The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“IRAQ WATCH” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H9889-H9895 on Nov. 17, 2004.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
IRAQ WATCH
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Beauprez). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, we are here to have another week of the Iraq Watch.
Before I start, I want to add my words of congratulations to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Crane) for his outstanding career and what we just witnessed on the floor, a very warm and rare moment of emotion and friendship between two colleagues. I wish we had more of those moments here, but I want to salute the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Crane) for his years of service and his dedication to this House.
A year and a half ago, Mr. Speaker, a number of us started what we call Iraq Watch. We began to come to this floor once a week to talk about Iraq, to talk about the problems that we saw with our policy there, to ask questions and to suggest changes in our national policy. Now, a year and a half later, like the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Crane), I will be leaving this House, and yet the questions regarding our policy in Iraq remain.
Things have changed in Iraq over the last year and a half, but some of the fundamental problems that were apparent at the beginning of our involvement remain today and plague us today and challenge our best national interest today.
A number of us involved in Iraq Watch, some like me who voted for the military power that the President sought in October of 2002 and some in Iraq Watch who opposed the President's request for military power, all of us were alarmed in the spring of 2003 when the fighting actually began in Iraq, that the President had used what we thought was such an arrogant approach to this challenge, to the diplomacy, to the need to move forward with as many allies as possible to confront what was surely a murderous tyrant, Saddam Hussein.
We saw an arrogant approach. We saw a go-it-alone foreign policy, what many of us thought was a cowboy diplomacy, where we pushed aside our allies, where we told our international institutions, such as the United Nations and NATO and others, that we did not need their help, that we were happy to go alone into the challenge that faced us in Iraq. A lot of us were raising questions about that a year and a half ago.
Unfortunately, that approach has not changed. The President talks about having the coalition of the willing supporting us in Iraq, but it is not the kind of strong international coalition that we truly need to share the burdens and share the costs and share the sacrifices that we have faced in Iraq and not the kind of strong international coalition that his father put together in the early 1990s for the Persian Gulf War.
What the President is now doing since his reelection this November is making changes in his Cabinet and promoting loyal members of his staff to higher positions and to Cabinet positions in a way that, in my judgment, will limit the options brought to the President for his consideration; that he will begin to hear just what he wants to hear from his Cabinet and top officials; that the advice they give him will be the advice they know he already provides to himself; and that he has, instead of turning in a second term to an independent and vigorous Cabinet of obviously loyal Republicans, which is the President's due, instead of building that kind of working relationship, he has decided to build an echo chamber, to create a foreign policy advice and support system in the State Department and in the CIA and in the National Security Adviser that will tell him what he wants to hear.
Well, what he ought to hear, Mr. Speaker, with due respect to the President and with due respect to his victory and the tough decisions he has to make every day, what he ought to hear is that he still needs international support in Iraq. He still needs to internationalize the challenges, the financial challenges, the security challenges, the military challenges in Iraq, and he still needs to Iraq-tize Iraq. We still need to train up the Iraqis so that they can fight for their own future, so they can provide their own security, so that they can be the tip of the spear.
Currently, we are using American forces, brave American forces, courageously led, and brave troops to battle the insurgency in Iraq, door to door, in Fallujah and other urban settings, and our troops are behaving magnificently, performing magnificently.
But it is my view, and I think shared by my colleagues here in Iraq Watch, that we are doing ourselves more harm than good with the reality that it is American troops fighting the insurgency, instead of Iraqi troops, Arab troops, multinational troops with American support; that the fact that we are having to fight door to door, facing the true horrors of urban warfare. That we are doing this virtually alone, without international help, without very much help from the Iraqis, is generating such ill-will in the Muslim world that while Iraq is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power and Iraq has some hope of moving toward a tolerant and pluralistic society with some version of self-
government, hopefully a flourishing democracy sooner rather than later, while Iraq is better off, the way we have gone about this has actually done more harm than good to America; that we have created more terrorists than we have killed; that we have created more ill-will than goodwill in the Muslim world; and that the arrogant and go-it-alone policies that we have pursued, the cowboy diplomacy that we pursue to this day, has set back the relations between this country and the Muslim world, while at the same time we do offer clearly hope to the Iraqi people that they can have a flourishing country, free from the abuses of the tyrant and murderer Saddam Hussein.
There is a lot more I would like to say tonight, but I am joined by two of the stalwarts of Iraq Watch, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) who have been here week after week for a year and a half. So let me turn to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) as he was the first on the floor, and I am happy to yield to him.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) but not just for this evening.
