[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17857-17864]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2100
                      THE ATTACKS ON SEPTEMBER 11

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege and the 
honor to be recognized on the floor of the United States Congress, and 
the opportunity to address you, Mr. Speaker, and the people that are 
listening in around the country.
  You know, as I listen to the message that has been delivered here by 
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I think we share a 
sentiment in balancing a budget one day. We don't always share exactly 
the same sentiment on how to get there, but I am looking for black ink, 
and I intend to be in this Congress to approve a black ink budget.
  I want to say that to my colleague from Arkansas one of the ways I 
would do that is tighten down this spending. In fact even on a 
discretionary budget, Mr. Speaker, if we just spent 95 percent of the 
money we spent this year we would have had a balanced budget. That is 
one way we can get there. We need to present a balanced budget and go 
from there.
  But I want to support the gentleman in his philosophy, and I am not 
for raising taxes, I am for doing it by restricting our spending, 
because we need to keep this growth run going. We are something like 17 
consecutive quarters of growth. I am confident they have averaged over 
3 percent. There have been only been about two quarters, and I can only 
think of one where our revenue was less than a 3 percent growth. This 
is an astonishing success for our economy.
  Mr. Speaker, I come here tonight, though, to talk about September 11, 
the fifth year anniversary to commemorate this day that passed us 
yesterday, and to renew our resolution to defend our people in this 
country and to promote freedom and to defeat our enemies.
  One of the things that happened, though, in reference to the debate 
that took place in just the previous hour, was our Pentagon was hit, we 
had a plane that was heroically taken to the ground in Pennsylvania, 
and we had the planes that went into the Twin Towers and shut off our 
financial centers in the United States.
  It was a direct assault on free enterprise capitalism. It was a 
direct assault on our financial markets, and it did shut down our 
markets for a short period of time. It also required us to spend 
billions of dollars in security in this country.
  So, our spending went up, our revenue went down, the economy was 
starting to drop down into a recession

[[Page 17858]]

mode, and the President stepped up and took a leadership role. Some of 
that leadership role was to mobilize troops and send them to 
Afghanistan. Some of that leadership role was to deal with the 
impending financial crisis.
  By doing so, we addressed the tax cuts to stimulate this economy. Who 
would have thought, Mr. Speaker, that those tax cuts that were 
implemented the following year, and the second round that we did here 
in 2003, would have put us on this run for this unprecedented economic 
growth?
  We have a strong economy, we have recovered from the attack on our 
financial center, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars just in 
our national security, our domestic security, as well as additionally 
our additional costs in taking that fight to the enemy, taking the tip 
of the spirit of the Middle East and elsewhere. It has cost a lot of 
money to move forward in this global war against these terrorists.
  Yet, the economy in the United States is strong. Mr. Speaker, not 
only do we have a strong economy, an economy that I believe, if it 
hadn't been for the attacks on the United States, if we hadn't had to 
spend the money militarily, if we hadn't had to spend the money for our 
domestic security, create this expensive airport security that we have, 
I believe our budget would have balanced. In fact, the economy has 
grown so well that we actually have our revenue stream has gone up by 
$274 billion more than was anticipated and estimated.
  That is the kind of rebound that this economy has done. That is the 
way to balance this budget, control the spending, not increase the 
taxes. Let the economy grow us out of this, show fiscal discipline.
  I am one of the people that has called for more fiscal discipline. We 
always have to do that. We have to continue to be the conscience here 
because everybody's project always seems reasonable to them. They 
probably are reasonable. But when you add them all in the aggregate, 
that is when we have to start slicing some of them out. We have been 
doing that more and more.
  But I think we should have tightened our belt more back in 2003 when 
we engage the enemy in Iraq. We should have said to the American 
people, you are going to have to sacrifice. You are going to have to 
tighten your belt. We are going to reduce our domestic spending, at 
least the increases, and we are going to give our military everything 
that they need, and we are willing to all of us pull together as a 
Nation, Mr. Speaker.
  But had it not been for September 11, this would not be a budget 
discussion going on here in this previous hour, because it would be in 
the black, and there would not be complaints. That is my belief, and I 
think we are getting there now anyway. I think it is closer than most 
people will predict. It depends a little bit then on how the elections 
turn out here in November.
  But we are here today, just a day after the 5-year anniversary of the 
horrible and tragic attack on September 11. On that day, each person 
that is alive in America today that was around then remembers where 
they were. They remember the shock. They remember the pictures as they 
came out on television. Most of us saw this unfold as it went online.
  Most of us got the news, found our way to a television, and stood 
there mesmerized as the smoke poured out of the towers and as the first 
one went down and then the second. Most of us watched and prayed for 
those who were in the towers, and for their families. Most of us 
believed that there would be significant survivors that would be 
treated in medical units, and most of us were sadly informed that there 
weren't going to be wounded arriving. Most of them either were killed 
outright or got away clean without injury.
  But on that day, as the casualties estimate went up, and the first 
numbers that I heard, as I recall, were about 10,000 was the 
prediction, and now we know that number is lower than that. But that 
10,000 number of projected killed in those attacks went on up to 
15,000, to 20,000, on up to 30,000 was the highest number that I heard.
  I can still recall what it felt like to think about the concept of 
30,000 Americans, burned to ashes in the inferno of that attack by al 
Qaeda on our Twin Towers. I remember that feeling. I also remember the 
feeling of gradual relief as the real estimates came down from 30,000 
now to 25,000 to 20,000 to 15,000 to 10,000 and finally settled down. 
Actually, the number that I have is 2,973, all tragic, all human 
beings, sacred lives with unique value, dashed to death that day, and 
all of them with family friends or loved ones, most with all of those. 
Those families have lived with the horror of that day. The prayers of 
this Nation and the prayers of the world have gone out to them, Mr. 
Speaker.
  But as that number went down from 30,000 to 20,000 to 10,000 and then 
down to 3,000 now, that equation of relief, in my mind, was palpable. 
Today I can still feel it.
  But on the other side of the ledger was also the realization that the 
lower the number went, the shorter would be our attention span, and the 
weaker would be our resolve.
  As the 30,000 number settled down to 3,000, our resolve also was 
strong that day, and it stayed strong for a long time afterwards, but 
it is diminishing now in proportion to the loss of those lives. We 
cannot allow ourselves to settle into complacency, Mr. Speaker. We 
cannot allow ourselves to tell ourselves that this will go away, that 
they will quit attacking us if we just leave them alone, that somehow 
we could apologize to the people who attacked us, and find a way to 
understand them better. Maybe if America would convert to Islam, we 
could find a way to find peace with these people.
  But it is not to be, not by this proud, free people, not by this 
proud, free Nation. This Nation will never capitulate to threats. I 
interviewed a World War II veteran, who had served just outside the 
battle of Bataan, and I think about a commander there, when he demanded 
that he surrender, and his answer was, nuts.
  That is our attitude here in America, nuts. We don't ever do that. We 
take it to you. You have attacked us. We are going to remain a proud, 
free Nation. Our streets will be free and they will be open, and this 
will be an open society, and we refuse to cower. We refuse to retreat 
from the rest of the world and curl up in a national fetal position. We 
will defend our schools and our hospitals and our ball games and our 
theaters.
  Essentially, the condition that Israel is in today, where they have 
to guard everything, that will not be America. Because we will take 
this a little to you, and it will be over, this war will be over when 
we change the habitat that breeds the kind of venom and terror that 
attacked us on September 11.
  But 5 years later, Mr. Speaker, no attacks on America on our soil, 
not one successful one, a significant number of attempts, but not one 
successful attack. That is a testimonial that supports the effort, the 
efforts of the PATRIOT Act, the efforts of other pieces of legislation 
that we have done, the efforts of our intelligence personnel, our 
emergency personnel, our law enforcement officers, a team of Americans, 
and a team of people around the world who have an eye out for 
suspicious behavior, help us with our leads, and maybe we have been a 
little bit lucky. But we have got to be right 100 percent of the time. 
So far, so good.
  But at this point, I see the gentleman from Georgia, my good friend, 
Mr. Gingrey, has arrived in the Chamber. I am quite interested in what 
he might have to deliver this evening.
  I would invite the gentleman from Georgia to address you, Mr. 
Speaker. I would yield so much time as the gentleman may consume.
  Mr. GINGREY. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Iowa, 
Representative King, for taking the hour to discuss such important 
matters, and, of course, in a timely manner, here, one day more than 5 
years from the anniversary of that horrific event on 9/11. The 
gentleman was mentioning, I think, earlier about people remembering, of 
course, where they were at that horrific time of that initial plane 
attack on the first Twin Tower.

