[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 26076-26081]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             NATIONAL SECURITY AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cuellar). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, tonight I'd like to share a few 
thoughts about national security and about American foreign policy. We 
have many challenges that confront us today, and we live in perplexing 
times, but we also live in a time when there are great challenges as 
well as great opportunities, as long as we, the American people, have 
the courage to live up to our potential as a country that could lead 
the world into a better way than we have known throughout the history 
of humankind.
  We are indeed in a new millennium, and this new millennium, coupled 
with the technological capabilities that we have and the vast wealth 
that is available to the free societies of the world today make it 
possible that we can build a better world than any human being has ever 
known. But, again, a lot of this has to fall back on the United States 
of America and our willingness as Americans to live up to the 
responsibility that we've been handed.
  Ronald Reagan used to say that America has a very special role to 
play in this world. He used to say that because we Americans are a very 
special kind of people. We are not of one race. We're not of one 
religion nor one ethnic group, but instead, we are made up of people 
who come from every part of this planet and every racial background and 
worship God in every way that you can imagine. And in fact, there are 
many atheists who don't worship God at all and have that right, but 
we've come here to live in freedom and to show the world and to lead 
the world as a country that's made up of people from all over, that 
lead the world toward that direction which will enable it to overcome 
those trials and tribulations, those hatreds, ancient hatreds that have 
plagued mankind for so long.
  And yes, today, the United States is the great superpower, thanks of 
course a lot to Ronald Reagan who I just talked about. The fact that 
during the Cold War he was willing to act responsibly to make tough 
decisions, in a way that ended the Cold War in a very real sense, he 
oversaw the demise of communism in the Soviet Union. It was Ronald 
Reagan who everyone knows brought down the Berlin Wall and not George 
Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush's father.

                              {time}  2145

  But as the Berlin Wall came down because of the policies of Ronald 
Reagan, we too must make the right decisions to ensure that the 
challenges that we face today are overcome in time for the next 
generation to enjoy greater freedom and to free themselves from the 
threats of fear that we face today. This will not happen unless we act 
responsibly, unless we act with courage, but, most importantly, unless 
we stand up and proclaim that, yes, we are from every nation of the 
world and every race and every religion, and we are the ones who will 
promote freedom and liberty on this planet. It is that alliance that we 
can have with those people in every country, that we have are, as I 
say, those people within our own society who can reach out to every 
country with that message, that we are allied with those good and 
decent people throughout the world who would stand with us to create a 
world where human freedom and liberty and justice and treating people 
with respect is something that is commonplace rather than the 
exception.
  Sometimes it's a little difficult to think of a world becoming free, 
and the expansion of liberty and justice in this world, when we hear 
the reports that we heard today coming out of Burma. Burma, for these 
last 4 decades, has lived under tyranny, a horrible, horrible tyranny. 
It has been a closed society. Burma is a country that is so rich in 
natural resources that after the Second World War it was thought that 
Burma would be the breadbasket of Asia, that Burma would indeed be one 
of the richest countries of Asia.
  Instead, Burma has sunk year after year, suffering from tyranny but, 
as a result of that tyranny, its people have lived in deprivation and 
in hunger and in want that was never ever thought would happen. No one 
ever thought that would happen after the Second World War.
  But if we have learned anything from Burma and from the other 
countries that are poor today, it is that poverty is not created by too 
big a population. Poverty is not created by even a scarcity of 
resources, natural resources. Poverty is created because of tyranny. 
Tyranny and dictatorship bring corruption and bring about a strangling 
of those creative impulses within any society and those productive 
people within every society that will build, that will create the 
wealth necessary to uplift the people of any society. Instead, tyranny 
drags them down, no matter how prosperous the country could be in terms 
of its natural resources.
  The report today is that Burma had its chance, or perhaps it still 
does, but that the ruling regime, the gangsters that have run that 
country for decades, have now unleashed their firepower upon the 
Buddhist monks and the other people in that society who are calling for 
a liberalization of the Burmese regime. Apparently, thousands of people 
have been slaughtered.
  In fact, an intelligence officer for the Burmese military has 
defected, and he now is reporting to Western newspapers that it was his 
orders, by his commanding officers, to round up hundreds, if not 
thousands of monks, and put them in trucks and take them into the deep 
jungle and murder them and dump their bodies in the jungle.
  He could not do that, and so he defected. He grabbed his child and 
ran for the border. It is time for the other military officers in Burma 
and the police not just to take their children and run because they 
can't obey an order, but to realize that the orders they are being 
given by their generals, their so-called generals, are not lawful 
orders. It is time for the army of Burma to side with the people of 
Burma.

