Green Zone. But somebody 
told us that it is now the most dangerous highway in the world. And 
somehow after 3 years and over $332 billion, I guess I was somewhat 
surprised that the security situation in Baghdad was as bad as it is. 
And, again, I kept coming back to this notion that,

[[Page 15250]]

indeed, our military is unmatched and unchallenged, I think, in the 
world in terms of conventional warfare. But I think we have to be 
honest with ourselves that our military is not well suited to be an 
occupation force, and probably even less suited to be involved in the 
nation-building business. And I think that is something that I felt and 
I believe other members of our delegation felt, that we are really 
asking our military to do some things which they are not particularly 
well suited to do.
  And I just wanted to offer some of those observations because as we 
were returning from Iraq, and it is a long flight, one of my colleagues 
who was on the trip with us had a copy of an article, and I am going to 
submit it for the Record if it is possible, Mr. Speaker, but I would 
like to talk a little bit about the article, and I will enter this into 
the Congressional Record at the end of my remarks.
  What it is is a column that was written by former Secretary of 
Defense Melvin Laird, who served as Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 
1973. He was also a counselor to the President for domestic affairs in 
the Nixon White House. And the article that I am talking about appeared 
in Foreign Affairs back in the November/December of 2005 edition. The 
title of the article is ``Iraq: The Learning Lessons of Vietnam.''
  And in many respects, Melvin Laird is in a very unique position to 
talk about both the history of that but, more importantly, what we 
should learn from those years and how we could apply them to the 
situation the the United States finds itself in today.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to read from the article because I think it 
says a lot in a few sentences right here that really illustrate what I 
think is a conclusion and the takeaway that I had from this particular 
visit to Iraq.
  He says: Another great tragedy of Vietnam was the Americanization of 
the war. This threatens to be the tragedy of Iraq also. The war needed 
to be turned back to the people who cared about it, the Vietnamese. 
They needed U.S. money and training but not more American blood. I 
called our program Vietnamization, and in spite of the naysayers, I 
have not ceased to believe that it worked.''
  And he goes on to say in another paragraph: ``We need to put our 
resources and unwavering public support behind a program of Iraqization 
so that we can get out of Iraq and leave the Iraqis in a position to 
protect themselves. The Iraq War should have been focused on 
Iraqization even before the first shot was fired.''
  Mr. Speaker, I read this column on the way home, and I want to tell 
about where we went after we left that hospital, because we flew up and 
we were only the second congressional delegation since 1991 to actually 
go up and visit Kurdistan. And we landed there at their airport, and I 
was surprised. I was shocked because I, frankly, expected to be greeted 
by bearded warriors with AK-47s over their shoulders, and what we were 
greeted by were businessmen wearing business suits who were very 
friendly, very hospitable, and the first thing you see when you get off 
the plane are new buildings going up, high-rise buildings around the 
airport there.
  And as we drove into town, and I want to emphasize as we drove into 
town with minimum security, I asked about those buildings. They said, 
These are new condominiums going up. They are luxury condominiums. They 
will sell for anywhere from $250,000 to $400,000. This is in Irbil, 
Iraq. This is in the Kurdish zone.
  And we went into town, and we got to meet with some of the political 
leaders including their Parliament. It was interesting to learn that 
the Parliament that they have there in the Kurdish area is very 
representative. Over 16 percent of the members of the Kurdish 
Parliament are women. We even met a Christian who is a member of the 
Kurdish Parliament. It is very open and very pragmatic. And we met with 
the Prime Minister. And he is coming to Washington here in the next 
