[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15579-15584]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        RECENT EVENTS IN ISRAEL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. King) is recognized for half the time remaining until midnight.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address 
you, and in doing so, Mr. Speaker, the floor of the United States House 
of Representatives.
  I come to the floor tonight to address the subject matter that has 
had the world sitting on the edge of its seat and somewhat transfixed 
for the last about 13 days, those days that the military actions began 
in Israel. I take us back and lay some of the groundwork on that and 
perhaps lay some of the framework of the history that has brought us to 
this point and as fellows travelers in the world.
  Israel was established as a Nation in 1948. The many thousands and 
thousands of refugees from the Second World War, those that survived 
the Holocaust, the Shoah, from the Nazi attack and the Nazi hatred, the 
Nazi anti-Semitism, the Nazi bigotry and the deep, seems to be abiding, 
anti-Semitism that I do not understand that some in the Western 
European culture, in fact, that anti-Semitism that seems to be growing 
from those roots yet today, not just the Muslims that have migrated 
into Western Europe, but also the native Western Europeans do not stand 
up and defend Israel in the fashion that I believe they should because 
we have a lot in common with Israel.
  They are a free country. They are a democratic country, and aside 
from Iraq, they are still the only place in that hemisphere, let me say 
the only place in the Middle East, where an Arab can go to get a fair 
trial is in Israel.
  Israel is a Nation established in 1948, approval by the United 
Nations, but a Nation that was carved out in a fight for freedom. It 
was a glorious fight, and it was one that was brought from the theme 
never again, never, never again will they allow an annihilation, a 
genocide to take their people.

[[Page 15580]]

  That is why we stand with them today, Mr. Speaker. We stand with the 
Israelis because they stand for freedom, and because they elect their 
leaders and they come together in the Knesset, and they have a prime 
minister and they choose their national destiny.
  But they have enemies that surround them, enemies all around them, 
and that was proven in 1967, the 6 Days War, and this has helped frame, 
for me, the history of Israel and their defiant, brave, courageous 
leadership that has kept them sovereign and kept them free.