[[Page 26077]]

  Any military leaders in Burma today who side with the people will 
become national heroes and will be renowned and remembered by their 
people for generations to come. They will receive the gratitude not 
only of the people of Burma, but to all the good and decent people of 
the world. The soldiers in Burma and the police in Burma should turn 
their guns on their generals. They should side with the people of 
Burma, their fathers, their mothers, their brothers and sisters who 
want honest government and clean government. They should not be 
slaughtering their fellow family members who want nothing more than 
clean, honest, Democratic government.
  The regime, as I say, is headed by what they call generals, but these 
are not generals. These are gangsters who have put on military 
uniforms. No Burmese soldier owes them any allegiance. These generals, 
these gangsters, have sold out their country and their countrymen to 
foreign interests, namely, the Chinese. Yes, the dictatorship in 
Beijing is treating the government, which means the generals, in Burma 
as if Burma was a vassal state of China.
  In exchange for the $1.5 billion worth of military equipment that 
China has given Burma, the Burmese gangsters who run that country are 
permitted, the government in Beijing and the Chinese, to rape the 
natural resources of the people of Burma, the teakwood, the gems, the 
uranium, the rich minerals that Burma has are being taken away. They 
are being eliminated from the future of the people of that country in 
order to pay for the weapons that repress the people of that country. 
The Chinese have demanded of the Burmese Government a facility on their 
ocean so that they can be in a position to outflank India and to 
interfere with the trade, ocean trade in that part of the world.
  All of this is being given away by those leaders, so-called leaders 
in Burma. They are giving away the rightful legacy of the people of 
Burma to Chinese outsiders, gangsters in China now in league with 
gangsters of Burma.
  This is the type of relationship that China will have with other 
countries if we permit them. And it is clear, for those of us who are 
looking, that the military troops that are now shooting down those who 
seek democracy in Burma would not be doing so if the Chinese would have 
objected and sent any message to their Burmese stooges not to shoot and 
not to commit violence against those who are peacefully advocating 
change, democratic change in Burma.
  Yes, they have a regime. But unlike in other countries, like we faced 
in another issue which I will talk about in Iraq, in Burma, there is an 
alternative. There is an alternative to the Burmese dictatorship. Aung 
San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Prize winner, won with her party elections back in 
the 1990s when the generals were so deluded that they believed their 
own propaganda in thinking they were more popular than they were, and 
they permitted a free election. In that free election, they were wiped 
out.
  The fact is that Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma and the people of Burma 
went to polls and the people of Burma overwhelmingly supported 
democratic reform and Aung San Suu Kyi. The election was, of course, 
immediately discarded; the generals mobilized their troops. Aung San 
Suu Kyi was sent into House arrest.
  Aung San Suu Kyi, I went to Burma and met her several years ago, one 
of the great heroes of our time, a saintly person, someone who is 
depending on us like the people of Burma to make a strong stand. If 
nothing else, the American people must let the people of Burma know 
that we are on their side, and we must let the ruling junta know that 
we oppose them and we oppose their oppression of the Burmese people.
  This should be clear to them, and we must make sure that those 
Burmese generals and those military officers who were committing 
atrocities against the people of Burma realize they are not just 
murdering their fellow Burmese, they are committing crimes against 