month or so. I hope all Members will get a chance to meet him. In fact, 
I think he is coming in September. He is one of the most charismatic, 
articulate leaders that I ever met. He was very candid with us.
  First of all, he thanked us. He thanked us for all that America has 
done for the Kurdish people. Now, admittedly, the Kurds from a cultural 
standpoint are different than many of the other Iraqis, but they are 
Muslim. And he told us that they faced all the same problems in 1991 
that the southern part of Iraq is facing today. They had 
factionalization. They had terrorists. But they adopted what I would 
describe as a zero-tolerance policy. In fact, they described one 
particular incident where someone had committed an act of terrorism and 
then fled to Baghdad. They went after them, and they brought them to 
justice.
  You see, they have the advantage that they speak the language, they 
understand the culture, but, most importantly, they know who the bad 
guys are. And as I sort of distilled this story, and I was surprised by 
the wealth of the Kurdish region, one of our colleagues said, Well, but 
you have oil.
  And the Prime Minister smiled, and he said, The whole country has 
oil. He said, The difference is we have decided to work together to 
develop our resources so that we can have an economic future of 
prosperity for all of our people, whether they happen to be Christians 
or whether they happen to be Shiia or whether they happen to be Sunnis, 
whatever. And the only thing they have said is that they will not 
tolerate terrorism in their territories.
  And there are two things that they demand from the national 
government: One is they will not tolerate a religious state. Even 
though they are Muslims, they tolerate other religions, and it makes an 
enormous difference in the way people are living and working together 
in the northern portion of Iraq.
  The second thing that they said they demanded is an equitable 
distribution of oil royalties. And when you see what they have 
accomplished up there, you can understand why now that they have done 
all the work, they do not want to share all of their revenues with the 
people of the rest of Iraq.
  But, most importantly, we asked him, Don't the Kurds really want to 
be independent?
  And again he smiled and he said, Well, if you polled my constituents, 
I suspect that almost universally they would be in favor of 
independence. But, he said, that is not practical. In fact, he said, we 
Kurds have decided that we have our best opportunity to work with the 
rest of the people of Iraq and be part of a strong and united and 
economically prosperous Iraq.
  We all sat there and listened to this, and we met with the members of 
the Parliament. They threw an enormous feast for us of some of the 
finest food I have ever had in my life. And as we sat and listened and 
visited and learned from them, I said to myself, and it is one of my 
favorite expressions, I said, Success leaves clues, and if you really 
want to know what Iraq can look like, you would have to visit the 
Kurds.
  And it is unfortunate that too many of our colleagues have not had 
the chance or taken the chance when they visited Iraq to go up and 
visit the Kurds. But it is an enormous success story, and I think it is 
the model that if we can somehow imprint on the rest of the country and 
if the new Prime Minister, Mr. Maliki, will take that as the model, 
adopt it for the rest of Iraq, then I think that Iraq can have a very 
bright future.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I mentioned earlier that the leader of our 
delegation, Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Intelligence 
Committee, was good enough to invite me along and, more importantly, 
get me into some of the most interesting meetings I have ever been at. 
So I would like to yield to the leader of our congressional delegation, 
the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra).
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague for yielding. And maybe we can 
have a little bit of a dialogue about the trip that we had.
  It is kind of interesting. It was your first opportunity to be in 
country. It was my eighth trip into the theater, and I probably spent 
close to 20 days on the ground now in Iraq. And you are flying in from 
Kuwait, and I think you

