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.
“ENERGY CONCERNS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H11495-H11500 on Dec. 13, 2005.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ENERGY CONCERNS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Poe). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for the remaining time until midnight, approximately 48 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, thank you for the privilege to speak on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. As I listened to the discussion here this evening, some of my material was created by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and I wish to begin by responding to some of the remarks that were made.
Again, I hear a consistent message of pessimism and really no message of solution or a plan. In fact, I heard a lament that they are night after night not coming up with the real answers for the American people, and I lament the same thing, and I agree with those statements, Mr. Speaker.
First, some of the notes I wrote down as I picked up on some of the discussion that went on here on the other side of the aisle were concerns about energy and the price of gas and home heating. In fact, there is a government report out some few weeks ago that it is going to cost perhaps 50 to 51 percent more for the average American to heat their home this winter as opposed to last winter. And that is all true.
We tried to move energy policy through this Chamber. In fact, we did move some through this Chamber, but we did not move near enough. I called for drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf and drilling in ANWR. It looks now like we are going to see the new year without a vote on either one of those things. I hope we do and that we get it passed, because it is the right thing to do. But into that bargain there are people that oppose energy development, and here sits this country on 406 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on our Outer Continental Shelf.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KING of Iowa. Yes, I would be happy to yield.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. One of the proposals that we had was to take out the $16 billion in corporate subsidies in the energy bill. Would you be willing to support us on that?
Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I am talking about expanding the energy here in this country. And whether or not you address any kind of subsidies, whether they exist or not, does not affect our overall energy supply except to discourage the development of that energy, Mr. Ryan.
What I am talking about is that we have 406 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on the Outer Continental Shelf. A lot of it is around Florida, and it is really much of the Florida delegation, and that is not a partisan issue down in that part of the panhandle; but we need to open up that gas, and we need to open it up all the way across for all of America, particularly in the Corn Belt where 90 percent of the cost of our nitrogen fertilizer is the cost of natural gas. It has gone up 400 to 500 percent in the last 5 to 6 years. It used to be $2, and the other day it went to $15. That is my point.
So that is a piece of it. But what I am hearing, and my issue really from what I have heard out of your discussion tonight that I do take issue with is that adding $1 billion to LIHEAP and talking about corporate welfare does not increase the supply of energy in this country. What I am about is increasing the supply of energy, because there is a law of supply and demand. The more energy we have, the lower the cost.
We cannot sit here and turn up the heat in our homes and turn down the development of energy and expect that we are going to have a viable economy. In fact, it is economic suicide for a country with an energy component of our economy like we have to not develop our energy in this country. It puts a price on everything that we do.
ANWR is part of the aspect of that, too. We are sitting on this massive supply of hydrocarbon up on the Arctic shore. I have been up there and walked on that sod. There is not an environmental reason not to drill up there. There are no caribou that live there. There are no trees. It is a frozen Arctic tundra. We do all the work on ice roads. We have proven we can do it next door on the north slope. There has not been a report of an environmental damage or an oil spill or an effect on that environment.
There has been, because I did see some locations where they have gone in and reestablished tundra and it will grow back, it takes 5 to 6 years to do that, I have seen the examples and flown over by air and am confident it can be done. Although the tundra will be disturbed, it is not something that is a permanent scar on the landscape.
But this energy is one piece of it. We need to open up the energy supplies in the United States. It does not do to stand here on the floor and talk about tax breaks for corporations. Some of those are incentives so that they will develop energy. What we have is a statutory and a Presidential executive order that lingers from a previous Presidency that prevents us from drilling offshore. And with this massive supply of natural gas offshore and with this increase in gas prices, it puts us at a disadvantage with the rest of the world.
It happens to be this same natural gas that is $15 here in the United States that peaked out here the other day has a natural gas price of 95 cents in Russia and $1.60 in Venezuela. And those are the countries that are producing fertilizer and shipping it over to us. We have our fertilizer companies in this country that are put on hold. They have had to slow their operations down and practically freeze the development or stop the production of fertilizer. That means the farmers that were going to take delivery of fertilizer late in the year, and some of them to try to beat their year end for tax purposes as well, are not going to have that fertilizer.
