Disapproving the granting of amnesty by the Government of Iraq to persons known to have attacked, kidnapped, wounded, or killed members of the Armed Forces of the United States or citizens of the United States in Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address you this evening, and I appreciate the fact that my message to you echoes across America in this technology that we have today.

As I awaited my opportunity to address the Chair, I also reflected upon many of the remarks that were made by my colleagues in the preceding segment, and I would like to start out first by stating that there were some remarks that I do agree with. I know that may seem a bit unusual, but the objection to the proposed policy by the newly sovereign nation of Iraq to the rejection of the proposed amnesty is something that we stand together on, as I heard my friend Mr. Larson say; and I thank him for raising that issue tonight.

As I think about what that means, to offer amnesty to someone for killing Americans or killing coalition troops but not amnesty if they happen to attack Iraqis, whatever stripe they might happen to be, and the same administration will be making demands on us to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law and punish American soldiers that may or may not, but certainly today we know are accused of those kinds of activities.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Connecticut.

Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman; and I will take a good look at the text of that. I know that philosophically we do agree, and I will give it serious consideration, and that is the spirit that we should operate in in this Chamber. I appreciate the gentleman's work on this cause.

I do also, though, have an obligation to lay out a disagreement, and that disagreement is with the language we

heard with regard to permanent bases. We know that a year ago there was language that was inserted into the Department of Defense appropriation bill, and this was language that I understood a year ago was introduced by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha). This language prohibited any of the funds from being used to negotiate for or to establish any bases in Iraq.

Now that language was taken out in conference. It passed through this Chamber, and no one caught it, evidently, and it was taken out in conference, I understand, at the request of the White House, because the President is the Commander-in-Chief. That is something, Mr. Speaker, we didn't hear over here in the last hour, about who it is that conducts foreign policy in America. Constitutionally, the President of the United States has the duty to conduct foreign policy, and he is the Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces.

The rest of this verbiage and rhetoric that comes out is an effort to try to fence him in, limit his options, and sometimes make him look bad across the globe. But the President is the one who conducts our foreign policy, and he is the Commander-in-Chief. But the Murtha language a year ago would have tied the hands of the President, would have tied the hands of the Iraqis and prohibited them from even negotiating for a temporary base, no matter how essential for the entire nation of Iraq.

Well, that language was stripped out in conference, thankfully so; and the bill went to the President without the Murtha language. This time, the bill came to the floor with the same language back in it again. The language, they argue, prohibits permanent bases. But there is nothing in that language that says permanent. It just says no money will be used to either negotiate for or establish bases in Iraq. All bases, no matter how temporary. Not even to talk about it.

Now we have a sovereign Iraq, with a new prime minister, Prime Minister Maliki, and we have a new minister of defense and a new minister of the interior, and now that they are finally standing on their own two feet, within a matter of weeks. We are tying their hands as well as the hands of the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States, the conductor of foreign policy by Constitution, with language in the DOD appropriation bill that says that not $1 of those funds can be used to even negotiate for a temporary base, no matter how desperately it might be needed by the newly sovereign Iraq.

Now, that is a shortsighted policy. That is a foolish policy, Mr. Speaker. It is a policy that if we had followed that policy in each one of the other conflicts we had been in, for example, we wouldn't have bases to operate out of in Kuwait. We wouldn't still be in Germany, a pretty handy place to have. We utilize those bases considerably in Germany. We wouldn't be in places across the Pacific.

And, in fact, that place we finally found out was the horizon. When the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) said that we should immediately redeploy back to the horizon, we couldn't get him to define what the horizon was for months. Finally, he has defined horizon. Out on the horizon from Iraq, so you can quickly deploy in case there is a crisis, and I don't know why you would want to let it get to a crisis stage, but that was the strategy, and now he has said that horizon is Okinawa. We should redeploy to Okinawa. From there, we could mount air raids into Iraq, perhaps with some B-52s and do some carpet bombing to teach them a lesson, I guess.

But when you are taking on a terrorist entity, you have to beat them on the ground where they are. You can't pull out and let things brew and then come back in with overwhelming force. The gentleman from Pennsylvania knows that. He knows that if we ever pull out of Iraq, they will do everything they can to make sure we don't go back for any reason whatsoever, no matter what the consequences.

And I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, the consequences would be cataclysmic if we pull out of there, let things fall apart, and then the terrorists will have the very thing they were seeking to establish in Iraq in the first place.

So the Murtha language in the Department of Defense appropriation bill did make it through this floor in the House of Representatives. We could have made some better decisions on that, but it will go over to the Senate, where hopefully it will get pulled out, but I am just confident, if that is not the case, that it will be pulled out by the White House at their request in conference.

