[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17207-17213]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2215
                           NATIONAL SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Price of Georgia). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) 
is recognized for half the remaining time before midnight.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the privilege 
and honor to address you here on the floor of the United States 
Congress. I am pleased to be back in Washington, D.C., where we can 
join together and work together to resolve the issues that are in front 
of us between now and the election and after the election.
  As I awaited this opportunity to address you, Mr. Speaker, and I 
listened to the remarks made by my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle, I have to say that it is a bit depressing to listen to that 
litany, but as I look back across these Presidents that have done such 
a fantastic job, I think in terms of who was in charge when we got into 
those wars that were ended when they were in charge, it is the same 
person.
  I don't take a great issue with the way the Second World War was 
conducted by FDR. In fact, I am quite proud of the way Harry Truman had 
enough vision and courage to do what he did to end the Second World 
War. But as I listened through the rest of that, who was in charge when 
the war in Vietnam began, and the first troops were sent over there by 
John F. Kennedy, who was in charge at the Bay of Pigs when air power 
was taken off to protect the lives of the Cuban freedom fighters who 
were caught out in the open and slaughtered in the Bay of Pigs, that 
was John F. Kennedy who decided not to provide the air cover that he 
had guaranteed them. They went in there thinking they had air cover, 
they didn't have air cover, and Castro has been in power ever since 
down there in Cuba.
  I would go further. Not only did Kennedy send the first troops into 
Vietnam, but Johnson accelerated the operations that were there. As I 
listened along throughout some of these Presidential candidates, and I 
am just simply giving the balance on the other side, Mr. Speaker. I 
didn't come here to make a case to denigrate any of our proud 
Presidents that we have, just to put some balance in this perspective 
that we have here and hopefully I can get that done and then move on to 
some other subjects that I came here to talk about.
  But the Johnson administration got to the point where Lyndon Johnson 
would not run for a second term of office. Those of us that were here 
remember that. He knew he couldn't win. The streets were full of 
demonstrators. Things had melted down in Vietnam to the point and 
melted down in this country to the point that he had lost confidence, 
and he came to the American people and said I will not be a candidate 
for a second term for President.
  So that some characterize as a failed Presidency, and I just point 
this out to bring some balance to the reality of it all.
  I also recall what happened in the aftermath of the issue that nobody 
is proud of, and that is the Watergate break-in. That put political 
power in the hands of the people on the other side of the aisle. And 
what was the first thing that they did with it? They passed legislation 
that said there won't be a dollar spent in Vietnam helping anybody 
defend anybody from the North Vietnamese. There won't be a dollar spent 
for a meal or a bullet or a tank or a gallon of fuel for air cover to 
protect the people that we pledged to protect.
  And in a matter of a few months, the North Vietnamese stormed through 
South Vietnam. And you wonder why they couldn't defend themselves. They 
didn't have munitions to work with. They didn't have air cover support 
which we had pledged them. And there were hundreds of thousands, in 
fact, millions that died in the aftermath because we made a commitment 
and didn't keep that commitment because of political fighting here in 
Congress. Not because of the lack of the will of the American soldier 
or the lack of the will of the South Vietnamese soldier, for that 
matter, at least during that era.
  And as we move forward throughout history and we bring ourselves up 
to the Clinton era, I just have a little note in my pocket from a 
speech that I gave a couple of nights ago. In fact, it was last night. 
Someone remarked in that meeting that I was at that they knew what the 
meaning of the word ``is'' is. Well, all I have to do is say that, Mr. 
Speaker, and I think it brings back to mind all kinds of images of 
things that went on through the 8 years of the Clinton administration.
  I didn't notice that there were some strong remarks there, but I do 
remember the remarks that were made with regard to Sandy Berger, the 
proud adviser to the Clinton administration, and how he had provided 
for a strong military.
  Mr. Speaker, there is something about the image of Sandy Berger with 
his socks full of secret documents at the National Archives that just 
belies any kind of image of Sandy Berger contributing to a strong 
military. In fact, on his watch, and on the watch of Bill Clinton, we 
saw our military be reduced from 2.4 million military down to about 
1.4, perhaps even 1.3 million in our military. Now, that is not what 
you call contributing to a stronger military. That is reducing the 
military. That is what they called the peace dividend.
  If you remember when the Wall went down on November 9, 1989, most of 
the people in the mainstream media thought that had to do with a family 
reunion between East and West Berlin families. But what it was, when 
that wall went down, the Iron Curtain came crashing down at the same 
time and peace echoed across Europe almost bloodlessly in what I would 
consider to be nearly a historical miracle.
  But in that period of time after a couple of years and that soaked in 
and we got around to the 1992 elections, people in Congress then 
coupled with the President decided, and that would be President 
Clinton, decided we have this great peace dividend. Now the Soviet 
Union is no more. There is no evil empire out there. Of course, they 
wouldn't have called it an evil empire. That was Ronald Reagan that 
defined our enemy there. But the evil empire had fallen apart and been 
separated into its parts. And, of course, it wasn't equal to the sum of 
its parts. Each part was separate. They didn't pull together anymore. 
And the threat from a superpower from without diminished substantially.
  When that happened, the decision was made here, Mr. Speaker, in this 
Congress, to dramatically reduce our military and take the savings and 
spend them on growing government programs. That is what was going on 
during the reign of Sandy Berger. I don't know how he was the guide 
that propped up and beefed up our military.
  There are compliments that we can lay into every administration and 
criticism that we can lay into every administration, but it is pretty 
difficult to lay out a clear perspective that is