The Iraq Watch, which has been trying to bring a responsible voice to Iraq policy now for many months, was the brain child of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel), and he really did lead this effort, and we are very appreciative of him, and I know his constituents are, too.
I have to tell the gentleman, he has a lot of fans out in the State of Washington that I hear about, why can you not can be as good as Mr. Hoeffel. I hear that many times.
But seriously, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) did something that does not happen all the time around here. He really led, and he led in an important issue to make sure Americans heard a voice about Iraq other than just from the White House, and that is important we have that debate. This was a creation of his and I think has been useful, and I know a lot of people have appreciated it, and I appreciate his leadership on that. We look forward to when the gentleman is back in public service. So we hope within 2 years, maybe even shorter. Who knows?
But with that, let me turn to the subject here which is a tough one tonight. I have to call a mother and father who lost their 19-year-old Marine in Fallujah this week tomorrow, and it is very difficult because all three of us here this evening voted against this war, and we have all had this experience of talking to families. It is very, very difficult.
What I am going to say is, what I know what we all have said, is no matter what you think of the policy, these are all good Americans who served, and no American has died in vain while serving under the flag of the United States. I am going to do my best to make sure parents appreciate that. No matter what you think of the policy, they died as heroes, and the people who are sitting tonight in Fallujah, that is how I think of them, no matter what you think of the policy. I know we all share that view.
It is difficult because it does inspire some anger sometimes I think in all of us as to what has happened in Iraq, where a war was started based on false assumptions about weapons of mass destruction and false assumptions and statements by the White House about Saddam's connection to 9/11.
The trouble I have tonight is that the same type of source of the mistake was made unfortunately is being perpetuated by the White House. In other words, one would think after the White House started a war based on two major falsehoods, that was given to him by certain people, that the President would be doubly diligent to endeavor to get people who would not perpetuate that same kind of mistake, but in fact, what we have seen since the election on November 2 is sort of like a green light for hubris, a green light to go ahead and actually make stronger in the administration the very voices that fouled up in giving us bad information about this war and making repeated misjudgments about how to perpetuate it.
Just look at the decisions that have been made in the last week. The man who himself admitted responsibility for putting a false statement into the State of the Union address, where the President told people that Saddam was trying to get uranium to build a nuclear weapon, it was a clear falsehood in the State of the Union address, and the man who himself admitted being responsible for telling Americans and the world that falsehood did not get docked pay, did not get fired. He just got a promotion to the National Security Council. So here we have the guy who is responsible for a major failure of American information that led to a war where 1,200 Americans have died. He gets a promotion. This is a perpetuation of this arrogant attitude that has got us into this pickle in Iraq.
What happens to the Defense Secretary who has had running arguments, as we know, with the Secretary of State Colin Powell about whether to go into this war and how to perpetuate it? Who is the one who leaves? It is the guy who, we are told at least, said let us be scrupulous about this, and the Secretary of Defense stays, the one who has been in charge of this since Abu Ghraib and did not give us accurate information, including the U.S. Congress, leading up to this.
Then what do we see happens at the CIA? Well, here's the capper for me. Here we have a man who left this chamber. He is now heading the CIA. What is the first thing he does, almost first thing he does? He writes a memo to all the CIA employees. I have not seen this memo but it is quoted in the paper. It says, he expects all employees that their job is to support the administration and its policies in our work and as agency employees we do not identify with, identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies.
{time} 2130
He sent a very strong message to CIA employees: what the White House wants, it is going to get. And that is language that people understand.
The last thing this President needs is unanimity from his intelligence agencies. He needs debate. He needs to be told some information that may not square with his preordained view of the world. And, in fact, they are going the wrong way at the CIA and firing people who have deigned to give the President information that is different from information he believes to be true.
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from Washington will yield just on that point, the last thing this country needs is for our intelligence, our CIA to be politicized, to have decisions made, conclusions reached that are based on political considerations rather than on factual, objective data.
This memo from a newly appointed CIA director, Mr. Goss, is a blatant attempt to politicize our intelligence operations, to politicize the CIA. What that will do is place this country at great risk. Because if we cannot trust the intelligence to be based on actual fact, actual objective data as best we can collect it, but make decisions based on political considerations, then that will put the American people at risk, and it will put our troops at risk.
That is absolutely almost unthinkable, that a newly appointed director of the CIA would be so insensitive and out of touch that he would actually put such a directive into a written memo and have it circulated.