No president should have their hands tied behind their back and then be drubbed here every night on the floor of the House of Representatives and prevented from conducting his foreign policy. That is what happened at the end of the Vietnam War, and the end of that cost three million or more lives in Southeast Asia because this Congress tried to tie the hands, and effectively did tie the hands, of the Commander-in-Chief.

Now, we also hear that they are quite offended by the term ``cut and run.'' And you can describe it a lot of ways, but I can't describe it any better than cut and run. That is what I heard they want to do. Why can't they simply wait for the new government of Iraq to get their feet on the ground and establish themselves and do what they are doing, which is taking on this enemy? They are taking out the enemy, going into Baghdad, in some of the neighborhoods in Baghdad and cleaning those areas out.

Now, war is never pretty. It is always ugly, and it is always costly, and you can never measure the progress of a war by the minute or the hour or the day. It has to be looked at incrementally. And sometimes a battle that is lost might end up being the war that is won, and vice versa.

We know that the writings that came from General Giap and other commanders of the Vietnam military, they were desperate. They were nearly ready to give up. But what gave them hope and what kept them in that war and kept them from giving up and surrendering was the rhetoric on the part of the left wing United States Senators and House Members.

In fact, that is something that is in Bud Day's book. Colonel Bud Day, who is the highest decorated living American war hero, writes in his book that the first years of his incarceration as a prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton, as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, after being shot down over there, the first years they had to write propaganda. But after a few years, all they had to do was quote people like Senator Kennedy and Senator Fulbright and Jane Fonda, and, he said, pick your House Member, that we quote as well.

That is going on in this conflict as well, Mr. Speaker, in the same way these 30-some years later. The results are going to be different, because the American people are not going to fall for this same rhetoric again. They are advocating cut and run. If they would like to describe it some other way, honestly, I would be happy to pick that language up, too. I like to use a lot of adjectives. Cut and run is the short term for it.

They say that 80 percent of the Iraqis want us out of there. I would like to know more about that poll. I would like to read the question. I would like to know who they asked. I think you could get a higher number than that. I think you could get 99 percent of the Iraqis to want us out of there, the same way they wanted us out of there 3 years ago. They said so. They said, we are happy to be liberated, and we want the Americans to go home, some day.

But not any time soon, Mr. Speaker. Not before the Iraqi people have control of the security of their country, not before the political solution at least gets some roots down and gets to operate. And the President has made this clear.

But the people on the other side of the aisle would not let the President move troops out of Iraq at a rate that he sees fit. They always want to be a little ahead of him.

If the President says we have 150,000 troops there, and they are thinking, well, maybe he will pull 10,000 out next month, they might hear a rumor coming from the Pentagon, and that isn't an air-tight operation over there either, Mr. Speaker, they might hear a rumor from the Pentagon that we are going to move 10,000 troops back to the United States. So people on the other side of the aisle jump to the floor, run down here and say, I demand the President remove 10,000 troops and bring

them back to the United States. And they will pound on the podium and make that demand in the hopes it actually happens. Because then they can stand up and say, he finally listened. He wouldn't listen for a long time, but, finally, he listened. They want to get ahead of things so they can declare they were the cause of those decisions.

And that just makes it harder for a Commander-in-Chief to make the right decisions. In fact, running out front and trying to get in front of an issue reminds me of Robespierre, who was one of the leaders in France during the revolution, about the 1789 time period. He looked out his window, and he said, the people are marching in the streets; I better get in front of them and see where they are going, for I am their leader. A few months later, Robespierre was a head shorter. I don't know if he ever learned the lesson that you can't lead from the rear. You actually have to have some vision of your own.

You can't get up every morning and try to decide who am I going to attack today; who am I going to make look bad. Surely if I can pull some people down the ladder on either side of me, I will look better, if I can drag them down the ladder. That is the mentality that motivates a lot of the people on the other side of the aisle.

They said that, according to the Pew Foundation, I didn't hear the percentage, but a significant percentage had a negative image of the United States, a negative image of the United States. Do you suppose some of those people listen to the rhetoric on the floor of the United States House of Representatives on a regular basis? What do they think, the kind of message they are sending? What do they think of the United States?

I wonder if they answered to the Pew Foundation's poll, I wonder what the gentleman that made this argument would say if they asked, do you have a positive or negative view of the United States?

I am going to say I would expect they would have said we have a negative view, because that is all I hear is a negative view from that side of the aisle. I don't hear solutions. I hear negative attacks on the White House, negative attacks on the Republicans and Congress.

Somehow they will learn how to spell Republican with four letters so we can truly be a four-letter word, instead of this optimistic, progressive operation that is looking for ways beyond the horizon to make the world a better place. Then the question was from the gentleman from Washington, Who was driving the bus when it comes to the Iraq policy?

When you swear allegiance to uphold the Constitution, you are supposed to understand what is in there. I need to inform the gentleman, the person driving the bus, when it comes to Iraq policy, is the person driving the bus when it comes to foreign policy, and the person driving the bus when it comes to being Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, in Iraq, its President Bush by Constitution.