[[Page 17208]]

subjective because all of us have a different viewpoint. We have that 
different viewpoint. It has driven us to come here to help serve the 
American people.
  But out of this Congress needs to come a consensus that can help 
direct the American people, Mr. Speaker. It doesn't serve us well to be 
tearing down our effort of our military when they are overseas, when 
their lives are on the line for our safety, for our freedom, to win 
this global battle and this war on terror and provide an opportunity 
for freedom for the Iraqi and the Afghani people.
  And who knows what might be next. Who knows what people might be 
next. Who knows who might be attacked next. But we are on the eve of 
the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001, and I am standing tonight 
on the floor of Congress listening to a lamentation of sadness and 
despair because the resolve to finish this appears to not be there with 
some of my esteemed colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I regret 
that, and it saddens me.
  But I ask: if they say staying the course is not a plan, and I am 
looking for some direction that can resolve this thing more quickly 
myself, Mr. Speaker, but if they say staying the course is not a plan, 
I have to tell you, it is no plan to tear down the effort. You had 
better have a positive message. You better have a way to resolve this 
issue. Or it works against the American people and it works against the 
American soldier to stand on the floor of this Congress and say, This 
is not a plan. We're going to take a new direction. We will fight the 
war wiser than President Bush fights the war. But we're not going to 
tell you how. We're going to keep that classified.
  That would be one of the few things kept classified that had to do 
with military, but that is because there is nothing to uncover. There 
is not an idea. There is not a plan. They don't have a way to fight the 
war smarter than it is being fought now, or they would tell you. They 
would surely tell you between now and the elections in November. But 
that seems to be still a secret.
  So I say to them, gentlemen, what is your plan? Please tell the 
American people what is your plan. How would you resolve the issue in 
Iraq? How would you resolve the issue across the world where about 1.3 
million Muslims have within them, maybe 10 percent that are sympathetic 
to, or actively supporting, al Qaeda? How would you resolve this issue?
  And if as some of the people on the other side of the aisle say, Mr. 
Speaker, and that would include the minority leader, that Iraq was a 
diversion, that it really didn't have anything to do with the global 
war on terror, that the terrorists weren't in Iraq, that they weren't 
operating in there. Saddam Hussein, they claim, was not harboring 
terrorists and he was not fomenting any kind of terror. He was 
essentially a benign dictator that just tortured and murdered, in mass 
fashion, with weapons of mass destruction, his own people. That is the 
argument, Mr. Speaker.
  I would submit this, then: If Iraq was a diversion and didn't have 
anything to do with the global war on terror, why did you vote for 
military operations to go in there? Don't tell me that you were duped 
by the intelligence of the United States, that you were given 
misinformation. That was the intelligence that all the world had, that 
all the world concurred with. This was the intelligence of America and 
the United Nations and Great Britain and Israel, and probably the 
intelligence that Saddam Hussein had as well.
  We made a decision based upon the very best information that was 
available, all of us together. And now you want to say, No, it was a 
diversion. It was a distraction. We should have been somewhere else. 
Where? Well, anywhere else.
  If Iraq could have been taken off the map, and I would challenge you 
on this, as a nation that didn't threaten us and didn't foment terror 
and didn't have weapons of mass destruction, all these things we know 
did happen, they are true, but you want to argue that they are not. If 
you could have taken Iraq off the map and wouldn't have had to worry 
about Iraq, what other countries out there, gentlemen, would you name 
that are nice and safe and we can cozy up to and we can take them out 
of the equation as a nation that might harbor terrorists, breed 
terrorists, foment terror, fund them or sympathize with them or have 
the kind of habitat that breeds them? Who can we take off our list?
  Could it be Syria? I don't think so.
  Iran? No, I don't believe so.
  Even Saudi Arabia? Well, there are a lot of Saudis that were here 5 
years ago in the air, came in to blow up Americans. So I don't think 
so.
  Pakistan? There are thousands of madrassas teaching hatred there. 
Even though Musharaf has been doing a very good balancing job within 
Pakistan and he is making progress there, but we can't turn our back 
and conclude that the Pakistanis are all our friends. A lot of them 
are. They have done a good job of working with us. But there are 
elements from within.
  What about Great Britain, speaking of elements from within? Can we 
take them off the list? It would have been a foolish mistake to do so, 
Mr. Speaker, as we found out just a few weeks ago as a plan was foiled 
to blow up as many as 10 or more airliners across the Atlantic Ocean 
that would have flown out of Great Britain towards the United States. 
That plot was put together and led by, some of them, born citizens of 
the United Kingdom, second generation people, who were taught hatred in 
their home and in their schools that didn't assimilate into the 
society.
  So the argument that Iraq was a diversion just simply does not hold 
up, Mr. Speaker, because you could not have taken Iraq out of that 
equation any more than you could take Syria or Iran out of the equation 
today.
  It is a false and specious argument and the American people know it, 
Mr. Speaker. The more it gets repeated by the other side of the aisle, 
the broader the margins of victory are going to be for the Republicans 
in November, because at least we have a rational process of thinking. 
We are a reasonable people. Even though we disagree, we understand a 
logical and rational argument, and we understand when one is not 
logical and it is not rational. It is not rational to argue that we 
didn't have to worry about Iraq if you can't name a country that we 
don't have to worry about today. You didn't have the vision then, you 
don't have the vision now, and that is where it stands.
  Moving along now, Mr. Speaker, as I listened to the argument that we 
need to go to Brazil to figure out what to do about our energy crisis 
here in the United States of America, I went down to Brazil to take a 
look at that. I wish the gentlemen over there would sit down and have a 
conversation about this or maybe just simply, Mr. Speaker, tune into C-
SPAN and I will fill them in on what one can find out in a place like 
that. You can go to Brazil believing that they have replaced 100 
percent of their gasoline with ethanol that is produced from sugar 
cane. But you can't go to Brazil and come home believing that, because 
it is simply not true. And it is obvious from your first moments within 
the country.
  I can give you some real numbers that put this in perspective. Of all 
of the fuel that is burned on the roads in Brazil, only 15 percent of 
it is ethanol. Only 15 percent out of the 100 percent pie chart, 15 
percent is ethanol, of all the fuel burned on the roads by all the 
vehicles in Brazil. When you take the trucks and the diesel fuel 
vehicles out of there so you are just dealing with the ethanol gas 
market, now the number goes up to 37 percent. Not 100 percent. Even 
when you take the diesel vehicles out of it. That is respectable, 
though, I have to say. But it is only a little bit more than a third of 
what most people think is the reality in Brazil.
  But 37 percent of the gas-burning vehicles that have the option of 
gas and ethanol, 37 percent of the fuel burned is ethanol. Then they 
burn a blend. You can either go in, pull in and buy a 100 percent blend 
of ethanol, or you can buy the blend.
  The blend is actually a 25 percent blend. While I was there, they 
reduced it down to 20 percent because they

