[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 310-311]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                          OUR MISSION IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I came to the floor to talk a little bit 
about national security and where the Nation's defense apparatus stands 
as of now. But I thought I also might comment on the comments that were 
made by two of my wonderful colleagues, Ms. Woolsey of California and 
Mr. Paul of Texas, who preceded me and commented about their position 
to the effect that we should bring our troops home immediately from 
Iraq. And implicit in their comments was the message that somehow 
Saddam Hussein's continued rule of Iraq would have been preferable to 
the American intervention.
  I disagree with that theme, and let me tell you why. In listening to 
Ms. Woolsey talk about the wounded, the KIA, the suffering in that part 
of the world, and the burden that has been borne by American soldiers, 
I think it is also important to remember the Iraq that was represented 
by Saddam Hussein.
  And while she has, obviously, the images that have compelled her to 
take her philosophical position, the image that I have, and I keep in 
my desk drawer, is the photograph of the hundreds of mothers whose 
bodies are strewn across the hillside in northern Iraq, holding their 
children, some of them newborn babies, some of them four, five, 6 years 
old, dead in mid-stride where they were hit by poison chemical, poison 
chemical that was delivered into those villages at the order of Saddam 
Hussein.
  And I have taken, as a guy who sometimes watches the History Channel, 
to tuning in when I see the History Channel reviewing the exhuming of 
bodies in these mass graves and putting together this story, this 
mosaic of Iraq history under Saddam Hussein and the story of how 
hundreds of people, men, women and children, would be herded

[[Page 311]]

across fields and they would be executed and their bodies would be 
pushed into mass graves. And now we are uncovering those mass graves.
  And just like the mass graves that we found in Europe, especially 
those that were filled by bodies that had been people who had been 
executed by the Nazis, there are more people now in those mass graves, 
we find, than what we had projected.
  And as I watched the exhuming of some of those bodies on the History 
Channel, I noticed that the anthropologist who was doing the particular 
work noted that the mother, in some cases, who was executed would often 
have a .45 bullet hole in the back of her head, and her small baby that 
she was holding would also have a bullet hole in the back of his or her 
head. So the monstrosity that was Saddam Hussein, the mass execution, 
the killing of people with chemical weapons, is what the American 
troops displaced when we moved into Iraq.
  Now, it is tough to stand up a free nation and stand up a military 
that is able to protect it, but that is the challenge that we are 
meeting right now. And we are following the same basic pattern that we 
have followed for 60 years. Whether you are talking about Japan or the 
Philippines or El Salvador in our own hemisphere, first you stand up a 
free government. Secondly, you stand up a military that is capable of 
protecting that free government, and third, the Americans, not coveting 
anything that that country has, the Americans leave.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I thought I also might speak just a little bit, as 
we turn over the control of Congress to the Democrat leadership, not 
only in the full House, but also the committee chairmanships, and my 
own committee chairmanship now has been relinquished to the gentleman 
from Missouri, Ike Skelton, my good friend and a wonderful person and a 
person with a real heart for the troops. I thought that I might just 
comment about where we stand right now. I think it is important for the 
American people to know where we stand and what this Congress that is 
going out has accomplished for national security.
  First, what have we done for the troops? Well, over the last 8 years 
we have increased the pay for the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the 
Marines, and the National Guard by right at 40 percent, a 40 percent 
pay increase. We have increased family separation pay, the amount of 
money that we deliver to our military families when they are separated 
when people are deployed overseas. We have increased that from $100 a 
month to about $250 a month. We have increased our combat pay.
  Mr. Speaker, I know I have only got 5 minutes, so I will elaborate on 
some of the accomplishments that occurred during this last Congress in 
the next hour.

                          ____________________