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.
“OUR TROOPS IN IRAQ” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H2560-H2566 on May 11, 2006.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
OUR TROOPS IN IRAQ
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address you, Mr. Speaker, and this House Chamber. I do rise in support, and I wish to associate with the remarks of the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) who brought up that Mother's Day is coming up, and we need to honor our mothers. They are the source of a lot of the good things about the world. They are the things that civilize us men, I would point out.
And I certainly give my greetings to all mothers and look forward to the day that we formally celebrate that glorious day. A source of compassion and understanding and nurturement, all of the things I will never be in my life are wrapped up in motherhood.
Mr. Speaker, I did come here to speak about a different subject matter, Mr. Speaker. Before I get to the subject of Iraq and the broader war on terror, I feel compelled to address the issue of the National Security Administration and their data mining operations that came to light today in a publication.
I am alarmed in the verbal messages that come around this Chamber, alarmed that there could be that kind of an operation going on in this country.
Before I react, though, Mr. Speaker, I think it is imperative and incumbent upon all of us to step back, to take a good look at the facts, and not run forward with an uninformed response. I concur with the first instincts of the gentlemen from New Mexico and also the gentleman from Washington that spoke on the issue of the data mining of the National Security Administration.
I serve on the Judiciary Committee where we had at least 12 and perhaps 13 hearings on the PATRIOT Act, renewed the PATRIOT Act. We put some insurances in the PATRIOT Act. In a couple of the sections, we set them up with a sunset so that we will be able to go back and review those issues in a shorter period of time to make sure that we are protecting the rights and the privacy of Americans.
Mr. Speaker, when I look at this issue and again, from the sense of alarm that there would be that kind of a potential intrusion into the private lives of Americans. And I would dig a little bit deeper and say this data mining, with the little bit of information that we have at this point, does not look into the details of Americans, and no one is alleging that it does except for the remarks made here in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker.
And it does not, according to the administration, collect any names of anyone, it does not collect any addresses, it does not listen to any telephone calls. None of those things, according to the administration's response at least, and worthy of verification I would add, takes place unless the FISA court is aware of that and unless it happens to be a communication from a domestic call within the United States from or to a caller in a foreign country, and even then the interest would be in al-Qaeda, as the President made clear.
So data mining is a little bit different. It is clear that, you know, it depends on how you define the invasion of privacy. And the allegation was made here, Mr. Speaker, that the administration, and through the NSA's data mining, that the privacy was invaded. That is a direct quote from the gentlemen from New Mexico.
Well, the definition of the privacy, I think, needs to be clearer before America comes to the conclusion as to whether that privacy was invaded. Now, if it has not been, if no phone calls have been listened to, if none have been recorded, if there were no names, and if there were no addresses that were recorded, if it were just the telephone numbers, and if the telephone numbers were data mined and run through a database to sort out, to see if those numbers also were the numbers that were known phone numbers of suspected terrorists, if that was the indicator that would cause the National Security Administration then to go to the FISA court and ask for a warrant, to perhaps listen in on some of these phone calls, it might have been discovered through the data mining process. That is how I understand this to be.
This is how the administration defends their actions. This is how I hope the facts emerge as we listen more closely to this situation. But I am concerned, Mr. Speaker. I think it is important for Congress to take a real close look at this. And I will be one of the people who will be making these requests to take a close look at it.
Mr. Speaker, I am not willing to go out here and make the allegation that there is a tremendous invasion of the privacy of millions of Americans until I know that factually that is the case.
The administration would need, in order to get a FISA court warrant, probable cause, as the gentlemen from New Mexico stated. And the gathering of information beyond simply an indexing of a phone number that might link to known al-Qaeda phone numbers or suspected al-Qaeda phone numbers, as the administration's position on all of the fervor they have gone with this.
So let's take a deep breath, America. Let's count to 10, America. Let's get the facts in front of us. Let's get a sense of what is actually going on before such time as we would leap to a conclusion.
But I want to announce that I am focused on this and I am concerned about this. And I also would point out that in a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, the Attorney General, General Gonzalez, was asked the question as to whether there were any telephone conversations that were being listened into, domestic calls within the United States without a FISA warrant or without a warrant of any kind.
That answer that he gave that day I recall not to have been a very concise, precise or clear answer. And I intend to look up the Congressional Record to determine that answer that was given by Attorney General Gonzalez and see how that comports with this story that came out in the news today of which we will be looking more carefully into.
Just looking at calling patterns of phone numbers, I am not certain that that does rise to the level of invasion of privacy. America will decide that, Mr. Speaker. And we will draw some conclusions ourselves when we get the facts together.