[[Page 17209]]

didn't have enough ethanol to fuel their own vehicles. So I don't think 
Brazil has got the answer for us all here. They want $8 billion to 
build the capital to invest in their ethanol production because they 
want to double this production that they have, but they don't have the 
sugar cane to make enough ethanol to even blend their fuel up to 25 
percent.

                              {time}  2230

  I would rather have that capital invested in this country where we 
can build an infrastructure here that is going to produce the ethanol 
that will replace the gasoline from the Middle East.
  So I would simply submit that there is $1 billion worth of private 
capital that is being invested in this construction year in my little 
congressional district to produce renewable fuels, between ethanol, 
biodiesel, and wind, $1 billion in that sliver, that western third of 
Iowa, and we are kicking up our ethanol production. And if you want to 
see how to do it, come out there where we are doing it in America.
  I see my esteemed colleague on the floor this evening, and I am quite 
interested to hear what my friend and the chairman of the Armed 
Services Committee, Duncan Hunter, might have to say, and I would be 
happy to yield to him.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good colleague, Mr. King, 
for yielding.
  And I listened, as you probably did, to some of the Democrat Members 
who were decrying the state of the world and ``woe is me'' and things 
are going terribly, according to them. And as the gentleman took the 
floor, as I watched him take the floor, and started talking about the 
Republican legacy in national security that they were complaining about 
and the Republican legacy of peace through strength, I was reminded 
about coming here in 1980 when a guy named Ronald Reagan was running 
for President. And we just finished with a President who was very, very 
similar to Jimmy Carter, the gentleman who had his tenure in office 
somewhat truncated by Ronald Reagan, and that was Bill Clinton. And I 
thought of the fact that the Democrats entered the Clinton 
administration with 15 Army divisions, combat divisions, and when they 
walked out of the White House and that administration left, they had 
cut the United States Army by about 40 percent. They were down to 10 
divisions, and many of those divisions were undermanned, and then I was 
reminded that they were the same people that complained that we didn't 
have enough people on the ground when we went into Iraq. And then I was 
reminded that, as we are talking about Iraq, and today there is a big 
hue and cry to get rid of Secretary Rumsfeld among the Democrats, in 
the Democrat cloakroom, thankfully, 6,000 miles away that sentiment is 
not shared by the Americans who are reenlisting in the combat zone, in 
places like the Sunni triangle, where the 101st is well over 100 
percent of their expected reenlistment rate. The First Marine Division 
out in the very dangerous Anbar Province is up well over 100 percent of 
their expected reenlistment rate. So the people that serve in combat 
under Don Rumsfeld seem to like him.
  But I was reminded, as I listened to that ``woe is me'' discussion by 
the Democrats, that it is the Republican Party that is the party of 
peace through strength, and the American people rely on us to do that. 
And I think that is one reason they are trying to pull down Secretary 
Don Rumsfeld.
  And I thought it was interesting today, as the President announced 
that Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the attack that drove 
those planes into New York, into Washington, D.C., and into 
Pennsylvania, will soon be coming to a courtroom near us in the United 
States because he was captured and he was interrogated and others were 
interrogated in what the Democrats call inhumane methods, even though 
our lawyers and all of the people who scrutinized the methods of 
interrogation found that they were legal methods of interrogation, 
uncomfortable but legal and not torture, and that that person and 
others who joined him, his team of terrorists who joined him in 
masterminding the 9/11 attacks on America, will be coming to a 
courtroom near us, soon to be prosecuted, truly brought to justice 
because of the leadership of this administration and because of some of 
these methods of interrogation that have been associated with Secretary 
of Defense Don Rumsfeld. And the President laid out today how thousands 
of Americans had their lives spared, how we stopped attacks and we 
stopped plots to attack our country in mid course, including not only 
attacks that would include explosives but also attacks that would 
include things like anthrax, because we had a forward-leaning, tough, 
aggressive posture in this war against terror.
  So as the Democrats sip their lattes and find themselves very 
comfortable in what they describe as a very uncomfortable world, the 
reason they are able to be here having enjoyed almost 5 years after the 
9/11 attack with no further attacks on the United States is partly 
because we had a President with an aggressive, forward-leaning policy 
against terrorism; that he went out and took them on; that he hunted 
them down in places where they didn't think they would ever be found, 
with the leadership of Don Rumsfeld, and we kept them off balance. And 
because of that, because they were kept off balance, because we 
penetrated them, because we were able to get into their cells and we 
were able to discover who was masterminding these plots against the 
United States, we were able to keep our people safe.
  And I am further reminded that when Don Rumsfeld's military, our 
military, led by General Tommy Franks, was driving that iron spearhead 
up toward Baghdad, you already had the Democrats complaining that there 
were not enough troops and that he would get bogged down. And as you 
saw them on talk shows, the talk shows in which Democrats were 
complaining that he would get bogged down were interrupted by news 
announcements that Tommy Franks had taken yet other stronghold of 
Saddam Hussein. And they would seem to be almost disappointed rather 
than joyous when they would hear that American troops had, in fact, 
mowed down another line of defense by Saddam Hussein; so they stopped 
criticizing for a while. Then after we took Baghdad, the criticism 
started again. And this time the criticism was what I called the ``both 
ways criticism.'' In the same discussion, a Democrat leader would say 
we need to have more troops on the ground and in the next sentence he 
would say we want to have an Iraqi face on the security apparatus. 
Well, how do you have an Iraqi face on a security apparatus if you 
stuff enough troops into that country to have a GI on every corner? The 
facts are you cannot have it both ways.
  And then the other criticism was, we should have kept the Iraqi 
military intact.
  The Iraqi military had over 10,000 Sunni generals. What do you do 
with 10,000 Sunni generals? You don't do anything. And that is what the 
army would have done to secure Iraq: nothing. The idea of having that 
army where corruption was the order of the day, where you had people 
who were simply following their own political agenda and making their 
own way and making their own profits and the idea that we would 
maintain that army as the new safeguard or security force in Iraq to 
protect this fledgling, newly elected, democratically elected 
government coming up makes no sense at all. The smartest thing we ever 
did was starting with scratch with that military and teaching the new 
army the chain of command; teaching them respect both up and down the 
chain of command; teaching them to take responsibility; teaching them 
to have a thing called NCOs, noncommissioned officers; teaching them to 
be decent to people; teaching them not to be corrupt. And that is why 
today the best force that we have in Iraq is not the police force, is 
not the security force. It is the military. And even people who have 
criticized this administration in the way they conducted the war concur 
that there is a strong core in this Iraqi army. That is because we 
built it from