humanity, and they will be followed and pursued just like the Nazis 
before them, and they will be held accountable and brought to justice.
  I am calling on our government to freeze any assets that any leader 
of the Burmese Government might have, and our government should be 
working with other governments to issue arrest warrants for any member 
of the Burmese Government who travels abroad.
  Furthermore, we must join with other nations and suggest that China 
is not doing its part and is playing a horrible role when it comes to 
freedom in Burma, as it will play the same role in the Philippines and 
elsewhere as its strength as a country grows.
  China has prevented the United Nations from stopping the atrocities 
that are now going on, as we speak, in Burma. China has been pulling 
the strings. The Burmese regime would never have opened fire without 
permission in Beijing. The people of Burma should know that. The people 
of the world should know that.
  It is time for the people in the United States to quit closing their 
eyes to the monstrous nature of the Beijing regime. Without that 
regime, the Burmese dictators, the gangsters in Burma, would not be 
able to succeed in holding down that population and by brutalizing 
their people.
  I have a piece of legislation before the Congress, and I would ask my 
colleagues to join me. The legislation is H.R. 610. It is a bill 
suggesting that we go on record as being in favor of boycotting the 
upcoming Olympics to be held in China.
  There is no reason, while China remains the world's worst human 
rights abuser, and that includes Burma, I might add, the Chinese are 
the world's worst human rights abuser, and why should we ever hold an 
Olympics, which stands for some of the higher aspirations of humankind, 
why should we ever hold an Olympics in China while it has that type of 
monstrously dictatorial government. Yes, in China they not only are 
involved with repressing the people of Burma, but they are deeply 
involved with criminal acts against their own people, especially 
against religious believers.
  Isn't it fascinating that in Burma, those who would try to lead the 
country to a better and more Democratic way are those Buddhist monks 
who now, in a very peaceful way, have presented their case and are 
answered with an iron fist. They are answered by bullets, they are 
answered by brutality.
  In China, it's the same. We have people of the religious faith, 
whether they are Muslims in the far reaches of China or whether they 
are people in Tibet, who have been so brutalized, or other religious 
believers, Christians, Catholics, and, yes, the Falun Gong, the Falun 
Gong who have a spiritual belief that is somewhat similar to yoga and 
somewhat meditation. Yet, this very simple and pacifist religion has 
been vilified by the communist party of China, and thousands and 
thousands of Falun Gong practitioners believing in meditation and yoga 
have been arrested. They are picked up, and they disappear.
  The women are raped in prison; they are murdered. Perhaps worst of 
all, when they disappear, they are sent to prisons, and now we have 
reports coming out of those prisons that Falun Gong prisoners, people 
who are pacifists, who are simply believing in meditation and yoga, 
they are, what, they are being murdered for their organ parts which are 
then being sold. Sometimes they sell them to Americans who come there. 
Falun Gong prisoners are killed right before a doctor, who would then 
remove the cornea from their eye and sell it to people in the West who 
spend thousands of dollars to get these body parts.
  If there is anything more ghoulish than this, even the Nazis, I don't 
think, could sink that low, but they sank about as low as one could 
ever expect. But that is the type of thing that goes on today, and we 
are giving the Chinese the ability to hold the Olympics, to cover up, 
to put a good face on this type of monstrous regime.
  It is time for the people of the United States Congress to join with 
me in agreeing that as long as China is doing, number one, what it's 
doing in Burma