[[Page 17859]]

  We all do. We think back about that. We remember almost exactly what 
we were doing. Just like back in 1963, I can remember exactly what I 
was doing when our President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was brutally 
assassinated. I remember exactly where I was on the campus at Georgia 
Tech and what meeting that I was in and who the faculty leader was at 
that meeting at the campus YMCA and how I left that meeting and walked 
slowly across campus to my fraternity house to turn on the television 
set where we all were glued for the next 72 hours.
  That was the same shocked feeling that I felt 5 years ago yesterday 
when I was a medical doctor and actually in the operating room 
performing surgery early on that morning when the announcement was made 
that a plane had struck one of the Twin Towers. We thought that maybe 
it was a small private plane like the one that had hit the Empire State 
Building in New York City many years ago, with not a massive loss of 
life, and certainly no building came tumbling down.
  So you remember. We all do, and, of course, today, as we are here 
back in Washington on the floor of this hallowed Chamber, talking a 
little bit about our memories, and why it is so important, as President 
Bush said, the very next day, and Representative King has brought it 
out so clearly, we will not cower against this horrific enemy. We will 
fight them to their death.

                              {time}  2115

  We will do everything in our power as a people and the President as 
Commander in Chief and we as the Congress to prevent another attack on 
our soil.
  You know the old adage, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, 
certainly that is true today. We can listen to all the naysayers and 
the criticism of what we should have done, could have done, would have 
done, what has gone wrong, why the plan is not perfect; but the bottom 
line, Madam Speaker, my colleagues, Representative King, we all know, 
is that we have not been attacked. That is not to say that it couldn't 
or won't occur at some time in the future, but I say we are where we 
are today because of the action that this President, this Commander in 
Chief, this Congress and our military and the will of the American 
people to not continue to draw lines in the sand against the Islamic 
extremists, in this instance, of course, al Qaeda.
  But we had been attacked before, and last week when we talked about 
this, you know, you can enumerate date time and event, loss of life, 
really going all the way back to the Iran capture of the men and women 
at our embassy in Tehran, and then after that, of course, the bombing 
of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the loss of 241 lives, and the 
first attack on the World Trade Center and the USS Cole and 17 of our 
sailors killed in that attack. And what did we do? You say you better 
not do that again.
  As my colleague from Iowa, and I think all of my colleagues, our 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle understand, at some point you 
have got to show some real courage and respond in the appropriate 
manner, and that is indeed exactly what we have done.
  It starts, of course, with the PATRIOT Act and the creation of the 
Department of Homeland Security and the detention of these enemy 
combatants that have been caught on the field of battle in Afghanistan. 
Those people are not detained, whether it is at Guantanamo or these so-
called secret prisons in Eastern Europe, they are not detained because 
they were caught jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk, Madam Speaker. 
These were enemy combatants that were at the scene of the battle with 
literally their hands caught in the cookie jar.
  We have, because of the ability to interrogate them in a humane 
fashion, a tough fashion, we have been able to get actionable 
intelligence, and that is exactly what has led to things like the 
capture, actually not capture, but the ferreting out and killing of al 
Zarqawi, and finding Saddam Hussein himself and the ferreting out and 
killing of his two sons. This is because we were able to obtain 
actionable intelligence in the interrogation process.
  Now we hear from the other side and all the naysayers saying, you 
know, you have got to be kind and warm and fuzzy and treat these people 
with respect. I say to my colleague, what kind of respect did they 
show, Madam Speaker, to those 2,997 men and women, from not just the 
United States, but from a lot of other countries, who were working, 
law-abiding individuals at the Twin Towers that fateful day 5 years 
ago? They were shown absolutely no mercy.
  So it is important for our colleagues, it is important for the 
American people, to understand that this President is doing exactly 
what is necessary to protect this country. He is the Commander in 
Chief. That is his first and foremost responsibility, to maintain 
internal order and protect us, protect the domestic tranquility and 
protect the American people.
  So for us to have an opportunity tonight to talk about that I think 
is a great thing, and I commend Representative King for leading this 
hour. I am proud to be here with him and will be here to listen 
carefully as we continue and as some of our other colleagues weigh in 
on this issue and discuss this further.
  At this point I yield back to my colleague, but intend to stay right 
with him for the rest of this hour as we continue to discuss this most 
important subject.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia, and I thank the 
gentleman for his leadership on a whole variety of subjects. It appears 
to me whenever we have an important issue before us, we have the 
opportunity to hear a share of the wisdom of Mr. Gingrey, who comes to 
the floor quite often and carries his voice to the American people.
  As I pick this up, I reflect upon a number of things, some of the 
things that we did and some of the stopgap measures that we put in 
place.
  I mentioned the PATRIOT Act. That PATRIOT Act, one of the important 
things it did was eliminated the firewall that prevented the CIA from 
exchanging information with the FBI. Had that firewall not been there 
in place, if they had been able to exchange the information, it might 
well have foiled the terrorist plot that attacked the United States on 
9/11.
  So we looked back on where were the holes in our system and we set 
about fixing the holes. The PATRIOT Act fixed a lot of the holes, and 
we are a lot safer because we have passed the PATRIOT Act.
  There was a national debate on the PATRIOT Act. There were those that 
came forward and said, well, it is going to infringe upon people's 
rights, and there will be people who will have their library cards 
examined, and somehow Big Brother is going to figure out what our 
reading list happens to be out of a public library.
  That has not happened. I am not sure what the concern actually was. 
My reading list is all the way through my library in my office, and you 
can take a look at that. You can learn a lot about people if you 
observe their reading list and learn what is going on in their own 
library and what it looks like.
  But libraries are one of the top locations to exchange information by 
spies and terrorists, because they are such an easy location for people 
to walk into and out of and leave information in a specified place 
within a book or simply have that conversation and pass the material 
and the information there. But also the public libraries that were 
opened up that had Internet access. On those computers, perhaps, was 
information that can save thousands and maybe even millions of lives.
  In spite of the allegations that there would be people who would be 
individually singled out and unjustly have their privacy invaded by the 
PATRIOT Act, as many hearings as we held, and I believe it was 13 
hearings before the Judiciary Committee, I specifically offered a 
number of witnesses an opportunity to name a single case of a single 
individual American who had had their rights, their freedoms, their 
privacy trampled on, infringed, or even specifically threatened. The 
closest thing I got was a vague allegation about some obscure librarian 
in Texas that no one could chase down.

[[Page 17860]]