[[Page 17210]]

scratch, and we didn't start with 15,000 Sunni generals.
  Now, the last thing, and I have mentioned it, that the administration 
was condemned for and that Don Rumsfeld became a lightning rod for was 
uncomfortable interrogation methods. Well, you know, the world is a 
tough place, and the people that we are dealing with are not made out 
of cotton candy. And the fact that we were able to get information from 
terrorists because they are the ones that have the information, not 
Americans, but because the terrorists are the ones that have the 
information, the fact that we were able to get that information from 
them and use that to stop other actions against the United States 
before they could mature, before they could result in American 
casualties accrued to the benefit of America's security.
  So when I look at this ``woe is me'' and we have got the real 
security plan and if we had only taken the other road, you will notice 
that the road not taken is always the smoothest one, where we had all 
the Sunni generals, that we would have used those to somehow bring 
security to Iraq, or if we had stuffed enough GIs into Iraq that 
somehow there would not be any car bombings or would not be any 
violence, or if we would just ask people politely to give up the names 
of their co-terrorists, they would do that and we wouldn't have to be 
tough on them in interrogations. All those positions, I think, define 
why the American people, Democrats and Republicans, rely on Republicans 
for national security.
  And I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for coming to the 
floor and speaking on behalf of our military men and women. And as I 
listened to his presentation, it was very welcomed from my perspective.
  I wonder if the chairman would yield for a question.
  Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Chairman Hunter, I would ask you, would you care to 
comment on the remarks on the position that Iraq is a diversion on this 
global war on terror and it didn't have anything to do with Osama bin 
Laden and al Qaeda?
  Mr. HUNTER. I think that comment that somehow this is a neat, tidy 
package and if we just confined ourselves to Afghanistan, somehow we 
would win the war against terror and we wouldn't have to worry about 
Iraq is a naive position.
  The facts are that we learned after 9/11 that if we didn't change the 
world, the world was going to change us. And having an Iraq that has a 
modicum of freedom, that is not an enemy of the United States and will 
not be a springboard to future terrorism accrues to the benefit of 
generations of Americans. It is not something you can put on a bumper 
sticker, but having some change in that part of the world.
  And one manifestation of that change that was little noticed was 
when, during the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, Hezbollah 
sought rearmaments from Iran, and Iran, according to reports, sent off 
a plane full of new missiles to throw at the defenseless civilian 
populations in Israeli cities, and Iraq would not let them fly over. So 
they said, okay, we will try to fly over Turkey. And Turkey said, You 
can come into our aerospace but only if you land and we can search your 
plane. And Iran then turned the plane around and took it back home and 
did not deliver the missiles.
  Now, that is only a small thing. On the other hand, it could be a big 
thing for the people who might have felt the impact of those warheads 
in Israeli cities. But that was an Iraq whose government was not 
friendly to terrorists. That was an Iraq whose government was 
supportive of free people. And that was because of the American 
position in Iraq and the fact that we have changed the face of Iraq.
  Now, there is something I think all American troops should see 
because they are hearing this constant drumbeat now from the Democrats 
that the casualties have been in vain, that their efforts have been in 
vain, that this is all a terrible fiasco. I think that every American 
who serves should be shown the excavations that are taking place in 
Iraq right now, those mass graves wherein if you watch the History 
Channel, you might have seen some of this about a month ago where 
American anthropologists and scientists are excavating the mass graves, 
where Saddam Hussein's people would herd hundreds and thousands of 
people and in many cases would shoot the mother holding her baby in the 
back of the head. And then when the scientists would examine the skull 
of the little baby, they would notice it too would have a pistol bullet 
hole in the back of its head. Double execution, mother and baby. I 
think all Americans that serve over there should see the photos of 
those Kurdish mothers whose bodies are strewn out across the hillsides 
still holding their babies, killed in mid stride by Chemical Ali.
  And I am reminded of a Democrat President who stood on the west steps 
of this Capitol many years ago and said, Let the word go out, let 
friend and foe alike know that America will bear any burden to support 
the cause of freedom. And I am paraphrasing, of course, John Kennedy. 
What happened to those Democrats? What value do they place on those 
thousands of people who were pushed into mass graves?
  In fact, I think one farmer testified about Saddam Hussein's 
executioners that they had an execution squad that would show up at 
about 9 o'clock on his farm. They had an excavation squad or team that 
would show up with construction equipment, and they would dig these big 
trenches on his farm in the morning, and then the execution squad would 
arrive, and then they would truck in the unfortunate villagers who were 
going to be executed. They would line them up and shoot them in the 
back of the head, push them into this big cut that they had made in the 
Earth, and then they would cover them up with bulldozers.