It means there will be a rush in the spring and prices are likely to be very high in the spring. But we are not far away from losing our entire fertilizer industry in this country because we refuse to develop the natural gas that is right under our very noses.
I did some calculations. I thought, well, if we are going to bring in liquefied natural gas from the Middle East, or if we are going to be bringing it in from just across the Caribbean, from a place like Venezuela, which is a place that has a lot of natural gas, or Trinidad, Tobago, would be another place where there is a lot of natural gas; and it also sounds like the commitment has been made to build a natural gas pipeline from the north slope of Alaska on down to the lower 48 States. So I thought, well, let me do a few simple calculations.
So there are 38 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on the north slope developed at this point that we can tap into. There is likely much more. And it is 4,779 miles, I believe is the number from mile post zero at the pipeline terminal on the north slope of Alaska on down to, and I picked the middle of the United States, Kansas City, so 4,770 miles from north slope, mile post zero, to Kansas City. How far is it to the mother lode of natural gas down on the south side of the Caribbean, Venezuela, for example? Well, it is 2,700-some miles down there, Mr. Speaker.
So would it make more sense to run a pipeline from Alaska or a pipeline from Venezuela, when that gas is $1.60 and ours here on this continent is up to $15? Of course it would make more sense to bring that pipeline from Venezuela up here. It would enrich Hugo Chavez. It does not make a lot of sense. It does not make a lot of sense to run that pipeline right through some of our significant natural gas reserves in this country that we refuse to develop.
But we could cut about a thousand miles off that 2,700-mile pipeline down to Venezuela, or just actually not bother to build the pipeline at all, Mr. Speaker, and continue to drill wells and hook up lines and move our way right around the gulf coast, right on around the tip of Florida and up the other side and right on up the east coast, and some of it up the west coast, Mr. Speaker, where there are some gas supplies offshore in California that are significant and that have not been tapped either.
I think we should open it up, and I think we should open it up all at once. I think we ought to open it up for natural gas and for crude oil, so that we can take the lid off this slow metering of increasing of supplies that is allowing prices to go up while supplies creep up only marginally.
If Alaska can compete with that, great. They are an outstanding State, and I have been quite impressed with what they have done up there. If it makes sense to run the pipeline down here from Alaska, run that too, and let us pump the energy into this country.
There will be, or it is very likely, I should say, a crude oil pipeline to come down through the United States. It will come from up in Alberta where the tar sands are. There is a huge supply of crude oil up there, a very thick oil; and it takes some technology to get it out of the ground. The Canadians are developing, and I believe have developed, that technology. Those kinds of things need to happen.
The rest of the discussion about who got what tax break and what incentive is there and what kind of class envy we can lay out here for the American people and how much pessimism we can pour out here on this floor every night are redundant subjects with regard to the overall question of increasing the size of the energy pie so that we can afford to heat our homes, our factories, produce our products, and produce our fertilizer and produce our food and keep this world economy rolling.
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We need to answer those questions and resolve the energy issue. And I will add nuclear to that and expand coal. I would go with hydroelectric if we could get it. I will use wind. I will use everything we can to increase the size of this energy pie. If we let it compete, then supply and demand and costs of capital and the cost of the energy delivery to the system will be what determines how our whole energy supply is provided.
Some of the other concerns here tonight is the concern about this economy. If a person had just woken up from a long and deep sleep and turned on C-SPAN and listened to the discussion about this economy, they would think that the stock market had crashed and people were jumping out of buildings and committing suicide because there was no hope in our economy. There was no signal whatsoever that we have completed 10 consecutive quarters of 3 percent or more growth. And the last quarter was 4.3 percent growth. That takes us back more than a generation to find a period of growth that has an equivalent period of time of consecutive quarters of this kind of growth. That goes back to the early Reagan years where growth after the Carter administration was not that difficult of a challenge.
Mr. Speaker, growth after coming off of the dot-com bubble and the good years through the 1990s is a far more difficult challenge. And growth after September 11, growth after having to pour resources into a worldwide war on terror, growth getting through this bump of Hurricane Katrina, all of that growth came in spite of those things. It is because we have a Bush tax cut plan that stimulated this economy. There is no rational argument that it has been anything but a very, very successful plan. It has done what it was predicted and designed to do.
