[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 819-824]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        THE DEMOCRATIC AGENDA AND THE PRESIDENT'S AGENDA ON IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mahoney of Florida). The gentleman from 
Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address 
you

[[Page 820]]

and of course all the Members here on this floor of the United States 
Congress. I would point out here in the beginning that it is about 8:15 
here this evening, and the President will be giving his major address 
on Iraq at about 9:01 and so I intend to be asking for an adjournment 
just right before 9:00 so there is an opportunity to do that transition 
and that the President does have an opportunity to use this channel to 
speak to the American people.
  To begin this presentation this evening, and we listened to the 
members on the other side of the aisle talk about supporting the 100-
hour agenda, Mr. Speaker, I point out that this 100-hour agenda was a 
number just kind of picked out of the air or off the wall and it turned 
into a promise. And inside of that promise of 100 hours and to 
accomplish these five or six things within 100 hours are a whole series 
of other promises, and it appears as though the most important promise 
of all is we are going to do all this in 100 hours. The 100-hour 
promise. And not the promise for bipartisanship and not the promise for 
the most open Congress in history, and probably not the promise for the 
most ethical Congress in history. The jury is still out on that, Mr. 
Speaker, but this thing that preempts all, that trumps all is this idea 
of 100 hours.
  Well, 100 hours to the American people might mean at midnight on 
December 31 when the ball dropped and hit the bottom in Times Square, 
the clock might start to tick on the 100 hours here in 2007, the new 
110th Congress. But I don't take that position necessarily, Mr. 
Speaker. I take the position that when we gaveled in and went to work 
here, if you want to count 100 hours, that is fine; if you want to make 
a promise to get something done in 100 hours, that is also fine. But 
that 100 hours didn't start for the first week. It didn't start for the 
first week because we were voting on things other than the six things 
on the agenda to be accomplished in the 100 hours.
  And so then the promise that it was going to be bipartisan and an 
open process, we found out, I guess after Congress began, this 110th 
Congress, that this open process couldn't be opened up until the 100 
hours were over, or otherwise they couldn't get everything accomplished 
in the first 100 hours. So bipartisanship went out the window a victim 
of the 100-hour promise, and so did the open kind of a system. The 
bills didn't go through subcommittee. They didn't go through committee. 
They didn't go through rules. No amendments are allowed. And yet that 
was all decided before the 100-hour clock began.
  So we set up a clock, a legitimate clock, one that actually keeps the 
time here that Congress is in session. From when we gaveled in this 
110th Congress, we gavel in the morning, open with a prayer and the 
pledge, and we gavel out in the evening. That clock has got a tick on 
that. We are paying people here to work around this Capitol the whole 
time the 100 hours is moving.
  So I set up this clock so the American people can keep track of what 
the hours are, and I point out this: When we started this morning, we 
were at 31 hours that ticked away since. And these are just business 
hours. It is not a stretch; it is not 24 hours a day. It is the hours 
that this floor is in operation. In fact, yesterday, it was scheduled 
to be at 10:00, so a lot of people made their plans to be here at 
10:00. It didn't work on Monday because of the football game. And I 
will just reserve my opinion of that tonight, Mr. Speaker. But the 
10:00 time to start got moved back to 10:30, got moved back to noon and 
then got moved back to first votes at 5:30 yesterday afternoon. So some 
of that is not taken into account here, but as of about now, this 100 
hours has clicked up to 42 hours, Mr. Speaker, have ticked away. And 
there have been a couple of things that have been passed, and some will 
claim that to be an accomplishment. And I don't intend to take up that 
issue either tonight, Mr. Speaker. But I would point out to the 