                              {time}  2245

  As I recall at one point, the farmer said that one day the execution 
squad, the logistics guy did not show up so they did not have any 
bullets. So he said, what the heck. They just pushed the people in 
alive and covered them up without shooting them. It did not make a lot 
of difference to them.
  Those historical excavations, and that record of human suffering and 
human tragedy that was visited on those people, that should be shown. 
Because that is the work of Saddam Hussein. That should be shown to 
every GI, every marine, every navy corpsman that serves out there in 
that tough Fallujah area, and al Ramadi with the marines, every airman 
who flies those long lifts, bringing and keeping that logistical train 
going between American bases and that area of operation.
  Every one of them ought to be shown the full story of what Saddam 
Hussein did and what he was. And the idea that we can turn that country 
where the ruler did that to those people, to a country who, when Iran 
says we want to fly these missiles over your air space so we can kill 
people in Israel says ``no, we are not going to let you do that. Go 
back''.
  To me that is a remarkable thing. Now, you know, the freedom of the 
Iraqi people is not guaranteed by this operation in perpetuity. 
Nobody's freedom is guaranteed in perpetuity including our own. We are 
developing them, a freedom for that country. We are giving them a 
running start at freedom. I think it was Ben Franklin one time who 
said, we have our freedom, now if we can keep it. It will be up to them 
to keep it.
  But we learned after 9/11 that if we did not change the world, the 
world was going to change us. This is far-reaching. This is visionary. 
This is going beyond Fortress America that somehow we must have said 
something wrong to these extremists to come after us and bomb us and do 
these things to us.
  And you know, I have thought about this idea that somehow what did we 
do wrong to invite this strike against America? I thought about that. I 
thought about the last couple of wars we fought. Two wars ago it was 
the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. Kuwait is a Muslim country. 
We saved it.

[[Page 17211]]

  And then we went in and we saved hundreds of thousands of Muslims in 
the Balkans, in Bosnia. We had that record. And the reward that we got 
from the extremists was for them to attack the United States of 
America. So what more could we do? So this idea of this flagellation of 
America is something that is reviving in the Democratic party. I think 
you probably noticed that. It is coming to the fore. It is, we did 
something wrong. And it is not Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the real devils 
in this operation, according to the Democrats, are not these people 
that we are going after who have tried to kill thousands of Americans, 
it is really our leaders.
  Those are the people that they say are the bad people. And it is not 
the guys that our great intelligence agencies and military people 
manage to bring to justice that we will soon see in a court of justice 
being tried I believe for murder, among other things.
  But it is the methods of these uncomfortable methods that were used 
to get them to tell about people that were planning to kill Americans 
and fly planes into our country loaded with explosives and do the other 
things that the President talked about today. This blame America first 
thing is reviving on the Democrat side of the aisle.
  I do not think the American people are going to buy it.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would take this to 
another level of this vision too. Before I do that, I would point out 
that I sometimes have some opportunities to sit down and talk to people 
who were raised in Iraq. Some of them are refugees that have found 
their way here. There is just a certain bond and affinity between Iraqi 
and Americans today because they understand and they appreciate the 
sacrifice and the commitment that has given them now an opportunity.
  I recall a conversation with a young lady who was raised in the north 
up near Kirkuk. And she said that no one admitted that they had any 
boys in the family. The houses in that town all had hidden compartments 
in them. If they had a boy they had hidden compartments. So when 
Saddam's men came to town, those boys crawled into those hiding places 
within those homes to hide from the military recruiters.
  They would pick those young men up and haul them off to the military 
and they would never know where they went and they would never see them 
again. The girls could go out and play, but the boys could not. They 
had to be kept in hiding, like young little Anne Frank hiding in their 
home and growing up and trying to make a happy life out of this.
  But I would take this image, that we had Iowa Guard troops on the 
ground in Afghanistan helping to guard the routes to and those polling 
places that were there. The first time in the history of the world that 
those people had ever voted on that place in the planet.
  And we have seen the Iraqi people go to the polls, and three times 
pull off a successful election, when the naysayers on the other side of 