So I hope that has cleared up some of the issues here. There are no negotiations going on for permanent bases. There would be no negotiations going on for permanent bases. We have no permanent bases anywhere around the globe.

We have no permanent bases here in the United States. They are all temporary bases. They are all established for a period of time, a term that can be agreed to by the parties involved. Sometimes it is a short term, sometimes it is a longer term; but none are permanent. If anyone thinks that here in the United States we have permanent bases like Fort Hood, for example, or Fort Campbell would be another, the answer to that is, no, they aren't permanent either. All bases in the United States are all subject to the BRAC approach.

We voted on that, and we are closing some bases, and we are downsizing some bases and shifting some materials around. That ought to convince anybody in this Congress if they had ever been through a BRAC vote and a BRAC negotiation, that there is no such thing as a permanent base, no matter how badly Members of Congress would love to have permanent bases in their districts, even these Members, there is not any such thing takes a permanent base in the United States or overseas. We are not inclined to negotiate for them, but we are inclined to negotiate for temporary bases where they make sense and where we can reach an agreement with the people who are the sovereign government of each individual nation in question, including Iraq.

I would point out also that we have a neighbor to Iraq called Iran, and this neighbor is developing nuclear capability, not just the ability to build a bomb and detonate a bomb, but the ability to deliver that bomb to a target site. They have said that Israel has no right to exist, and they want to wipe it off the map.

They have named us as one of their number one enemies. So sitting next door to Iran, with a couple of large military bases, one would think that it would be a pretty good idea not to foreclose an option to be able to maybe mount an operation from the very bases that we have invested so many dollars into.

We have billions of dollars invested in Iraq. We have a tremendous amount of blood and treasure invested there, and that investment should return something back on it. It already has. It has returned freedom to the Iraqi people.

If we play our cards right, and we are able to negotiate with them, we might one day look at that and say it was a very good thing that we stripped out the Murtha language and saved the options and the authority of the President of the United States, who is Commander in Chief, and who by Constitution conducts our foreign policy.

I would be happy to yield to my friend from Tennessee, Mr. Wamp.

I thank the gentleman from Tennessee, and I wish to associate myself with every remark made here in this spontaneous demonstration of Mr. Wamp's heart and head and involvement in this big effort that we have. I don't think it can be overemphasized, and I am going to make it a point to go back and look at the Congressional Record and read through those words again. Sometimes there is a gem that shows up here on the floor; and this is something that happened tonight, Mr. Speaker. I do greatly appreciate it.

I want to emphasize that I believe that our United States military that is involved in this conflict, this global war on terror, it is the very highest quality military ever sent off to war. And I don't say that to diminish the contribution on the part of anybody, especially the greatest generation or those wars that came behind. I say this

to build on top of that reputation, not diminish it.

But some of the reasons we heard from Mr. Wamp were, first of all, they are an all-volunteer service. And not only that, they are people that have all volunteered for this conflict, because this conflict has gone on long enough that everyone had a chance to re up. So everybody that is in uniform got to consider the current state of conflict globally, and they signed back up again in numbers far larger than ever anticipated.

They said, I am going back for a second tour, I will go back for a third tour, I will put my life on the line, and I will certainly put it on hold for a year or more to give the Iraqi people a chance at freedom. Because they believe, as Zach Wamp and I believe and as President Bush believes, that we never go to war against another free people. Free people resolve their differences at the ballot box, not on the battlefield. That demonstration of that has been true throughout history, and it can be true in the Middle East as well.

I continually point out this example, and that is on 9 November, 1989, when the Berlin Wall went down, when people climbed over the top of it and chiseled pieces of it out and broke champagne bottles on it and families were reunited, the story in the mainstream media was all about how families were reunited, and they seemed to think it was all a personal thing, that now they didn't have to write letters across the wall or maybe wave through the Brandenburg Gate at each other or go to Checkpoint Charlie and figure out how they might get through.

No, it wasn't about that. It wasn't about that at all. It was about the end of the Cold War. It was about the Iron Curtain crashing down November 9, 1989, not predicted until you look back at Ronald Reagan when he said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. And the people tore down the wall out of a desire for freedom.

That desire for freedom, once that wall went down, November 9, 1989, within about 2 to 3 short years, freedom echoed across eastern Europe, almost bloodlessly. And I will say virtually bloodlessly in the single most significant historical event of my lifetime, the end of the Cold War, Mr. Speaker. That freedom that echoed across eastern Europe for hundreds of millions of people can be the same freedom echoing across the Arab world for hundreds of millions of people. And that is a formula for a final victory in the global war on terror.