But I would add also, that the White House would not confirm or deny the existence of such a program. I will not draw a conclusion either, Mr. Speaker, as to what that might indicate. But I would point out that perhaps the architect of this plan, the person who was in charge at NSA during the period of time that this data mining was initiated and developed, and certainly during the time of its activity, if indeed it did take place, was General Michael Hayden, General Michael Hayden who has been appointed to be the next Director of the CIA.
And we know that there is friction between the CIA and the White House, and that there is political ideology conflicts going on between the CIA and the White House, and that the appointment of General Hayden, an outsider, a military officer, to come into the CIA to be the Director of the CIA and hopefully to clean up some of the activities within the CIA that have undermined the foreign policy of the President of the United States of America, might just be the reason why there was such a timely leak of this information.
Mr. Speaker, I pose that question to America as perhaps being more important or at least a question that needs to be raised to a high level of importance, alongside the importance of the privacy of the American people.
We will get to the bottom of this, Mr. Speaker. And I will join others in asking these questions and asking for the factual information so that we can draw a conclusion here in the Congress, and that the conclusion in this Congress by right and ought to reflect the conclusions of the well-informed American public. That is the path that we need to go down, Mr. Speaker.
I thank you for your indulgence. I shift then over to the subject matter that I came here to talk about on this floor, and that is the subject of the effort of our great, dedicated, well-trained, well-
disciplined, well-performing and well-equipped military of the United States of America.
The effort that they are giving worldwide, globally in this global effort on terror, this global effort that was enjoined against our will on September 11, 2001. And the President went to Ground Zero in New York with a bullhorn and made it clear that we were going to take on this enemy wherever they might be.
And he said, if you are harboring terrorists, you are a terrorist, if you are aiding and abetting terrorists, you are a terrorist. If you are on the side of the terrorists, you are against the side of freedom, and we will identify our enemies as such.
And within months, the Commander in Chief dispatched troops into Afghanistan, a nation of 25 million people, a nation that had never had a free election on that soil ever in the history of the world. A nation that the Khyber Pass was renowned as being a place where you could never send military through there without them being ambushed and shot down, that no nation in the world, including the very powerful Soviet Union, could ever invade and occupy for any period of time a nation like Afghanistan.
And that a military, we were advised that a military effort in Afghanistan would be a failure. And I remember the voices of the people over on this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, and they advised America that it would be a defeated effort to presume to go into Afghanistan since all nations throughout all of history had failed in that country because of the rough terrain, because of the tribalism, because of a tenacity of the people there to always reject any outsiders, no matter what kind of good will might come to Afghanistan.
But the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan. And they had been harboring terrorists. They had been harboring al-Qaeda, and they had allowed al-Qaeda to get established on Afghanistan and on the border with Pakistan.
And this al-Qaeda was the worst venom in a very venomous regime there. The Taliban had taken over essentially all of Afghanistan. They has been blowing up the religious symbols and statutes in Afghanistan, trying to wipe out anything that challenged them. They rejected Buddhism, they rejected Christianity.
Afghanistan was one of the few countries in the world, Mr. Speaker, where the life expectancy of the women in Afghanistan was less than the life expectancy of the men, even though the men were the ones that were continually in combat taking on the bullets and the bombs and the missiles and the artillery.
Still, they were so brutal with their women in Afghanistan that their life expectancy was less than that of the men. And the children did not fare much better, Mr. Speaker. Girls could not go to school. The lack of freedom, the lack of an economy had devolved down into barely a survival mode, with a Draconian Islamic cleric regime in place called the Taliban, one of the darkest regimes ever in the history of the world.
But our Commander in Chief saw differently. He got good advice from his military advisers. He took the advice of the military advisers, accepted that. In a period of within a couple of months of September 11, dispatched our troops into Afghanistan, where they joined up with the Northern Alliance.
In a matter of months they swept through Afghanistan, wiped out the Taliban and enabled a free government to be established there. And free elections were held on that soil for the first time ever in the history of the world. That provided the 25 million Afghanis the gratitude of the coalition forces and the United States military. No small feat.
And as that fantastic feat unfolded, the critics from the other side of this aisle, and the liberals throughout America, slowly were muzzled by the success of the operations in Afghanistan. Slowly muzzled, Mr. Speaker, because they came to the realization that it was such a resounding success in all facets of it, from the military perspective, from the security perspective, from establishing a free government having successful elections, and establishing an economy that is now starting to grow and become stable in Afghanistan, from building infrastructure, sewer, water, wells, roads, schools, girls going to school, women voting. The freedom that you see in the eyes of people that are looking out through a burka that had never had the chance to do that before, was an astonishing success that again had not taken place on that place in the globe ever in the history of the world, thanks to the bravery and the courage of our Commander in Chief.
His vision, his courage, his ability to discern the advice that came from his Secretary of Defense, from his military staff, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to be able to discern that advice, select the best advice and then act upon that and send an appropriate number of troops with appropriate tactical support with appropriate equipment to be able to initiate and carry out and complete a successful operation in Afghanistan.