                              {time}  2250

  But that happened to be the year I graduated from high school, and 
that was the year, as things happened, that was burned into my memory.
  And not that long after that, in 1973, the second war, second great 
war that Israel had after their independence, where once again they 
prevailed over their enemies and they established their boundaries and 
justly earned territory. It was the effort of their enemies around 
them, the Arab nations that surrounded them, to drive the Israelis into 
the sea, to annihilate Israel, and to wipe Israel from the face of the 
Earth.
  In fact, they still deny the reality of the existence of a sovereign 
and free country called Israel. It doesn't show up on the maps in many 
of the Arab nations. They will not acknowledge that since 1948, that 
would be 58 years, they still don't acknowledge that Israel is a 
sovereign nation.
  In fact, if you look at the United Nations, resolution after 
resolution, Mr. Speaker, comes to the United Nations, and that Third 
World-class enemy debate society lines up invariably with resolutions 
against Israel. They aren't rooted in justice, Mr. Speaker. They are 
rooted in bigotry and hatred and anti-Semitism.
  There is something the Arabs cannot explain to me when I ask them the 
question, Why do your people hate Israel so much? It is rooted deeper 
in history than I have been able to unravel, but I know it exists 
today.
  I had a high school student in my office not that long ago from Oman, 
and I asked him if he believed Israel had a right to exist; and his 
answer was, no, I don't believe they do. I said, what would you do with 
the Israelis? And he said, rather flippantly, send them to Oregon. I 
said, well, if that doesn't work, to send them to Oregon, what would 
your next alternative be? He said, I don't care what happens. They have 
no reason to be there; they have no right to exist as a nation.
  It is one little piece of real estate on the entire Earth. Isn't 
there one place in all that continent, in all of the Middle East, in 
all of Africa where they can live in peace and safety without their 
enemies seeking to annihilate them? Such has not been the case, Mr. 
Speaker. Yet the Israelis have bent over backwards and have tried time 
after time after time, with peace accord after peace accord, to try to 
find a way to come to peace with their neighbors.
  I think sometimes they try so hard that they do some things that 
don't appear to be something that is predictable and predictably 
positive. For example, the efforts of land for peace, as we watched 
this unfold and we saw Israel give up a piece of real estate here and a 
small piece of real estate there, but also looked to see where they 
needed to defend themselves.
  And one of those places would be the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights 
sits up above the Jordan River Valley, up near Lebanon. I have been up 
there in the Golan Heights. They were occupied by Syria. The Syrians 
put gun emplacements up there. The Jordan River Valley is flat and 
fertile and beautiful, and the Syrians would sit up on those heights 
and they would take target practice against the Israeli farmers that 
were out in the field.
  It is something to sit in those gun emplacements now and look down 
over that valley and see what the Syrians were looking at as they were 
picking off Israeli farmers who were trying to feed the people in their 
country. It is something to meet a widow whose husband was killed there 
as he went out into the field to try to get the farmers off the field 
and get them to safety as the Syrians, just for no reason, seemed to 
open up fire occasionally and begin to shoot at Israelis that were 
farming in the fields.
  It is something to see what it is like for a nation that is 
surrounded by enemies, and sometimes strategically have a disadvantage 
because of elevation, because of certain tactical situations that they 
have, and to see a nation try so hard to come to peace with their 
neighbors.
  It is something to watch the Israelis pull out of the Gaza Strip and 
cede that piece of ground to the Palestinians. What is also something 
to watch is when there is a free election in Palestine, the area I 
guess that is referred to as Palestine, it is mostly the West Bank in 
Gaza, it is something to watch that and see Hamas come to power and 
take over and rule in the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and in 
Gaza. You wonder what kind of people would elect terrorists to rule 
them.
  Well, the kind of people that have been teaching their young people 
for generations now to hate Israelis, hate Israelis, hate Israelis, for 
reasons I don't understand, and they don't need to understand, 
apparently.
  But they elect terrorists to run their government, and then, when 
they have land for peace and Gaza is handed over to the Palestinian 
Authority, under the control of Hamas, we have Prime Minister Olmert 
come to this very Chamber, Mr. Speaker, not that long ago, and in his 
speech talk to us about his idea to bring 50 to 100 Jewish settlements 
out of the West Bank and move them up close to the fence, 
appropriately, and sometimes for protection it needs to be a wall; or 
bring some of them inside the fence and into Jerusalem so that the 
Jewish settlers from these 50 to 100 settlements can be protected from 
being annihilated by their neighbors because of their neighbors' 
hatred, bigotry, and anti-Semitism.
  It is something to watch that, and see how hard a nation has tried to 
make peace with the people among them who are not like them. It is 
something to be there and see that 20 percent of the Israeli population 
is Arab; something to know that the Arabs in Israel go to the polls and 
they vote, just like the Jews do. They can serve in the Knesset, and 
they do, roughly in proportion to their population as a whole. They can 
serve in the supreme court. And in fact, Ariel Sharon, when he was 
active prime minister, appointed an Arab to the Israeli supreme court, 
full rights of property ownership, rights of citizenship, and rights to 
vote.
  And some will argue that, well, there is bigotry there. But still we 
are not watching Jews killing Palestinians because they are 
Palestinians. We are watching Israelis defending themselves from 
terrorists attacks.
  So they said, we will give you Gaza; give us peace. Land for you, 
peace for each of us, an idea that I can't find has a precedent of ever 
having worked in history, but, nonetheless, Mr. Speaker, that was the 
effort. So the Gaza Strip went over to Hamas and the Palestinians. And 
the effort in the West Bank hadn't quite taken shape down the vision of 
Prime Minister Olmert yet as to moving the Jewish settlements out of 
the West Bank. Taking the Jews out of Judea, Mr. Speaker, a place where 
Jews have lived since antiquity, in an effort for peace. Thousands of 
years of history traded off in an effort for land for peace.
  We know what the answer is. And for 18 years the Israeli Army had to 
occupy Lebanon in order to make sure that there weren't going to be 
attacks coming from there down on to Israel from the north. Yet, after 
all those years, in the year 2000 they finally deployed out of Lebanon, 
and in that interim, this 6-year period of time, even though we had 
United Nations Resolution 1559 that said that Hezbollah had to disarm 
and they had to step back out of their involvement in Lebanon, a very 
clear resolution by the United Nations and one that was never enforced, 
it is typical if you let the United Nations enforce something it is 
never enforced, so for 6 years Hezbollah, the terrorist organization, 
brought in armament into southern Lebanon.