[[Page 26078]]

and in Darfur, where they are again behind the scenes playing a 
horrible role, it is time for us to join together and say we will not 
participate in an Olympics hosted by such a criminal government.

                              {time}  2200

  And I am happy to announce today Neil Abercrombie, my colleague from 
Hawaii, has joined me in supporting this legislation.
  China, of course, even beyond, if it was simply a nondictatorship, 
there would be major problems with China. China is a predatory nation. 
China is a nation, for example, it is a nation, as a nation state it's 
huge, and it has more territorial claims than any other major power in 
the world. China has been built into a huge power, an economic power, 
which is now being translated into military power. Even though it has 
claims against India, huge areas of India and Russia, large areas of 
the ocean are claimed by China. If one remembers, it was just a few 
years ago when one of our planes, our surveillance planes flying in 
international waters was forced down in China, and they claimed that 
their territorial waters extended way beyond anything the United States 
would recognize. And all they wanted for us to get the crew back was 
for us to apologize and to acknowledge that we were in their territory.
  What does that mean? They would have murdered these American military 
personnel in order to assert their claim to huge areas of ocean. In 
fact, they claim the ocean right up to the shore line of the 
Philippines. They claim the Sprattley Islands, which are only 100 miles 
from the Philippines and 500 to 600 miles from China. Huge areas, as I 
say, of India and of Russia.
  This is a country that we have built an economy over these last two 
decades, we have built from a weak country, we now have created a 
Frankenstein monster. And when I say ``we,'' I mean the policies of the 
United States Government have uplifted the economic capabilities of a 
country that has had no liberalization, no political reform of their 
dictatorial system.
  We were told for 20 years, when I first got here, vote for most 
favored nation status for China, because if we interact with China 
economically, they will liberalize. What they need to do is, we have to 
prove to them not to fear us. This is a reoccurring theme by which 
people who live in democratic societies fool themselves into thinking 
that the criminals who run other governments, dictatorships are in some 
way motivated by the same motives that people are in free societies, 
that people in free societies will fear someone, thus they will agree 
to certain expenditures, military expenditures.
  The Chinese know exactly who we are and who they are. The Chinese 
people are not the enemy. Those people in Beijing want to hold on to 
power, just as the dictators in Burma want to hold on to power. And as 
we move forward and try to determine what our policy should be in the 
future, let us note the policies of trying to engage China 
economically, permitting huge transfers of dollars of capital assets, 
of technology, of American know-how, of opening our markets, even 
though their markets were closed, letting them manipulate the currency, 
letting them get away with policies that shifted wealth from the United 
States into China. That did not have a positive impact on their 
government. Their government is still corrupt. Their government is 
still a government of criminal dictators, people who oppress their 
people and, as I say, are the worst human rights abusers in the world.
  So first and foremost, in dealing with China, as in dealing with 
Burma, we must differentiate how we treat a dictatorship and how we 
treat a democratic country. Those leaders in China should not be 
granted the status of acceptability that goes with hosting the Olympics 
with our blessing.
  Yet, we have, for the last two decades, seen an army of American 
corporate leaders rushing to China to invest and build factories and in 
partnership with the Chinese Government set up these factories and 
create manufacturing units that sell goods back to the United States, 
putting American workers out of work, selling goods back to the United 
States that have such poor standards that some of them are made of 
toxic material, as we've just seen with Mattel Toys, American corporate 
leaders, who are looking for two, three, maybe 4 years' worth of big 
profit for themselves, then they can cut and run and go off to their 
vacationland homes and enjoy themselves.
  Those corporate leaders have created a monster with the blessing of 
the United States Government, because it's been our policy to permit 
them to transfer the technology, the know-how, and the investment 
dollars that were needed to build China into what it is today. And 
today, the Chinese are destroying the manufacturing base of the United 
States, and we have turned a blind eye to the fact that they manipulate 
the currency, that they manipulate access to their markets, and that 
they steal American intellectual property. We have turned a blind eye 
to that, just as we have turned a blind eye to the fact that the 
Chinese repress their own people.
  And when you talk to these corporate leaders who've gone over there 
and built this monster, created this Nazi-like government, you ask 
them, they say, well, you know, when we do more and more economic 
interaction, we have more business; that's what's going to create more 
liberalism and reform there. How many times have we heard that? We've 
been listening to that for 20 years. The first speech I heard about 
this on the floor for most favored nation status for China was saying 
just that 20 years ago, yet it never happens. This is called the ``hug 
a Nazi, make a liberal theory.'' Just get close to them and they won't 
fear you anymore.
  Well, the fact is China has been getting worse since, over these last 
two decades. It was Tiananmen Square that was the turning point. Up 
until Tiananmen Square, there was a legitimate reason for us to try to 
build the economy of China, to create closer ties, because there was an 
evolution going on, both economically and politically in China. And 
when it reached a point, at Tiananmen Square, you might say the tipping 
point, the United States didn't stand up. The Chinese gangsters, just 
like in Burma, where the military regime had to make its decision, was 
it going to open fire on their own people, the Chinese Government was 
facing this decision, and our government did nothing and we said 
nothing.
  It is my contention that had George Herbert Walker Bush, then 
President of the United States, sent a message to China and to the 
Chinese leaders that if you murder and try to slaughter the democratic 
movement in China, we are withdrawing from our economic cooperation 
that we have agreed to, they would not have done so. And I will tell 
you tonight, Ronald Reagan would have sent that letter in a 
millisecond. Ronald Reagan would have been told that the democratic 
movement was on the verge of success, but they would be slaughtered if 
they sent the troops in and they need to send a message to the 
leadership of China saying that we are going to withdraw our economic 
cooperation with them if they, indeed, mowed down their own people. 
Reagan would have done it.
  This President Bush's father did not; and thus we have had, in the 
last 2 decades, not a transition to democracy, but only a growing of 
their economy, which now gives them greater military capabilities and 
gives them greater wealth from which to try to undermine the United 
States.
  And, again, as we look at this threat, what is really important is 
the same thing that's important in Burma and elsewhere, the basic 
message that we need to understand tonight, that when confronting 
regimes like China and Burma, and confronting radical Islam that hates 
America, let's remember that it is the people who want to live decent 
lives and live in democracy who are America's greatest allies. The 
people of China, the people of China are the ones we must ally 
ourselves with. They need to know that we are on their side. They need 
to know that the people of the United States and the people of China 
all long to treat people decently and to live in freedom and justice. 
The people of China will be on our