And I would point out, Mr. Speaker, that his critics have been muzzled on that issue, even though logistically, population-wise, the degree of difficulty in Afghanistan is greater than the degree the difficulty in Iraq from a military perspective.
The critics have been muzzled because of the resounding success. Slowly their voices have been squelched one after another after another. I point out, Mr. Speaker, that the logistics and the population in Iraq, substantially easier from the military's perspective than the war in Afghanistan, the critics said the same things before the beginning of the operation.
They have not quite been muzzled yet, but one of the people that is helping in that cause is here to join us this evening. That is the gentlewoman from Tennessee who stands up for freedom and free enterprise and our American military, and is there every time they need her and many times comes without even bothering to call, stands up for America on the floor and in committee, and in every facet of her life.
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to share some time here on the floor. I am proud to yield to the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa for his leadership on this issue, and how much we appreciate that leadership.
Mr. Speaker, you know, I stand tonight for our men and women in uniform. And in my district, the men and women and families at Fort Campbell, and also our Guardsmen and our Reservists, and all of those that are deployed, how much we appreciate their sacrifice, how much we appreciate, Mr. Speaker, the great work that they do in order to be able to be certain that we preserve freedom, that we have the ability for children in this Nation to know that they are going to grow up in freedom.
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This is so those children will have the ability to dream big dreams, to look at the future with hope, with the expectancy of opportunities that will come their way.
We do thank our men and women in uniform. And I thank them. I thank this House today that approved a bill that will allow for a pay raise for our military. We are grateful for that and for the actions of this body.
I am so pleased to join you tonight as we turn our thoughts to Iraq and what is happening in Afghanistan because those are centers and they are battles in the war on terror. The war on terror is a global war. When we talk about the war on terror, we are not talking about one specific place or one specific battle. The global war on terror is something that is localized right now in Iraq; but we do know that while this is the battleground of today, while Afghanistan is the battleground, while the Middle East is the breeding ground for much of the terrorism that has been disbursed all across the globe, we know that we have to look at this as a global war.
We have to know that this is going to be a long war. We have been told that by our leaders. We have been attacked. We know that we were attacked for two full decades before we stopped looking at terrorism as an act of civil disobedience and we started responding to terrorism as an act of war.
That seemed to all come to a head when we looked at Iraq, when we had a very evil dictator who continued to defy U.N. resolutions, who continued to just repeatedly snub the U.N. and snub the free world and say, I can be the bully of the region if I want to. And that came to an end after September 11.
We commend our men and women in uniform that have gone there to set free, to set free a people, to begin stamping out terrorism and to be certain that we are standing up, democracy and partners in democracy that will yield a peace dividend for our children and our grandchildren.
I appreciate that the gentleman from Iowa took a few moments to talk about some of the women in Iraq and some of the women that have fought so valiantly for freedom and for democracy and for liberty.
I have had the opportunity to work with our Iraqi Women's Caucus and work with our Department of State, and stepped forward and helped to mentor some of these women as they take those baby steps and then as they lead in putting democracy in place.
You know, it is so amazing to talk to them and to read the e-mails that they send to us as we seek to encourage them and their work and their efforts. Some of the stories that they have told about atrocities that they have lived through, how they watched the vicious nature of Saddam's henchmen and how they would brutalize people, brutalize families, and how these women have lived through that and have moved forward to take that leadership role and to step forward and say, Do not leave us now. Do not leave us now. We are on the right track. And we know it looks messy, and we know it is going to be a long process and we know this is not easy, but do not leave us.
Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but think when I have these conversations with these women and when I see some of them, maybe they are missing a finger, maybe there is something that is wrong, maybe they have suffered pain and torture and agony and you can see it in their faces and you can see it in their bodies, but in their spirit what you hear is the desire to be certain that they have their shot at freedom. That is what they want. They want the opportunity to live freely, to enjoy the benefits of freedom. And I think that we have to keep that in mind as we move forward.
One of the things we repeatedly hear and, of course, I know the gentleman from Iowa is like me, we all want to see our troops come home, come home victorious, and we would like to have them all come home, but I think we have to keep in mind that there is not going to be one specific event or one announced time where we say, all right, the work is done, because this is a work in progress. It is a work in progress, and we have seen tremendous progress. We have seen some tremendous stepping back. We have seen some failures, but we are seeing progress. And we are going to continue to see progress take place.
We have seen the elections in January of 2005, all the way to the election in December of 2005. We have watched the formation of a new government, and now we can look forward as they are putting in place a permanent government. This is not a provisional government. There is a government that will rule in that country. They will govern. They will be making the laws, setting the laws, and at the same time we are watching the Iraqi security forces train, develop the competencies that they need in order to secure their nation and begin to stand up and take charge.