And I yield back to the gentleman.
Mr. INSLEE. I thank the gentleman for his comments, Mr. Speaker, and let me continue.
Later on in the memo, Goss has language that says ``We provide the intelligence as we see it and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker.'' But when you send a memo to your employees suggesting they dare not ever say anything to challenge the President's preassumptions, that sentence does not bear out this memo. The message was sent and I am sure received by the CIA.
And I am very disturbed about something I saw last night, a show I was watching, and I cannot remember the name of it, but a former CIA person who has now left the agency and who was the person in charge of the unit searching for Osama bin Laden was on this program. This was the gentleman whose professional duty it was, for about 6 years, to lead the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In fact, he was so aggressive about it, for about 2 years they took him off the job because he was driving his superiors nuts because he was raising these red flags about Osama bin Laden. After September 11, they put him back on the post because they realized he was right about how serious this issue was.
He has now left the post, but last night he said there was absolutely no credible evidence of a substantive link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The number one guy in the employment of the Central Intelligence Agency last night told Americans there was no link. And for a year or more, the President, the Vice President, you name it, was running around America trying to create this impression in America's mind that there was a link in order to justify this war. That is disturbing to me.
Here is a guy that ought to be in the CIA challenging the White House's political decisions. He needs to be on the job rather than spit out of the agency like a watermelon seed. That is what they are doing. Anyone down there who is challenging the White House orthodoxy is getting kicked out.
This is not a good thing for our future decisions. We have tough decisions to make with regard to Iraq. This offensive in Fallujah, where heroes died, and they were heroic, but it is not the end of the trail. We have some tough, tough decisions.
I yield back to my colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel).
Mr. HOEFFEL. Well, Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues, and I am very concerned about the problems we are seeing at the CIA. The reality is that this administration, over the last couple of years, has a very sorry record of spinning the information that the CIA has given them. So we have got a problem with the CIA intelligence not being as accurate as it needs to be for a number of reasons, I guess, listening to each other parroting back what other agencies have said. Not enough human intelligence agencies in Iraq during the Hussein regime. There are a variety of reasons.
The intelligence that they did produce about weapons of mass destruction was incorrect. It was filled with caveats and uncertainties. The reports that were being issued to the White House in the fall of 2002 said we think he has these weapons, we believe he has got these weapons, we have been told he has these weapons. But none of that uncertainty was passed on to the Congress or to the American people.
In fact, I was briefed at the White House with 20 of our colleagues, a bipartisan group, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on October 2, 2002, by George Tenet, then Director of the CIA, and Condoleezza Rice, then the National Security Adviser to the President, and they spoke with complete certainty: we know that Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, they said to us. We know how many he has got. We know where they are. We know how much those weapons weigh.
It turns out that 7 or 8 months later, when the reports that George Tenet's CIA was giving to him and to Condoleezza Rice in the fall of 2002 finally became public, or actually became available for rank-and-
file members to review, those reports were filled with caveats, filled with uncertainties, filled with hesitance; and yet none of that was passed on.
So I would say to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) that there has been spinning at the White House for quite a while. And as my colleague says, the Deputy National Security Adviser has now been promoted and the National Security Adviser is now going to be the Secretary of State. I must say, based upon her intentional misleading of the 20 Members of the Congress who were briefed by her and by George Tenet on October 2, 2002, I do not have confidence in Condoleezza Rice. I am afraid she is going to tell the President what he wants to hear and will not tell the Congress and the American people what we need to hear and will not face up to the President when she needs to.
I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding to me, and as we stand here and talk this evening, there may be those listening who wonder why are we talking about the past. I think there is a very good reason for us to talk about the past and to remember what has happened, because the very people who are responsible for having made these erroneous decisions in the past are the same people who are in positions of power and even being promoted in the present. That means that they will be in a position to make decisions about the future.
Now, many of the decisions that have been made have been deadly decisions, and lives have been lost as a result of decisions that were based upon false information or distorted or twisted information; quite frankly, I believe information that was purposefully manipulated in such a way as to try to get the support of the American people for carrying out this President's foreign policy.
I just want to share with my colleagues some human consequences of what has happened. About 3 weeks ago, I received nearly 20 letters from various members of a family support group. This family support group consists of family members whose loved ones are part of a transportation reserve unit that has been activated and is now in Iraq. And at the time they wrote me, they told me their loved ones were around the Fallujah area, which is one of the most dangerous places in which to be in Iraq.