American people that we are at 42 hours and counting.
  If you can't count time, you also can't count dollars or people. And 
it is important to understand the cost to the United States of America 
and the taxpayers that fund it. And we will be doing some of these 
tallies after hours tonight to come back with some better numbers 
tomorrow, and I will bring this chart then to the floor every day until 
the 100 hours ticks over, and we can make this 100-hour promise 
something that goes into the dust bin of history.
  But this 100-hour promise has trumped the other promises. It has been 
more important than an open system of government. It has been more 
important than allowing anyone to offer a single amendment to any bill 
that has come forward here, and each one of those bills are going to 
change the destiny of America. Maybe a little bit, maybe a lot. But 
each one will change the destiny of America some. And the people I feel 
sorry for, all of those new freshmen Democrats, the ones that were 
elected to office having promised that they were going to represent 
their constituents here, they would have a voice, they would be 
effective. They bring with them the vitality of America. They bring the 
new ideas into this Congress, the fresh blood. The best responsiveness 
to constituents that you ever will see on average comes with the 
freshmen. We are glad when they come here every new Congress because it 
adds new vitality.
  But that large crop of Democrat freshmen and that smaller crop of 
Republican freshmen I think have gotten their eyes opened up a little 
bit. I think they believed they would come here and they would be able 
to come to a subcommittee and do a markup on a bill and offer an 
amendment to improve the bill and see it go over to full committee, 
offer an amendment, improve the bill and bring it to the floor, where 
amendments would be offered and the bill would be improved and perhaps 
perfected and passed out of this Chamber, on over the Senate, where we 
would have negotiations working with them and they would have done the 
same thing.
  The sad news for those freshmen is that they don't have a voice in 
this process. Not a single freshman had an opportunity to offer 
amendment to engage in debate in a subcommittee, to engage in debate in 
a committee; didn't have an opportunity to go before the Rules 
Committee and make their argument as to why their amendments should be 
made in order. None of that was allowed to the freshmen. And, in fact, 
the small little group of people that put together this policy didn't 
consider the wisdom of Congress; they considered the wisdom of the 
people within that room, and I guarantee you, Mr. Speaker, that didn't 
include the freshmen, either the Democrats or the Republicans, who now 
have to reassess what kind of a system they thought they had gotten 
elected to.
  And I hope this 100 hours ticks away, and I hope it can be put away 
into the dust bin of history, and I hope those other promises can be 
rejuvenated and brought back to life, those promises about having an 
open system, a system that is bipartisan and a system that allows for 
amendments so that we can improve the legislation that comes.
  We are at 42 hours, Mr. Speaker, and the clock will start again. 
Actually, it will shut off when we adjourn here about 9:00 and it will 
take up again tomorrow morning when we gavel back in.
  But, Mr. Speaker, I come here to talk about a big subject. It is a 
subject that has been consuming the thoughts and the prayers of the 
American people since September 11, 2001, and that subject is a subject 
the President will take up here in a little more than 35 minutes. It is 
the subject of this global war on terror, and primarily the 
battleground, the main battleground, which is Iraq, in this global war 
on terror.
  I have certainly been involved in this since the beginning of the 
operations in Iraq. I have been over there four times. I have traveled 
into Afghanistan as well. Each time I go over there, I always stop at 
Landstuhl in Germany and visit our wounded troops there. And the last 
time I was over was over Thanksgiving, just a little over a month ago, 
when I ate Thanksgiving dinner with wounded troops in Landstuhl at the 
hospital in Germany, and that was the most meaningful Thanksgiving I 
have ever had in my

