[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13785-13786]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


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                        DUTY, HONOR AND COUNTRY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. I rise, Mr. Speaker, to talk about duty, honor, and 
country.
  Many times, Members of this great body rise to talk about those who 
wear the uniform of the United States who have fallen in the Iraq or 
the Afghanistan theater and to recount their actions and to recount 
their mission and to praise their motive and their patriotism and their 
love of this great country.
  I rise tonight, Mr. Speaker, to talk about an American who was killed 
on the 24th of this month, not wearing the uniform of the United States 
in the military service, even though he had served in the military for 
some 31 years, but who was killed in a deadly area in Iraq as an 
American contractor, an American who had worked as a contractor for the 
Department of Defense and then the Department of State, Steven Farley.
  Steven Farley represented the very best of this country, and I have a 
picture here, Mr. Speaker, that I'd like to show the Members. This is 
him in his Navy uniform. Before he donned this Navy uniform and 
finished a career of 31 years in the U.S. military, he served in the 
U.S. Army in Vietnam.
  He was a man of service, and when he left his wonderful wife, Donna, 
and his family to go to Iraq, he told them that he understood that this 
was a difficult and dangerous mission. He worked on a provincial 
reconstruction team, and I

[[Page 13786]]

think he represented a forgotten segment of this great effort, this 
effort to bring the sunlight of freedom to Iraq.
  He represented those people that don't wear the uniform in this 
operation but who wear contractor uniforms, who go out into very 
dangerous places in Iraq. And in this case, Steven Farley was with 
three colleagues, working the provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq. 
He was in Sadr City, that adjunct to Baghdad that has over 1 million 
people in an area of great fighting and great turmoil and great danger. 
And yet when he came home to see his loved ones, he told them he knew 
that he was in danger. He knew that it might, at some point, cost him 
his life, but he told them that he thought the cause was a worthwhile 
cause.
  His service to America represented all those wonderful aspects of 
duty and honor and country and patriotism, even though he wasn't 
wearing the uniform of the Army or the Marine Corps or the Air Force or 
the Navy, because he was serving that same goal, that same ideal, that 
same flag, and all of us.
  Mr. Speaker, he came home a few weeks before, bringing some of the 
members of the city council of Sadr City to the United States to let 
them see what freedom was like, what this great experiment in freedom 
called the United States of America was like, to inspire them, to give 
them a model they could go back and use in this fledgling 
representative government that is now taking place in Iraq.
  He wanted to show them the American example, and Mr. Speaker, his 
example and the example of his family and the example of his great 
community, a guy from Guthrie, Oklahoma, it was the finest example that 
anybody can watch if they indeed want to model their country, their 
community, their town after a winning democracy, the United States of 
America.
  So here was a gentleman who served in a very, very crucial area for 
the United States, and most of the work that we do here in the House of 
Representatives, most of our work is air-conditioned. I'm so proud of 
the members of the Armed Services Committee, most of whom have taken 
multiple trips to see the troops and the operations in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. And we now and again go out and put our boots on the 
ground in some tough places, but most of the time, we're in Washington, 
D.C., or with our constituent cities and our wonderful communities. 
These Americans, Americans like Steven Farley, are out there for years 
on end in very difficult conditions, carrying the American flag.
  So, Mr. Speaker, a number of us on the Armed Services Committee are 
going to be visiting Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming months, 
especially the summer months, when we take the district work period 
break. I will tell you one thing I'm going to do. When I go to Baghdad 
this time, I'm going to spend more time with those contractors, people 
who haven't necessarily been given all of the credit that they should 
be given by this body, by the House of Representatives. People talk 
about the contractors as if they were somehow mercenaries.
  Well, Steven Farley represented the very best of this very wonderful 
force of Americans who help to establish freedom around the world. May 
he rest in peace. God bless his family, and thank you, Steven Farley, 
for your service to the United States.

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