The people who wrote me indicated at the time that they wrote that out of this one reserve unit that is headquartered in Cadiz, Ohio, that they had lost three of their loved ones. They have since lost a fourth. So four soldiers have been lost out of that one reserve unit. It is a transportation unit.
The letters told me that they were getting messages from their loved ones, these troops, telling them that they were not being adequately supplied with proper life-saving equipment. They were driving around in vehicles that were not armed, for example. And we know that if you are a member of a transportation unit and you are on patrols and you are delivering supplies and so on, one of the great dangers in Iraq is driving over these explosives that have been placed in the roadways.
So out of this one unit, four have already been lost. And these letters that I received from the loved ones said to me, when we gave our precious soldiers to go fight this war, we trusted our government to provide them with every protection possible. Now they are deeply, deeply disturbed and concerned that their loved ones are not being adequately cared for.
Now, I believe that part of the problem in the execution of this war has been the fact that it was initially based upon these false assumptions and this false information. We were told basically this was going to be a piece of cake; that we were going to be welcomed as heroes; and there was not adequate planning, not adequate preparation. It took the Pentagon, it took this administration, this President, because he is the Commander in Chief, more than a year to be able to say that all of our troops, each of our troops in Iraq was equipped with basic body armor. Now, I think that is absolutely shameful.
I wonder how many of our troops have lost their lives because they were not properly equipped, and how many of our troops right tonight, as we stand here in the Chamber of the people's House, how many of our troops are in danger tonight simply because this administration has failed to properly plan and provide them with adequate materials. There is a consequence to the kind of behavior that we have been describing. There is a consequence when people use false information or distort information or make such unrealistic assumptions, and it is absolutely tragic.
In my congressional district, the Sixth Congressional District in Ohio, we have lost five soldiers, a 20-year-old, a 21-year-old, and three men who were in their late 30s. One of those men left five children ages 3 through 12. We are talking here about real consequences. We are talking about real people, real families. And there are Americans tonight who are worried sick because they have loved ones over there fighting this war, and they are doing the very best they can under very difficult circumstances, and we honor our troops, but that is one of the reasons that we stand here and advocate that they be cared for in a way that is befitting a great Nation.
We should never send one of our soldiers into harm's way without them having proper armor and equipment. And tonight I can say, based on what I have heard from my constituents and some of the soldiers who are currently in the field, we are not doing all that we can to keep them as safe as they can possibly be kept.
I yield back to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio. That is a very human account of what is happening in Iraq.
There is no question that this President knows how to use American power, but what I fear is that he is not aware or willing to use the totality of American power, which certainly starts with military power but is much more than that. We are certainly the strongest military in the world, and we need to stay that way. It is a dangerous world. The war on terror is going to be a challenge for years to come, and we must maintain our military strength. But there is more to American power than the military power that we possess, and this President does not seem to appreciate or understand or value the totality of our power, which includes diplomatic power and economic power, our cultural ties, the powers of moral persuasion.
We are the only superpower left in the world, and I am thankful we are. It gives us an opportunity to lead, inspire, cajole, push, advocate, and pressure. We have the ability through diplomacy and trade and economic ties and cultural ties to bend people to our will, up to a point, if we have a good argument and we are right on the facts and it is in their interest too. Obviously, every situation is different from the prior. But this President does not seem to put any value in the totality of American power.
The military strength we have needs to be maintained and nurtured, but it has to be used as a last resort, not a first resort.
{time} 2145
As strong as we are, we cannot be the world's policemen. We cannot impose our will through military strength alone, and yet that is the circumstance that we face in Iraq. We are trying to do very good things there, and we all share the President's goals of creating a pluralistic society, a tolerant, democratic society. And yet the unilateral, go-it-
alone, arrogant strategy, the cowboy diplomacy, the failure to admit mistakes, the inability to train up the Iraqis for them to do their own fighting and provide their own security, and the mistakes that were made. The first thing we did was dismiss the Iraqi Army and the border patrol, and the second thing was dismiss the Iraqi civil service, and there was nobody left to run the country but Americans.
This President does not seem capable of acknowledging error and fixing it. The people he has been promoting in this echo chamber seem unwilling or incapable of standing up and saying, Mr. President, you have to change these policies.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on what the gentleman said on the failure to successfully pursue any international involvement.