[[Page 26079]]

side if we are on their side. The people of Burma are on our side as 
long as they know we are on their side. Good and decent people 
throughout the world know this.
  But, instead, we have been so busy building an economic 
infrastructure that permits wealth to flow to China that we have not 
bothered to make the demands on the government or to create, to help 
create the democratic movements within China that would move their 
government from within.
  One example, by the way, of how we have done this is the fact that we 
have built a conveyor system for trade across our oceans, especially 
across the Pacific, especially from Shanghai into the ports that I 
represent, Long Beach and Los Angeles. We have built, with American 
taxpayer dollars, an incredibly efficient system so that American 
businessmen could go and set up factories in China, manufacture their 
goods over there, and ship them to the United States via a system that 
we've paid for, and come into our market and undercut our own American 
working people and our own American manufacturers who've stayed at 
home. We built this for them.
  That's why I've long been an advocate of a container fee system so 
that at least, at the very least, if they're going to send containers 
filled with goods here, why should we build the ports and spend 
billions of dollars of infrastructure so that they can very efficiently 
send containers filled with goods into our society and undercut our own 
manufacturers?
  I have not received the support that I believe that idea justifies. 
In fact, you see people in both the Democratic Party and the Republican 
Party, oh poo-pooing that as if it was a tax on the American people. We 
are not charging those American manufacturers who go to China. We're 
not. We are subsidizing them in their shipment of goods here to 
undercut our own people. That makes no sense. But it makes sense to 
those businessmen. It makes not only sense; it makes dollars for them. 
And as I say, they make a really quick profit; 4 or 5 years and they're 
done. They're even done with their own companies after 4 or 5 years. 
But we are the ones with our manufacturing base destroyed who have to 
pick up the pieces.
  In my own city, in Huntington Beach, where I live, a manufacturer of 
paint and coatings was the person who sold the coatings to Mattel Toys 
for Barbie dolls. And in the year 2000, Mattel Toys gave an award to 
this company as the number one supplier for Mattel Toys. And then 
Mattel Toys sold out to the Chinese, decided to manufacture everything 
in China. The Chinese came to this gentleman and said, give us the 
formula for your coatings, and we will be partners. As soon as he gave 
them the formula, the Chinese disappeared. They disappeared, and he was 
never able to get a hold of them. And next thing you know, they aren't 
using his formula. They're using lead in the formula. And my children 
at home, who have Barbie dolls now, and all the other American children 
who have Barbie dolls, may have been infected with lead poisoning 
because Mattel Toys took the easy way out, along with the other 
American manufacturers who went to China in order to not pay our own 
American workers a decent wage.

                              {time}  2215

  They want to get a 10 percent or 20 percent higher profit in China 
rather than paying American workers a decent wage and having half as 
much profit. Who is paying the price for us? The American people in the 
end will pay the price as China grows into a massive, economic, and 
military power, which goes with that.
  Of course, during the Clinton years, what did we find? There was not 
only technology transfer in the economic area, but they had actually 
polluted our political system as well. Campaign contributions flowing 
into the American political system and American missile technology 
leaking out in the other direction. The scandal during the Clinton 
years of American missile technology being transferred to the Chinese 
through Hughes and Lorel Corporation is a disgrace. And the evidence of 
Chinese influence and especially financial support during that election 
makes that even worse.
  But we need to make sure that we bypass our own business leaders, 
bypass the leadership, the gangsters that run Beijing and Burma and 
like countries, and go directly to the people throughout the world with 
our message of hope, democracy, liberty, and justice. The people of 
Burma and the people of China are our greatest allies. These Burmese 
soldiers now have to make a decision as to whether they will fire upon 
their own people. The Chinese people should not permit their children, 
and they only have one child per family, to go into the military so 
that it can be used to suppress their own people.
  This is not unlike the war we fight today, not with Burma or China 
but, of course, with radical Islam. China is not an enemy today. China 
is an adversary today, a very powerful adversary. We are, in fact, 
making that adversary so powerful, it's becoming frightening. But we 
are at war with radical Islam. We are at war with radical Islam. And 
again let me note that when I say that, I emphasize that Muslims 
throughout the world who do not hate America, Muslims throughout the 
world who love their faith, as they should, which it has meant very 
much to their lives and over a billion people, Muslims throughout the 
world who know that their prayer time and their other religious 
ceremonies and beliefs have meant a lot to their life and have added 
great depth to their life, those people are not our enemies. Those 
people are our friends.
  We believe in freedom of religion. We respect other people's 
religion. We ask only that other people respect our religion. And, by 
the way, our respect for religion doesn't just go to other faiths, but 
it goes to people who don't believe in God at all, who don't choose to 
worship.
  Our Founding Fathers did not come here, as some of my conservative 
friends say, to create a Christian Nation. We came here to create a 
Nation where freedom of religion was respected and that we acknowledged 
God but we did not in any way want to force those beliefs on those who 
were nonbelievers.
  It is right that the people of Islam worship the way they choose, 
whether here or abroad. Those people who only want that freedom and are 
willing to grant that to others are our friends. But a radical fringe 
which hates everything we stand for has now arisen in the Muslim world.
  Let me note that during the 1920s we had terrorists and in years past 
we had terrorists who were Christians. In 1920, the biggest political 
force in this country was the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, as we 
know, carried around banners with crosses and declaring their love of 
Christianity. And the fact is that Christian churches in the South did 
not condemn the Ku Klux Klan, as they should have. The good and decent 
people of the American South, when they knew that these Klansmen were 
murdering people, they were terrorizing the black population, murdering 
them, hanging them, all kinds of torture that was going on in our 
country against our own black population, the Christian people did not 
stand up in those areas when they knew that the Klansmen were right 
there in church with them.
  Well, that was a hundred years ago. Our Muslim brothers we are 
expecting to do better than we did when it came to the Klan because al 
Qaeda is the Ku Klux Klan of Islam. Al Qaeda are the hate mongers. Al 
Qaeda are those who would bring people who believe in God and put them 
at war with one another rather than trying to bring them together in 
peace and brotherhood.
  In Afghanistan after 9/11, the United States went to Afghanistan and 
allied itself with moderate Muslims. During the 1990s, there was a 
mistake by this government just as we made a mistake with China. We 
tried to work with the Taliban. In fact, during the Clinton 
administration, the Taliban came into being. And, in fact, it is very 
easy to see the historical record that the Clinton administration 
reached an agreement with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,