  These were all specious arguments designed to undermine the PATRIOT 
Act. If that had been successful in doing that, your safety would have 
been undermined as well. But we passed the PATRIOT Act and we 
reauthorized the PATRIOT Act, and it was the right thing to do for 
America, not just in the short term, but for the long term.
  It is pretty impressive to see a bill that was passed quickly in the 
wake of a crisis withstand that level of scrutiny after all of those 
hearings and all that public criticism and emerge without a single 
incident that can be named to a specific individual at least, only 
allegations. The PATRIOT Act made us safer.
  The REAL ID Act makes us safer. There were at least 5 of the 19 
terrorist bombers on September 11 who could have been, would have been 
removed from the United States if we would have been just applying the 
law in the local places when they had a false driver's license or when 
they weren't in the United States legally. We tightened this up with 
the REAL ID Act.
  There are something like 800 different kinds of identification that 
come before law enforcement officers. They do a great job, but there is 
literally no way they can have enough knowledge to examine the validity 
of 800 different kinds of identification. So the REAL ID Act 
standardizes and raises the legitimacy up of a driver's license.
  When you think about it, Madam Speaker, when you go to rent a movie, 
it takes a government-issued ID or a legitimate ID, a picture 
identification. We don't have that same kind of standard, or didn't 
have necessarily for climbing aboard an airplane and flying into the 
United States or flying out of the United States or flying around the 
United States.
  So we tightened that up with the REAL ID Act, with an intense debate, 
a lot of criticism. Whenever you change things in America, people are 
going to rise up and resist. It is the nature of this free society that 
we live in that we debate these issues intensively.
  It is also natural that the resistance comes up with all kinds of 
stories about how bad and how ugly it will be if you pass an act that 
changes the status quo. It is also a matter of fact, a matter of fact, 
Madam Speaker, that once you pass good policy, the criticism 
disappears, because the cases that are alleged to have happened do not 
materialize if you pass good policy.
  Mr. GINGREY. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I 
just wanted to interject as he developed this line of thought. I was at 
a rally in my district yesterday, we did a tribute to the 9/11 victims, 
and in the newspaper in Marietta, GA, there was an article, Madam 
Speaker, written by a former State representative who is now our chief 
deputy sheriff, Colonel Linda Coker, who had been to Israel with a 
group of law enforcement personnel to study what they do in Israel, in 
that small country of 6.8 million people, particularly in the city of 
Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, and what their citizens have to go through 
to protect them from these horrific improvised explosive devices and 
bombs that are strapped to bodies and folks walking into shopping 
centers, crowded shopping malls.
  The lesson, Madam Speaker, that we learned from them, and I think 
what Representative King is pointing out that we need to understand, 
and I think the American people do now understand, is that we are not, 
because of what we have had to do, we all wish, pray to God, that we 
could go back to September 10, 2001, and enjoy that false sense of 
security. But now we know that we can't. And it is not about taking 
away our liberties, but it is very much about inconveniencing us.
  Madam Speaker and my colleague, Representative King, I just wanted to 
point out that Colonel Coker said when she was there in Israel on this 
recent trip with law enforcement, she noticed that people there when 
they go into a shopping mall, they go into a Parisians or whatever, 
they have to check their purses, they have to go through metal 
detectors. We fret about that because we do it on getting on airplanes, 
and yet they do that even going to shopping malls. But they understand 
that is important.
  I think we just need to understand that too. I hope my colleagues 
agree with me that we can put up with a lot of inconveniences without 
infringing on our liberty for the safety and protection of ourselves 
and our families and our children and our grandchildren.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia and appreciate 
the perspective that you brought to this debate.
  I reflect upon some of those changes that we have seen over the years 
with regard to our security. I recall when we brought our security down 
tighter on boarding our airplanes, it ended up you were very likely to 
get a fairly extensive spread-eagle search if you bought a one-way 
ticket. That was an indicator. We all take our shoes off now. Those 
things happen. There are lineups at the airport.
  We are paying a lot of TSA officials a lot of money to make sure we 
are safer, and our baggage is going through x-rays and being checked 
for bombs. The list goes on and on and on.
  I have two pair of nail clippers that they broke the tiny little file 
off the end for fear that would be a weapon. That has been relaxed 
somewhat. These are reminders, whenever I get the nail clippers out, 
that is why that is broken off. It is because of terrorists that 
attacked us in a cowardly way.
  So after the events that unfolded in Great Britain here in the early 
or middle part of last month with a plot to blow up perhaps 10 
airliners across the Atlantic Ocean on their way over to the United 
States, in that short period after that, when the regulations changed 
and they said you can no longer have gel or liquids with you on the 
airplane, so that covered one set of materials for the ladies and 
another set of materials for the men, no shaving cream, no toothpaste 
for either one of us, no lipstick in some of those cases.
  My wife and I happened to have been stuck in a line that took an hour 
and a half to get through security. While she watched our luggage, I 
walked up and down the line and asked people what they thought. 
Everyone there was unanimous. They said, if I have to give up some 
liquid or gel or stand in line for an hour or longer, they are making 
me safe, and if it makes the airline safer, I am happy to stand here.
  I am proud of that kind of patience and that kind of tolerance, and 
yet I do the equation and I think now a lot more people are checking 
their luggage because they want to carry along some liquids.

                              {time}  2130

  And the numbers of bags have gone up significantly since that period 
of time. And when you have to go check your baggage, it takes more 
time. Sometimes you can print your ticket and get on the plane if it is 
carry-on luggage. So perhaps it is 20 minutes more to get on, and then 
you have to wait for it to come off the carousel, and that might be 
another 20 minutes. Maybe 40 minutes of flight multiplied by the 
thousands of people who are in the air. And it has cost American 
productivity, Madam Speaker, but we are patient about it.
  I do caution the American people to always remember why you are 
standing in that security line, always remember why you are not going 
to be able to carry your toothpaste or your lotion or whatever it might 
be. It is because these terrorists are actively plotting to attack us, 
to kill us because of who we are and what we stand for. They want to 
kill us because of our freedom. They want to kill us because of our 
religion. They want to kill us because of our economic success, which 
is why they attacked the financial centers. So while we are giving up 
our liquids and while we are standing in line a little while longer, 
Madam Speaker, I would ask all the American people to remember why that 
is. Keep focussed on the real goal here. The goal is not to shed enough 
things out of our luggage that no one is going to be able to bring a 
bomb on a plane. The goal is to end the motivation of this enemy so all 
of our freedoms come back to us and so our children and grandchildren 
will live with the same sense of security and