[[Page 821]]

life. I don't expect to ever top that for a moving Thanksgiving where 
one can really be in awe of true courage, true patriotism and true 
sacrifice.
  And I believe we are going to hear a speech from the President in a 
few minutes from now that is going to be, I think the tone of it could 
have been written by those people that have sacrificed the most, our 
soldiers and Marines and airmen that have perhaps given a limb, perhaps 
been wounded and crippled for life. I have not yet met a wounded 
soldier who said to me, ``This is a lost cause.'' They believe in the 
cause. They want to get back to the fight. They want to get back to the 
people they feel responsible for, and they want to complete the 
mission.
  The wounded troops will stand with the President in the speech he is 
about to give and the families of those who have given the ultimate 
sacrifice, the Gold Star families, the families that have traveled 
across America and been here in Washington, DC, a number of times and 
were in my office a week before I went over to Iraq. Some of those Gold 
Star families, those that have lost a son or a daughter over in Iraq or 
Afghanistan, some of them have also traveled over to the Middle East, 
also traveled into Iraq and got to visit the Iraqi people. And one of 
the fathers who lost his son killed over there in Iraq said to me: ``We 
cannot pull out of there. It is different now. We are committed to that 
cause. Lives have been lost. The soil in Iraq is now sanctified with 
American blood. It is not so simple that we could just walk away. We 
cannot. We must stay. We must prevail. We made the commitment to go 
there; we are invested in it; we must prevail.''
  As I looked him in the eye, I know what kind of pain he has been 
through, that soaked in with me, Mr. Speaker. And so I traveled over 
there in the aftermath of their trip, and as I went alone this time, I 
didn't go with a congressional delegation, I just went alone, and I had 
an opportunity to sit down with General Abizaid and close the door and 
talk and ask questions and probe a line of reasoning and then take on 
another line of reasoning. I had the opportunity to do the same thing 
with General Casey, although staff was in the room for that one. I also 
sat down with General Corelli and did the same thing. I had two 
meetings with Ambassador Khalilzad. And then each time I walked into a 
mess hall, or I would just holler out, ``Is anybody here from Iowa?'' 
And invariably there would be Iowans there. And there is an instant 
connection between you and someone from your State. You know where they 
are from. You know what they believe in. You have an understanding 
about their background and where they come from. You know what sports 
teams they support, or at least you can find out quickly, and we have 
those little arguments, Mr. Speaker. But when I index the things that I 
hear from our top officers that are in the field and what I hear from 
the people on the ground, and as I talk to people through all ranks and 
travel across Iraq and also Afghanistan in this last trip, put back 
together a kind of strategy and come to a conclusion as to where we 
need to go and what we need to do.
  And let's look at this thing, Mr. Speaker, from two broad 
perspectives. One of them is the idea that I am hearing over here on 
this side of the aisle, and this is not a new idea from the people on 
that side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker; they slipped language into the 
Department of Defense appropriations bill that would have by now 
prohibited all operations in Iraq. And that was Mr. Murtha's language 
that went in there that prohibited any basing rights negotiations in 
Iraq, which would have meant, had that language prevailed that when our 
agreement on any of our bases in Iraq had expired, we couldn't 
negotiate a new one. So, over time, we would have had to give up base 
after base after base until we had to pull our troops completely out of 
Iraq.
  That is not a lot different than the amendment that came out of an 
appropriations bill on this floor, Mr. Speaker, back in 1975 when a 
large Democrat majority took over and decided that they would take us 
out of the operations in Vietnam, and they introduced legislation 
successfully that forbid a single dollar from being used to support the 
South Vietnamese military. Not a dollar that can go for a bullet, for 
food, for a helmet, for a pair of khaki uniforms, no air cover, and 
nothing could go on offshore in South Vietnam either. So they shut down 
their operations in South Vietnam. And the South Vietnamese had 
defended their own country for 3 years, but when their resources dried 
up, their military collapsed.

                              {time}  2030

  Some of those things are being maneuvered right now, and I can hear 
this come out of the debate on the other side of the aisle.
  But here are the scenarios: One scenario is listen to the people over 
here, Mr. Speaker, who would say, well, let's unfund this operation. 
Let's bring our troops home now. Let's get out of there because it is 
sectarian strife and you can't resolve a civil war and it is just 
brother fighting against brother and why do we want to get involved in 
a family feud? All of that that substitutes for rationale.
  But what they are really looking at is if they get their way, the 
reality in Iraq is different than their perception, I believe, and I 
would like to have them pay a little more attention, maybe go over 
there with a real intention to learn.
  But a year ago in Iraq there was violence over most of the entire 
country scattered around. And the argument I heard from this side of 
the aisle over here was, well, let's get out of there right now, get 
the Americans out because, after all, they are the targets and Iraqis 
just want to have their own country. They object to Americans walking 
on their soil. So if we would leave, there would be nobody for them to 
shoot at, and then peace would break out all over Iraq, and the 
government would take over, and everything would be peaceful and fine. 
That was their argument then. Well, it was flawed, of course. But there 
was violence over most of Iraq.
  A year later, now, most of the violence is confined to Baghdad. 
Eighty percent of the violence is in the Baghdad area. So peace has 
broken out over most of Iraq. And if you talk to the soldiers that have 
been over there that are running missions and convoys and doing 
patrols, they will tell you that most of Iraq seems very, very normal, 
that you go down the street and off on the road and the Iraqi kids come 
out and wave and the Iraqi people are open and friendly. The men are 
open and friendly. The women are a little more shy and a little demure. 
That is their culture. But they travel where they want to go, and the 
only thing that makes them realize that there is a war is when an IED 
goes off. So we are getting there, and the Baghdad area is the area 
that needs to be controlled and pacified. The rest of the country is 
pretty good.
  If we pulled out now or if we pulled out in the near future, the 
involvement and the interference that comes from Iran would be imposed 
on the Shiia section of Iraq, which is actually a little more than the 
southern area of Iraq, which has got most of the oil in it. It would be 
Baghdad and some of the areas to the north of there and all the way 
south down to Basra, into the hands of the influence of the Iranian 
Shiia, who are right now funding and training, equipping and arming 
terrorists in Iran and sending them into Iraq and supporting some of 
the militia personnel there like Muqtada al Sadr.
  I happen to have his picture here. This fellow has been a nemesis for 
a long time. And I put the date down here. That was the date that I was 
sitting in a hotel in Kuwait City watching Al Jazeera TV. Muqtada al 
Sadr, the head of the Mahdi militia, came on Al Jazeera TV, and as I 
watched that he said in Arabic with the English crawler underneath: 
``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.'' Muqtada al Sadr.
  Now here he is being supported by the Iranians, funding his militia, 
helping to train his militia, and paying