It is exciting to see that type of progress take place. It is exciting to see progress in Afghanistan. It is exciting to see that there is that hope there, and it raises our concerns we have about the rest of the Middle East, about Iran, about the areas that surround there. And you know, Mr. Speaker, I think we have to keep in mind why we do this, why we are there, why we are rooting out terrorism, why we have rooted out a brutal dictator. Why we do this is because if we are fighting there, we are not going to have to be fighting that over here. How very important for us to keep that in mind.
Taking this battle to them, right there in the Middle East, in that breeding ground of terrorism, taking the battle there helps us to do our best to keep this Nation secure, to allow us to continue to be a trustee of this great and wonderful legacy that we call freedom.
I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa for yielding. I want to thank him for his excellent work that he continues to do to speak out to support our men and women in uniform and to support our troops with the good work that they are doing and always his good words in protecting the cause of freedom.
With that, I yield back to the gentleman.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee for her presentation here, Mr. Speaker. It is always with great gratitude that I have the privilege to share some floor time and address this Chamber.
Mr. Speaker, picking up on the remarks made by the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), several things pop to mind as I listened to her discussion. One of them is passing the DOD authorization bill here a little more than an hour ago. It is encouraging to see that we come together with that kind of unity in supporting our military here. A few dissenters I would say, but the core of this Chamber does support our military, and that was evident today.
I would also like to compliment Chairman Hunter, who did an excellent job of putting the bill together. He brought into play a number of interests and was able to work this out in a fashion that I think demonstrates the unity of the American people as voiced through the United States Congress.
One of the elements in that bill that we did not discuss is a directive in the bill that will ensure that the military chaplains can pray reflective of their faith, reflective of their consciences; and that they will not be told by the ACLU or any other anti-faith group out there that may want to interfere with their relationship between God and our soldiers as reflected between them by our chaplains.
When this bill gets to the President's desk, our chaplains will be protected to operate and to pray consistent with their faith, consistent with their consciences, consistent with their duty as they always have until this more enlightened era, as some might call it, when they began to interfere with the faith relationships. We put our soldiers on the battlefield and we ask them to put their lives on the line for us. The least we can do is let them worship in the fashion that they would prefer.
That is one of those constitutional guarantees. We can go overboard in trying to make sure we sanitize our religion to the point where no one is offended. In fact, I think that is a major mistake in the approach to many of the issues that we have, the idea that somehow we can move through this society and make progress without offending anyone. No, there are people who are grievance experts in America and around the world who will be offended no matter what you do. And if you keep backing up and backing up, they just bring their line of offense to follow you back to some point where you get your back against the wall when you cannot retreat anymore and they will still be offended when you cannot back up anymore.
Then what do you do? It is pretty difficult to step back and plant your foot and fight, Mr. Speaker. I submit that we have to draw a line consistent with our moral values, our religious values, our constitutional values and stand up for those principles that we hold dear, but also stand up for the principles that have made the United States of America a great Nation.
Some of those principles of course are on the line right now around the globe. They are on the line in Afghanistan where the President committed troops in the fall of 2001, and successfully I might add. The critics have been muzzled. And yet before Mrs. Blackburn took to the floor I had taken this, Mr. Speaker, up to the point where we made the decision in this Congress to endorse the President's authority to go into military operations in Iraq, and I point out the similarities between Iraq and Afghanistan: 25 million people in each of those two countries; both of them being Arab countries, Muslim countries. And some might argue about the Arab-ness about the Afghanis, but Muslim countries certainly. Those similarities. Fair amounts of desert in each. Far more mountains in Afghanistan than there are in Iraq, but similar-size countries, countries without large economies, countries that had not made a lot of progress in the last 35 or more years.
One country was ruled by the Taliban and the other was ruled by Saddam Hussein. Who is to say which is worse. The Taliban did random violence and intimidation and pushed that country back into the Stone Age, sometimes one person at a time, small groups at a time. They turned their soccer fields into execution fields where they executed women in front of a crowd.
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It is a brutal thing going on in Afghanistan, but the brutality in Iraq was not quite so obvious. It was not submitted to us so much on the media because those things took place behind the scenes, but Saddam Hussein, the tyrant that he was and tyrant that he is, was committing atrocities against his own people.
The rate of those atrocities can be calculated a number of different ways. The lowest number that I come up with is that he was killing his own people at a rate of something just less than 100 a day. The highest number that I come up with is that he was killing his own people something over 200 per day, but however it is calculated, and if you want to figure the lowest average versus the highest average, and these are numbers that come off the Web pages designed to show how many Iraqis have suffered, it is not a pro-administration Web page by any means, but it is the only numbers we really have about the levels of Iraqi civilians that have died since the liberation of Iraq that began in March of 2003.