[[Page 17861]]

peace and safety that we have lived with all of these years. Remember 
the frustration. We should be a little frustrated. We should be 
patient. But we should understand why and who is to blame.
  And I would just put it into a simple metaphor. There are thousands 
of people in America that lock their keys in their car. Each day it 
happens, I imagine, thousands of times around this country. And I think 
it is pretty rare for anyone to think why that is a problem. Now, we 
are forgetful folks and we do things by habit. When we get out of our 
rhythm, we might lock our keys in the car. Then we go get the locksmith 
or we go find another set of keys. It costs time; it costs money. But 
how many people who lock their keys in their car think if it were not 
for the thieves, there would be no such thing as car keys? And how many 
people that are standing in line at the airport think if it were not 
for terrorists, there wouldn't be a line? There wouldn't be a TSA. 
There would simply be people walking, getting to the gate in time to 
jump on the plane before the door closes, and fly off into the wild 
blue yonder. That is the way it was before these cowardly acts came, 
Madam Speaker, and that is the way I pray it is again. But it will not 
happen until we change the habitat that breeds this kind of terror.
  And this subject comes back to me as I reflect on a conversation I 
had with Benazir Bhutto, who was the former Prime Minister of Pakistan. 
She came to Storm Lake, Iowa, Buena Vista University, to give a speech 
shortly after September 11, 2001. And after that speech, and it was 
really an impressive keynote address, I had the privilege to sit down 
and talk with her in a casual conversation, and it wasn't casual to me 
but it was casual to her, one on one in a private setting. And I asked 
her a series of questions, but the most central question was how do we 
win this war? How do you fight people that are interspersed throughout 
a population of perhaps 1.3 billion Muslims and in there are the al 
Qaeda members and the al Qaeda sympathizers? How many are there? 
Perhaps 130 million would be the answer that I received that night. And 
how do we defeat them? And former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's 
response was you have got to give them freedom. You have got to give 
them an opportunity at democracy. If you do that, they will change 
their focus from hatred and killing to growing prosperity for their 
families, their communities, their neighborhoods, their cities, their 
countries, and their mosques. Now, that is a very human thing to do is 
to grow that opportunity for the next generations. But you have to have 
some control of your destiny to be able to do that. And in order to 
have that control of destiny, you have to have freedom.
  And this country has never gone to war against another free people. 
It has always been tyrants and despots, never people who could control 
their own destiny and elect their own national leaders. And I believe 
free people can resolve their differences because free people have that 
control of their destiny and they want to continue to grow and prosper 
rather than live in hatred.
  So I was not actually that impressed with that proposal at the time 
until I did a series of readings in-depth into the Islamic mindset, 
particularly into the al Qaeda mindset. And after I got into that 
pretty deep, particularly Daniel Pipes, I came out of that, and I 
thought I believe Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was right, that we 
really do need to engage in promoting freedom. But I had simplified 
this down to change the habitat that breeds terror. Change that 
habitat. Well, it needs to be for the good. It cannot be for the worse. 
And that means freedom. That means opportunity. And when the President 
said that freedom is the right of every person and the hope and the 
future of every nation, I believe that. Whether it is in our time or 
whether it is in another time, that is the progress that we are making 
in that direction. And bold steps were taken by the President in the 
aftermath of September 11, when he said that they were going to hear us 
now, the terrorists were going to hear us around this globe. And many 
said it couldn't done. Many said that going into Afghanistan, no one 
had ever succeeded in that in history; that it was too dangerous, it 
was too mountainous, the terrain was too rugged, the local Taliban were 
too good of fighters, that we couldn't risk our military to go in 
there. And yet in cooperation and conjunction with the Northern 
Alliance, we went in there. In a matter of weeks, Afghanistan was 
liberated. And I recall talking to some Iowa National Guard troops who 
were on the ground protecting the voting booths and the access and the 
routes to them, about 750 Iowans deployed in Afghanistan. They were 
there to help ensure that Afghanis could go to the polls and vote their 
freedom for the first time ever in the history of the world on that 
place on this planet. The first time. And now who would argue that the 
Afghan people are free? Of course they are. And they are making 
progress and they are moving forward. And they have their troubles, but 
freedom has always been worth fighting for.
  And it is something that we see moving in that same direction in 
Iraq. Iraq has not been as easy. In fact, it has been more difficult. 
The liberation of Iraq took place very quickly, faster than anyone 
predicted, Madam Speaker, but in the aftermath there was a lull when 
there wasn't very much violence and it looked like Iraq was going to 
heal up the same way that Afghanistan did. But, you know, Iraq has 
different neighbors than Afghanistan has, and Iraq became the center 
that brought al Qaeda to Iraq to fight Americans, fight the coalition 
forces, fight the new Iraqi forces because they realized, as Zarqawi 
realized, there was no place to retreat to. If they were to lose in 
Iraq, where else could a terrorist lay his weary head? Where else could 
they hope to have a terrorist training ground and a terrorist center so 
that they could gather resources and do their training and deploy their 
terrorists around the world? Al Qaeda needs a safe haven. We took that 
safe haven away from that them in Afghanistan and in the mountains of 
Pakistan. We took that safe haven away from them in Iraq.
  Zarqawi wrote a letter a couple of years ago that said that there was 
no place for them to hide. There were no mountains. There were no 
forests. There was no place for them to hide in Iraq. They had to rely 
on Iraqis to take them into their homes to harbor them there. And he 
said in that letter the Iraqi people that were willing to harbor and 
provide a safe haven for al Qaeda were ``as rare as red sulfur.'' Now, 
I never really got an answer to how rare red sulfur is. I would just 
say this, Madam Speaker. I have never seen it and I have been around a 
little bit. So I think it would be in the category of rare as hens' 
teeth or frog whiskers, something like that. That is maybe a Middle 
Eastern phrase, ``rare as red sulfur.'' So they were very apprehensive 
then about being able to hang on to a toehold in Iraq. But Iraq has 
attracted al Qaeda terrorists from other places around the globe to 
come there to fight because they know that when Iraq is free, not only 
does that erase their place where they hope to be able to have a 
terrorist center, but it also shuts off their opportunities anywhere 
else in the world because what it does is it inspires the Iraqi people. 
When they stand up; when they become prosperous; when free enterprise 
starts to work; when the oil starts to pump out of the ground; when the 
Baghdad Chamber of Commerce, whom I gave a speech to here about a year 
ago and they were just so spontaneous in their response to me; when 
those good things happen in Iraq, when safety is established, commerce 
is established, and the oil comes out of the ground and the money flows 
into Iraq and they become a free, prosperous nation, an Islamic nation 
and an Arab nation, that inspiration that Iraq can and I believe, Madam 
Speaker, will become will be too much for al Qaeda, too much for the 
rest of the world of al Qaeda and the people within that religion who 
hate freedom, who hate Western civilization, who hate Christianity, who 
hate Americans, who hate free enterprise capitalism because the model 
of success would be what will defeat the