[[Page 15251]]

and I both had an opportunity to be up in the cockpit with the pilots. 
And I think the pilot, he had been on assignment a number of times, and 
I believe this might have been his eighth tour. It was something like 
that. So he spent a good part of the last 3 years flying C-130s back 
and forth between Kuwait, Baghdad, around the theater inside Baghdad to 
Jordan, probably to UAE and various places.
  But what really struck me was the first two soldiers that I met, the 
conviction and the enthusiasm that they still felt for the mission. I 
mean, each time I go, the litmus test to me is kind of what are our 
soldiers saying? This C-130 pilot, he is flying our troops back and 
forth, and he says, We are here. I keep wanting to come back. We need 
to win this mission. We need to stay until it is done, and we are doing 
the right thing and we are making progress.
  And I think for a couple of reasons, these folks interact with the 
pilot maybe not as much, but they hear the stories of our troops on the 
ground as to the interaction that they are having with the Iraqi people 
and the appreciation from the Iraqi people. And I hope this is one of 
the things that Prime Minister Maliki talks about next week, about the 
genuine appreciation of the Iraqi people for the progress and the 
support that they have received. They see that appreciation.
  The other thing that I think they see is they see the horror of the 
other side. These are terrorists who attack civilians. Our troops 
understand their viciousness, and they understand the nature of these 
people, that they are not just attacking in Iraq, but I mean there is 
all this talk now about what is going on in Lebanon. 1983 is when our 
barracks were blown up, 23 years ago, Hezbollah. Even before that, 
terrorist groups have been attacking U.S. interests, Western interests 
around the globe. And I think our troops see the need to confront this 
and to defeat it and that they genuinely believe that if we step away 
and do not confront it, it will move back to the homeland.
  We go on the ground to Baghdad, get met at the airport by someone who 
interned in my office about a couple of years ago, interned in my 
office, went to Hope College in my district, got to be a good friend 
with a number of the people in the church that we go to, so he went to 
our church. He is now embedded not in the international zone where you 
and I were, he is embedded with Iraqi troops that have been trained. So 
there are like eight to ten U.S. troops with a large group of Iraqi 
troops, and he says, Man, am I glad I am here. He hadn't been there 
long, but he said, You know, this is where I wanted to be. This is 
where I want to be right now. I am working with Iraqi troops. I have 
been to their homes. I have been to their families. We need to do this, 
and we need to see the mission through.
  And like I said, he had just been there a couple of months. And like 
I said, this is a kid that I know. If he did not feel that way, he 
would have told me. But he had just gotten there, and they also see the 
sacrifices that the Iraqi people are making.

                              {time}  1930

  There have been a lot more Iraqi troops, police and citizens that 
have been killed over the last number of months than U.S. troops. They 
are willing to go to the front lines. They are willing to pay the price 
and make the difference.
  You and I both saw, there is lots of work to be done. It is not a 
pretty picture on certain occasions. The day we were there, the folks 
went in and got the chairman of the National Olympic Committee.
  Maybe you have talked a little bit about some of the other things we 
observed. We can talk about the training of the troops, the need to 
secure Baghdad. I heard you talk about Kurdistan. But there is lots of 
work to do. It is two steps forward, one step back. But it is clearly a 
war against radical Islam that is moving forward, that needs to be 
completed.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I was talking about the Kurds, and I think every part 
of the trip, in my opinion, was a highlight. I hate to say one was more 
important than the other.