By any measure, Mr. Speaker, when one measures the loss of American life, plus the loss of Iraqi troops who are on our side fighting for their freedom, plus the loss of civilian Iraqis, however one measures those fatalities, those killed in action, those casualties that resulted in death, and then one calculates the loss of Iraqi lives under Saddam, that loss of Iraqi life under Saddam was far greater than the loss in lives during any operation or any period of time that one wants to select as broader than a few minutes during the whole period of the operation during 3 years in Iraq.
Saddam's killing of his own people, add up all of those numbers and subtract the lives that have been sacrificed in Iraq that have gotten them to this point of freedom, and there are still, by any measure, at least 100,000 Iraqis who are alive today because of coalition forces, because of our American military, because of the effort of the Iraqi people to step up and defend themselves.
This effort that is ongoing in Iraq is more than the function of our daily casualties, more than the function of the daily casualties of Iraqi military and Iraqi civilians. What we see are bombing in the street. We see the news media that is there. It is as if Al Jazeera gets called whenever there is going to be a bomb detonated and they can be there to turn on their movie cameras and record the videos of what is going on for the level of violence in Iraq.
Now, I think it is too high, and I pray that we can get this violence reduced and get Americans out of the line of fire so they are not taking on the casualties. I also pray that the Iraqis who are taking more casualties than Americans are and other coalition forces will be able to quell this violence, but however we measure this, the loss of American lives, plus the loss of Iraqi military, lives of people that are allied with us, plus the loss of innocent civilian lives that we see on television every day as the bombs detonate, still result in a massive net saving of Iraqi lives because Saddam Hussein was so brutal to his own people.
There are not mass graves that are now filling with bodies in Iraq like they were during the Saddam regime. Those things have stopped. The level of violence that is there in Iraq and Iraqi civilians are taking this violence and those killed are far greater than Iraqi military who are taking more casualties than the American soldiers who are taking more casualties than the balance of the coalition forces. That is how that rank order of loss goes, tragic as it is.
But if we look at the real circumstances in Iraq, and we ask the question, how can anybody live in that country with daily constant bombings and people being killed every day in the course of going to the barber or going to the store or walking down the street or driving through the intersection or going to school or getting on a bus or lining up to volunteer for the police force or for the Iraqi military or even for the rarest of occasions, I am allowing even going to vote, how can they tolerate that level of violence in their country?
Well, what is the level of violence in Iraq? And so I looked up those numbers, and it turns out that the annual fatalities due to that kind of violence, due to violent deaths in Iraq, the same way we measure violent death in the United States, by a form of murder, first and second degree murder and manslaughter, that kind of violence in Iraq is a rate of just a little over 27 per 100,000 people. So you can multiply that across the 25 plus million people that are there and come up with that number, now 27 for 100,000 people.
How does that compare then being an average civilian Iraqi compared to other places in the world where a civilian has a risk of dying a violent death on any given day? I looked up the statistics for Washington, D.C. I live here part time and part time in Iowa. My wife lives here part time and part time in Iowa. It turns out the risk to me, more important than to me, the risk to my wife Marilyn for being on the streets in Washington, D.C., is almost twice as high here as a civilian in Washington, D.C., as it is to be an average civilian in Iraq. Twenty-seven times per 100,000 in Iraq as civilians due to violent death, and the number here in Washington, D.C., is 45 per 100,000 here, not quite twice as high but significantly higher than Iraq.
So what would it be in some other places around the country? Well, let us see. Detroit, not one of the safer cities but a little safer than Washington, D.C. That number is 41 per 100,000 compared to 27 per 100,000 in Iraq. So it is significantly safer to be an average citizen in Iraq than it is is to be an average citizen in Detroit, Michigan.
If we took a look at where would be the most dangerous place in America, that would be down in New Orleans before Katrina. Before Katrina in New Orleans, the violent loss of life there was 54 per 100,000, and I will say that is statistically twice as dangerous to be a citizen in New Orleans as far as taking the risk of violent death, murder, manslaughter, than it is to be hit by a bomb or a murderer over in Iraq itself.
So that puts it into perspective for us on how dangerous it is in Iraq. I have been both places within the last few months, and I think it is important for us to take a look statistically because what we do not have is the news media sensationalizing the violence in New Orleans or the violence in Washington, D.C., or the violence in Detroit. That is the difference, Mr. Speaker. We do not have the news media sensationalizing. So America gets this sense that it is an intolerable level of violence in Iraq and that it cannot be quelled.
Some Members of this Congress declare, as the junior senator declared from Iowa, that there is a civil war going on in Iraq, and I would submit that if there is a civil war going on in Iraq, if that were to happen, we would know it. It is not what is going on there today. A civil war would be defined as when the uniformed military of Iraq, the 254,000 strong now that are in the field taking the fight to the insurgents and to the enemy, when they choose up sides and start to shoot at each other, Mr. Speaker, there will be a message that there might be a war that has begun in Iraq. Until that happens, they are not choosing up sides.