The bad news is that the President's plan is even unraveling with those who originally made some commitments to him. I read in the paper last week that Hungary has just announced that they will withdraw their troops. This was on top of withdrawals, either actual or announced, by Spain, 1,300 troops; Poland, 2,400 troops; the Netherlands, 1,400 troops; Thailand, 450 troops; the Dominican Republic, 322 troops; Nicaragua, 115 troops; Honduras, 370 troops; the Philippines, 51 troops; Norway, 155 troops; and New Zealand, 60. These are relatively small numbers, but I think it is a symptom of some bad decisionmaking. And the reason we talk about the past is the President is perpetuating his decisionmaking that created these conditions. He sees no reason ever to change.
We had a small coalition to start this, and now the small number of troops sent to help us are being withdrawn so our people are having to bear the burden of the fighting.
In Fallujah, this long after the fight, we had token Iraqis with us, and one of the reasons is the administration did not set up an infrastructure for training the Iraqis. Last month, 4 weeks ago, all that time since the original invasion, we still had only 40 percent of the trainers that the plan called for on day one to train Iraqis troops.
This thing has been botched, and the problem is the President is promoting people who are responsible for it, and we are getting deeper. One thing that bothers me, the gentleman mentioned the President knows how to use power. He should not use it in a way that lets politics dictate military decisions. It is pretty clear to any neutral observer that is what happened in Fallujah, because this spring we had an offensive into Fallujah. It was called off. Everybody knew we were going to have to go back in there, and it would seem to me it would make prudent sense to go back in there before we give thousands of insurgents time to build bunkers, accumulate their communications network. What did the President do? It is pretty clear. Not until after the election because there is going to be American blood flow.
One week after the election, all of a sudden we get the attack on Fallujah. Thirty-eight Americans die in the attack. It is pretty clear, and it is sad to say what happened here. There was a political decision to avoid this assault and, as a result, these insurgents had more and more time to fortify Fallujah. That was wrong by a Republican, a Democrat or anybody, to put our men in harm's way, to allow the enemy to consolidate their position, and we had to walk our people into those dens of fire.
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I want to reinforce what the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) is saying. It was very obvious this decision and the timetable attached to it was influenced by a political clock. The fact is, we telegraphed to the world and the enemy what we were going to do. We gave them time to prepare, and we waited until a few days after the election and then the decision was made to go in.
That is a troubling thing to conclude. It really troubles me to think that a decision like that that would involve a military operation that was going to likely consume American lives would be in any way influenced by a political clock, but the evidence seems quite clear that is what happened. We had to build up for months and then more intensely in the weeks leading up to the election, and the enemy knew we were coming in. That gave them an opportunity to be ready for us, to have supplies and equipment in place. There was no element of surprise in our going into Fallujah. We basically let them know, as soon as the election was over, it was going to happen. That truly troubles me. I think it should trouble every American.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it troubles me because I am going to call some parents tomorrow who lost their 19-year-old son in that battle. I am not going to broach this with them. I do not know if the thought has crossed their mind, but I cannot reach any other conclusion. What possible reason was there to wait 6 months to go into Fallujah except the fact that there was an election on November 2, and then do it just a few days after the election. What possible reason could there be other than the fact of the election schedule?
We saw how horrendous the fighting was in Fallujah. Some of these tunnels were reinforced with steel, and we gave them 6 months to do that. People's heads should roll in the administration for that.
Again, what we hear tonight is the people responsible for that have been promoted into higher positions of authority. We are not going in the right direction in Iraq.
Unfortunately, let me note a reality in Iraq, we have to some degree obtained some degree of success over Fallujah, but just read what happened everywhere else.
In Samarra, we had a Fallujah-like assault several months ago, and we thought we were successful there, but this week the Iraqi police stations were raided by the insurgents, and 33 Iraqi soldiers and policemen were killed, injured 48.
In Ramadi, a slew of suicide car bombers wounded 20 U.S. Marines. Guerillas raided three police stations, killing 22 officers.
In Diyala Province, a governor's aide and two members of the Provincial Governing Council were killed, and bombs exploded across Baghdad at a Catholic Church and against U.S. convoys along the main road to the airport.
We still cannot secure the main road to the airport in Baghdad. We still are hiring the people responsible for these debacles and giving them promotions. It is wrong.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman mentioned the main road from Baghdad and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) indicated earlier tonight that we have been holding this Iraq Watch special order for some period of months now. Those who have listened to us before may recall that I have mentioned in the past that I was privileged to be in the first delegation of American Congress Members who were able to get into Iraq, leave the Baghdad airport and go into what is now the Green Zone in May after the initial attack on Baghdad.