But not until then. Because there is a habitat that breeds terrorists. There is religious fanatical beliefs that their path to salvation is in killing people who are not like them. And we are some of their preferred targets. Wherever we are, they will attack us until that ideology is defeated. You have got to do it boots on the ground there, and you have got to give people freedom and hope, and that is what we have been doing ever since September 11, 2001. The American people have voted on that issue. They have elected their Commander-in- Chief.

I heard these Presidential debates in Iowa. First in the Nation caucuses and continually eight or nine and sometimes ten candidates for the White House would get up every morning and decide what can I say to tear down President Bush. And they would have advisory teams out there trying to find soft spots that they could attack the President on. They didn't stand up and debate the differences between them as candidates, to determine who would be the nominee for the presidency. They decided that they would line up and take shots at the President. Whoever could be the most aggressive criticizer of the President presumably would be the one who then won the nomination and went on to run for the presidency and perhaps the White House.

That is when Howard Dean melted down, John Kerry emerged. The John Kerry who stood there and said over and over again, wrong war, wrong place, wrong time. First I voted for it before I voted against it. That example of leadership, that gift that kept on giving, and probably the biggest reason why we have this fine leader in the White House today is that that gift that kept on giving kept reminding the people that there was a stronger leader that had a clearer vision; and that has been true in spite of relentless, relentless attacks.

My friend from Tennessee also talked about how important it is for us to be a sovereign Nation that secures our borders; and I wish to pick up on that subject matter, Mr. Speaker.

Because, as I watch this situation, and we knew that when we were attacked by enemies from within, most of whom had violated our immigration laws in one form or another, faulty paperwork or let their visas expire, entered into the United States by a method that may or may not have been legal, but certainly the majority of them were not legal at the time that they attacked the United States, the 19 hijackers from September 11, tell us that if they want to come here to do us ill, then we needed to secure our borders.

So we got busy and spent a lot of money and set up a lot of new standards; and we have things now that are halfway in place, like US VISIT, where we have a computer database now that tracks everybody that comes into America, that is not quite yet tracking everybody that goes out of America, so we don't have a balance sheet list of who is here. We just have a list of who came. If they come back again, then we can presume that they left and went home again and then came back again. But, other than that, we have not caught up with US VISIT.

We set up the security in our airports where it is locked down tight. Yes, they make mistakes and sometimes things get through. But for a while there, you couldn't get a nail clipper onto an airplane without them breaking off the file that you might use to clean your nails and file them with. That is how tight it has gotten. And our matches and cigarette lighters, things like that have been shut off of our airplanes. So we have done a lot. We have done a lot to create a TSA that is there protecting our airports.

And we are doing a better job at our ports. In fact, the job that is being done at our ports is far better than the critics would have you believe, because it has got a random and statistical selection process of these containers that are sealed containers, and it is more important than opening every one and looking through them to use our resources to pick which ones to open, which ones to x-ray, which ones to look through.

In fact, I have been the witness to some of that success as they have gone through sealed containers in our ports and uncovered contraband material that is in there.

But our most porous and most open vulnerability that we have, Mr. Speaker, is the vulnerability in the 2000-mile border between us and Mexico. Down there, when you have that kind of travel of people flowing across the border, and I sit on the Immigration Subcommittee, and for now 3\1/2\ years, I have heard continual testimony, nearly every week, that deals with how many people are coming across our border. And that number, the most consistent number that I come up with as I listen to this testimony from border patrol officers, high-ranking officials, it is their job to know this, and they will say that, well, that number is perhaps four million a year coming across our southern border. Four million. And they will testify that they stop 25 to 33 percent, a fourth to a third of those that seek to come across our borders, which means you have a positive opportunity, a chance, the odds are better that if you want to come into the United States illegally across the southern border, it is better that you make it that you don't.

We stopped, out of that four million that come across the border a year ago, we had stopped 1,159,000. That was for 2004. For 2005, we stopped 1,188,000 of those. Most of those were put on a bus, turned around and taken down to the port of entry, and they got off the bus, and they watched them walk through. Some of them got picked up within 24 hours when they came back in again.

We have a catch and release program that will stop them seven to 14 times before we adjudicate them and punish them, rather than just take them back.

But I would be happy again to yield to my friend from Tennessee at any time.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman and appreciate his delivery here on the floor.

I would point out for his edification that at that town where you met that lady in Cleveland, Tennessee, is where I believe this suit was made. You will be glad to know that I look around to find American-made suits, and I buy them off the rack in Denison, Iowa, and I am proud to do it.

I appreciate that contribution to this succession here tonight as well. And I point out also, Mr. Speaker, that it isn't just Americans that believe this way. It isn't just Americans that concur with the statements of Mr. Wamp and myself, but I have a survey in front of me. That survey is of the Hispanics in America, and some of these polls are this: that opposing increasing overall levels of immigration, overall immigrations of immigration, legal or illegal, 56 percent of Hispanics oppose it, and 31 percent say let us go ahead and increase the levels of immigration. But 56 percent, a significant majority, are opposed to increasing those levels of immigration.