[[Page 822]]

some of them to plant IEDs and attack Americans. Iran is conducting a 
proxy war against the United States from the sanctuary of their 
sovereign nation of Iran and sending in the munitions and the militia 
and the insurgents to attack Americans there, and this man is their 
surrogate, and he must go.
  It is more complicated than the people on the other side of the aisle 
would say. They would argue that it is just Shiia and Sunni that are 
fighting each other. There are six to eight different factions fighting 
each other there. Sadr is one. The Badr Brigade is another. Al Qaeda is 
another. There are Sunni criminal groups that are fighting. There are 
other groups, the former Baathists, that are fighting.
  You can add these pieces up, Mr. Speaker, but in the end it is more 
complicated than just simple sectarian strife. It is a power struggle, 
a power to provide security and safety within some areas of the 
community, the effort on the part of Muqtada al Sadr and others to 
drive some of the Sunnis out of Sunni sections of Baghdad so that they 
can have their internal hegemony within the city of Baghdad.
  But this all happened because there was somewhat of a vacuum there 
and we didn't go in and take this man out when we needed to do that. 
And he has been to some degree protected by Prime Minister Maliki, who 
this afternoon made a statement that essentially puts Muqtada al Sadr 
on notice. He tells the Shiite militias to give up.
  ``Prime Minister al-Maliki has told everyone that there will be no 
escape from attack,'' said a senior legislator who is close to Maliki. 
``The government has told the Sadrists,'' Muqtada al Sadrists, ```if we 
want to build a state, we have no other choice but to attack armed 
groups,''' this being the armed groups, Mr. Speaker.
  So I will say there are two main points that I want to hear the 
President address tonight, and one of them is militias must be taken on 
and taken out and they are getting an opportunity to surrender right 
now because Prime Minister Maliki has put them on notice. They must be 
taken on and taken out if they don't surrender. This is the lead that 
has got to go.
  The second one is Iran must cease and desist from their proxy war 
against the United States from the sanctuary of the sovereign nation of 
Iran by sending in insurgents who are trained, equipped, funded, and 
armed by the Iranians.
  And, by the way, IEDs that are being detonated that are blowing up 
Americans and killing Americans are being made in Iran and smuggled 
into Iraq. If we pull out of Iraq now without a successful safe country 
there, the result will be Iran will control the Shiia section of Iraq. 
They will control most of the oil in Iraq. They control the Straits of 
Hormuz now. They would control the outlet, the mouth of the Tigris and 
Euphrates River, the Umm Qasr ports, the export area for Iraq's oil. 
They would have a stranglehold on 40 percent of the world's oil, which 
is a death grip on the world economy.
  They would be in a position to continue to enrich themselves, and 
their money chest would be pouring over. They could then accelerate 
their nuclear weapons development. They could either build more and 
build them faster or buy them where they could get them, perhaps from 
North Korea, and you would see Iran much more quickly become a dominant 
nuclear power with an ability not just to put a nuclear missile into 
Tel Aviv but the ability to do so into Western Europe and within just a 
few years the ability to do so clear into the United States of America 
with a death grip on the oil and the world, 40 percent of the oil, 
which controls the market, Mr. Speaker.
  That is what we are looking at if we pull out of there. The stakes 
are too high, and that is why the President rejected, I will say 
politely ignored, the Iraq Study Group's recommendations.
  But we should keep in mind, Mr. Speaker, that there was a million 
dollar appropriation here that went to the United States Institute for 
Peace and out of that came the Iraq Study Group. Now, why, if we wanted 
to figure out how to win a war, would we go to the United States 
Institute for Peace and ask them to give us some advice? That makes 