[[Page 15581]]

  They dug bunkers and poured concrete and brought in rockets, and they 
brought in missiles, and they got more heavily armed and they got 
better trained. There are 5,000 Hezbollah troops, at least, in Lebanon, 
in uniform, paid every month, funded out of Iran, with military 
supplies out of Iran, smuggled through Syria, either over the air or 
through seaports, through Syria and down into Lebanon. Fully armed, 
fully protected, fully trained, fully funded. Every month paychecks 
coming from Iran into the hands of Hezbollah troops, uniformed and 
ready to take on the Israelis in southern Lebanon. For what purpose?
  And their agreement, Mr. Speaker, was that they would avoid a 
conflict with Israel because so much of Lebanon had been destroyed in 
the previous conflicts. And as the reconstruction of Lebanon began, 
they couldn't afford to have another war. They couldn't afford to have 
their buildings, their airports, their bridges, and their highways 
demolished in the bombardment that would come if there was another war. 
So the peace between the Lebanese and Hezbollah was kind of a peace 
tied together on this implicit promise, this tension that Hezbollah 
would not bring a war on Lebanon.
  And here we sat with a static position in the north, with Hezbollah 
with 12,000 or more rockets and perhaps 100 or more long-range missiles 
in their possession, with Iranians in their midst, trained and ready to 
go, sitting there in this static position looking across at Israel 
while Hamas organized in Gaza in the south and began to be prepared. We 
knew it was going to happen, that they were going to attack Israel. And 
so they began to send sporadic rockets out of Gaza, homemade rockets, 
some of them, over into Israel. Many of them landed in benign places; 
some of them did not.