Benefits for illegal aliens, 60 percent of Hispanics oppose; 20 percent support benefits for illegal aliens. And then even a guest worker program is kind of split. It leans a little bit in favor of a guest worker program, but it is not decidedly in favor of that.

A pathway to citizenship, Hispanics in America oppose that for people who are in this country illegally today, 52 to 38 percent.

So this is not something that alienates Hispanics in America when you stand up for the rule of law. It is one of the reasons they came here. And they followed the law. They jumped through the hoops, and they respect this. And they want us to honor their citizenship and support this rule of law and also defend our border.

And the time I spent on the border, and there have been a number of times that I have gone down and invested my time there, I sit down had and, of course, I meet with the highest ranking people that are there, and I see the display of all the equipment that they have and the technology they use and the tactics that they use, and the effectiveness that comes with that gives me a nice warm feeling.

Then I go back down there, and I sit alongside the border, and I talk with the rank-and-file people that are the boots on the ground, Mr. Speaker, and I listen to what they have to say. I listen to the Texas border sheriffs, what they have to say, and the local law enforcement along through Arizona as well, and I come up with a little bit different picture. And that picture is, as I said earlier, 4 million people pouring across our southern border every year; and yet if we appropriate the funds requested by the President, it will be $8 billion to protect our sovereign border, 8 billion. And yet the numbers of illegal crossings are going up, not going down. The dollars' worth of illegal drugs coming across the border are going up, not going down.

So one would think if money were the answer, if we just threw more money at it, and we had more Border Patrol officers and we had the National Guard down there that the border crossings would go down. Well, they will in some areas until they retool and do their end-run and go through the areas that are vulnerable. And the President has said that we simply cannot stop people at the border that want to come here for a better life. If they want jobs to provide for their families, they are going to come. That has kind of been his answer and it is almost the same tone. As he contends that we cannot stop people that want to come here for jobs, I would argue that we can. In fact, of the forces pushing on our southern border, the easiest force to stop is the one of the honest hardworking people that just want to have a job and a better way of life. Those are the easier ones to stop. And if we cannot stop them, then we sure in the world are not going to be able to stop the criminals, the terrorists, those that want to come here to do us ill, those that are carrying $65 billion worth of illegal drugs across our border.

That is a tremendous amount of force, $65 billion pushing against our border and the drugs that come through there. Ninety percent of the illegal drugs in the United States come across the border from Mexico. Has anyone heard the Commander in Chief speak about that subject matter? Has that been uttered in a press conference? Is it anything that seems to be part of the lexicon or the rhetoric that comes from the White House? And I think no. But I think that needs to be a very big part of this debate. If we want to take a position that we cannot stop honest people from coming into the United States, why do we think we can stop the dishonest ones that want to come into the United States?

And that is why I contend that the time that I spent on the border, the time that I sat down there in the dark and listened to the illegals unload from their vehicles that drive up near the border, get out, pick up their backpacks and infiltrate into the United States, those that I have seen that are crossing illegally, the things that you see in the streets, 500,000 marching in the streets of Los Angeles with Mexican flags, that ought to give us an image to go by. They are feeling so confident, so self-assured, so strong that they go to the streets to demonstrate against us, thinking that they will scare us into granting them amnesty.

I mean, the threat of can you imagine a lawn that wasn't neatly trimmed or can you imagine having to cook your own steaks? Some of those things are arguments that have been made, Mr. Speaker. So I think the American people did get a message from that. I think they understand that there is a growing force here in the United States, and it is growing faster than 450,000 or so a year illegals coming in, growing faster than most realize.

Because if 4 million come in and we stop a little over 1 million and take those physically back to the border and watch them go back through the turnstile, some are back the next day. Some are not going back to the border because the Mexican consulate has all of the credentials for them to have access to our stations everywhere along the border, and they decide which ones go back and which ones do not. Now, why do we let the Mexican Government decide that? That is the same mentality of one who would write into a bill that we have to go consult with Mexico before we could build a fence on our southern border.

Now, I do not disagree with the gentleman from Tennessee. There is a lot of technology that we ought to be using. But I am a little bit more of a fellow that says I know what does work. We do not know that the technology works. I hope it does, but I know what does work. And as I sat down there on that border and I watched them catching drug dealers and pulling 180 pounds of marijuana out from underneath the bed of a truck and then hauling a Mexican across the border from Mexico that had been stabbed in the liver in a knife fight that just happened while I was there, those incidents come along so often that it is just part of the daily life down there. And the only way that you can shut that off with that force is to build a fence and a wall.