  But what I had said before you came in, Congressman Hoekstra, was 
that I was so impressed with the Kurds and what they have done in 
taking responsibility for their own area, of having essentially a zero 
tolerance policy. I said that I think that may be the example that 
Maliki can use for the rest of the country. You mentioned, and this is 
what I think is the good story.
  The bad story, from my view, is that Baghdad is far less secure than 
I thought it was. Maybe that is my fault. Maybe I had a different 
impression. Maybe I had been led to believe. I am not sure, and I am 
not really in the blame game.
  But clearly Baghdad is still a very dangerous place. In fact, I think 
the phrase that some of them used is the road from the airport to the 
international zone is the most dangerous highway in the world. Maybe 
that is an exaggeration. But those are Americans who are serving there 
that used that term.
  My takeaway is probably somewhat different than yours, but my 
conclusion and my takeaway is we need to press and continue to press 
for the Iraqis and exactly what you are talking about, where we have 
some of our Special Forces embedded and working with and training 
Iraqis. We trained, I think the number is 262,000 Iraqis so far. We 
need to really push them to step up, as they have in the northern parts 
of the country, to take responsibility for policing their own streets.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, that is a conclusion that 
we probably reached on a bipartisan basis, that it is absolutely 
essential to as rapidly as possible train up the Iraqis and transfer 
sections of the country to Iraqi troops with U.S. advisers. They know 
the neighborhood, they know the culture, and I think they have the 
desire and conviction to win. We need to provide them with the training 
and the resources, but then get them at the front lines so that the 
Iraqi people in the communities see them. This is their opportunity to 
get the country back.
  I think the other thing you said, it was my first time to Kurdistan. 
There was never a need to go there before. Now you can see what happens 
in a period of 14 years. Remember, what was the number, 182,000 Kurds 
had been killed by Saddam. Iran was active in creating mischief. There 
was an ethnic cleansing going on in the southern part of Kurdistan.
  But over a period of 14 years, they have got political stability. The 
two major parties have come together to form a unity government, the 
economy is doing well and the security situation is good.
  So if the rest of the country can see Kurdistan as a model and 
embrace the kinds of reforms, I think that is the other thing that 
happened in Kurdistan. They are doing the things that are attracting 
foreign investment and foreign confidence in what they are doing. 
Because you cannot rebuild Iraq with just U.S. money. You need to get 
the private sector coming in, and Kurdistan is doing that in the laws 
they are shaping to encourage and welcome foreign investment into their 
area. You do it in the south and the rest of the country, you have got 
oil, you have got agriculture, you have some manufacturing, but you 
have got to put in place the right legal framework.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I think you said it exactly right. When I left, there 
was progress. I was looking for progress. I think it is a three-legged 
stool. I think you have to have military or security progress.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is all about securing Baghdad right now.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Exactly. That is where I really was disappointed. I 
thought Baghdad would be much more secure than what we saw or learned 
about it. But you have to have military security progress, and you have 
to have economic progress, and you have to have political progress.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The political meetings we had, it was very interesting 
meeting with the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Interior. The 
difference this time is you are meeting with people who know they are 
going to be in the job for 4 years. Every time I have gone before, you 
have always