We have Sunni and Shi'as and Kurds all wearing the same uniform, all defending the same flag, all defending the new free Iraq, all defending the new government that has been established there, the new government that has now finally been formed and been put in place with a cabinet that soon will be approved perhaps by the parliament, and they will be launched upon the political solution of this.
But the violence in Iraq is nowhere near the level that the news media would have us believe, but it is very much sensationalized.
And how does it compare, the violence of an average citizen in Iraq, to maybe a Nation like Colombia or Honduras? Well, it is significantly more dangerous to go to either one of those two countries than it is to go to Iraq. The murder level in Honduras is nine times that of the United States. So it is significantly safer to be a regular citizen in Iraq, again, than it would to be a regular citizen in places like Colombia or Honduras or let alone Swaziland where that country has the highest murder rate in the world at 88 per 100,000 people. So to go visit Swaziland and walk around on the streets in a country like that, you can divide 27 into 88 about as well as I can, Mr. Speaker. It is not quite four times as dangerous, but 3.5, 3.6 times more dangerous to go visit Swaziland. Reading the news media, you could do a Google search and have difficulty finding such a statistic.
I would submit also, Mr. Speaker, that we had some choices. The President had some choices, and engaging in the liberation of Afghanistan was an excellent choice because it took the habitat that bred the Taliban and supported al Qaeda, that habitat that bred terror, erased that habitat, cleaned it up and established a new habitat there. If you want to think about this from an environmentalist perspective, there was an environment that bred the kind of terror that came to visit us on September 11 and had attacked us for 20 years and attacked many of the countries around the world and continues to do so at a far lesser scale than it would be otherwise.
The habitat that was there bred terror. The habitat that replaces it breeds freedom. That is the Bush doctrine. That is the vision that was put in place within 2 months of September 11 when our military was ordered into Afghanistan, when the people over on this side said it cannot be done, that our troops would be bogged down, but it has been a resounding success.
That same approach, with that same philosophy, the Bush doctrine of erasing the habitat that breeds terror and replacing it with a habitat that is a free habitat that grows freedom was brought to bear in Iraq, and I will point out that many of the same advisers that had advised President Bush in Afghanistan advised President Bush in Iraq. Some of the same tactics that were used in Afghanistan were used in Iraq, but the same thought process, the same evaluation, the same willingness to take risk, measure risk, make sure that we had the resources that were necessary to complete the operation was all considered.
To argue that the President did not listen to the right people in Iraq, none of the people that argued against the President's decision-
making are willing to endorse that he listened to the right people for going into Afghanistan. They simply do not talk about that operation, as if the global war on terror only has one front, only has one battlefield, and only had one conclusion or one way to conclude it and one way to do so, and that in retrospect for them would be send a half a million troops in there, not 150,000 or 167,000 or 168,000 troops in there to do this operation.
The President sent enough troops to do the job that was in front of them. He used the best information he had at the time. He knew who to listen to before he went into Afghanistan. He listened to a lot of the same people going into Iraq. Tommy Franks has not stepped forward and said, oops, I wish I had another 350,000 troops. I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that another 350,000 troops in Iraq would have taken so long to mobilize, and the cost of mobilization and the difficulty of doing such a thing would also put more of our troops in harm's way.
I would point out that if one looks back statistically, that if you are going to stand up a military, when you put young men and women in the same place where you have machines that move fast and are heavy and instruments that are designed to deal death and destruction, as our military is designed to do, there will be accidents and you will lose people due to accident that are not combat fatalities.
In fact, one out of every five fatalities in Iraq has been a noncombat fatality, the result of an accident, but those accidents take place whether it is a civilian on the streets of America or whether it is a military wearing the uniform on a base somewhere where we never hear about that accident. If we add up the loss of American lives as a price to be ready, because those accidents that take place in training they take place on the base, the in-uniform accidents, if we add them up for the period of time between Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, there were 5,000 Americans who gave their life to this country for our freedom as a price to be ready to take on the enemy. We mourn them as well as we mourn the soldiers who we lost in combat. They all paid the price for freedom, and we need to take advantage of this freedom and exercise this freedom and defend this freedom here the same way they defended it overseas for us.
But those loss of lives are still hard when it is a family that gives up a son or a daughter due to a price to be ready as opposed to the price to be engaged in combat. All need to be honored, all need to be respected, and of course, we add an extra level of honor to those who went into the line of fire for our freedom.
But the price remains as a price paid to be readied. There has been a price paid due to accidents in Iraq, as well as loss of life due to combat, but there is freedom there in Iraq. They held three elections in the year 2005, all successful, and they said it could not be done. They said that the violence would be so great that we could not open the polling booths and allow Iraqis to come to the polls and vote, but they did, Mr. Speaker, and each election the number of Iraqis went up, not down.