I hear over here, it just did not pan out over and over again. Mr. Speaker, the numbers are there. It has panned out. It is here, and it is real. Unemployment numbers are going down, down, down. Economic growth numbers are going up, and the interest rate is going up consistently. They just announced that it is going up one more time. I do not remember how many quarters we have had the interest rate increase, but it is an attempt to hold down this economy that is bursting from the seams.
And how does it do that if we are in the middle of an economic and an energy failure? We have failed to develop our energy because environmental extremists, and nearly everyone on this side of the aisle over here, has refused to let us develop the energy supply, and it is irrational to refuse to develop this energy that sits right here under this country and on the outer continental shelf of this country and pay the equivalent of an extortion price to some of the people around the world who are putting this energy into our system and taking the profits out, and we know a significant amount of money from those profits goes to fund our enemies, and it costs American lives.
Opening up energy here in this country converts to more safety for every American, a higher quality of life for ever American, a stronger economy for every American, and an opportunity to move this Nation towards another level of our destiny.
So this economy is strong. We need to do some things to open up energy. The lament that we are evicting Americans, and we are giving them a notice, telling them they have to find another place to live because we do not think that the taxpayers can fund flying people from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. where the hotels are some of the most expensive hotels in the country and putting them up in five-star hotels indefinitely; that is the lament about evicting Americans.
It is a notice that says, after Christmas some time, you are going to need to find a place to live. I advocated for and wish we had simply put a voucher in their hand instead of trying to find a place for them to live and said go find yourself an alternative location. Rent yourself an apartment, buy yourself a house, do what you need to do.
But this idea that we are going to take everyone by the hand and manage their lives because they lived in a disastrous, counterproductive situation, so Americans have to step up and take responsibility for themselves.
Who among us, if we were going to be bunked in a five-star hotel and there was no limit, no end to that, would not just stay in that five-
star hotel? Good room service, laundry service, you have all of the facilities that you need. I suppose the bus picks the kids up for school. I cannot imagine living in a hotel for months on end and thinking that was somehow an entitlement.
There are many things we could have done better with Hurricane Katrina and done them better, but there is not a justification for keeping people in five-star hotels in Washington, D.C. and then feeling guilty when we ask them to find an alternative place to live. I think that is about the end of America's generosity when we go to that point.
Food stamps. The argument that we are starving children comes up over and over again. I sat through hours of that in the Committee on Agriculture when we marked up the reconciliation package. We needed to find some savings. I looked back in the last reporting year, and I wanted to know how many dollars worth of food stamps were handed out to people that did not qualify, food stamp fraud. And in the last reporting year, I would find, $1 billion was handed out to people in food stamps, people that did not qualify, so food stamp fraud.
So we set some conditions on this that were minor conditions and, over the grand scheme of millions of Americans, saved a few million dollars, and it had to do with a policy that said, when you come to the United States, you agree you are not going to put pressure on our welfare system for 5 years, and we extended that to 7 years for food stamps.
A couple of tweaks of that nature, and we found all of the savings we needed to find in food stamps. It is not the issue of starving children. There are no children that are going to go without food stamps. Their nutrition is going to be there. I do not know anyone in the United States that is suffering from malnutrition, but yet the wailing and the crying from the other side of the aisle has to come up again because there are some Americans that will listen to that and believe that.
A billion dollars in waste in the last year that was reported to me leaves plenty of room for a little tightening of the belt in food stamps. I think we should tighten that right up to the last dollar of the billionth dollar that is there and take all of the fraud out and take a little of the fat out while we are at it. We did not go anywhere near that, but the demagoguery persists.
As I listened tonight to this group of nattering nabobs of negativity, it reminds me of a Vice President that laid that out on the news media some years ago, and I wonder, the argument was that we should not have troops over there in the Middle East spending money on those troops, a hundred billion or $200 billion, whatever their number was tonight, because we do not have a perfect health care system. We do not have a perfect retirement system. Our jobs are not perfect for everyone; our educational system is not perfect for everyone. So? So we should not be defending the safety and freedom of the American people and in the process liberating tens of millions of people who yearn for that freedom? Where are our priorities?