[[Page 15252]]

been kind of meeting with an appointed or an interim minister. Now you 
are meeting with somebody that has been selected, and they know they 
are going to be a part of this new government, which gives you a little 
bit more stability. The parliamentarians, obviously, representative 
government is a new phenomena for them and they have a little bit of 
work to understand exactly how that works.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Let me say, and I talked to the speaker today and I 
know you are working on this as well, one of the things we would like 
to do is invite at least a dozen of them to the United States. We may 
smile about our meetings with the parliamentarians, and they all had 
own political points of view and so forth, but, first and foremost, 
every Member of Congress, and I think Americans need to understand, if 
you are a member of the Iraq parliament, you are a hero. You are 
someone who has enormous courage.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. A couple of things. You are a hero, and you are a 
target.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Exactly. And not only are you a potential target, your 
family is a potential target. Most of us at one time in our political 
lives have had some goofball who has issued some kind of a death threat 
against us. Usually we don't even take it all that seriously. 
Fortunately, the FBI takes it very seriously, and I appreciate what 
they do for us every day. But in Iraq, it is a different ball game.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I would just like to reinforce the point that you made 
about the stories that we heard, where the people that are involved in 
the government, the strategy now for the terrorist groups, the 
insurgents, the militias, is to go after their family. You are now 
talking about their parents, their wife, their kids.
  So it is no longer someone saying, you know, I am going to 
participate in this government because I think that it is the right 
thing to do and I know it is a risk to me. They are taking a much 
bigger risk. These folks have to have this dialogue with their family, 
saying if I participate in this, we are all at risk.
  So, these are folks that are committed. The parliamentarians, when we 
met with them, they leave in the middle of the afternoon, because they 
don't live in the International Zone. They go back into the rest of the 
country. You can protect them, you can protect their immediate family, 
but when you go out and get their brothers and sisters and parents and 
all that, these are people who are committed to success and there is no 
other way to look at it. There is no personal enrichment here.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. No. I was very impressed with the character of the 
parliamentarians. Hopefully, with the help of our Speaker, we can get 
some of them over here so that more Members of Congress can actually 
get a chance to visit with them, to learn from them, to talk to them 
and perhaps to ask them some questions.
  What I was talking about earlier as well is from an article that I 
think we both read on the plane on the way home that was written by 
Melvin Laird. If anyone would like a copy, they can just send me an e-
mail at G[email protected]. We will send you a copy of this article.
  I think from my perspective it actually put into perspective a lot of 
the things we saw on our visit and why it is so important as soon as we 
can and as much as we can, we need to turn more of the authority, the 
responsibility for managing the affairs of the Iraqi people, back to 
the Iraqis themselves.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is much like what we talk about for some of our 
domestic policies. The longer we are there propping them up, the more 
we have the potential of creating a situation of dependency, where they 
are looking to the U.S. Government to fix their political problems, to 
fix their security problems and to fix their economic problems.
  I think we were very clear when we met with their parliamentarians 
and saying we are committed to stay with you and to provide you with 
the opportunity to fix your political problems, to fix your economic 
problems and your security issues. We cannot do that, because this is 
your country.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. That is exactly what Melvin Laird said about Vietnam. 
That is why it was important to turn Vietnam, as soon as possible, back 
to the Vietnamese people. He said the greatest mistake was the 
Americanization of the Vietnam War.
  I think that is something we have to be very aware of when we look at 
where we are today.
  What I said also, Congressman Hoekstra, is because the Maliki 
government is now in place and they have a Minister of Defense, they 
have a Minister of the Interior, which are the two key ministries I 
think in terms of domestic security, now that they have those people in 
place, and my impression of them was they are very strong people, my 
impression was they understood the risks, they understood what needed 
to be done, and I think the next two months are going to be critical.
  They have to demonstrate, in my opinion, that they really are 
serious, that they will deal with these militias that are out of 
control, they will deal with the radicals and the others who have come 
in from out of country.
  I think it is important that our perception, and we had very good 
briefings, I know that sometimes it is a little like the blind men 
describing the elephant, but all the terrorists are not the same. Some 
of them are religious fanatics. Some of them are just thugs that Saddam 
released from prison, and they are thugs trying to create a territory 
and using terror and using violence, much as Al Capone in the St. 
Valentine's Day Massacre did, used violence in a certain way to gain a 
certain amount of power in a neighborhood. So it is not as simple as 
sometimes we would like to pigeonhole what the violence is all about. 
It is about a lot of things.
  But, most importantly, I think the Iraqi government now has to 
demonstrate, as the Kurds did, that they have a zero tolerance policy. 
They will hunt people down and bring them to justice.
  You said something else earlier about the advantage that the Iraqis 
have when they are doing the heavy lifting. You said they understand 
the culture. One thing you didn't mention, I want to add, they 
understand the language. That is incredibly important. That puts our 
forces sometimes at a huge disadvantage, because they really don't 
understand.
  You can't really understand a culture if you weren't raised in it. So 
in many cases we were asking our soldiers sometimes to do some things 
that are very difficult. Not that they aren't very professional and 
they do it very well, but there is no question that Iraqis out there 
policing the streets can do a much better job than Americans.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Talking about soldiers that do things well, I mean, we 
went to Arbil, and there were two groups of people that were absolutely 
outstanding. The troops from North Dakota, our colleague from North 
Dakota, Representative Pomeroy, was with us.
  These guys have the responsibility of every day being on the road 18 
to 20 hours and making sure that 50 miles of highway is free from IEDs. 
Man, these guys are good, and they have done a phenomenal job. They had 
a casualty a couple of weeks ago. Our sympathy goes to that unit, 
obviously the soldier's family in North Dakota and the whole community.
  But they are well-trained, and it was inspiring to listen to their 
story about we came here with a job to do and here is what we have 
learned and here is how we are doing it. They have experienced 42 
explosions, I think about 42 explosions. The vehicles they are in are 
designed that the compartment where the soldiers are in survives. The 
wheels may fall off and the engine may go away and the transmission may 
be gone, but the soldiers are protected.
  They have experienced 42 explosions, but they have stopped, what was 
it, 562 they have stopped. We saw some of the devices that they have. 
If you wonder how good our guys are. It means as they are going down 
the road, they are looking ahead and they see, I wish I had taken a 
piece of that copper wire, just a thin little piece of copper wire,

[[Page 15253]]

which signals to them there is a problem here, or they see a small pile 
of stones that wasn't there the day before. It is not that they know 
exactly the stones weren't there, but it is kind of like, this is 
strange.