about as much sense as going to the Syrians or going to the Iranians 
and saying, can you help us solve this problem? Why don't you give us 
some constructive recommendations?
  It is not in their interest to give us constructive recommendations. 
It is in the interest of the Iranians and the Syrians to undermine our 
effort there so that they can get us out of the Middle East and they 
can impose their influence on Iraq, not the other way around. We will 
not get constructive advice from Iran or from Syria any more than we 
got advice on how to win a war from the Iraq Study Group because I 
believe that they thought that their charge was how do we get out of 
this? Let's figure out how to get out of this. Not how do we win?
  But the President, to his credit, went to the Pentagon and said, I 
don't want to hear from you how we get out of Iraq. I want to see a 
strategy for victory.
  I wish he had done that a couple years ago, but I am glad he did it 
now. I am looking forward to his speech; and, as I said, I will be sure 
we adjourn here before the President's speech that will happen right at 
9 o'clock.
  But, at this moment, I would very much like to yield to my friend 
from Tennessee, Mr. Zach Wamp.
  Mr. WAMP. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding.
  And I just want to open by saying how encouraging it is to see a 
Member like yourself take such a hands-on interest in the affairs of 
the Middle East, and I think anyone here tonight or watching these 
proceedings would understand your perspective and how informed it is. 
Plus you approach it from the purity of an Iowan. And I am very 
grateful for your due diligence and for the work that you have done and 
the way that you understand these threats.
  I was reminded, as you were speaking, that just a couple of years ago 
you and I were in Africa together talking about these threats and how 
we were concerned that Africa was also at risk with some of the areas 
like Somalia, which is in the news again this week, where these 
international terrorist networks are, frankly, looking for another 
sovereign nation from which to operate, as they had with Afghanistan, 
and how global this threat really is.
  I did not come, Mr. Speaker, to the floor tonight to in any way 
alienate or accuse anyone here or the other party in this case, because 
if ever there was a time in my life where we need Democrats and 
Republicans to come together on an issue of national/international 
importance, it is this issue. This is where I hope that there are never 
partisan motives attached to anyone's position on matters of war and 
peace.
  I want to go back to the very time when we voted in the House and the 
Senate to remove Saddam Hussein by force and remind everyone that over 
half of the Democrats in the Senate voted to do so and almost half of 
the Democrats in the House voted to do so. And they can say now, oh, 
but we didn't have good information or whatever their rationale is for 
wanting to pull out abruptly now, but the truth is we are where we are 
and this situation is as it is and we are in it together. And if ever 
there was a time where Americans need to meet again at the water's 
edge, it is now.
  I don't want to preempt what the President says tonight. The 
President is in a very difficult place because the war has not gone 
well. We have made mistakes. We have not implemented certain policies 
to the best of our ability. And I think it is important for him to 
recognize those flaws and those shortcomings with the mission to this 
point because, in my opinion, all great leaders at some point say we 
are on the wrong road and we need to get to this road or we have made 
this mistake or that mistake and if you will join me, we can rectify 
this problem. Because the stakes are enormous, as you said.
  The great football coach Vince Lombardi, and football is just 
meaningless compared to these matters of war and peace and life and 
death, but he said once that fatigue makes cowards of us all. We need 
to remember that as a people, as a Nation, because we are all tired of 
this. I mean, I am weary of attending funerals in my district. I 
attended one with my wife