We were there in late May on the day that Ambassador Bremer took the reins of control from General Garner. Forgive me for going over some past ground, but, unfortunately, what is being cited by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) and by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) tonight requires this for a very simple reason.
When we hear of standing up or creating this Army, creating these forces, that was the goal that was stated to us the very first day that Ambassador Bremer was there, supposedly based on the work that General Garner was supposed to be doing up to that time. And we continue to have reports in the presses as if this is something suddenly just discovered.
On that day, we sat at the table with Ambassador Bremer and General Garner. I recall very clearly saying to them, we have just been down this road from the airport, the international airport in Baghdad here, and I said to them. You are going to need 10,000 soldiers just to guard that highway. I said. It is a strip of tar going from the airport in the middle of a desert into Baghdad. This is not the Big Dig up in Boston or entering metropolitan Atlanta. This is not finding your way around Philadelphia or New York. This is a strip of tar from another big strip of tar where planes land into Baghdad. I said, there are no lights. There is no possibility of being able to stop people planting mines or coming up with shoulder-
held rocket grenade launchers, explosive propellants of all kinds.
And now here we are nearing the end of 2004, and you cannot even go on that road today. This is a debacle. This is a disaster. This is taking place right now in circumstances in which we are observing generals saying to their troops, witnessed by embedded reporters with television cameras, drawing the analogy to Hue in Vietnam.
I am old enough to have been involved in the discussions that took place during the 1960s with what we were doing in Vietnam with a half a million soldiers and an indigenous Army fighting with the South Vietnamese that could fight, that was trained and was equipped. And the analogy was Hue in Vietnam. Fallujah is going to be like Hue. Hue was a disaster for us. A few more wins like that, and we are completely undone.
What we forget is the actual military activity that took place had nothing to do with the war in the sense of whether or not we would be successful politically or militarily. The actual circumstances of the combat and the capabilities of the soldiers, all of which have been cited by us over and over again, that is not the issue. The competency of the American soldier is not the issue. The willingness of the American soldier to fight or the bravery, the professionalism, that is not the issue as such. Whether they are equipped properly, of course, that is an issue for us, but the political reality is this is an unmitigated disaster. We are setting the foundation and groundwork, if you will, for decades, if not centuries, of opposition to us as a result of what is going on right now.
You need only go to look at how it is characterized around the country. I was visiting with my mother in Florida, and I have been to Massachusetts. I have gone all over the country. The Palm Beach Post, the Providence Journal, how is it characterized? Here is what the Providence Journal said on Monday, November 15.
{time} 2200
``The absence of insurgent bodies in Fallujah has remained an enduring mystery.'' It is no mystery. This is a guerilla fight.
In the same paper:
``But much of the city lay in smoking ruins. Isolated bands of rebels still harassed American and Iraqi soldiers.'' Rebels against what?
``The military victory appeared to be nearly overshadowed by insurgent violence elsewhere, particularly in the northern city of Mosul.''
Again quoting:
``The Governor of Mosul province, saying he had lost faith in local security forces, called in thousands of Kurdish militiamen for the first time to quell the insurgent uprising there.''
Today a hearing was held on the staffing requirements, the personnel requirements for the Guard and the Reserve, testimony at the Committee on Armed Services today. Happy faces, it was characterized to me by a Republican Member here tonight, a stalwart member of the committee. And I reiterate again with respect to the many times we have appeared on the floor, this is not a Republican versus Democratic issue. The Committee on Armed Services tries not to operate in that kind of a context. We try to operate on the basis of the security interests of the United States. One of our colleagues said to us, ``They put on happy faces today.'' What the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) has just quoted, what these other two of my colleagues here have been quoting is that we are living in a fantasy. I was asked by a former Member today, What are you doing over at the Capitol? I said, We're organizing our delusions. We are in the midst of organizing our delusions.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I would yield with one observation, though, as has been stated by our colleagues here tonight. The thing that I most regret about coming back this evening is that shortly we will be taking leave of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel). He is the founder of this opportunity that the rest of us have seized upon week after week. He has been the guiding light and the inspiration for this. I deeply regret that he will not be here next year because, unfortunately, I am afraid we are going to have to be here next year. But I can tell him that the fire that he has lit in us and in others who have come here will not go out, and we will try to carry on the legacy that he has established for us to live up to.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, that is very kind of the gentleman from Hawaii, a bit overblown and exaggerated, but very kind of him.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Not a bit.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Next year I am going to be watching. I am going to be tuning in. I know my colleagues will be fighting the good fight as they have been for the last year and a half.