When would this team that is here every night, when would they ever say we think we have it right now, Mr. President? Let me rephrase that, when would this team that we have here nearly every night say, We think we have it right now, Mr. Republican President? When would they ever say the word ``Republican'' in a fashion that had anything to do with objectivity or complimentary fashion? When would they ever say the health care system is as good as it needs to be, and we think we can now take care of our national security? And when would they say our retirement, especially for our military, is up to snuff so we can go ahead and protect our security with the military that we have in uniform, the active duty and Guard and Reserve people that are serving us so well and so honorably?
When would they ever say there is an adequate number of jobs for an adequate price that pays an adequate amount of wages and benefits so now we can take a little extra money and put it into our military and defend our safety and our security?
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When would they ever say, Mr. Speaker, that the educational system was adequate for all of our children and our young people and that they had an opportunity for a good K through 12 government education and they could go off to higher learning and they could all go off to college, all at the expense of the taxpayer, of course, Mr. Speaker. When would the health care, retirement, jobs education, when would all of that ever meet the satisfaction of the nattering nabobs of negativity that are here every single night, lamenting how terrible it is here in the United States of America.
Meanwhile, we cannot defend our own borders, and 4 million illegal aliens pour across our southern border every single year for the last few years. Why are they coming here? Are they not watching C-SPAN at night? Do they not see how bad it is? I submit, Mr. Speaker, that they see how good it is. They can go on the Web page. They can click on and see what the Department of Labor statistics are. They can see the economic statistics. They know that there have been 10 consecutive quarters of 3 percent or more growth. They know unemployment is going down. They know there is health care accessible to everyone. They know there is nobody malnourished in the United States of America. They know there is a free education.
How can you go wrong in the United States of America when you compare it to any other nation in the world? And so, at what point, Mr. Speaker, do we say we must provide for the safety and security of the American people, and while we are there, let us give the people that are in those countries that opportunity for freedom and liberty so they can erase the habitat that breeds terror. That is what is going on over there.
And then I hear, well, all we are asking for, Mr. President, is we have got benchmark, benchmark, benchmark. Yes, they mentioned some of the benchmarks, Mr. Speaker, and I have some of them here. And I want to point out these benchmarks in Iraq. March 20, 2003, was the beginning of the liberation of Iraq and it was March 19 over here at 9:30 a.m., if you want to mark your calendar and put the time on, eastern standard time. That was March 20.
By May 12, Paul Bremer was in place. He had replaced Jay Garner as the civil administrator in Iraq, May 12, 2003. July 13, Iraq's interim governing council was inaugurated. So just a few short months, April, May, June, halfway through July, 3\1/2\ months, and the Iraqi interim governing council was inaugurated.
By July 22, Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Kusay, were eliminated in a fire fight in Mosul. And I have been to that site, Mr. Speaker, and the building is gone. The lot is razed. The only sign of it there is I imagine you have to have a GPS locator to figure that out. The neighbors know. But that was the end of the terror of those two terrorists on July 22, 2003.
December 13, 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured. If my date serves me correctly, this is the 2-year anniversary of the capture of Saddam Hussein. And we have something to celebrate here, Mr. Speaker, and that was that we handed over Saddam Hussein to the civilian government then, and a little bit later down the line, or I will pick that date out here in a moment. But this is the 2-year anniversary of the capture of Saddam Hussein. We were delighted on that day. I am still delighted. He is before a court in Iraq. He is receiving a fair trial. It looks a little bit like a circus from time to time, but the Iraqis will bring this out. And they will provide justice.
I have met with the judges over there. They are courageous people. Their lives are on the line. They must have an objective court, and they have got to get into the record the crimes of the administration so that it is recorded in history and once it is recorded and packaged up, then when punishment is meted out to the perpetrators that committed those crimes against humanity, then the Iraqis can move forward and put that stage into their history. So that was December 13, 2003, 2 years ago today, Mr. Speaker.
On March 8, 2004, the Iraqi governing council signed the interim constitution and that guided them. It was a bill of rights, it was a system of checks and balances, and it made the military subordinate to civilian rule. Those were all significant milestones. A bill of rights for the people that have never had a bill of rights before. And on May 28, 2004, Iyad Allawi was designated Prime Minister in the Iraqi interim government, a Shiite neurologist by profession. And it happened to have been my birthday that day as well. So I will try and remember that as a milestone for a couple of reasons.