[[Page 823]]

again Monday, another one of a young soldier who died in Iraq over the 
holidays. His son was born the day after he died. We are all sickened 
by this sacrifice and this loss. But I have got to tell you if that 
collectively causes us to lose our passion for freedom or our will to 
carry on our way of life, it will be a tragedy in American history, and 
these are the decisions of the moment.
  Now I know that our friends from time to time quote people, but one 
of the people, ironically to me, that serves as kind of the conscience 
of some of these international issues is Senator Lieberman of 
Connecticut, who ran against, with my fellow Tennesseean Al Gore, the 
President and the Vice President. He just returned from this area and 
he came back in support of not only continuing our efforts until we can 
prevail in Iraq but, if necessary, and I am not endorsing increased 
troops tonight and I think the President is going to make his 
presentation and he has got a long way to go to convince the country 
and the Congress that this is necessary, so I am not endorsing that. 
But I am saying that Senator Lieberman came back and effectively 
endorsed, in order to control these areas of insecurity particularly 
within the 30-mile radius of Baghdad, increasing troop strength and he 
talked about ``greatly advancing the cause of moderation and freedom 
throughout the Middle East and protect our security at home.'' And I am 
very concerned that if we retreat into the 1990 style complacency that 
9/11s will continue.
  One of the problems is that we did not have enough troops on the 
ground, and one of the expressions I wish hadn't been uttered was 
``Mission Accomplished'' because there were many difficult days ahead 
of us following that unfortunate time. We didn't have enough troops to 
secure the area in and around Baghdad, and that is where 80 percent of 
the violence is taking place.

                              {time}  2045

  Sending more troops to Iraq will not help unless it is coupled with a 
concrete and feasible plan and a new strategy that requires the active 
participation of the Iraqi government. And the goal should be clear, an 
Iraq run by, secured by and governed by the Iraqi people.
  Frederick Kagan from the American Enterprise Institute wrote this 
week that, ``The real choice we face is this: Is it better to accept 
defeat than to endure the pain of trying to succeed.''
  I will say it again. ``The real choice we face is this: Is it better 
to accept defeat than endure the pain of trying to succeed.''
  I don't think we can accept defeat. I don't think we can be seen as 
in retreat, and I want to explain why. For one, all of those troops 
that have given their lives that I have been with the families of say 
to me, We must prevail. We must continue on. My son, my husband, my 
father, believed very much that this was a just cause and the right 
thing to do, and we must succeed. They have suffered great loss, and 
they believe that it is the right thing to do.
  But I want to say this, this cannot be George W. Bush's war. This 
must be America's fight. We must see people in a bipartisan way come 
together around a plan. I don't know if 20,000 troops is the right 
number, or 5,000 or 100,000; but we need to come back together because 
we are where we are and it is what it is, and if we are ever going to 
bring troops home in victory in 18 months or 24 months, we may have to 
put our foot down in the short run. Senator Lieberman believes so. The 
President believes so. And I hope that the case is made clearly so that 
more and more Americans understand this.
  Over the last few days, Zawahri, who is now the commander effectively 
of al Qaeda in the Middle East, has encouraged these terrorists to go 
to Somalia, as I said earlier, in northern Africa to fight the fight. 
The truth is this: If we were out of Iraq tomorrow, this threat 
continues. This threat did not just happen. September 11th was not the 
beginning of this. It was the culmination of them attacking us and our 
interests around the world and our sovereign land around the world, at 