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The smiling Iraqis with the purple fingers coming out of polling places, those numbers got greater and greater. As that happened, we were transitioning from the military security phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom to the political phase. And now we are into this political phase full blown, full bore. The Iraqi people have established their prime minister, their president and their speaker of their new parliament along with names that have been presented to their cabinet. That cabinet is endorsed by a majority of the parliament. They will be up and running.
When they are seated at the United Nations, they will be the most sovereign and most representative Arab nation in the world, the Nation that reflects the will of their own people far greater than any others.
We often think of the United Nations as an organization that is the democracy for the world. It is a voice of all of these nations, and the ambassadors from the countries represent the voices of the citizens of the country that they come from. That is not the truth. The truth is that there are some democratic countries that come to the United Nations, that appoint an ambassador to go to the United Nations to speak the will of the people. That is some of the countries.
Then there are the other countries that are significantly different. These are the ones that come from the dictators and tyrants who do not allow their own people to have a voice, but they send their ambassador to the United Nations and they have a voice there, a voice equally weighted to the voice of the ambassadors who actually represent a free people.
Mr. Speaker, I would submit that the Iraqi ambassador soon to be named to the United Nations will be a voice of a free Arab people, and that is a significant improvement, a significant change from the way it was in the past 3\1/2\ years ago. And, in fact, that ambassador will stand out in the United Nations hopefully as a beacon of freedom to the Arab people. And hopefully this freedom that is emerging in Iraq as we speak will be the freedom that becomes contagious and emanates across the borders to the other countries of the Middle East in such a fashion that they will stand up and say I want my freedom, too. I will celebrate when that day comes, but that would be the next phase of the Bush doctrine. That phase where the President understands that the clarion call of freedom calls all people, and that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation.
It may not be in this year or this decade or in this generation. It may not be in my lifetime, but it is inevitable that the yearning for freedom will bring every country to a level of freedom over time. I believe, as they say in the Arab world, it is God's will that we arrive at that point.
The alternative that the President had, given the challenges in front of him after September 11 was we could have looked at this from a law enforcement perspective, as did the previous administration. But the President chose to take the battle to the enemy in Afghanistan with a model for that country almost a mirror image of Iraq. If an approach to Afghanistan was wise, and the same approach to Iraq was not wise, I wish the people on the other side of the aisle and the critics of that effort would stand and tell me those distinctions. I can give distinctions, but it is Monday morning quarterbacking now. We must complete this task.
If we should pull out of Iraq, if that should happen, the effects on the future of the United States of America and the free world and the global war on terror would be catastrophic in their magnitude. The message that would be sent to the rest of the world would be that the United States does not stick with its commitment to go in and liberate. The message that came from Muqtada al-Sadr, when I was there on one of my visits a couple of years ago when he said if we keep attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq the same way they left Vietnam, the same way that they left Mogadishu and the same way that they left Lebanon. That is what I heard in live real-time out of the voice of Muqtada al-Sadr.
In fact, I took the trouble to put it in a poster, Mr. Speaker. I would point out that I heard this as I was visiting in Kuwait City watching Al Jazeera TV. He made the statement that if we keep attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq the same way they left Vietnam, the same way they left Lebanon, and the same way they left Mogadishu.
That message gets through to our enemy. They understand that the United States, if we do not stick to a mission, a subsequent military and American civilians will pay the price for not sticking to that mission for a generation or more after the fact.
There are those who add to this argument and who add fuel to this fire. Here would be an example. This is the senior Senator from Massachusetts who said that this was a war made up in Texas, this whole thing was a fraud, and Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam, which is really my point.
This message out of the mouth of this senior Senator from Massachusetts went through the satellite versions of television and within seconds, in fact at the speed of light, can emerge on the other end in the Middle East directly into the ears of Muqtada al-Sadr and Zawahiri and Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden, and you name the leaders over there who are committed to killing people who are not like them. They believe that is the path to their salvation. They are encouraged by these kinds of messages. It cost the lives of American soldiers.
We must stand together and complete this task. If we fail to do so, our only alternative will be to retreat back to the shores of the United States of America, fortify everything that we have that we want to protect, that we hold dear, guard every bus stop, guard every school and hospital, and guard every restaurant. They do that in Israel. If you go down the streets of Israel, the military are required when they are out on the street to carry their gun. They guard everything, and still their women and children, their families are blown to bits by terrorists who are committed to killing them for some religious reason I will never understand. That is our alternative here in America if we do not complete this task in Iraq.
Some of the things that we have done to provide stability in Iraq are demonstrated on this poster. The yellow spots here and the green dots, those are initiated and I believe they are completed operations of construction projects. Yes, the green is completed operations. The yellow are projects that are in progress.