[[Page 26080]]

and our government was involved in creating the Taliban.
  During that time period, I was a Member of Congress, and because I 
had spent time in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets, I 
spent considerable time in Afghanistan working with those people who 
would oppose the Taliban. I begged the powers that be that they support 
King Zahir Shaw, a moderate Muslim, a man who was much beloved by all 
Afghans, to support his return. And, instead, our government, under 
Madeleine Albright and all the others of the Clinton administration, 
did what? They decided to go along with the Saudis and to go along with 
the Pakistanis in creating a religious force, that they said because 
the people of Afghanistan are devout, this is what will draw them 
together, by supporting religious fanatics.
  I told them at the time it was ridiculous. I told them that it would 
backfire on them during the war with the Soviets. The Pakistanis had 
passed on aid to Hikmatyar Gulbadin, a horrendous terrorist who was, 
again, a radical Islamist. But there were many others whom we helped 
during the war against the Soviets. I was there with them. And whether 
it was Abdul Haq or Commander Massoud or others like them, there were 
many others, Galani's forces and others, who were very, very mainstream 
Islamic people who were not anti-Western but were just trying to free 
their own country from the atheistic dictatorship of the communists, 
and we helped them. But after that, as we walked away, when the Soviets 
walked away, we made this deal with the Saudis and with the Pakistanis 
to let them finance the reconstruction and determine who would be in 
power in Afghanistan, and that is when the Taliban was born, as I say, 
at that time over my serious objections, and I spent 5 years going in 
and out of Afghanistan meeting with those people who would later become 
the Northern Alliance.
  So as we look back on Afghanistan now, years after the Taliban has 
been defeated and al Qaeda was driven out of that country, let us 
remember the success that we had was because we went to the people.
  There is a mistaken belief that we are not ``winning'' in Iraq 
because we didn't have enough boots on the ground. We didn't send in 
enough American troops. Well, in fact, we had probably 100 boots on the 
ground when Kabul was liberated from the Taliban and al Qaeda forces in 
the aftermath of 9/11. In fact, that liberation of Afghanistan was 
accomplished with very few American soldiers on the frontlines. In 
fact, the people of Afghanistan liberated themselves, and we did not 
liberate them. And we went into that war, and we reached agreements 
with those leaders, tribal leaders. They are often called warlords, but 
that was the Northern Alliance. And it was the Northern Alliance and 
those good people in Afghanistan who worked with me in the Mujahideen 
to fight against the Soviets. Those are the people who drove out the 
Taliban.
  When we went into Iraq, it was a different story, unfortunately. 
Mistakes have been made, yes. Mistakes have been made in Iraq. There is 
no doubt. We sent in a military force, a strong military force, and 
they did their job. What did not happen was the political job that was 
necessary to complement the fact that we had dispossessed Saddam 
Hussein of his military might. Instead of making agreements as we did 
in Afghanistan with the tribal leaders, we did not, as we did in 
Afghanistan, reach out to the local powers that be that were moderate 
Muslims, and there are many moderate Muslims in Iraq. What we instead 
did was tell the people of Iraq that we were going to rebuild their 
entire country and that, for example, there would be no room. Mr. 
Bremer is quoted as saying to tribal leaders that there would be no 
room in a modern democratic Iraq for tribalism. Thus in our effort to 
make the decision for those people, rather than going to the people and 
their leaders ourselves, we have put ourselves in what has been a 
horrific quagmire.
  How we extricate ourselves from Iraq will go a long way in defining 
what type of world my children live in and, in fact, what kind of world 
the young people who are with us today will have. If we try to pull out 
precipitously and look like we are running away, if we look like we are 
surrendering, if it looks like we have been defeated, we will embolden 
those people in Iraq who hate everything about the United States, and 
we will embolden the radical Islamists throughout the world. There is 
no doubt about that. That is not to say, again, that we should not be 
admitting our mistakes and doing what we can to extricate ourselves in 
a responsible way. That is why I have been supporting General Petraeus 
and his efforts to have a phased withdrawal, a responsible phased 
withdrawal, that will then permit those elements within Iraq that do 
not want to be ruled by radical Islam or those elements that would like 
to be friends of the West to give them a chance to step up. If we are 
viewed as retreating and abandoning those people, there will be a heavy 
price to pay.
  And let us admit that with the mistakes that I have already 
mentioned, it is a tempting target for people involved in our political 
system to use what is going on in Iraq as a political vehicle in the 
upcoming elections.
  Now, the people here in Congress, we have to search our souls to make 
sure what we are doing is based not on political motives but instead is 
based on what is the long-term interest of the people of the United 
States.
  I go down and welcome home the troops, the reservists and National 
Guard, all the time that come in and out and leave Iraq or are coming 
back from Iraq, and I welcome them back, and I know, because I have 
supported this effort, that I must pay special attention. But let us 
note that we have to be doing this and looking at this and analyzing 
what is happening in a nonpolitical way. I am afraid that there are 
some forces at play that would try to politicize what is going on in 
Iraq.
  Those people who oppose our efforts to have a phased withdrawal, 
would like immediate withdrawal from Iraq, those people who see America 
as the big problem in the world instead of as the world's only hope, 
those people cannot attack American soldiers because they realize that 
all Americans are proud of the men and women who are defending our 
country in uniform. But what we are witnessing now is what I would 
consider a maneuver on the part of those who, if they could, would 
attack American military troops. What they are doing is attacking 
American security companies who have been brought to Iraq to try to 
supplement our war effort there. By and large these American security 
companies are made up of people who have perhaps 10 times the 
experience of our own soldiers. American security companies like 
Blackwater, for example, hire on special forces and other 
extraordinarily well-trained American military personnel when they 
retire from the military so that their skills can still be put to use 
in the defense of our country and in the promotion of human freedom.