our embassies. The same people, the jihadists, the extremists.
  Read the book ``Hatred's Kingdom'' about wahabism, Qutubi and Azzam. 
In the 1950s, they began indoctrinating people on this unbelievably 
radical element in Islam to oppose anyone who did not believe as they 
believed, and that is the Hezbollah foundation out of Iran, as you say.
  When people say these connections were not in place before September 
11th, these connections with these terrorist elements have been in 
place for years. Don't deny that. You are burying your head in the 
sand. Read ``Londonistan'' and how they have infiltrated London. Read 
``While Europe Slept'' and how they have infiltrated Europe. Read 
``America Alone'' or ``Looming Towers'' and understand that these 
threats are our generation's call to courage, and we cannot grow weary 
such that we retreat. Too much is at stake.
  The President is trying to get us back on the right road. One speech 
is not going to do it. Tonight is not going to do it. But I am hopeful 
for our country's sake, not my party's sake, not the Democrat's sake, 
but for our country's sake so we can find a path forward together. This 
cannot be the President's war. It has to be our country's fight against 
the jihadists wherever they go, and Iraq is one theater, and they want 
to fight us, and we need to defeat them. Let's meet together and send 
them back to their caves or into eternity so that our way of life is 
carried forward to the next generation.
  This is a generational challenge. We can't deny from time to time in 
history you have to step up and these brave sons and daughters have 
done just that, and they have volunteered to serve. We honor their 
sacrifice, but please, House and Senate and country, come together and 
find a path forward as one Nation.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee for his 
commitment to this country and the passion that he brings to everything 
he does. I point out, that meeting in Africa, we arrived from different 
locations and almost by coincidence, by providence, we arrived at the 
same location to address the things we were concerned about in South 
Africa at the time. I also note that Mr. Wamp shows up to address these 
issues spontaneously on occasion. I very much appreciate your 
leadership, Zach.
  As we sit here tonight, I will review some of the things that Mr. 
Wamp addressed. He listed a number of books that he recommended that we 
read. Among them was the book ``While Europe Slept'' by Bruce Bawer, 
and that is, I think, one of the most profound reads I have ever gone 
through. It tells the story how the author has traveled from New York 
City into Holland to make his life there, and realized he could never 
become a Dutchman in Holland the same way you can become an American in 
the United States. So he moved to Norway to become a Norwegian and 
found out that although he could develop his language skills and 
understood the culture and history of Norway, he would never be a 
Norwegian because they don't have a system of assimilation that we have 
or at least had in the United States.
  So he traveled throughout the countries in Europe and gathered 
anecdotes and data and studies and compiled an understanding of what is 
happening with the ethnic enclaves that have been created in Europe, 
those enclaves that are Muslim enclaves.
  Our idea has been in this country to promote assimilation. Everybody 
can become an American. That, we have considered to be 
multiculturalism. But the multiculturalism in Europe is different. That 
is, let us create an ethnic enclave here, and look at us. We are no 
longer this blue-eyed, blond society, or whatever it happens to be in 
the Scandinavian north or whatever the complexion might be in some of 
the other areas in Europe. We now have multiculturalism by ethnic 
enclave, and the ethnic enclaves being primarily Muslim have not 
integrated into the rest of society, and they have brought more and 
more from their home country and grown their enclaves to the point 
where Bruce Bawer's analysis comes down to that skepticism that France 
will ever be French again within the next generation, and that