                              {time}  2300

  But as this went on, this static situation was here, Iran is fueling 
and funding the Hezbollah in the north and we believe also, to a lesser 
degree, Hamas in the south. Then as the world turned their pressure on 
Iran, as Iran moved forward towards developing nuclear capability, the 
capability to produce nuclear weaponry, nuclear bombs, and the means to 
deliver it, and that means missiles that they can put their warheads 
on, and if that missile can reach from Iran to Tel Aviv, that will be 
the first target. But they would not be satisfied just to have missiles 
that would reach to Tel Aviv, but they needed to have missiles that 
would reach to Europe and then perhaps one day across to the United 
States. If they can do that, if they have a nuclear capability, Mr. 
Speaker, then they can threaten the rest of the world. And the radical 
regime led by Ahmadinejad see themselves as martyr fighters for a 
nation. They think that the 12th Imam will arrive if they just kill 
enough people who are non-Muslims, nonbelievers, infidels. That means 
everyone else, to keep it short. But as the world pressure turned up on 
Iran to stop their efforts to develop nuclear capability, and that 
happened through the House of Representatives as well, Mr. Speaker, in 
the discussions that I had with representatives of the Western European 
nations regarding this and many of the rest of us in this Congress had 
those conversations as well, it became clear to me that I didn't see 
the will to enforce anything in the part of the Western European 
nations. But there are a couple of nations that do have the will, a 
couple of nations that will not tolerate, Mr. Speaker, a nuclear armed 
delivery capable Iran, and that would be Israel and the United States. 
Israel because they are the first bulls eye with the crosshairs on them 
all the time. The United States because we have a responsibility to the 
rest of the world, being the world's only super power, and we promote 
freedom and we protect freedom where it exists because we know that we 
never go to war against another free people. Free people find ways of 
resolving their differences among other free people.
  The stage was set, and as the pressure from the world and the United 
Nations and the need to finally demand that Iran give up their effort 
to build a nuclear weaponry and missiles to deliver it, as that 
developed, the pressure got high enough where it became clear that the 
rest of the world was going to find some ways to put some sanctions on 
Iran. And the path of this likely would have been to shut off some of 
their funding, limit or prohibit the travel of their leaders, find a 
way to set up sanctions first and perhaps a blockade next, the world's 
stopping doing business with Iran. And we know that there are countries 
that have conflicting interests there, countries that would not stand 
with us, and Russia and China likely could have been a couple, although 
it is surely in their interest to avoid nuclear capability in that part 
of the world. Russia is a lot closer to Iran than the United States is. 
So we have some cooperation there but not the level that we would like 
to see.
  But Iran could see the pressure coming. And just as things were 
coming to a head in the United Nations, just as the United Nations was 
prepared to act, coincidentally, some will say, but most of the world 
will see clearly through the ruse when the attacks from Hamas came out 
of Gaza and the attacks from Hezbollah came out of Lebanon, on to 
Israel from the south and from the north almost simultaneously. Rocket 
attacks from both places. Military incursions up, one through a tunnel 
up into Israel where they took on Israel IDF troops and captured 
soldiers, almost simultaneously. And when that happened, when the 
Israelis did what they had to do, the idea of counterattack, they had 
to go into Gaza, go in and engage, identify some of the enemy, and then 
pull back out and disengage. They have been doing that for some days 
now, Mr. Speaker. And they will have to demonstrate to Hamas down in 
Gaza that they will be back there with the full presence in Gaza unless 
the violence stops and unless the prisoners are returned. And they 
cannot be negotiating land for peace this time. In fact, it ought to be 
the other way around. It can be we will take this land back, it was 
ours, you didn't follow through on your part of this bargain.
  As I watch what is unfolding here, Mr. Speaker, the coordinated 
attacks on the part of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both 
were designed to take the pressure off of Iran. Both were designed to 
change the subject in the world, to take the pressure off so that Iran 
would not have to be dealing with the pressure of the United Nations, 
the pressure that was coming from United States, from Germany, from 
France, from Great Britain.
  That is the effort that we need to continue. We need to keep turning 
the pressure up on Iran. They cannot be allowed to believe that we do 
not have the will to follow forward with this and shut off their 
nuclear capability at some point. In fact, Mr. Speaker, that message 
needs to be sent more clearly now than ever before. Coordinated 
attacks, both funded, I believe, by Iran.
  In fact, the leader of Hamas, Mr. Kaled Meshal, I am going to check 
this name to make sure I get this right. Kaled Meshal, the overall 
leader of Hamas, who generally is in Damascus, did go to Tehran, by the 
information I have. The information I have, and it is not supported 
fully yet, but it indicates that he was handed $50 million in cash 
shortly before Hamas attacked Israel out of the Gaza Strip in the 
south. Now, if that happened with Hamas, an organization that is not 
naturally aligned with Iran because Hamas is Sunni and Iran Shia, but 
if that happened, it is part of this theory that we always know: ``The 
enemy of my enemy is my friend.'' So as they have a common enemy, being 
Israel, they can get together, and with the proper transfer of cash, 
Hamas could take this minor risk and do these excursions and then 
attack Israel from the south.
  Hezbollah had a lot higher risk, and I do not know what might have 
happened with regard to funding there, but I know this, that Iran has 
been funding them all along. So they surely had a lot stronger tie and 
Teheran is a spiritual center for Hezbollah, where they send troops in 
there to be trained. They bring their philosophy down to Lebanon. They 
have been a surrogate of Iran for a long time. But the price

[[Page 15582]]

for Hezbollah was a lot higher because their implicit agreement, the 
kind of unspoken agreement, with Lebanon was: Do not bring war on us. 
We do not want to see the things we built destroyed. We do not want to 
lose our peace here. We have a fledgling democracy, even though 20 
percent of that fledgling democracy are elected Hezbollah leaders 
within that organization. So Hezbollah took the risk and attacked 
Israel and started firing rockets, sometimes by the hundreds. And as 
this has unfolded, it has become clear that this is a gambit that has 
been coordinated, orchestrated, and operated by Iran. And Syria is 
complicit in this. And that is why they have been in the crosshairs of 
Israel as well.
  So the pressure is on right there in the center of the bulls eye, 
where much of the world's conflict has been. And land has never been 
traded for peace in a successful fashion. Now, we need to look at a way 
that we can resolve this issue once and for all. And I am not sure we 
can get there, Mr. Speaker. But I would submit this, that Israel is the 
center of the bulls eye. The pressure that comes on Israel is coming 
from the Arab nations, some to a greater and some to a lesser degree. 
But a lot of them have signed up in this. Many of them launched the 
attacks in 1967 and in 1973. They are still on the suspect list. They 
still have people in those countries at least, even if it is not an 
official policy of their nation, to send money, send support, send 
military troops, send terrorists in to put pressure on Israel. Israel 
is the center of this bulls eye. And the direct pressure has come now 
from Hamas out of Gaza and Hezbollah out of Lebanon to do a dual attack 
on Israel and put them in a two-front war in the north and the south, 
funded by Iran, cooperated with and coordinated and logistically 
passing a lot of materials through Syria.
  Now, we also know that the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia, some of them are 
supportive of this, although their regime there appears to be more 
inclined to want to support peace and maintain a level of stability. 
But that surrounding of Israel is something that one needs to look at 
like a bulls eye. Israel's being the dead center red part of the bulls 
eye, and as the surrounding countries around that bulls eye move out, I 
would submit this, Mr. Speaker: The problem of the violence and the 
attacks on Israel cannot be resolved by simply declaring that there be 
a ceasefire in Gaza, that there be a ceasefire in Lebanon. It cannot be 
solved by negotiating with Hamas or Hezbollah.