I wanted to comment upon your views, that what is virtually a purely military approach to our challenge in Iraq is not working, cannot work in the face of a guerilla opposition that melts away when we attack en masse and comes up and attacks us where we least expect it a few days later in another location. It is consistent with my earlier statement that as strong as our military is and as strong as we have to keep it, we have got to use more than just our military power in our dealings with the rest of the world. We have to use the totality of our power, which includes diplomatic power, economic power, cultural ties, the powers of moral suasion.
One of the things I wish this President would talk about and I hope the next Congress will talk about is the need for economic revitalization in the Middle East and in Eurasia. We need a modern day Marshall Plan. We need to address the challenges in Iraq and the rest of that part of the world not just with a military strategy but we have got to give to those young men and women, mostly young men, although there are now suicide bombers who are women, who are so desperate, who are so hopeless that they would believe it is in their best interests to strap a bomb on and kill innocent civilians rather than have some hope that they can build a better life, that they can find a job, they can improve the quality of life for themselves and their families. We have got to address the economic needs. I do not mean by handing out money. I mean by making the kinds of investments, along with Western Europe and other industrialized societies, the kinds of investments that will build some economic strength.
In the Marshall Plan after World War II, over a period of 4 years we invested $13 billion in 14 countries. That in today's dollars would be
$100 billion over 4 years, $25 billion a year. Our total foreign aid now is about $20 billion a year. So if we a little bit more than doubled our foreign aid, we could create a similar economic revitalization plan as we did so successfully in the late 1940s.
It is a different challenge. The countries we are trying to help here are frankly much worse off than the Western European countries were after World War II. Those countries had a labor force that was trained. They had been industrial countries. The Afghanistans, all the Stans, Iraq, Iran, those are countries with much greater needs. But if we try to solve the problems of the world with military solutions only, if we try to keep ourselves safe with military solutions only, if we try to win the war on terror with only a military response, we will not succeed. Our military will perform well, as they always do; but there is not a military solution, a purely military solution, to the challenges that face us.
We have got to pay attention to the hopes and aspirations. It is more than just the poverty these people face. It is the grinding helplessness and hopelessness they must feel. We have got to create a sense of opportunity in this part of the world.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. In that context, then, you have indicated, yes, a Marshall Plan might be in order, but that presumes that the fighting has ended. The fighting has not ended. It is nowhere near ending. You cannot make an investment in somewhere, where again I will quote, most of the city lay in smoking ruins.
Another quote: ``Tanks and armored vehicles, their turret guns blazing in all directions, finished the sweep through the city.'' We are destroying everything in our path. And then the only thing that I see is that, well, we will be responsible, the United States is going to have to be responsible for the rebuilding. Who? Another Halliburton? Another series of projects to be laid out? You cannot guarantee that the people who are going to do the building will be safe.
So all of this is a fantasy. It is a delusion, that somehow we are going to succeed with this. My final point on that is that it is the military itself then at that point that will have difficulties because we are not going to be able to recruit. Despite the happy face that has been put on this, the Reserves are falling behind in their recruitment and retention. The Guard is falling behind in their recruitment and retention, and those strains and those stresses are going to become more apparent in the days and months to come, and the stress and strain in the days and months to come will manifest itself in the inability of the United States to have the kinds of deployments under the circumstances that would be most ideal to maximize the efficiency of the Armed Forces.
It is not that they will not try. It is not that they will not do their best. It is not that they will not give their all. It is that we will be letting them down in the first place by requiring something of them that actually is against the protocols and the standards that we have set up in order to have the best possible military capacity.
Mr. STRICKLAND. If the gentleman will yield, just listening to the gentleman, I am reminded of a fact. The fact is this: that the only people sacrificing for this war are the soldiers and the people who love them. The President is not sacrificing for this war. The corporate world is not sacrificing for this war. Those of us who sit in the safety of this Chamber, we are not sacrificing for this war. We do not have sons and daughters and loved ones in Iraq in harm's way.
So who is sacrificing? The taxpayer is not sacrificing for this war, not the current taxpayer, because the President has decided that the cost of this war is just going to be pushed into the future so the children and the children yet to be born will bear the burden for paying for this war. It is a shame that the President is asking nothing of us as a Nation, save the lives and the time, the service of our soldiers and the grief and the worry of the people who love them. It is just almost beyond belief that we find ourselves where we are tonight.