the aisle said it cannot be done, there is too much violence, and the 
Iraqi people really cannot handle this Democratic process.
  Think about what this means. The inspiration that Afghanistan is 
today, and the inspiration that Iraq is becoming. I see those two 
nations as the loadstar for the world of Islam. And if Islam can see 
that they can live in compatibility with freedom and prosper and turn 
their focus, as Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan 
told me shortly after September 11, she came to Buena Vista University 
in Storm Lake, Iowa, and gave an outstanding speech.
  And we sat down afterwards one on one and had a conversation. And I 
asked her a couple of questions, that I remember, at least. And one of 
them was, what percentage of the Muslims are really inclined to be 
supportive of or sympathetic to al-Qaeda? And her answer was, not very 
many, perhaps 10 percent. A very quick answer which told me that she 
had thought about it.
  Daniel Pipes used the number 15 percent in his book Radical Islam, I 
think, Visits America or something very close to that. 15 percent. So 
when you think about what that means, I said how can we get to this 
point? How do we define victory, and how do we achieve victory?
  And she said, you have got to give them freedom, you have got to give 
them a chance at democracy. And if you do that, they will turn their 
focus then from hatred and killing and jealousy, and the kind of things 
that motivate people to evil, their focus will be to good.
  It will be to build their families and build their communities and 
build their countries and make that stronger. Take those goals, and now 
they have an opportunity to reach for. But today, their energy is being 
used in hatred and being taught in madrassas to hate people that are 
not like them.
  So when you think about it in terms of Iraq and Afghanistan becoming 
the lodestar nations, they are the inspiration for the world of Islam. 
I want to say to the Arab world, but then we have got countries like 
Iran that are really not Arab they are Persian. But the inspiration for 
those countries to know that they can become free, and then index that 
to that historical miracle that I referenced a little earlier about how 
freedom echoed across eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall and the Iran 
Curtain came crashing down, that historical miracle can be replicated 
in the Middle East, probably not as fast, certainly not as easy, maybe 
it takes a lot longer, maybe it is not as pretty when it is done, but 
there is an opportunity there to find a way to finally win.
  Our alternatives become, promote freedom as the President has done, 
that is the Bush doctrine. And in that freedom, change the habitat that 
breeds terror. And if we go the other route, if we go the route to the 
poor me's, the lamentations, the everything is wrong and we would have 
been smarter, we just cannot tell you even in hindsight how, and we 
certainly are not going to give you any foresight as to how to be 
smarter, if we go that route, then our alternative, and there only 
being two, the first one is the road to freedom, to change the habitat 
that breeds terror.
  The other road is for the United States of America to curl up in a 
fetal position and guard every bus stop and every school and every 
hospital and every football stadium, and still be attacked and still 
see our families blown to bits by people that hate us. We cannot 
prevail in this war, this clash of these two civilizations by simply 
playing defense and thinking it is a law enforcement mission. It is a 
matter of defending ourselves militarily, putting our resources at the 
tip of the spear, but it is also a matter of changing that habitat, so 
that freedom can grow and prosper.
  When that day comes, and I believe that freedom burns in the heart of 
every person, and I believe it is in the future of everyone on this 
earth. When that day comes, we will be a lot closer to freedom than we 
are today. Free people never go to war against other free people.
  I particularly appreciate the chairman and ask him if he has any 
other remarks to make.
  Mr HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I think the last thing the gentleman said, 
and I appreciate you letting me come in and butt in here and talk a 
little bit. But you know Great Britain has nuclear weapons. But we do 
not fear Great Britain because Great Britain is free. France has 
nuclear weapons. We do not fear France because France is free.
  The Soviet Union, former Soviet Union, now Russia has nuclear 
weapons, residual from their days as the center of the Soviet Empire. 
But they are becoming free. They are still a fragile country that is 
trying to move in that direction. Still with lots of problems. We have 
less worry about them today because they have more freedom than they 
had before.
  So clearly bringing freedom to the world is an important part of 
America's own future, and an important part of our own security. And 
for those who think we can hold back in Fortress America and not change 
the world, and not worry about what the rest of the world is doing, 
that is a naive position.
  It is one that politicians had a number of occasions in the last 
century, in