                              {time}  2230

  Their personnel are essential to the success of any of our military 
goals, but they're also essential to the success of a phased pull-out 
of Iraq. Otherwise, there will be no buffer. Otherwise, there is no 
means for us to have the type of withdrawal with success. Otherwise, it 
is a retreat.
  Blackwater, as I say, has been working now, I think, since 1997. It's 
run by a young man named Eric Prince. He inherited his money. And the 
fact is he could have done a lot of other things with his money and 
made a lot more money. He could have gone to China and made 10 times 
the profit that he makes by creating a security company that would work 
side by side with American forces and American diplomats overseas to 
try to offer protection to our country and to those State Department 
and other people who are working in the United States Government 
overseas. He could have gone and made much more money.
  Instead, now he's being called, I've seen him called ``murderer,'' 
I've seen the people in Blackwater being called ``thugs,'' when in fact 
almost every one of these people who work for

[[Page 26081]]

Blackwater, like Eric himself, are former Special Forces people. Eric 
was a Navy SEAL for 5 years. And then, rather than just living the life 
of luxury that he could have done when he inherited his money, he 
decided to do something good for his country. Those people who are 
retiring from our military and have good pensions, yes, they could live 
the life of Riley; they could go fishing every day. But, instead, they 
are putting their skills to use by putting their lives in danger for 
us. Yet, they are being attacked unmercifully by people who just 
basically oppose the fact that this President got us involved in Iraq 
in the first place.
  We should not be taking it out on the people of Blackwater. Those men 
and women who are in Blackwater are very honorable people. And not to 
say they haven't made some mistakes, just as our own military personnel 
have made mistakes; but, in fact, Blackwater probably has a better 
record than our own military because they are, as I say, they are 
people with vastly more experience than that of our own soldiers and 
sailors and airmen.
  So tomorrow there will be a hearing on Blackwater. I would hope that 
Blackwater and the people of Blackwater, those people who have made 
enormous contributions to the safety and security of our operations in 
Afghanistan and in Iraq, that they are not brutalized, that they're 
treated fairly, and that we do not permit the politicalization of this 
fight with radical Islam and this effort that now goes on in Iraq to be 
used in a way that will, number one, hurt brave people who are risking 
their lives for us, but at the same time, undermine our efforts for the 
long-term security of our country so that we will have a phased 
withdrawal that will give the good people of this world a chance.
  We need to give the people of Burma a chance. We need to give the 
people of China a chance. We need to give the people of Iraq a chance. 
They are our greatest allies.
  The people of the world who would live in democracy and see America 
as a positive force and, fortunately, many of them see America as a 
positive force, yet many people here in the United States for some 
reason do not share that opinion of their own country and believe that 
the United States is a negative force in the world. And that's what 
motivates many of them in their actions when it comes to Blackwater and 
it comes to this war.
  Finally, let me note this: This President has made a lot of mistakes. 
And I have supported the President when he has been right; I have been 
opposed to him when he's wrong. This President seems to be headstrong, 
and I think that's a pleasant way of putting it. That does not mean 
that all the decisions that he has made have been wrong. We need to 
support him when he's right; we need to try to work with him and try to 
steer American policy when he is wrong. The idea of a phased withdrawal 
from Iraq is right.
  But this President did not get us in this war with radical Islam. 
This war that we are in with radical Islam was created in the previous 
administration. We need to document that. It needs to be documented 