[[Page 17862]]

rest of them. So Afghanistan and Iraq become the two lodestar nations, 
and those two together are the inspiration for the Muslim world.
  And as they move forward towards freedom and they want to share in 
that prosperity, I would just ask the world to consider what happened 
after November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall went down and the Iron 
Curtain came crashing down on that day and freedom echoed bloodlessly 
across Eastern Europe all the way to the Pacific ocean. Almost 
bloodlessly. Ceausescu, I think we have to exempt him from that 
category. And that is about the only place where the bullets flew. But 
in the end, the people of Eastern Europe and across Asia loved freedom. 
They reached out for freedom and were ready to fight for freedom. That 
kind of historical miracle that took place in about a 2\1/2\-year 
period of time can be that same kind of historical miracle for the Arab 
world.
  So, Madam Speaker, I want the American people to understand the Bush 
doctrine, this goal that we have, which is to change the habitat that 
breeds terror and promote freedom so people can choose their own 
destiny. And if they choose their destiny to be something less than the 
freedom that we have, there is not much we can do about that, but we 
can encourage them to be free and make their own decisions and take a 
look at models around the world. And the best model, Madam Speaker, is 
right here in the United States. There is no place with more freedom. 
There is no place with more prosperity. There is no place with a 
stronger economy than we have here in the United States. And it is one 
of the places that has the strongest families and the strongest 
tradition of faith and Biblical values, and you put that all together. 
We are descended from Western civilization. We are now the leaders in 
Western civilization. The thought process that was descended from the 
Greeks and through France in the Age of Enlightenment and over to the 
United States at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, that 
dynamic that came from Western civilization coupled with the Industrial 
Revolution and that dynamic of free enterprise capitalism that matched 
with the Industrial Revolution, was tempered by and given a moral 
authority from our Biblical values, those three pillars are what made 
this Nation the great Nation that we are. And we need to be anchored in 
those pillars.
  But I would take us back, Madam Speaker, to some situations that are 
just simply facts, facts that we forget about. Osama bin Laden 
officially declared war against the United States on August 23, 1996. 
He just flat came out and said, We are at war with the United States of 
America. He decided he wanted to take us on. That was after the World 
Trade Center was bombed, which was February of 1993. There were also 
the plotting terrorists there, and I believe that number was also five 
of them, that had we enforced our laws on our security, we would have 
plucked them off the streets and they wouldn't have been in the mix and 
perhaps we could have interceded in the first attack on the World Trade 
Center. But that was February, 1993, Madam Speaker. And then there was 
an attack on the Khobar Towers in June of 1996. After that, August 23, 
1996, Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States. And our 
response was, I guess we will have to serve a warrant on Osama bin 
Laden and make it a law enforcement approach rather than a war. And 
according to significant, credible accounts, we passed up several 
opportunities to take Osama bin Laden out. It would have saved 3,000 
lives then and perhaps another 3,000 lives of our troops that have been 
in the field, not to mention the thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis and 
our coalition troops, who have all had casualties associated with this. 
But I would take us into a perspective that might lay it out a little 
differently, and that would be 5 years ago yesterday, I was on my way 
down the road to the Clay County Fair. My wife called me on the phone 
and said, Turn on the radio. A plane has been flown into the Twin 
Towers.