And I have admired Iyad Allawi, who came to this Chamber and spoke to a joint session of Congress, and he said thank you America, thanks for liberating us, thanks for making us free. It was a moving speech that he gave, not so much for the language, for the words. The words were very appropriate, but for the way it poured from his heart that day. You could feel that reverberate in these Chambers, Mr. Speaker.
Then on June 1, just 3 days later Mr. al-Yahwir was chosen as president. So this set up the Iraqi governing council and gave them leadership. And then the plan was to hand over the governing of Iraq to their interim governing council on June 30 of 2004. But, Mr. Speaker, the Iraqis have been meeting every deadline, every milestone, except when they beat them. And on this milestone they beat it because the United States transferred sovereignty to the Iraqi interim government on June 28 as opposed to June 30, 2 days early. And I think it was a good move. It said that nothing has been delayed along this way. It has always been done on time.
Then on June 30, was the day, 2 days after, we handed over the civilian control of Iraq to the Iraqis on June 30 of 2004, we just 2 days later handed over control of Saddam Hussein, the legal custody of Saddam Hussein and 11 other high profile, I will say, perpetrators, Baath party officials to the Iraqis. And they took control of that, and it is entirely appropriate that this trial be conducted by Iraqis. They must do this. Then, another milestone. A huge milestone, January 30, 2005 purple finger day. That was the day that millions of Iraqis went to the polls to elect themselves a new national assembly, and this national assembly's job was to draft a Constitution. So they were elected January 30, 2005 and on March 26 they were seated.
The Iraqi assembly was convened and they went to work in drafting not an interim Constitution now, but a real Constitution, a Constitution that was amendable, but a Constitution for all time. So they went to work to draft that Constitution, a Constitution that was amendable, a Constitution for all time. To the polls, dipped their finger in purple ink. January 30, convened their assembly March 26, 2005. Their new Constitution was presented to the Iraqi National Assembly August 28, 2005.
October 15 of 2005 the Iraqis went to the polls. Seventy-nine percent of them voted to ratify their new Constitution. That sets up the stage that we are in right now, and there are elections taking place in Iraq as we speak, and they are elections that build up to the final and formal election day which takes place on the 15th of December. And at that point, Mr. Speaker, there will be named a full general assembly; a sovereign nation will be formed when, in March, the new general assembly is seated under the new Constitution and that will make Iraq as legitimate a government as exists in the Arab world and, in fact, they will have an argument that theirs is as legitimate a government as exists anywhere in the world.
When seated at the United Nations under their new Constitution and their new sovereignty with leaders that are chosen by the people, they will have and enjoy a measure of legitimacy that meets or exceeds the measure of legitimacy of almost every country in the world, certainly in the Middle East. They will surpass that and set the highest standard of legitimacy. They will be an Arab constitutional republic, a democracy.
That is what we have been working for, Mr. Speaker. That is what the treasure has been poured into Iraq for is to change that habitat in that terrorist part of the world, and it is working. Last Friday, Mr. Speaker, I made a trip out to Bethesda to the national naval medical center. I make it a point to go to either Bethesda or Walter Reed or at Landstuhl in Germany if I happen to be going through there at least once a quarter to visit our soldiers and marines and our corpsmen who are wounded and in the hospital and who paid a significant price to defend our freedom and to promote it throughout the world. It is always an uplifting experience for me. It is always something that encourages me and gives me strength and great faith in this country. Sometimes you walk in the room, and no matter the injuries, if they are in pain it is one thing, but there is often laughter in the room.
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There is often a measure of optimism. That optimism often comes from the family, the wife, mother there, maybe the children that are there.
I had great conversations with these Marines last Friday. They pointed out that while so much good work is getting done, the media has not highlighted their efforts to rebuild the critical infrastructure in Iraq and that these important pieces of critical infrastructure lead Iraqis to democratic independence, but we do not hear about it here, Mr. Speaker. And I would point out that there was a report released by the Media Research Center, and it confirms the concerns of the Marines. Out of 1,388 reports broadcast on network news programs, only eight were devoted to recounting episodes of heroism or valor by U.S. troops and only nine featured instances when soldiers reached out to help the Iraqi people. Eight of heroism, nine of helping hand. Calculate the rest of the 1,388 were stories about what was sensationalized bad news, Mr. Speaker. If you sensationalize bad news long enough, the people in the world that are inclined to be the nattering nabobs of negativism will believe it, and that is what is being poured out here on the floor of the House of Representatives each and every night, and this focusing on negativity encourages our enemies.
