[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9885]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     HONORING MR. DAVID HALBERSTAM

  (Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, yesterday a great American died, David 
Halberstam. We had a mutual friend, and through that I got to know Mr. 
Halberstam. He chronicled and wrote and reported the events of the last 
half of the 20th century. He saw truth, he spoke truth, and he wrote 
truth; and he gained his first fame at the age of 30 when he received a 
Pulitzer Prize for reporting about a quagmire known as Vietnam, a 
misdirection of American energies in foreign policies that led us to 
lose over 50,000 lives and many casualties in a great blunder under 
American foreign policy. We have a similar situation today in Iraq, 
another mistaken folly, and lives are being lost.
  Madam Speaker, I would hope that we could speak truth to power, and 
that power would know that the Congress is giving the President a bill 
to support the troops, to bring the troops home and support them by 
seeing that they are not put in harm's way, and that the President will 
support the bill that the Congress gives him.
  We have lost a great leader in Mr. Halberstam, and may the truth and 
knowledge that he brought to this country be imbued in this House and 
in executive leadership where another politician along with the 535 
here serve.

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