                              {time}  2145

  I turned on the radio, a few minutes later the second plane hit the 
other tower. The gentleman with me said, and he is a World War II 
veteran, just said under his breath, ``Pearl Harbor.'' It didn't take 
him five seconds to analyze what had happened. There had been another 
cowardly attack on the United States of a similar magnitude. And in the 
aftermath of Pearl Harbor, we went into an all-out global war and we 
fought on two fronts, in Europe and in the Pacific, and we fought the 
Nazis and the Japanese. And the loss of American lives in that 3\1/2\-
year period of time was about 450,000 brave Americans, about the 
similar number of lives lost in Pearl Harbor as there was in the Twin 
Towers.
  Since that time of the attack on the Twin Towers, this Nation has 
suffered not quite 3,000 killed in action. But 450,000 in the aftermath 
of Pearl Harbor. If you calculate that ratio or that equation, Madam 
Speaker, I think it indicates pretty strongly how successful this 
effort has been. And this is a different kind of war. It is a war that 
is going to go on for a long time, and it will not be over until we 
change the habitat of the people who get up every morning and decide 
they are going to come and kill us.
  I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).
  Mr. GINGREY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just want to 
interject, he is exactly right. And his friend, the veteran that was 
with him on that fateful morning and said, ``Pearl Harbor,'' that 
attack on December 7, 1941, that day which President Roosevelt said 
would live in infamy, certainly it has. And as Representative King 
pointed out, Madam Speaker and my colleagues, something like 2,400, 
slightly less than 2,500, people were lost on that Sunday morning at 
Pearl Harbor in that unprovoked sneak attack by the Japanese. And the 
Twin Towers was very, very similar: an unprovoked sneak attack on 2,997 
people.
  Representative King, I was asked recently in my district on a radio 
interview, and the reporter said, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, we have 
lost almost 2,700 of our brightest and bravest patriots. Is it worth 
it? And is it worth it, indeed. Losing one life is painful. It is 
painful for the families, of course, and for the Commander in Chief and 
from this Congress who gave the President the authority to wage war 
against these dastardly Islamic extremists. But it is worth it. It is 
worth it because that is the price we have to pay. I think Thomas 
Jefferson said a long time ago that the tree of liberty has to be 
nourished occasionally by the blood of patriots.
  And I think about World War II. The island of Iwo Jima, that very 
important foothold in the mid-Pacific. In 30 days we lost 7,000 of our 
best generation, our Greatest Generation. But it was worth it.
  I just felt like I had to make these points with my colleague and say 
that that is why the President says we will stay the course, we will 
not fail those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice, and their 
families.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Gingrey from Georgia. 
And those sacrifices in the past have indeed been significant, and 
every life is equally cherished whether it is in today's conflict or a 
conflict back in that era.
  Madam Speaker, I would pose this question: Would anyone like to be on 
the side of the other guys? Would anyone like to be sitting there 
without the resources that we have, without the firepower, without the 
intelligence, without the tactics that we have, without the finances to 
support that, and without the 300 million people that stand behind our 
military and the ability to go out and recruit? Our recruitment is up.
  One thing that is different between Desert Storm number one and 
Operation Iraqi Freedom is that we had about 2.4 million people in our 
armed services than at the beginning of the liberation of Kuwait. Now 
we are down to about 1.3, 1.4, because in the aftermath of Desert 
Storm, there was called the peace dividend, and that is when the 
Clinton administration came in

[[Page 17863]]