And I do not submit that we do all 2,000 miles all at once. I submit that we do so where the highest pressure is, and then when they start going around the end, extend the fence and extend the wall. But I would put a 10-foot high chain link fence on that border. And I would put that fence all the way. We need to define the border, and ``virtually'' does not define the border. So I would put a 10-foot high wall. I would put razor wire on top. I would put a sign on the south side about every 200 feet in Spanish that says: Here is the Web page you can check with your wireless laptop, how to get in connection with the U.S. consulate and how you come to the United States legally. Go apply here. Do not be knocking on the gate on this fence because it is not open unless you have the credentials to come here legally.

Every nation has to do that. And as they begin to tear down that 10- foot high chain link fence and cut holes through it and do it like I saw them down there south of Lukeville where they had cut through the chain link fence and chained it back up again and put a hinge in there and a gate through our chain link fence with a double padlock on it and a great big guard dog on the Mexican side, that is their passage into the United States, Mr. Speaker, and it has got to be shut off. Those are people who mean us ill will.

So I am going to submit this: this box, before I cut the notch in it, this represents, let us say, the New Mexico, the Arizona, and the Texas part of the border, maybe part of California. Now, just plain old desert. We go in here to build this wall and we dig a trench through here. This is, Mr. Speaker, the trench that one would dig. And as we dig this trench, we build some machines up in Iowa that do a good job. They are the kind of machines that you pull this trencher along here, and as you do that, you pull the slipformer in behind it, and you pour a slipformer of about a 5-foot-deep tongue down in here. And it has got a slot in it, a notch in it. And you move along with that trencher and that slipformer, pouring a footing for this concrete wall that goes across the desert. A 5-foot-deep slot in it with a foundation so that it holds the vertical wall up and it is rigid.

And then you get a footing that looks something like this. It won't quite be above the ground, Mr. Speaker, because this area right here would be flush with the ground. But, nonetheless, one gets the image here that we are working with.

And then you bring in truckloads of these precast concrete panels. These panels would be 10 feet wide, about 12\1/2\ feet tall, tongue and groove, reinforced with steel, and you would just pick them up with a crane. They weigh about 188 pounds, and you drop them in the slot one at a time. The first one would go in like that. Then you pick up the second one and you put it in like

this. And pretty soon we end up with a wall here that will keep illegals out. It will keep the illegals out, and it will also keep out the drug runners, the smugglers, the terrorists.

And this is a pretty quick operation. It is not hard to do at all. Our little construction company, which I sold to my oldest son, could do about a mile of this a day. Now, we are not going to be in the business of bidding this. I want to tell you that in the beginning. That is not my interest. I am just taking my background, Mr. Speaker, and using it to demonstrate how simple it is to put together a design that they are not going to get across.

Now, it doesn't mean that they are not going to have some kind of human catapult and launch people across it or that they will not design and build some kind of a 12-foot-high ladder. Yes, they will. But it is not going to be that easy because we are going to put some of this wire right on top of there called concertina wire, or razor wire. I only put on one roll, but you could put on two or three, set that the concrete. We can then put cameras on the backside, if we choose, or on the front side. This would be about 100 feet inside the chain link fence. So there would be 100 feet of no man's land that one could patrol. So they would have to come through our 10 feet high chain link fence on the south side with the razor wire on top of that. And they will try to do that.

When they get to this wall, they would probably carry their 12-foot ladder through the fence. They would put it up on top and they would try to get over here on this side. They do not know what is over here. They cannot see the sensors, the cameras, the vibration sensors, the infrared, whatever is there that would trigger our warning, and that will let the Border Patrol converge on that area.

We can shut this traffic off going across our southern border at least 90 percent and maybe even a number approaching 100 percent if we make a commitment to the manpower to patrol a wall like this. And it will take far less manpower. We are spending $8 billion on our southern border, $8 billion. That is $4 million a mile. And I would say this: if you would pay me $4 million and say, Steve, you protect that mile, I am going to protect that mile. There will not be a species of anything getting across that mile if that is what my contract says.

So I will submit that the easiest way to do that with the least amount of manpower is build a fence, build a wall. This can be constructed for about $1.3 million a mile. One point three, when we are spending $4 million for that mile, every mile, to wear out Humvees and have our Border Patrol park on the X and watch people come through, sometimes a border that is not even marked, let alone fenced. And if it is fenced, it is not even a barrier for human beings.

We are talking about building a lot of fences along the border that are vehicle barriers so semi-trucks full of marijuana cannot get through and straight trucks full of marijuana cannot get through and pickup trucks that have drugs in them, it is harder for them to get through.

But, still, what they do is they just create burreros, pack horses, human pack horses. So they will bring the drugs up to the border, and if there is a vehicle barrier there, they will throw their marijuana through, their drugs through, go through and load their backpacks up with that, and each one of them carries 50 pounds of drugs, 25 miles across the desert, up to a predetermined location point where they will then take their packs and toss them in the back of the semi or the straight truck.