                              {time}  1945

  Then they go in with their equipment, they find it, and they disarm 
it, 562. Then the hospital. Wow, I mean what is it? The one soldier 
that came in, they gave him how many units of blood? It was something 
like 200.
  The professionalism of the docs there, you had one there from Mayo 
who had just come in. The professionalism of the folks there. The thing 
that I was really impressed with, I think one was a doc or headed up 
the trauma unit, was it in Cincinnati, said, ``We do things here I 
could not do in Cincinnati.''
  He said, you know, there will be books and articles written about 
what we are doing here that is going to be brought back to trauma 
centers around America, maybe around the world, because of what we are 
learning and how effective we are here.
  We give our troops better treatment here coming in off the 
battlefield than what I can give them in any major metropolitan center. 
I mean, my hats go off to these folks.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. They have been up performing surgery since 2 o'clock 
in the morning. I mentioned that Dr. Mike Yaszmenski from Mayo Clinic, 
he did not take the credit for it, but the story that we were all 
standing there when they pinned the Purple Heart on that young man. He 
had had several broken vertebrae, which is the reason he could not get 
out of his HUMVEE, and could not walk.
  At the end of his little presentation, he told the whole story, he 
sort of smiled. He said, I can wiggle my toes. Now, Dr. Yaszmenski did 
not take credit for this. I am piecing this together. Because he is a 
spinal surgeon my sense is that he had something to do with it.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The other thing, the solder saying, before I leave, 
they were on space-available because he was not as seriously injured as 
some other soldiers, he was going on to Germany. I think he was going 
to leave in the next 24 hours. But said, you know, before I leave I 
need to make sure that I call back to my unit.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. He wanted to see that private that pulled him out.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. You know, it is inspiring to see those folks and also 
knowing that, you know, whether it is an American or an Iraqi injured 
on the battlefield, that is the quality of care that they are going to 
get.
  I think we also heard the number that, you know, the vast majority of 
injuries today are coming from the IEDs. These things are becoming more 
and more sophisticated. But, you know, it shows that the enemy is not 
engaging us, they are moving to what we would call asymmetrical 
tactics. They are not engaging us or the Iraqis directly. They are 
using these improvised explosive devices or they are attacking civilian 
targets, where fitting to their name they can create terror.
  But they are also using that tactic to try to divide the country 
between Sunnis and Shiia. And this is why the government has to, the 
Iraqi Government has to step up and provide the security envelope so 
that the militias can be disbanded, the militias that are forming in 
the Shiia areas and the Sunni areas. Because our understanding, when I 
talked to David Pate from my district, he said, you know, when you talk 
to the Iraqi soldiers, they do not say, if you ask them, are you a 
Shiia or a Sunni, the Army is moving to the level of professionalism 
where they say, you know, they do not say I am a Shiia or a Sunni, what 
they say is I am an Iraqi.
  So they are focusing on the country. That is not everybody. You know, 
sectarian violence is something that we are very, very concerned about. 
It is evident. I do not think neither you or I are saying, man, it is 
done. There is a lot of work to do over there.
  But there continue to be signs of real progress.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I think the real progress that we are all looking for 
is for the Iraqis. Now that Prime Minister Maliki has got a government, 
and I think he needs to know that America is going to be there to 
support him.
  You know, I was misquoted that I was in favor of immediate 
withdrawal. That is simply not true. What I have said consistently is 
America needs to be there for quite some time to come. We still have 
troops in Germany. We still have troops in Japan. We still have troops 
in South Korea. But our real role has to begin to change, so that we 
provide the umbrella of security.
  If, for example, some militia being to mass and begin to directly 
confront the government or other forces, then I think from a 
conventional standpoint, we are in a strong position to make sure that 
that gets dealt with quickly and effectively. And nobody can do it 
better than our military.
  But in terms of some of the sectarian things and the thugs who are at 
large in some of the neighborhoods, since we cannot speak the language 
and we do not understand the culture, it is just much more difficult 
for us to get to the bottom of that. That is where the Iraqis need to 
step up. That is the progress we are looking for.
  When that happens, when people start to feel as secure in Baghdad as 
they do in Erbil, then you will see the economy begin to improve. 
Because, it is obvious to me that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis 
want what most Americans want. They want to live in peace. They want to 
be able to raise their families in a secure neighborhood. They want to 
look forward to an economic future that is worth living.
  They can do that. And that is why, again, I hate to refer too much to 
what we saw up in northern Iraq. But it was like night and day. It was 
like going to a different universe.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think I misspoke earlier. I said the troops were in 
Erbil. They were in Balat. The troops were in Balat.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. We will always remember the North Dakota boys. 
Especially one young man, I think his name was Lynch. He had been 
involved in four of these explosions. And, yes, it is true the 
equipment they have is specially designed to sort of take the explosion 
and the concussion in a ``V'' section so that the folks inside are 
protected.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is still a real experience.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. The concussion of it and what it did to those heavy 
vehicles, it is amazing that they have only had one KIA. Again, let me 
join you in sharing our sympathies to that family and that unit, 
because they were obviously a very close knit unit from North Dakota.
  They went to war together. They do their jobs together. They live 
together. They pray together. And it was inspiring to meet those young 
men.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think you have also got to give a real set of kudos 
to the folks in the background. You know, we talk about the troops that 
are going out and they are finding the IEDs. We are talking to the C-
130 pilots who are flying in. You and I were there. It is a harsh 
environment. You got the dust, you got the sand, you got more sand, and 
then you throw a little bit of heat on it.
  When we were coming off the one plane in Erbil where we walked 
through the backwash of the props, it must have been 130, 140 degrees 
right there. Of course we were doing it for a short period of time. But 
you are wearing the body armor, you are wearing the helmet, our troops 
are doing that all day long.
  The other folks, there is lot of folks over there that deserve kudos, 
but it is the maintenance people. These guys would say, hey, we go out, 
we are near an explosion, an IED, our equipment is damaged. We bring it 
back, our mechanics know that they need to get this fixed, because we 
are going out again on patrol.
  They may have not a spare, but they have got another truck or another 
vehicle that they can take out. But, they have got to get this one 
working again. And the mechanics, they work 24 hours straight to get 
this stuff up and running.