I will take us back then to the benchmark argument. I have read down through the list of benchmarks that have been met in Iraq. Every benchmark has been met or exceeded. One was exceeded by 2 days of the civilian takeover for the Iraqi people from our CPA and Paul Bremer, and the argument now is, what about all these benchmarks, Mr. President? We need a benchmark to get out, to quote the gentlewoman from Florida.
No, Mr. Speaker, that is the last thing we need, is an announcement on when we might pull out of Iraq.
I happen to remember the previous President set a benchmark to get out of Kosovo. He said we will be there 1 year, no more. We are going to send troops over there, and we are going to send air cover over there, 1 year and no more, and we will be out of Kosovo.
I think we are into the 11th year now since that deployment has been taking place, Mr. Speaker, but it is at least 10. So that benchmark really did not work so well. Benchmarks do not work well in wartime. And even if one could measure that kind of progress and pull out, the enemy is still going to use that to strategize against us. Why is that a difficult concept to understand? If we would say, here is a date on the calendar by which the first American troops are going to get out or the last American troops will be gone, we know very well that the enemy will husband their resources and change their tactics and go underground and store up their munitions and recruit their personnel. They would be able to go out and say, Here, we will take over of Iraq. It will be a terrorist center, and here is how we will handle that: They will be done taking casualties until such time as the Americans are gone.
Remember what happened when we deployed, and that is the kind of word that has been used here, deployed out of Vietnam? I went back and read through some of that legislation from back in that 1973, 1974 and early 1975 era. The legislation that is there confirms my recollection, although my dates were not exactly precise. This Congress took this debate, this national debate, this cut-and-run philosophy to the point where they passed legislation here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate that forbade any resources from going to even supporting South Vietnamese troops. Not an M-16 bullet for a South Vietnamese troop defending his own freedom in his own country. The Vietnamization program that President Nixon had established, all that shut off. No air cover, no missions flown to protect them, no munitions to support them, squeezed the valve down so there was not a drop of help. In the ensuing aftermath, when helicopters were lifting people off of the U.S. embassy in Saigon and people were doing everything they could to hang on to the struts of those helicopters and they were pouring into boats and going out into the South China Sea to go anywhere to get away from Vietnam and many of the boats capsized and some being sunk intentionally and militarily and thousands of people dying, in fact, tens of thousands of people dying even in the immediate aftermath, millions dying in Southeast Asia in the subsequent aftermath because we did not hold our bargain with the people in Southeast Asia. And millions died, Mr. Speaker.
I heard the gentleman from Ohio say, ``No one is going to tell me that I am not supporting our troops.'' Mr. Speaker, I will submit this: If you do not support the mission, you are not supporting the troops. If you send a soldier off into a hostile region, send him off to war and ask him to go defend your freedom with his life and to do so in a cause that you say is not justified, wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, Mr. Speaker, how can you ask a person to put his life on the line for a cause you do not believe in, a cause that you will not even put your vote behind or your voice behind? How can you ask them to put their life behind that and then say, No one is going to tell me that I am not supporting our troops? Well, supporting the troops, supporting the mission, and they are inseparable. If you do not support the mission, you are not supporting the troops.
Here is a measure of optimism, Mr. Speaker. We hear about casualties continually. The only measure I found in my research over the last 2\1/
2\ years or a little more is that Saddam Hussein was killing his own people at an average rate of 182 per day. I have gone back and measured some of that, and I can come up with a bigger number and a little smaller number, but that number seems to fit about in the middle of the Iraqis that were killed at the hands of Saddam Hussein. And so I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that we have been at this operation and Saddam has been out of power for approximately 1,000 days; so there are 182,000 Iraqis alive today that would not be if we had not enforced a regime change in Iraq and liberated the Iraqi people; 182,000 alive today, Mr. Speaker. And, yes, there have been casualties, and we have lost more than 2,000 Americans. And there have been something in the neighborhood of 30,000 or perhaps more Iraqis that have been killed in this conflict, civilian Iraqis for the most part. So if we are at the 32,000 to 34,000 number, let us just say 32,000 because that number works out round enough that I can do the math in my head, subtract that 32,000 from 182,000, and we come up with 150,000 Iraqis alive today that would not be if they had not been liberated by coalition troops, especially Americans. That is no small feat. That is no small endeavor to free 25 million people and to have a net savings in lives over 2\1/2\ years of 150,000 people. Do we not ever measure the positive side of this ledger, or is it always that the nattering nabobs of negativity cannot get to that plus side so I have to come down here nearly every night and bring this thing back around to reality, Mr. Speaker? And I will continue to do that as long as this message needs to come out to the American people.