[[Page 17212]]

which 619,000 Americans died on battlefields around the world. In many 
places and cases where we had forgotten that we achieved peace through 
strength, where we let our guard down, where we thought we could pull 
back into the United States and not worry about what was going on 
around the world.
  This president is aggressive. He has been tough in the war against 
terror. He has been determined. That is probably his best quality. He 
does not read the polls every day. He does not check the wind every day 
to see which direction it is blowing. But his aggressive stance against 
the terrorists, running them down in places where they never thought 
that our forces could get to them, killing them at 10,000-foot 
elevation mountains in Afghanistan, taking them out in safe houses 
where they had no idea that we were on to them, going after them and 
taking them out and keeping them off balance is one reason that we have 
had 5 years without attacks on this United States.
  So I thank the gentleman for talking about the Republican position on 
national security. It is too bad. I think it is too bad when we have to 
politicize or put a partisan face on national security. But I think it 
is appropriate when the Democratic leadership gets up and talks about 
the Republican position on security.
  I think it is appropriate to remind them that we rebuilt our national 
security after we had the hollow army of the 1970s, we had 1,500 petty 
officers a month leaving the navy because they could not make enough 
money to feed their families. We had about 35 percent of our ships that 
could not sail, about 50 percent of our combat aircraft that were not 
fully mission capable.
  And we rebuilt America from those days. We stood up to the Soviet 
Union and we disassembled the Soviet Union and we made the world a lot 
safer because we did that. We stood up to the Communist intrusion in 
Central America. When on this side of the aisle, the Democrats were 
writing Dear Commandante letters and talking about appeasement in 
Central America.
  Because of that, those countries that were dictatorships when Ronald 
Reagan came into office are now fragile democracies where people get to 
vote, where they settle things with ballots not bullets. That is the 
legacy of the Republican Party. And it is the Republican party that 
rebuilt national security.
  You know, we put $40 billion extra into the defense budgets during 
the Clinton years because President Clinton took our defenses down like 
a rock falling off a cliff. As I said, we had over 15-plus Army 
divisions when he came into office. When he left we only had 10. When 
he needed money for other things in the budget, he just cut the 
military. We had to rebuild that force after that gentleman left 
office. We did it.
  Today we are spending more than $100 billion more, not counting the 
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq than we did under the Clinton 
administration.