As I traveled around, I was down in Basra in the south and on up to Kirkuk in the north, and I have been around the Mosul area as well, these projects are all things that American taxpayer dollars have invested to upgrade the infrastructure that is there. That includes water, sewers, hospitals, roads, all kind of structure that are designed to add some stability to the country of Iraq that in the last 38 years, aside from coalition forces and the dollars that have been committed into the country since the liberation, had not made significant progress.
Now there is progress being made in the country. There is more progress that needs to be made before our troops can come home victorious, to quote the gentlewoman from Tennessee some moments ago.
I will submit that we have to stick with this task. We do not have an alternative except to succeed, and we are on the path of success. It is a long, hard slog, as the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld, has pointed out. He has been realistic and upfront and candid in his positions that he has taken. I think he has taken on a yeoman's task to reorganize our military at the same time we are involved in a conflict overseas. But the alternative is not acceptable, and that would be not to reorganize our military at a time when we need to be lighter, quicker, faster and still stronger than we were before.
I have met with the Secretary of the Army who has laid out this plan for me, and I am impressed with the level of organization and level of discipline that they have provided. And I am impressed that Secretary Rumsfeld has gone down this path and has seen the vision and directed that it take place in the reorganization of our military.
I am not surprised though, Mr. Speaker, that some of the generals who were steeped in the old way of thinking and who maybe have a little different approach might be a little disgruntled. We have about six generals that have spoken up. That means there are some 9,000 who have not spoken against the Secretary of Defense. I think it was untimely of them to do so. It did not help this cause for them. I think that if they had stepped back and taken a look at it from the perspective of the long-term best interest of America, they might not have taken these issues to the public because their voice echoes across through satellite TV, picked up by Al Jazeera, spread through the ears of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and Zarqawi and Zawahiri and al-Sadr who is maybe on the side of the government of Iraq and doing business there. It does not help to send the message of dissent.
If you have a message of dissent, take it to the White House. They will close the door on the Roosevelt Room or perhaps in the Oval Office and you can have your say and it will be considered. But to have your say and say it to our enemy at the same time you might convey that disagreement to the President of the United States through the media is not a constructive way to fight a war. If this goes on, it will be one of the reasons why democracies have a difficult time in succeeding.
I point out that the country I live in is a constitutional republic, and I am glad it is. I look forward to the day our military comes home victorious. I do not know how soon that might be. But I would point out that the previous administration sent troops to Kosovo and gave a time frame at which time they would be deployed back to the United States, and that time frame was 1 year. It has been well over 10 years since those troops were deployed to Kosovo, and we still have troops there.
I am not raising an issue about that except to say we cannot give a drop-dead deadline for our troops to leave Iraq. That empowers the enemy and allows the enemy to prepare for the day when they can emerge from their holes in the ground, having accumulated their military supplies, and then descend upon the less-equipped people that are there defending the country.
That idea that has taken place in a resolution over in the other body, joined in by the junior Senator from Iowa, is the wrong idea at the wrong place at the wrong time. The right idea and the right message is we will be there, Iraq, as long as you need us. We are going to encourage you to get out of the nest and fly. You are doing a good job so far under difficult circumstances and your fighting spirit is there. The judicial branch is there. Saddam Hussein needs to be tried. You need to get done with the trial. You need to accumulate a record for the Iraqi people so they understand the history that is going on within the country of Iraq. The era of Saddam Hussein must be recorded. When it is recorded, it will be fine with me if justice is served and an appropriate punishment should he be found guilty is made consistent with Iraqi law. And I am advised that there is only one penalty that is provided for an individual who might be found guilty of crimes against humanity and that punishment is death. I believe that is too gentle a penalty for someone who may have committed crimes of that magnitude, but it is the one that they have and it is all that we would have in this country as well.
Mr. Speaker, I urge this body to stand with our military, to stand with their mission, make the point that you cannot be for our military and against their mission. We cannot ask people to put their lives on the line and say you should not be doing this, I am against your mission, but I support you. I will send you some warm socks and an MRE and something cold to drink. I am for you, troops, but you shouldn't be there. That is wrong.
If you are not for the mission, you are not for the troops. You cannot ask them to put their lives on the line for you and be opposed to their mission. They are one and the same. You support the troops and you support their mission all together, not separately. You do not get to choose one or the other. It is a fallacy in the argument.
I stand with the troops and the mission. I am committed to seeing this thing through to the end. We owe that to our brave soldiers and Marines who have given their lives for the freedom of the Iraqi people, for the safety and security of the American people, that have taken the fight to the enemy globally overseas, who all of them volunteered to go over there. All of them volunteered to face the enemy. They knew they were taking a risk. God bless them for it, Mr. Speaker, and God bless our soldiers and our Marines in their effort, and God bless the United States of America.
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