and decided we can provide all the money we want to grow social 
programs by simply cutting the military. That is the peace dividend, we 
are going to grow social programs. Well, a million men and women came 
out of uniform in that period of time, and now we sit here thinner. And 
I am ready to beef these numbers of troops up some more to take some of 
the load off of the ones that we have so they we don't have to deploy 
so much.
  But the folks on the other side that are sitting there, and their 
recruitment, they have got a count of people coming into Iraq that have 
watched al-Jazeera TV perhaps, people that would infiltrate in from 
Syria and Iran, and their weapons, their munition, their funding all 
needs to be smuggled in to them and they have to cower and hide and 
sneak around like rats day and night to try to find an opportunity to 
detonate a bomb, not confront us face to face, but to detonate a bomb. 
And they know that they cannot win tactically, and they know that the 
only way they can win is if we lose our resolve.
  And at that point, I want to point out an experience that happened to 
me over there in the Middle East. This is the poster of the Shia cleric 
Muqtada al-Sadr. Now, he is the individual that today I would say is 
the surrogate to the Iranians because he is a Shia, because he has been 
in here fomenting violence on a regular basis, and he has had his 
militia. And there was a time when the casualty rates from American 
troops on his militia and the coalition troops on his militia was so 
strong that he really considered take up a career in politics because 
he didn't have much militia left over there in those days. He has since 
built it up some and his militia is operating, although in a restricted 
fashion, within Sadr city area Baghdad.
  But as I was over there a couple of trips ago sitting in Kuwait City 
in the hotel waiting to go into Iraq the next day, I had on al-Jazeera 
TV. As it came on, on TV, and Muqtada al-Sadr is a dentist, I think, he 
came on television. He was speaking in Arabic and they had the crawler 
going on underneath, so I could track him. And he said, if we keep 
attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq the same way they left 
Vietnam, the same way they left Lebanon, the same way they left 
Mogadishu. That was June 11, 2004, and it was on al-Jazeera TV. I wish 
I had the tape of that. I haven't been able to quite find that. But I 
know what I saw and I know what I heard, Madam Speaker, and that tells 
us why we must prevail in this conflict.
  The price for cut and run to the future of the security of this 
country would be cataclysmic. If we pulled out of Iraq without a 
government there that can provide safety and security and freedom and a 
tactical position in the world, if we pull out of there before those 
goals are reached and ensured, the price will be terrible to the 
destiny of the world and the security of the world, and the terrorists 
will be emboldened and Iraq will become their terrorist training 
ground, their campground, their deployment ground, the place where they 
would be insulated from the rest of the world because, after all, if 
the United States didn't come in there, if we ever pulled out, heaven 
help us if we ever tried back because half of the people in this 
Congress would stand up and resist that.
  We must prevail while we are there; otherwise, that same sentiment 
that comes out of Muqtada al-Sadr will be on the lips of every person 
that is our enemy. They will think that the Americans will lack 
resolve. And, in fact, we would not have resolve because if any 
terrorist flare-up came up anywhere else in the world, if we didn't 
finish the job in Iraq, how do you make the case to go someplace else? 
How do you make the case to go to Syria?
  And what if Iran continues with their nuclear build-up? How would we 
ever have the resolve to take that away from them, to say to them, 
Iran, we have decided the date that your nuclear effort will cease, and 
the only option to you is try to divest yourself of that nuclear 
capability before that day comes. Oh, and by the way, we aren't telling 
you what day that is. That is the kind of price that would have to be 
paid for the next several generations if we don't stay in Iraq and 
finish this job.
  As General Casey said the last time I was over in Iraq, he said the 
enemy cannot win if the politicians stay in the fight. If the 
politicians stay in the fight. And yet I hear, especially on the other 
side of the aisle, let's get out of there, we can't win. These are 
sometimes the same people that surrendered before we ever got there. 
And they are trying to get their prophecy fulfilled by encouraging the 
enemy to attack us. And that encouragement of the enemy is costing 
American lives, and it is encouraging not only our enemy but it is 
encouraging the people around them, the countries around them that 
support al Qaeda and the terrorists within Iraq.
  And the people that are doing that support comes out of Syria, it 
comes out of Iran. And I am starting to come to the conclusion that 
Iraq can't really be the safe country and the free and prosperous 
country that it has the potential to be as long as Iran is fomenting 
terror within the boundaries of Iraq.
  But we know the Iraqi people love freedom. They have had a taste of 