[[Page 15254]]

  Same thing with the C-130s. We are putting lots of hours on some of 
these machines. I think the first plane that we flew in on from Kuwait 
to Baghdad was a 1961 C-130, from Selfridge Air Base in Michigan. And, 
you know, there are maintenance people back there who in this 
environment, that plane goes on, I think it was doing two trips that 
day back and forth to Baghdad.
  You know, when that plane goes back to Kuwait that night, there is 
going to be some maintenance people all over that thing, you know, 
getting it back and making sure that the next morning it is going to be 
able to fly again.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I mentioned earlier, we also need to say thank you and 
kudos to the families. You cannot help but think about what the 
families in North Dakota must feel every day. I am sure they do not 
know all that that group does in terms of going out and looking for 
these IEDs.
  But not only do the folks in uniform, they pay quite a price for us, 
but their families, just worrying about what is going to happen today, 
what is going to happen tomorrow. You just really have to admire the 
families. And we need to say a special thank you to them. Because, you 
know, the guys that are over there, they are working hard all of the 
time. In fact, one of the things they said was we do not mind working 
long days and long hours because it helps the time go faster.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. There is not much else to do. But absolutely, you know, 
the families pay a tremendous price with the amount of time that their 
husbands or wives or sons or daughters are spending in Iraq, knowing 
that the conditions are tough, the environment continues to be 
dangerous. And so there are sacrifices that continue to be made by all 
of these families, by the whole military family.
  You know, we were talking a little bit about comparing some of the 
stuff that we do in the United States. One of the things that is 
different about the United States and sometimes moves us a little bit 
away from the military, but when you go on one of these trips, what 
really does connect you back to the military is being there with the 
troops.
  But, you know, the military folks are so few in number to who we are 
as a Nation. In Israel, since there is compulsory service, and I am not 
promoting compulsory service, but in Israel where everyone is required 
to serve in the military, everyone knows and understands the risks that 
the soldiers, military people have to take.
  That is why I think it is good for, you know, that you have reminded 
us of, you know, that sacrifice, because too often we are too far away 
and removed. And it is ``somebody over there''. We have got to 
remember, it is not somebody over there. It is a neighbor, it is 
somebody from our community. They love this country.
  They have got a family. They go to church. They share the values that 
we have. And they have just chosen a different career. You know, we 
have got folks who have chosen business, finance, banking, marketing, 
whatever. These guys have chosen a career in the military.
  It is a unique career. It is a special service that they provide to 
this country.