I carry a few more messages here that happen to point out some points that I think we do not see in the news media. I have to put on my glasses for this one.
What are some of the changes that are taking place in Iraq in a positive way? And I have a chart here before me. This is a chart that shows the number of Iraqis taking action to provide tips they received from the population. In March of 2005, the early part of this year, there was not much confidence in Iraq that we were going to stick this out. So there were 483 tips given on who the terrorists were, and how do we send troops in there to bust the terrorists? Four hundred and eighty-three tips. They did not all pan out, but that is an indication of the Iraqis being willing to cooperate. That was March, 483. April, 1,591 tips; May, 1,740; June, 2,519 tips; July, 3,303; August, 3,341. And that is where my bar chart stops. So we have gone from 483 tips in March to 3,341 in August. That tells us the Iraqi people are stepping up to provide their own safety, their own security, cooperating with American troops and coalition troops and Iraqi troops, of which about 210,000 are trained. Most of them are combat ready. All of them are operational in one form or another. Some of them are top-ranked troops that will match up with any in the world.
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Yet, I hear this drumbeat, the nattering nabobs of negativity, that there is only one battalion that is really combat ready. Well, that is really not true. There are quite a few battalions combat ready. At the time there was only one battalion that was ranked at the very highest level of ready. All of our troops are not ranked at that highest level all the time either. They waiver in and out of that level of readiness, depending on where their training is and what kind of condition that their equipment is in.
So I wanted to make a point here in the last couple of minutes of why it is important to support our troops.
Muqtada al-Sadr. This is a quote that I heard from Al-Jazeera TV in Kuwait City as I waited to go into Iraq June 11, 2004. ``If we keep attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq the same way they left Vietnam, the same way they left Lebanon, the same way they left Mogadishu.''
Where does a person like Muqtada al-Sadr get such an idea that if he keeps attacking Americans, we are going to leave? Is it from reading the history books? Is it from reading other literature, Mr. Speaker? Is it from observations of history as wishful thinking? I would submit it could be all of those things. But I want to do a little bit from history.
I have here, Mr. Speaker, a book written by an author who hails from my district, Sioux City, Iowa. This is Colonel George Bud Day's book,
``Duty, Honor, Country.'' Colonel Day is the most highly decorated American hero that we have who is living today.
This book is about him being a prisoner of war in Vietnam, Mr. Speaker. It lays out a tone that I think every American should know, every American child should study, and this book should be turned to page 155, Duty, Honor, Country by Colonel Bud Day, Medal of Honor winner.
He writes as he is in the prison camp in Vietnam, and this is the mindset of our enemies, he writes, ``The Vietnamese were positive of victory and that their cause was predestined for success. Their propaganda organs had been convinced that massive rioting against the war was commonplace in the United States and in support of the commies. That was the Jane Fonda message.''
He goes on. He says, ``It was disheartening at a quiz, which means an interrogation, to have Senator Fulbright or some looney politician declaring himself on the enemy's side of the argument. Many a torture was accomplished just to force a POW to say or agree to the same things that were attributed to fellow Americans, Senators and Representatives. It got to the point where the Vietnamese did not have to write their own propaganda against the U.S. They could simply quote Senator Gruening from Alaska, Fulbright from Arkansas, Kennedy from Massachusetts or a Congressman of the same ilk. I was sickened by these statements,'' writes Colonel Day, ``for the U.S. Congress passed the questionable Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which sent me to Southeast Asia. Loyalty I felt was a two-way street. It is a bit disconcerting not to be able to tells the difference between the words of a U.S. Senator and those of your enemy. More devastating to our cause was the fact that the North Vietnamese thought these statements to be semi-official U.S. policy. When combined with propaganda, it stiffened the Vietnamese backs immeasurably,'' and I emphasize this point, Mr. Speaker, ``adding significantly to the U.S. death list on the battlefield and the death of several POWs in Hanoi.''