                              {time}  2310

  That is because their mission statements don't coincide with anything 
that we believe in. They don't coincide with freedom. They don't allow 
Israel to exist. They won't acknowledge Israel's right to exist.
  They will continue to preach hatred, they will continue to act on 
hatred, they will continue to seek genocide against the Israeli people. 
They will continue to drive them into the sea, Mr. Speaker. That is 
their effort.
  People that are that fanatical without a rational goal in mind, you 
can put them in power and elect them to government, like they have been 
by the Palestinian people, the Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza, and the 
20 percent of the fledgling Lebanese democracy that has elected 
Hezbollah. If they were handed over the reins of power, Mr. Speaker, I 
would submit that it would be a boring life for someone who has been a 
military terrorist and all the glory and intensity that comes with that 
and say, okay, now it is your job to be the minister of education, or 
the minister of the interior, or the minister of transportation, or 
maybe the secretary of state.
  They are not cut out for that. That is not part of their mission. 
They don't envision themselves as one day being a legitimate leader 
with a legitimate government on the world stage sitting at the United 
Nations, or negotiating at the roundtable in Brussels, or visiting the 
White House in the United States, or speaking on the floor of this 
Congress here at the United States Congress, Mr. Speaker. They don't 
envision that at all. They envision themselves being modern day 
warlords, taking terror to people who are not like them and seeking 
their path to salvation, which their path would be that if they can 
kill enough people that are not like them, then they go to their 
eternal reward.
  Mr. Speaker, I said about enough about the eternal reward of a 
religion that is so steeped in that kind of hatred, but I would submit 
this: This Nation, this United States of America, must stand with 
Israel. We must make it clear that they dare not blink, and we will not 
blink. We will stand with them with everything necessary to preserve 
and protect them from being annihilated by the hatred that surrounds 
them, and for a number of good reasons. They are the vanguard for 
freedom in the Middle East, Mr. Speaker. They stand for freedom. They 
treat everyone in their country on an equal standing with the right to 
vote, own property, serve in the Knesset, serve on the supreme court. 
Full standing for everyone. They are a vision for what the future of 
the Middle East can be, yet a lot of the rest of the world doesn't 
stand with them the way they need to.
  Another reason we need to stand with Israel is they stand up for 
themselves. We have supported them with foreign ops money and they have 
invested it in military equipment, supplies and training, and they are 
one of the best trained, most ready militaries in the world. But they 
know they don't have room for error, Mr. Speaker.
  A small error on the part of the Israelis and in 24 to 48 hours they 
could be driven into the sea. It tends to concentrate the mind at that 
moment in history, and they have always risen to the occasion, but they 
know they can't be complacent.
  And we can't be complacent, Mr. Speaker. We need to be following 
through on the Bush doctrine. We need to be promoting freedom 
throughout the Middle East, and taking a look at Afghanistan as a 
nation now with 25 million free people, people that have gone to the 
polls and voted on that place in the planet for the first time in the 
history of the world there in Afghanistan. Yes, they have their 
troubles over there, but they are pulling together and they are 
fighting off the kind of resistance that seems to want to form and then 
disappear again.
  But Afghanistan is on track, and I don't think anybody argues that we 
did the right thing going into Afghanistan, unless things go badly. 
Then I hear the argument, well, we should have done something 
differently. But it is never a Democrat that gets criticized for any 
decisions, I would point out, Mr. Speaker.
  Then in Iraq, 25 million people, a more difficult proposition. But we 
have been in Iraq now since March of 2003. It is a little over 3 years. 
In that period of time, there have been three nationwide, free 
elections. They have established a written constitution and ratified 
the constitution. They have established a government. They now have a 
prime minister.
  They had difficulty after the election to get to that point where 
they could agree on a cabinet and form a government, but they did that. 
When they formed the government, it has been now about 2 months since 
they have had a minister of defense and a minister of the interior. And 
now we have a prime minister that has a leadership capability, and he 
is stepping forward and he is enforcing security and safety with a 
military arm that he has control of in Iraq. That part is moving 
forward.
  But it has been a long, difficult row to hoe; a long, hard slog, to 
quote Secretary Rumsfeld. But a lot the reason for that, Mr. Speaker, 
has been the involvement on the part of Syria and to a far greater 
degree the involvement on the part of Iran injecting themselves into 
the operations in Iraq.
  Iran does not have an interest in the safety and security of Iraq. 
They have an interest in the instability in Iraq. So they have been 
sending people and money and munitions into Iraq in an effort to try to 
destabilize the whole nation, if they can.
  As the civilian violence has gone up the last 2 to 3 months in Iraq, 
it has