                              {time}  2300

  We still need to spend more. We are spending about 4 percent of GDP 
on defense today. Under John Kennedy, a conservative Democrat who 
believed in peace through strength, we were spending 9 percent of GDP 
on defense, and under Ronald Reagan, we were spending 6 percent. 
Probably, we are going to need to go up to about 4\1/2\ or 5 percent of 
GDP being spent on defense to make sure that we ensure security for the 
coming decades.
  I thank the gentleman for his allowing me to come down and say a word 
or two this evening.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman. It is for a good 
cause, and as I recall, I believe that the percentage of our GDP during 
the Second World War was perhaps up to 26 percent for a period of time 
there. There was a real, real commitment, and as those numbers go down 
and you see the numbers in the military shrink, our commitment to our 
military has not been as strong as it might have been and needs to be 
stronger again.
  We do not have a real handle on how broad and how deep this is going 
to have to be, but we must be ready at every quarter, and especially, 
this homeland security side has been for these 5 years, it has 
outstripped the expectations and the aspirations I think. I did not 
hear anybody say back on September 11, 2001, we can go a half a decade 
without an attack in this country. Everyone believed that there would 
be another attack. Now, heaven forbid it happens at this point or 
beyond, but I am grateful for work that has been done that has kept us 
safe to this point.
  I would take us to another aspect of this issue, too. One of the 
things that this administration decided to do was we are not going to 
touch the oil in Iraq, and we set that aside for the Iraqi people. Now, 
that system over there is not shaping up the way it might be. There is 
a lot of oil in Iraq. It seeps to the top of the ground, and the wells 
they have drilled, there have not been new ones in years and years, and 
a lot of the infrastructure has not been rebuilt. That needs to all 
happen and get that oil online.
  One of the first things I would do, if I were the prime minister of 
Iraq, would be to hold a bidding conference and bring in the oil 
companies and get them to inject international capital into the 
development of the fields and the development of the infrastructure so 
they can get that cash flow running, and if the cash flow runs, 
capitalism will take over.
  I gave a speech in Baghdad a while back to the Baghdad Chamber of 
Commerce in the Al Rasheed hotel. As I walked in there, they started to 
introduce me. I said, just a moment, I would like to know who my 
interpreter is before you introduce me. They said, no, you do not have 
an interpreter. I said, but I do not speak Arabic. They said, you do 
not need to; these businesspeople speak English. There were 57 members 
there of the Iraqi Chamber of Commerce, and you could tell by the way 
they laughed and smiled and applauded, it was all timed just right. 
They understood English.
  Afterwards we had a great gathering over on the side of the room, 
handing out business cards like frantic businessmen in a way. They 
wanted to exchange information and ideas. They are ready to do business 
in that country, and they are doing business in that country. The more 
dollars can come in and the faster that can get turned over, the closer 
they are to their own solution in Iraq. So I am optimistic that we get 
a solution out of there that bodes well when judged by history.
  Sometimes we lose confidence in who we are as a Nation. I would take 
us back to a little over 100 years ago, and actually in 1898, we sent 
the military over to the Philippines. I recall being in this city about 
3 years ago in a hotel when the President of the Philippines, President 
Arroyo gave a speech. She was not speaking to Members of Congress. I 
was kind of a random dinner guest, but she said, speaking of this 
random crowd in a hotel here in Washington, she said, Thank you 
America. Thank you for sending the Marine Corps to the Philippines in 
1898. Thank you for freeing us. Thank you for liberating us. Thank you 
for sending the priests and the pastors there. Thank you for sending 
10,000 teachers that taught in our schools and you taught your language 
to us and we learned your language. We learned your culture, and today, 
there are 1.6 million Filipinos that go anywhere in the world to work 
and send their money back to the Philippines because they have the 
language skills and they have the cultural skills that came because of 
the liberation that came from the American military.
  How often do we read that in our history books, Mr. Speaker, that 
kind of an impact that, a century later, the expressions of gratitude 
that come from a national leader? That was an insurgency. That was an 
insurgency we fought in the Philippines and defeated at insurgency in 
the Philippines. That does not seem to be part of our national memory.
  We can often learn from history, and we need to understand the 
economics and the sociology and the military tactics and put this all 
together, but we must have faith in who we are as a people. We must 
have faith in what has made us great. We must hang on to those things 
that are going to enhance

[[Page 17213]]

that greatness and move America to the next level of our destiny. Once 
in a while we have got to discard some of those things that are not 
assets to us.
  We have got to move into the future with technology. We have got to 
hang on to those core things that give us strength, and those things I 
believe are free enterprise capitalism, Western civilization and our 
biblical values, tied together as the three pillars that make America 
great.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address this chamber 
and address you tonight. I especially appreciate the chairman coming 
down to stand up for American fighting men and women, and the job that 
you have done to lead us through these difficult years from September 
11 and on into the future, and I will stand with you and our military 
men and women when one day hopefully it will be us, and if it will not, 
it will be our children and grandchildren that realize there has been a 
victory in this global war on terror and the face of the world will 
have changed and the world will be a freer place. A freer place is a 
safer place, and that is the goal and that is the call of the trumpet 
for us in this country.

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