                              {time}  2000

  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I am going to close up here. If you have any closing 
thoughts, Chairman Hoekstra, go ahead. Then I am going to close up and 
yield it back here in just a few minutes.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. No, I appreciate you doing the Special Order. I 
appreciate you yielding me the time and the opportunity. The one thing 
we did not talk about was Serbia, that on the way back we stopped in 
Serbia, so that we had an opportunity to see a part of Iraq that had 
been divided, that was coming out of a very tough time and after 14 
years was prospering.
  We then stopped overnight in Serbia, met with the three Presidents in 
Serbia at Sarajevo; and, again, there is an evolving success story 
that, 10 years ago, the brutal and the bitter conflict, we still have 
some troops there. There are a lot of Europeans, more European troops 
over there, but, again, they have made significant progress.
  It takes a while to move from the ethnic religious strife to the 
steps forward. What is happening in Kosovo, or Serbia, and the region, 
is that the European Union finally embraced them, they have moved 
forward, Serbia is moving forward, Kurdistan is moving forward.
  What we now also have to have is the modern Islamic or moderate 
states in the Middle East. They need to embrace Iraq. They need to 
invest. They need to have their people there, their businesses there, 
to show that they stand with this new democratically elected government 
and that they are invested in the success of a new Iraq, in what the 
people of Iraq are.
  It is possible. It is not easy, but there are two examples of how 
this can work. It was very painful, but by sticking to it and moving 
through it, you can get to where you want to be.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to mention, and I 
am glad you did bring up the fact that we stopped in Bosnia 
Herzegovina.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I forget where I go sometimes.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Sarajevo. I was in Sarajevo 10 years ago, and at that 
time the city was essentially in, the center city, essentially rubble. 
Many buildings had large pockmarks. Some of them are still there. Many, 
though, have been fixed; and it now is a vibrant city.
  If I had predicted 10 years ago that we would see the life in the 
city that we saw, a lot of people said it cannot happen.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. But you can walk down, what is it called, Sniper Alley?
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Yes, Sniper Alley.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. That we could walk down Sniper Alley Sunday night, and 
that we could walk through the streets of Sarajevo in Bosnia, and that 
we could walk through the streets of Bosnia on Monday morning, and, you 
know, that it was a vibrant city, people sitting at the cafes, drinking 
coffee and getting their country moving forward. Again, problems, high 
unemployment rate, slow economic development, but secure.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I think we should share the story that the general 
told us about the man who worked at the military facility there. Every 
day, when he would come to work, he would stop, and this is a Bosnian 
individual, he would stop and salute the American flag.
  Then he would say a prayer. When he would leave work that night, he 
would again salute the American flag. They had a special ceremony that 
finally, the general said, we need to do something for that guy. So 
they presented him with a U.S. flag, one of these little wood cases 
that we have around here.
  When they presented it, he literally, with tears running down his 
cheeks, he said, I thank God every day for America and what America did 
to bring peace to this city, because it was America that saved us from 
that war.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is why they are nervous about us pulling our final 
troops out, because we are the ones that have earned their trust, and 
they still look to you, and I both hope and pray for the day where the 
same type of result, as we see in Kosovo, as we see in Bosnia, that we 
can see that same kind of result in the rest of Iraq.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think there are reasons to 
be optimistic. But I want to close with this quote. I started with this 
quote tonight:
  ``Do not try to do too much with your own hands . . . It is their 
war, and you are to help them, not win it for them.'' That quote is 
from T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia.
  In some respects, I think it is prophetic. We can only do so much in 
Iraq. We are doing our share. Our military is doing a marvelous job. 
The next step, Mr. Chairman, is up to the Iraqis.

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