[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14736-14737]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2000
                      HISTORY AND THE WAR IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hare). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) will 
control the remaining 12 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that, and I appreciate 
the gentleman from Tennessee for organizing this special order tonight. 
As I had the privilege to sit here on the floor and listen to each of 
the speakers, it was a good education for me to listen to the eloquent 
voices that stand up so well and speak for defending our freedom.
  To take us towards the to the point towards conclusion of this hour, 
it is hard to pick up on that tone that was left by Mr. Franks of 
Arizona, the understanding of over 6,000 casualties on that first day. 
I presume that they were those killed in action on that day, and on D-
Day landing on Omaha Beach and on Utah Beach and on other points there 
in Europe. That is a place and a location that will always live in the 
history of this country. It is a place of glory. It is a place where 
freedom was begun to spread back across Europe.
  As I look at that, and I see these 60-some years hence the D-Day 
landing, I can't help but think that those countries in Europe that 
have experienced freedom the longest seems to hang on to that freedom 
the least, and those countries in Europe, particularly eastern Europe, 
that have lived under tyranny the most recently, seem to want to grasp 
that freedom and hang on to it and fight for it and defend it more 
aggressively.
  That is reflected, I think, in the troops that are part of our 
coalition troops in Iraq. In one of my trips over there, I found myself 
standing with a British general down in Basra. I looked around his 
headquarters there, and I exempt the Brits from that definition, 
because they have been tenacious and stood with us in Iraq and other 
places around the world, but as I looked around, the uniforms and the 
national flags that were on the shoulders of the coalition groups, 
Great Britain there, Australia there, Romanians there, there were 
Danish soldiers there, Bulgarian soldiers there, as I recall, and the 
list went on.
  If I remember right, it was eight different countries represented at 
those headquarters. I just gathered them together at random, lined them 
up and stood there and had their picture taken so that I could go back 
and reference which countries were represented.
  But it surely appeared to me that the nations that had lived most 
recently behind the iron curtain, the one that had the least experience 
with freedom, were the ones that were the most likely to be there 
serving with and defending us and defending the freedoms of the people 
of Iraq and helping with the liberation that is there. That does not 
take away from the commitments that we have seen on the part of the 
British, and especially the Australians. They will let me know always 
that they have been with us in every war, and sometimes they beat us 
there. So I count them among our best friends and our best allies.
  But here we are, with a debate that is going on continually here on 
the floor of this Congress. The questions that come to mind, as I 
listen to this discussion, I have to ask this question, what do 
liberals think? What are they thinking about? How can they draw a 
conclusion that somehow, even though Iraq is the central front in the 
war on terror, and that al Qaeda has streamed into Iraq to fight us 
there, in a way, a lot like the bug light. It is attractive, millions 
of them have been killed. They were captured and taken out on the field 
of battle there in Iraq. I would a lot rather have it there than here, 
and so would the American people.
  But how can one argue that the war against terror is not in Iraq, it 
is anywhere else where they might be. We listened to the gentleman from 
Tennessee go through a long place of places around the world where the 
Islamic terrorists have attacked, a lot of times, free people. With 
that list, you have to

[[Page 14737]]