Some of those people then, the illegals that are carrying drugs in that pack train, the burreros in the pack train, climb in the truck and they go on into the United States. Some of them are continuing drug dealers. Some are criminals, some want just an honest day's work. And some turn around and walk 25 miles back down in the desert and pick up another load and come back again.

When they tell us that maybe 4 million people came into the United States, but a lot of them went back home again, some of them are going back to get another load of illegal drugs.

That is how $65 billion worth of illegal drugs comes into the United States, and we can't stop that if we are simply going to sit down there and think that we are going to do this by a virtual approach to the border. We have to do it physically. We have to stop it.

$20 billion gets wired back to Mexico out of the wages and labor that is there. Another $20 million gets wired to the Caribbean and Central America from the labor of the United States of people that are here. So there is $40 billion that goes south of the board that comes off of the labor. Out of the $75 billion worth of labor at the hands of illegal people in the United States, most of it comes out of there. It is $40 billion going south. Additionally, there is another $65 billion paying for the drugs that comfort north.

So we have got altogether over $100 billion being used for drugs and the economic incentive for Vicente Fox. Over $100 billion. And what is the next highest economic factor in the Nation of Mexico? Oil. $28 billion worth of oil. But this overall drug and human package for just Mexico is $85 billion, nearly 3 times the value of the oil in Mexico.

So we must stop this. We must do it with a human barrier. We can do it with this wall. We can build this for $1.3 million a mile. I will stand with it. We will design the machines to do it. We will build it, Mr. Speaker, and we need to stand together as a country.

I thank the gentleman. I am very grateful that he has come to the floor tonight to discuss these matters that are so important and even to respond to some of what has already been said here tonight. I think it is important for us, Mr. Speaker, to come and talk about what sacrifices are made on the other side of the world on our behalf.

British philosopher and historian John Stuart Mill once wrote this about war: he said war is an ugly thing, but it is not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A person who has nothing for which they are willing to fight, nothing they care more about than their own personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of ever being free unless those very freedoms are made and kept by better persons than himself.

Mr. Speaker, those persons are the men and women in the uniform of our Armed Forces. One thing I know, because I respect my friends on both sides of the aisle, is that the lessons of history, including the Vietnam lesson, taught America to support the troops, the men and women in uniform, regardless of how you feel about the mission, regardless of the decisions made by the Commander in Chief who is charged, as the gentleman from Iowa said, with making these critical decisions, duly elected, even re-elected, in the midst of this conflict.

Supported by a majority of the American people, and making these decisions with an all volunteer force, every man and woman in uniform, today, volunteered to serve. I have been with our President, with tears rolling down his face, talking about the sacrifices that these mostly young men and women are willing to make on our behalf, knowing that this call is a difficult call, knowing that the sacrifices are extraordinary, and, yes, we have lost over 2,500; many, many more have been injured.

But I have got to tell you, freedom is never free, and every time it has been handed from one generation to the next, it has been handed by the men and women in the uniform, and they are there making that sacrifice for us. I want them to look back in this interactive world we live in and see us standing behind them, not talking about leaving early, never retreating, always finishing what we start.

Let me tell you, I saw a Democratic Senator on television this weekend talking about what is happening in northern Africa, specifically Somalia. You and I were in Africa together a year and a half ago, talking about Sunni extremism that has spread around the globe and influenced the east coast of Africa. This is not because of what has happened in Iraq; it

is happening if we are not in Iraq. It is happening, and it manifested itself on September 11, 2001, no, 1993 is when they wanted to bring down the World Trade Center, but they didn't. Their engineering didn't work.

Did we pay enough attention then, or the other 30 times that our ships and our interests in hotels that we own around the world were bombed by terrorist extremist, from radical Islam? No, we didn't pay enough attention. We even retreated from human intelligence. We cut the budget.

Mr. Speaker, if we are not on the offensive today, freedom is at risk again for this generation. Man, I am glad that these men and women will stand in harm's way on our behalf and stand in the gap. Absolutely we hail them.

Iraq is difficult, but it is a decision that was made. Over half the Democrats in the United States Senate voted to use force to remove Saddam Hussein, and almost half the Democrats in this House voted to use force to remove Saddam Hussein. They thought it was important to remove this genocidal mass murderer, terrorist, and they said with weapons of mass destruction.

Now, sarin gas was found again. We know he used it on hundreds of thousands of people. We know he is a genocidal mass murderer, just like Slobodan Milosevic was, and President Clinton chose to remove him from Eastern Europe. But here we are today, frankly, second guessing, instead of standing together.

I have got to tell you, I believe deep in my gut, Mr. Speaker, that it is a matter of time till we are hit again. We cannot sleep. We cannot rest. We must be vigilant, and the Senator was right. Now, in northern Africa, what they are looking for is a vacuum, Mr. Speaker. They are looking for a sovereign nation from which to operate.