freedom. And when I watched the way they react to me when I go over 
there, I watch the interest that they show, I am convinced that there 
is a future for them and they want that free future.
  But if we also compare into this the Israeli situation where 
simultaneously Hamas attacked in Gaza and Hezbollah attacked in the 
north, now, what could coordinate such an attack like that? Iran. Iran 
whom I am reported sent tens of millions of dollars to Hamas, because 
Hamas, the Sunnis, weren't quite tied as tightly with Iran. So a little 
money helped, and they unleashed their attacks in Gaza and had to face 
the Israeli defense forces there. And Hezbollah, clearly a surrogate of 
Iran, began to fire their missiles into Israel.
  Look at the violence that is being fomented, the terror that is being 
pushed out of Iran today, Madam Speaker. That violence that in the 
Middle East is there today is rooted in Iran, rooted in Iran that just 
last month celebrated the centennial year of the formation of their 
constitution, a short-lived constitution, but a constitution that laid 
out the parameters for a free people. Iran has a tradition of freedom 
as well, Madam Speaker, and as old as it is, 100 years old, I believe 
the date was August 6, 1906, and to commemorate the centennial of that 
I hope that we move a resolution to acknowledge that date. I hope the 
Iranian people will be inspired to go back into the streets and grasp 
their freedom from the despotic rulers that are the ones that are 
fomenting so much terror and so much hatred, and take the control away 
from the madman that would continue to develop nuclear weapons and 
threaten to use them.
  We know from historical experience that when tyrants threaten, they 
generally follow through. And it was the British who learned that when 
they tried to negotiate in Munich with Hitler. And when they came back 
with a letter that said we will guarantee peace for the next hundred 
years, it didn't last very long; it lasted until the 1st day of 
September 1939 when the Nazis attacked Poland. But Hitler threatened 
and he followed through.
  Ahmadinejad is threatening. He will follow through because he is not 
afraid of anything. He is not deterred by a threat. He has a view that 
things are inevitable; and if he can kill enough people, his one 
religious cleric will come back, the 13th Imam or whatever his name is. 
And that is a radical approach to it all, but he would drive an entire 
people into oblivion. And if they get a nuclear weapon and the ability 
to deliver it, Tel-Aviv will be the first target, and he will threaten 
the rest of the Middle East and he will keep building missiles that 
will fire longer and longer until he is threatening Western Europe, and 
pretty soon he will be threatening the United States, just as that 
growing capability in North Korea has the potential within a very short 
time of threatening the United States.
  We simply cannot let nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them 
into the hands of madmen. There is not a

[[Page 17864]]

rational regime. He doesn't represent the people of Iran. The people of 
Iran are a modern, moderate society, and they would like their 
opportunity at freedom. They would like their opportunity at 
prosperity. And I hope that they reach up and grasp that before it is 
too late, before annihilation is brought upon Iran by their leader.
  And so on this date, this fifth anniversary plus one day of the 
terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, on Pennsylvania, on the Pentagon, 
I wish, Madam Speaker, to thank and give gratitude to our military men 
and women who have so selflessly served with great courage, great 
bravery, great fortitude in a foreign land.
  The safety that the American people have been able to enjoy over the 
last 5 years are to the credit also of our emergency personnel and our 
intelligence system that is there and the security that is put in 
place. There has been a good network, Madam Speaker, and we need to be 
ever vigilant and ever increasing our network. There are places where 
we are vulnerable, and we are working to bring that vulnerability under 
control. But over the last 5 years we have a lot to be thankful for. We 
are a prosperous Nation. We have recovered from this.
  I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

                              {time}  2200

  Mr. GINGREY. I realize the time is drawing to a close in this hour, 
but I wanted to point out, Madam Speaker, to our colleagues, that of 
course tomorrow on the floor of this House we will have 4 hours of 
debate on a resolution, a House Resolution, recognizing these men and 
women that Representative King just referred to, and I am talking about 
the first responders.
  We all honored them yesterday across this Nation, the 350-something 
firefighters that lost their lives on 9/11 as they charged into those 
burning towers. I am sure that none of them thought for a moment about 
their own safety. They just knew that there were men and women, 
possibly children in those buildings that needed to be rescued.
  So, again, I hope tomorrow we will have a unanimous vote on that 
resolution, and I look forward to being a part of that.

                          ____________________