know that this is a global war. These jihadists are attacking people, 
not like them, and their belief that they could expand, they should 
expand the caliphate at least around Western Europe and to the United 
States and presumably to the rest of the world, how can one conclude 
then that you would take a place off the map that has been paid for 
with the blood of American patriots, coalition force patriots and the 
blood of Iraqis, and the treasure, and say we are going to give it up.
  We have liberated it. We have earned it, we have paid for it, and, 
now, we are going to give it up and hand it over to the terrorists 
because the war on terror is not in Iraq, even though Osama bin Laden 
believed it was there, and al Zarqawi believed it was there and al 
Zawahiri believes it is there.
  It is obvious, General Petraeus has told us over and other again, 
that's where the central front is. In fact, Speaker Pelosi conceded 
that same point in one of her remarks here in a failed attempt to 
override one of the President's vetoes on one of their unconstitutional 
appropriations bills, but Iraq is the central front in the war on 
terror.
  To argue that we should pull out of there and let that country become 
whatever it would become, and that would be the off limits, safe ground 
and territory for al Qaeda to set up shop, because, politically, it was 
a good argument to make.
  All right, I can't follow that rationale, I can't follow that. If it 
is logical, someone has got to explain that to me. So we have a liberal 
approach to this. It is a law enforcement problem. Yes, we should go 
after Osama bin Laden in the mountains between Afghanistan and 
Pakistan, and we should do that.
  But we can fight this war on many fronts. We are a nation that can do 
that. Before this is over, we will have to do it in many places 
simultaneously. But we dare not walk away from this country that we 
pitched our future with. It was the right decision to go in there. I 
regret we had to.
  The President didn't have a choice, and honest historians will write 
that into the history books. But if we should walk away from there now, 
under any kind of ruse or under any kind of an excuse, they will claim 
victory, and, you would see, not just sectarian violence and the 
devastating bloodshed that would come from that until such time a 
dictator emerges, it can rule that part of the world, that's not the 
worst of things. It is a bad thing, but it's not the worst of things.
  What I believe you would see happen is the Sunni triangle would 
become the haven for the al Qaeda terrorists. They would set up shop 
there, unchallenged. We wouldn't have a way to go in and challenge 
them, because if we're not willing to take them out and keep them out 
of there now, why would we ever have the will to go in and take them 
out later. You know that the price would be higher, but the will 
wouldn't be materialized.
  So I believe al Qaeda takes over the Sunni triangle, and that would 
be the base of their operations, and they would seek to expand that 
base of operations. But, worse than that, as you have right now, you 
have Iranians fighting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq, 
and in Afghanistan.
  In fact, the motion to recommit with instructions that Mr. Pence 
offered today illustrated how Iran is engaging themselves into the 
operations and in the support of the Taliban and Afghanistan. But they 
have been engaged in this proxy war against the United States in Iraq 
for 2\1/2\ or perhaps 3 years.
  So if we were to pull out of there, you would see the hegemony of the 
Iranians go into the Shi'a regions and the influence of that, get 
entrenched further in the Shi'a regions of Iraq. Those regions control 
70 to 80 percent of Iraq's oil. That would put Iran in control of the 
oil in that region, and the Strait of Hormuz, through which 42.6 
percent of the world's export oil supply flows.
  They would be in a position to decide when their treasure chest is 
full of oil money, when they have purchased enough scientists and 
enough nuclear capability and when they have developed enough delivery 
capability to terrorize the rest of the world and attack the rest of 
the world with their nuclear capability, pick their time, shut down or 
shut off, I call it the valve at the Strait of Hormuz, the place where 
the oil has to flow through. Through that strait, they can control the 
economy of the world.
  If that valve is shut down, that sends the United States, the effect 
of the cost of our oil price is going through the roof, $3 a gallon gas 
would be cheap if that would happen. That would put the United States 
into at least a recession, probably a depression.
  China would follow us. They are starved for the energy the same way, 
and their economy is linked to ours. If we catch a cold, they sneeze, 
because they sell so much product to us. The biggest losers in this 
would be the United States, China. The biggest winners, Iran in their 
hegemony; and the Russians who have more oil than they know what to do 
with.
  That's why Putin is opposed to our operations there, and that's why 
we are getting a lot of grief out of Putin. This outfit over here says 
somehow says we shouldn't fight this in Iraq. The worst scenarios are 
the ones that I have talked about, and I anticipate a nuclear Iran, an 
Iran that is committed to annihilating Israel, and an Iran that is 
committed to annihilating the United States.
  That's the rationale that we are dealing with here. I wonder if they 
can actually think through this. But I also wonder why anyone would 
think that the voters have hired 535 liberal generals to micromanage a 
global war on terror. In fact, I'd ask anyone in this Chamber, come 
down, and I will yield time to you, and you tell me, name me a single 
general that was a liberal, a successful liberal general throughout all 
the history of the world.
  I defy you to name one, there isn't one. One has never existed. One 
will never exist. Liberal generals don't succeed, 535 micromanaging 
liberal generals certainly don't succeed. It's not Congress' business 
to micro manage war. It's our job to fund them and support them and 
equip our troops, field an Army and a Navy, and declare a war if the 
situation calls for it. We haven't done so since World War II.
  That's our job in this Congress, and that's our constitutional 
limitations. We need to live by those limitations and not be busting 
our buttons believing that we can do something here that isn't getting 
done, maybe, to the satisfaction of the people on that side of the 
aisle or mine, for that matter.
  But there is a tremendous amount at stake, and it is more than the 
lives that have been invested so far, those that have been lost so far. 
God bless them for that. Zach Wamp spoke well to that, but the destiny 
of America and the destiny of the free world and the destiny of western 
civilization are all on the line matched up against a belief that they 
are going to restore a caliphate and renew a 100 year-old conflict that 
has been taking place here in the war, here in the world for hundreds 
of years.
  We have a western civilization belief, we believe in freedom, this 
has been a country that has been founded on Judeo-Christian principles. 
That's some of the foundation of our strength, free enterprise market 
economy is another one, belief in the rule of law, and the foundational 
principles that we have in this Constitution, all tied together, all at 
risk, all matched up against people that don't believe in freedom, 
people that believe in death, people that execute homosexuals and 
female adulteresses, by the way.
  Many people on this side of the aisle have a different belief system. 
I don't know why they would want to ally themselves with the interests 
of those who want to restore the caliphate, stone women and execute 
homosexuals and destroy your freedom and your freedom of religion. All 
of that is tied up in the risk of this.

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