[[Page 824]]

the takeover that takes place without the assimilation by rejecting the 
host country's culture and importing the culture of the newly arriving 
immigrants transforms these countries and explains why you can see 
second generation British of Pakistani descent setting off bombs in the 
subways in London.
  It explains that, and it shows what is happening to the culture in 
Europe because they have opened up their borders and not promoted 
assimilation. When it is done, Bruce Bawer's analysis comes down to the 
choice for Europe will be either one of two things: total capitulation 
or mass expulsion. That is what Europe is faced with, and I am not 
optimistic that Europe will recover and come back to being a partner 
for the free world again because the people that are in those countries 
that are slowly by birth rate taking over don't believe in the freedoms 
that we believe in, Mr. Speaker. They reject them. They reject Western 
civilization and our Christian culture. The reject the Judeo-Christian 
belief system. The wahabists that Mr. Wamp talked about, they believe 
they have an obligation or at least a right to annihilate those who 
don't believe like they do.
  That is the enemy that we are up against. And this geopolitical 
dynamic needs to be understood by the Members of this Congress, and I 
am thinking the best way they can understand it is when the American 
people study it and get their voice into the ears of their 
representatives, the 435 here in the U.S. States House of 
Representatives.
  But to take on a little more of this, I would point out that a major 
question needs to be asked and answered, and I hope the President has 
asked the question and I hope he has answered the question, and that 
is: Can we live with, here in the United States, a nuclear armed Iran? 
That is part of this overall equation. It isn't just confined to Iraq.
  As I spoke earlier, Iran is conducting a proxy war against the United 
States in Iraq by training and funding and harboring terrorists and 
sending them munitions and equipping them and also making IEDs and 
other munitions that go into Iraq that are being used against Iraqis of 
all stripes and being used against Americans. That has to stop.
  But can we tolerate a nuclear-powered Iran, an irrational nuclear-
powered Iran that has Ahmadinejad who is fuming and making allegations 
about the annihilation of Israel and the annihilation of the United 
States.
  All we have to do is listen to these tyrants and believe what they 
say. Every action that they make makes it clear that they will develop 
a nuclear bomb. They will develop more than one. They are developing 
the means to deliver it now, as they are developing a bomb now. Why 
would we disbelieve them? Why would we think that we could talk them 
out of it? When you go into negotiations, you never get something for 
nothing. You have to have something to offer.
  I ask the President, and I hope he will tell us tonight, that he has 
put the cross hairs on Iran, and directly on their nuclear capability 
and sent through a back-channel message to Ahmadinejad and the mullahs 
that run him that Iran's nuclear days are numbered and that there is a 
decision that has already been made that they will not have a nuclear 
capability. And if they cease and desist from their proxy war against 
the United States that they are conducting within Iraq, then they will 
be allowed, perhaps, enough negotiation time that they can save some 
face before they dismantle their nuclear endeavor.
  Should they proceed, then the decision needs to be made whether to 
take out Iran's nuclear capability. We saw 4 days ago, there was 
intelligence or I will say a press leak that came out of Israel that 
they have a contingency plan to take out Iran's nuclear capability with 
limited tactical nuclear weapons. If they have to do that, I am afraid 
there is an all-out conflagration in the Middle East, and all Arab 
countries will descend upon Israel. If somebody has to do it, it is 
better if we do it. It is better if Ahmadinejad dismantles his nuclear 
capability.
  That is where I would start: Cross hairs on Ahmadinejad, put the 
cross hairs on their nuclear capability, and then if they back out of 
Iraq, then we can have a peaceful Iraq. We still have to remove Muqtada 
al-Sadr and some other militia leaders. If those two things happen, 
that shuts off the money, the munitions and the operations of violence 
that are there. As long as there is money there, somebody is going to 
set an IED. I can see that. But most is controllable by the Iraqis.
  I have watched as thousands of Iraqi troops have been trained, lined 
up in ranks. I first saw them and reviewed those troops in October 
2003. Those troops were trained by General David Petraeus. He headed up 
the Iraqi military training operations when he was over there during 
the last deployment, and now he has been appointed to command all 
military operations within Iraq. He is the most impressive military 
person I have met in my life. If anyone can run this operation in Iraq 
successfully, it is David Petraeus. He has the love and respect of many 
of the Iraqis, the Kurds and Sunnis and Shias. And in Mosul, where the 
101st Airborne, which he commanded when they went in to liberate Iraq, 
there in Mosul, they went in and liberated Mosul in the latter part of 
March 2003. By the end of May 2003, General Petraeus had held open 
elections in Mosul in those three provinces there, and elected a 
governor and a vice governor, and I also recall a business 
representative at the table in those discussions that we had. That was 
an impressive means to win the hearts and minds of the people, and also 
from a military tactical perspective.
  But to give you an understanding of how effective General Petraeus 
has been, there is a sign, and I have a picture of it as a street sign 
on a broad street in the city of Mosul in Iraq, and it said: 101st 
Airborne Division. They misspelled ``airborne'' and ``division'' so I 
was pretty sure that it was a sign put up by the Iraqi people in 
appreciation for the 101st Airborne led then by General Petraeus who 
will be taking over and commanding all military forces within Iraq.
  We can win this. We must win this. We do not have a tactical threat 
against us. We can and will prevail. The American people need to stand 
together. Mr. Wamp said that, and I agree with him.

                              {time}  2100

  We need to stand with our Commander in Chief. It isn't really up to 
the President to convince the American people that we should move 
forward on this, but it is up to us to support our military. And if we 
are going to support our military, we must support their mission, Mr. 
Speaker.
  So I look forward to the President's speech. It is a pleasure for me 
to have the honor and privilege to turn over, I will say this network, 
to the President of the United States as he lays out a plan for victory 
in the battlefield of Iraq, which will take us on to a final victory in 
the overall global war on terror.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), 
who was the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend for yielding.
  In a few minutes the President will address the Nation about his 
plans for Baghdad and the fact that he needs reinforcements, some of 
them to go to Anbar Province, some of them to work on a three-to-one 
basis with the Iraqi forces, three Iraqi battalions in each one of 
these sectors in Baghdad for each American battalion standing behind 
them.
  The President has asked for reinforcements, and it would be 
outrageous if the Democrat leadership in this House denied this country 
reinforcements for a military operation in a shooting war which 
continues to this minute.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Hunter. I yield back the 
balance of my time.

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