[[Page 15583]]

gotten more and more dangerous in that country, and we often see 
casualty numbers that go 50 a day or even higher on the part of 
civilians bombed.
  I will submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that had we been able to shut Iran 
out of this conflict, had we been able to shut Syria out of this 
conflict, if it would have stayed just Iraq and the coalition forces 
that were there, this conflict would have been over perhaps a year-and-
a-half ago. Maybe even longer ago.
  The casualties that American forces, coalition forces and Iraqi 
civilians have suffered, many of them have been casualties fomented by 
a hostile neighbor, Iran.
  I will remind you, Mr. Speaker, of the President's statement. The 
President's statement is if you are a terrorist, if you harbor 
terrorists, if you fund terrorists, if you support terrorists, you are 
a terrorist. That means you are our enemy and we are coming after you.
  But Iran has been harboring terrorists, has been funding terrorists, 
has been supporting terrorists. Although that is going on, and I am 
talking in those references about terrorists in Iraq, Mr. Speaker, but 
they have also been training, harboring, funding terrorists, Hezbollah, 
in south Lebanon and supplying them with rockets and supplying them 
with a lesser number of missiles, and in fact supplying them with 
troops of their own that have been in Lebanon helping to fire a Cruise-
type missile that hit an Israeli ship early on in this operation about 
perhaps 11 days or so ago.
  That is a terrorist country. That is part of the axis of evil. That 
is a nation that threatens the world with a current or future 
capability to produce nuclear weapons and to have a means to deliver 
those nuclear weapons.
  Iran had advisers on location in North Korea when North Korea decided 
to celebrate our 4th of July by setting off a series of missiles that 
went over the Sea of Japan. They were fizzled missiles mostly, Mr. 
Speaker, but missiles nonetheless.
  With Iranian observers there in North Korea, presumably this was part 
of the purchasing agents for Iran that were there while they put on a 
little show of force in North Korea, perhaps for the idea they would be 
selling those missiles to the Iranians. And if North Korea has a 
nuclear capability, and most of us believe they do, how do we know they 
have not already sold a nuclear weapon to Iran? How do we know that 
those transactions have not taken place?
  In fact, Kadafi in Libya made the statement the other day, and I 
think it was just yesterday, that he was a lot further along on his 
nuclear capability than anyone knew that he was.
  This can't happen, Mr. Speaker. If a nuclear weapon had been sold to 
the Iranians, has been sold at this point, and if they have a missile 
that will deliver it, then this regime that is in Iran today is far 
more dangerous than we are treating it.
  I would submit to this body, Mr. Speaker, that we need to look at 
this thing from a broader perspective. Generally when violence breaks 
out in a war, we always want to scramble and do shuttle diplomacy and 
get our Secretary of State there and say, hold it, shut it down, shut 
off the firing, kind of like we are breaking up a bar fight.
  Well, this isn't like that under these circumstances, Mr. Speaker, 
because if the firing stops now, there are still many Hezbollah and 
many rockets in southern Lebanon with many places to hide them. And 
this is a people that will hide rockets inside a house that has women 
and children in it, pull one outside the house, set it up, fire it into 
Israel and run back inside again, or leave the premises, so when the 
counter-assault comes, there are civilian casualties that occur.
  If you hide rockets and missiles and troops in residential areas and 
you house them in people's houses, then you have to expect there isn't 
a way to avoid civilian collateral damage. It is bound to happen.
  But this is a hateful people with a mission in mind to annihilate 
Israel. If that happens, if that should happen, shame on us for not 
acting soon enough. And I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that if someone has 
to take out this nuclear capability of Iran, it would be better for us 
to do it than it would be for Israel.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, the odds of avoiding it are pretty slim. With 
this rabid regime that is there in Iran, it almost comes down to this 
question, the question being are we willing to live with a nuclear Iran 
or are we willing to take the steps necessary to eliminate their 
nuclear capability? I am for diplomacy. I am for turning up the 
diplomacy. I am for turning up the sanctions. I am for shutting down 
commerce with Iran. I am for blockading them, if we can go that far. 
Every step from A to Z, I will follow all of them.