what the policies of the Clinton administration were towards the 
Taliban. I will be giving a speech in the next few weeks again 
detailing that, about how I pled, as a senior member of the 
International Relations Committee, for the documents from Madeleine 
Albright to prove what our policy was towards the Taliban; why it was 
that we were giving our foreign aid to the Taliban in radical Islamic 
areas of Afghanistan and giving short shrift to Commander Massoud and 
the pro-Western Muslims in Afghanistan.
  We need to document these things. We need to document whether or not 
bin Laden was someone who could have been handled, if we were 
courageous enough to do it, 5 years, 10 years before 9/11.
  We know now that some of the documents that the 9/11 Commission was 
supposed to read were not available to them. We had a commission that 
went to study why we had 9/11, but yet we know today that the National 
Security Adviser to President Bill Clinton stole documents out of the 
National Archives to prevent that commission, the 9/11 Commission, from 
seeing certain information that would be relevant to the war on 
terrorism. Part of his agreement, Sandy Berger, the National Security 
Adviser to President Clinton, when his theft was discovered, he 
volunteered, as part of his plea agreement, to give a lie detector test 
to the Justice Department if so requested to determine exactly what 
were the documents that he stole from the National Archives.
  At the beginning of this year, a majority of Republican Members of 
this body signed a letter to the Justice Department, under the 
leadership of Tom Davis, asking the Justice Department to give that 
polygraph test, after so many years, I think it's been 4 years, it 
could be 3. For 3 years Sandy Berger has not been given the polygraph 
test to see exactly what documents he stole from the National Archives.
  It is time for the American people to demand that we know what caused 
9/11, and we will not know that until Sandy Berger, the National 
Security Adviser to the Clinton administration, is given a polygraph 
test, which won't happen until the Department of Justice gives that 
polygraph test and demands it.
  Today, I am calling upon the new Attorney General to put Sandy Berger 
on the line, to give him a polygraph test and determine what documents 
he stole from the National Archives and to give us a full accounting of 
what led up to 9/11, what happened during the Clinton administration 
that was so heinous that Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser to 
the President, would risk everything, would risk his reputation and go 
into the National Archives and steal documents.
  Could it be that during the Clinton years that, for example, there 
was evidence of technology transfers and Chinese involvement in our 
political system? Could it be that a Gorelick memo, who at that time 
the lady was an important player in the Clinton administration, she had 
a mandate that domestic and international intelligence groups and law 
enforcement could not work together, could that have something to do 
with a Chinese connection?
  What did Sandy Berger steal from the National Archives? We need to 
know. We should not be ignored. If this was a Republican, I can tell 
you that every newspaper in the country would be clamoring until we 
found out exactly what documents were stolen from the National Archives 
by the President's National Security Adviser.
  So, tonight, I hope that my colleagues would join me, number one, in 
telling the people of Burma we're on their side; and joining me in 
calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics; of supporting a phased 
withdrawal, responsible withdrawal from Iraq; supporting our people 
both in uniform and in our protective companies like Blackwater, making 
sure we do not mistreat them; and finally, join me in calling for the 
truth in what Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser for Bill 
Clinton, stole from the Archives. He needs to be given his polygraph 
test. The Justice Department needs to act.
  So with those requests for my fellow colleagues, I now yield back the 
balance of my time.

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