That is not a hard lesson to understand when you encourage the enemy by sitting in the gun emplacements in North Vietnam, as Jane Fonda did, or speaking out against this effort relentlessly night after night, as happens here on the floor of the United States Congress. It encouraged our enemies in Vietnam, it encourages our enemies around the world today.
In fact, I happened to come across a Web page, and there is a quote here from Colonel Bud Day, and his answer today is, ``John Kerry launched his political career more than 30 years ago by comparing the actions of U.S. troops in Vietnam to those of the armies of Genghis Khan.'' I think that is not a refuted statement. But here is a point that exists today.
Mr. Speaker, after the comparison of the acts of Genghis Khan to create the political career, now we have the same individual saying to the American people, picked up immediately by Al-Jazeera, we all know, saying ``American soldiers in the dead of night terrorizing kids and children, women, breaking religious customs.'' The same individual, this is the Senator that came to Iowa for a year-and-a-half and said wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, gave aid and comfort to our enemies then, gives aid and comfort to our enemies now.
Mr. Speaker, if that were the only one, it would not be so bad. Maybe we could isolate an individual like that. But it is sad to say it is not the only one. I have another example, a blast from the past.
Here is our blast from the past, the individual, the other Senator from Massachusetts. I will not tell you that I just happened to pick a State randomly and pick two of their Senators. No, this is on purpose, Mr. Speaker.
This is the Senator referenced in the book Duty, Honor, Country from more than 30 years ago. He is still here and today he says, ``This war was made up in Texas. This whole thing was a fraud. Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam.''
Now do we understand, Mr. Speaker, why our enemies believe that Iraq can be another Vietnam? Not because of the forests or the mountains to hide in or the place for guerrilla warfare to take place, because we read in Zarqawi's letter that there are not any mountains to hide in, there are not any forests to hide in, and that the Iraqi people are willing to take the insurgents in and protect them and let them operate from their are as rare as red sulfur.
So the structure of this war in Iraq does not allow for that kind of guerrilla warfare. Yes, it is an urban warfare of a kind, but it is not at all like Vietnam. Iraq is a desert, Vietnam is a jungle. Vietnam has mountains and forests and jungle, Iraq has sand dunes and buildings. There is a huge differential though between the two countries because the Iraqis really do not want to hide these insurgents, and in Vietnam they were forced to hide them. In fact, there were places for the enemy to hide regardless of whether they had the cooperation of the civilians.
But the same individual who encouraged the enemies then, who is attributed by the most decorated American hero as contributing to the loss of American lives and particularly the lives of POWs, is still at it, Mr. Speaker, still at it. ``This was made up in Texas. This whole thing was a fraud. This is George Bush's Vietnam.''
Is that not some good Al-Jazeera material, Mr. Speaker? And I am not done. This material roles out every day in this country. We are trying to keep up with it by printing posters and putting quotes in there, and I am going to try to come down here on a periodic basis and try to keep the American people up to speed.
But I am glad that our soldiers are too busy with their diplomacy and the liberation of Iraq to be watching the news and have to listen to all of this debate. But I am determined to stand here and defend their efforts. And I support their mission and our soldiers, and that mission and the soldiers and the support for them cannot be separated. You cannot argue that I support them and I do not support the mission, Mr. Speaker.
So, in conclusion, we have a duty here on the floor of the United States Congress and in our jobs across this land as we represent our country and the people from our districts and as we interact with them and with the media to inform the American people that our military mission is on track in Iraq, the political sequence of events is on track in Iraq, and that the economic solution is around the corner. When they truly establish a sovereign Nation in Iraq, which will take place after these elections on the 15th, and when they are seated in March and when they sign a contract to develop that oil and the cash starts to flow into Iraq and free enterprise kicks in and the government gets the kinks out of its systems, and as the Iraqis step forward and do more and more providing the safety and security for the Iraqi people, this will be resolved to the satisfaction of history, if not the satisfaction of the nattering nabobs of negativity.
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