                              {time}  2320

  Mr. Speaker, I say quickly, because if we do not, then what we will 
see is the day that it becomes too late. And the day that it could 
become too late could be the day that the mushroom cloud rises over Tel 
Aviv, or the day that they aim their missile at us and say, well, you 
did not know it, but now we have the capability to reach the east coast 
of the United States.
  That is almost an inevitability if we do not stop them at some point. 
They have a religious fanaticism that drives them. They do not act like 
a rational State. They cannot be deterred by mutually-assured 
destruction, because their own destruction, they believe sends them to 
their own salvation.
  But they are there to create violence, to attack people who are not 
like them, not just to attack western civilization, but all other 
civilization, Mr. Speaker.
  We need to look at this at how we are going to find peace in that 
part of the world. I submit it has got to come from without first, and 
merge down to the bulls-eye that is Israel. If we try to do it any 
other way, we are simply putting a band-aid on a bleeding wound.
  So Hezbollah has got to be annihilated out of Lebanon, and Hamas has 
got to be controlled in Gaza. But meanwhile, Iran has got to be taken 
out of this picture so they are not funding training and fomenting war 
in places like Iraq and in Israel.
  But they are doing so in both places right now and they are getting 
away with it, Mr. Speaker. We have to put a stop to that. We have to 
understand our enemy before we can do that.
  This Nation needs to have the will to do what we need to do. During 
this process of sanctions and perhaps a blockade and shutting off the 
economic capability of Iran to continue to conduct war, and to develop 
nuclear, while this is going on, I ask our President to prepare this 
country for the job that may be ahead of us, and it may well be 
something that can save millions of lives.
  But it would be disastrous to wake up in the morning some morning and 
find out that we waited too long, that a mushroom cloud went up over 
Tel Aviv, and perhaps there was a missile on its way to western Europe, 
or a missile on its way to the east cost of the United States, and 
perhaps millions of people could die in this process.
  This does not include smuggling those kind of weapons of mass 
destruction across the borders into the United States, which are still 
far too porous. There comes a time to act, Mr. Speaker. I am not 
submitting that time is right now.
  But I am submitting that we need to establish a time frame and be 
ready. We need to look at the countries out there in the world, and 
determine what are their motives, what can we count on them doing, what 
have they told us they are going to do, and they have told us they are 
here to annihilate us. They repeat that over and over again.
  There are people in Iran that remember the times that they lived in a 
modern world. They hunger for that modern world again. They are 
repressed by the regime that they have. They had leaders that came 
forward as candidates that wanted to run for office in the recent 
elections that they had.
  But the mullahs shut them down, peeled them out, put some of them in 
jail and prohibited the candidates of the people of Iran from running 
for office so that they could choose their own leaders.
  The people in Iran deserve freedom. We need to hear from the people 
of

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Iran. We need to hear what they have to say about how hungry they are 
for freedom. But they had a constitution that was the established in 
1906. It was established August 5, 1906 in Iran. And the Constitution 
speaks, for the most part, the same way our constitution speaks, for 
freedom.
  Freedom for the Iranian people. The 100-year anniversary comes up on 
August 5, 2006. The century celebration for the constitution of Iran. 
Let that be an inspiration to the people in Iran.

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