Our country was attacked as a result of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban. We supported going into Afghanistan, obviously, all of us. Out of 535 members of the House and Senate, only one voted against the war in Afghanistan because it was wholly, totally justified and necessary. And then all of a sudden the President and his advisers decided that we were going to go to Iraq. No connection with the attack upon this country. No weapons of mass destruction. No imminent danger to us. Yet we divert resources and intelligence away from Afghanistan, away from the search for Osama bin Laden, and here we find ourselves in Iraq and we all knew that we were going to win the military battle.
There is not a country on the face of this Earth or a combination of countries on the face of this Earth that can stand up to our military and our fighting men and women. We all knew that. And so there is this quick, so-called end of combat, and the President got on the aircraft carrier, there was that sign up there Mission Accomplished, and look what has followed. Thousands of people injured. Well over 1,000 of our soldiers are now dead. Iraq has become a haven for terrorists. They are coming from throughout the world, gathering in Iraq; and we find ourselves bogged down with no plan, continuing death, continuing injuries, continuing expense. And we have got an administration who is wanting to continue to do the same thing they have been doing for the last several months. It is truly alarming, saddening, that our Nation finds itself in this situation tonight.
Mr. HOEFFEL. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. INSLEE. I just want to say that there is a future in Iraq. The one thing we should recognize and we are in it together, Democrats and Republicans, whether we voted for this war or not, and we all have responsibilities to try to make tough decisions about what to do now. Our discussion of the past does not mean to suggest that we can walk away in the next 24 hours from Iraq, but I think what we are saying is that we need people that we can trust with decision-making in Iraq, that we will have a rational, decision-making process that is based on the facts rather than just hopes and wishes.
I remember just even 6, 8 months ago listening to the Vice President talking about how things were going so remarkably well in Iraq and we had the Mission Accomplished incident. We had Ambassador Bremer telling us and Wolfowitz telling us that this entire thing was going to be financed with oil revenues from Iraq. He told us, to Congress, I remember this very well. He said, ``There won't be a single taxpayer dollar associated with this project.'' How many billion are we in it now? It is hard to tell.
As the gentleman from Ohio pointed out, the one thing we know about every billion dollars this President has spent, it has been of my grandchildren's money. He has not asked any sacrifice of us. Winston Churchill said, ``All I have to offer you is blood, sweat, toil and tears.'' This President has said, ``Just go shopping.'' That is how he has approached this. So we are asking this horrific sacrifice of our men and women in Fallujah tonight. But this President wants to keep cutting taxes for the wealthiest folks, his friends. That is how he handles it. He is the only President in American history who has insisted that in the middle of war when our warriors are out there risking their lives, he does not want to risk anything except his tax cuts, and he will not even risk that.
He is the only American President who has ever done major tax cuts in a war. I would assert that he is in the panoply of those who are the most economically and morally irresponsible. This is a moral issue to ask our soldiers to go die in Fallujah and go back here in the homestead and try to boost his popularity by giving tax breaks to the rich.
{time} 2215
That is a moral issue. And there has been a lot of talk about moral values in this last election.
I want to say, I look at that as a violation of the values that I hold and I think a majority of my constituents hold. We ought to be in this together as Americans, and this President does not want any American to be in it except those on the frontline because he does not want people to know how costly war is. And it is not cheap. And that is a moral failure.
And if we raise our voices on occasion, it is because there is cause for anger here. And there is cause for anger when I hear in the last week that this President gives promotions. There is not a guy who has lost his extra vacation day in this administration as a result of the debacle in Iraq. What kind of message is that to send on personal accountability when a guy who told us that it was not going to cost the taxpayers a dollar is sitting fat and happy as the Secretary of Defense, has never got his hand even slapped, did not even get a memo in his personnel file, and his buddy takes over the National Security Council and had the President tell us something that was a blatant falsehood to start this war? And now we are going to make calls, all four of us, to family members who lost people in Fallujah. That is a moral insult. It is not just bad public policy.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. I believe we are out of time this evening.
Iraq Watch will be back in January, in February and March, as long as these challenges continue, as long as there is a need for debate and for questions to be asked.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. HOEFFEL. I yield to the gentleman from Hawaii.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, we may be here a few more days than we expected, and I for one am quite concerned about what is taking place and would be interested in coming back if the time is available to us before we leave.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Excellent. Mr. Speaker, let me just say it has been a long time coming, but change is going to come.
____________________