You cannot convince me Iraq was not right to be a sovereign nation from which to operate. You cannot convince me, and I am on the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, been there since we created the Department of Homeland Security. Briefed at a very high level, you can't convince me that there were not connections with al Qaeda operatives and Saddam Hussein.

Now all you hear about this rhetoric here is this November. It is not about what has happened or what is happening. It is about them retaking the majority in the Congress. So let us just call it what it is. While I am on my feet, let me say, Mr. Speaker, that we are blocking and tackling and trying to do the people's business in this House as the majority. I am encouraged.

Our economic policies are working, amazingly durable economy today. I am amazed at that growth that is taking place out there in America. I am amazed that unemployment is this low, virtual full employment. I am amazed that everything we have been through from Katrina and Rita to terrorism all around, that we are still this strong, and it is because we have enacted sound, economic policies.

Legislative line item veto passed the House last week. It is a compromise that we know the Supreme Court, or, we believe, will uphold this time. The President can eliminate unnecessary spending, something the people back home continue to want from this Congress.

We also came up with a compromise for the death tax, because you really shouldn't be taxed again when you die. Within 6 months, the IRS shows up. This is a compromise.

We are reasonable people, but we are going to continue to press the fundamentals of blocking and tackling and doing the people's business. I am encouraged that there is some momentum in this House again. I am encouraged by the leadership of this House.

I tell you what, I know this is the silly season. Next 4\1/2\ months you will hear all kind of rhetoric and all kind of talk. But America is too great to dumb it down to election-year rhetoric.

I have come to the House floor tonight to just try to rise above it. I rarely do this. I have tremendous friends on both sides of the aisle here, and I respect this institution so much. What a privilege it has been for me to be here for 12 years.

But I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, and it is tough, if we left Iraq tomorrow with Sunni extremism, al Qaeda, Hezbollah.

Hamas was elected in Palestine, a terrorist organization was elected to the government, and now more people are being elected terrorists in Somalia. Terrorism is on the rise. We are on the offensive, or we are in retreat. Take your pick. Take your pick. You can't have it both ways.

I am glad this President has been strong and tough and consistent. The other people around the world are paying attention. Don't tell me Moammar Gadhafi turned over his nuclear weapons because we weren't strong. He turned them over because we were strong and consistent. He did not want to be on the list of countries that we were watching closely and concerned were aiding and abetting terrorist networks with weapons of mass destruction. So he turned them over.

This is a strong President, exerting leadership during very difficult times, extraordinarily difficult times. Because this war doesn't really have a front line, and there is no one to sign a truce or a treaty with at the end, because global terrorism now is spreading around the world through the Sunni extremism, this makes this the toughest of all fights.

It is the easiest to cast doubt about. It is the easiest to throw rocks at. There will be some rocks thrown in the next 4\1/2\ months. I think it is time for some people to come to this floor and speak out about what is at stake. Number one, the main thing that people expect of a President or this Congress is to protect them from threats.

If you don't think that Sunni extremism and radical terrorism is a threat, it is why we are working so hard in the House to secure our southern border, not come up with some notion of how to encourage other people to come here illegally, like we got out of the other body, but securing the other border, stopping the inflow of people into this country that can bring damage to us and bring harm to our people. Security is the main thing.

I tell you, in the wake of September 11, I know mistakes have been made, but I would rather be on the offensive, fighting them on our terms and their land rather than on their terms and our land. It really does boil down to that.

Again, I respect everyone who comes up with their open plan, and I believe the debate ought to come to this House for it, and we ought to do it in a civil way. But I tell you, I believe that those people that understand this threat and know historically what has been necessary to deal with these threats should come down here and defend, not only the men and women that are carrying it out, but the principle that says sometimes freedom comes with a price.

We have got to promote our way of life around the world, not be policemen around the world, but to promote freedom. Free countries do not war with one another. I believe in that. I think that is a Bush doctrine, and I believe in that. Twenty-two Arab League countries, none of them really have our form of government.

None of them really freely elect their leaders. None of them really respect the dignity of an individual. None of them really give women full rights and privileges. None of them really have freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of thought. Those are the kind of freedoms that will contain and eliminate terrorism over time.

This is a bold proposition. It is a world-changing proposition. I actually believe it is the right thing to do.

I think, Mr. Speaker, in all fairness, we should point to some successes by the Department of Homeland Security since last September in

changing the policy from catch and release to catch and return. As I tell people back home in Tennessee, that the policy really was, going back to 1986, that you would actually release people coming across the southern border that were apprehended, you know, pending a court date. And there is always a chuckle in the audience because they know that that illegal immigrant would not show up for court. And so effectively the policy allowed them to come into this country and disappear.

But I have just got to say, the folks that I represent, and this is really where we need to stay focused, the people back home, they know that we have a system in this country that people who are sick can walk into the emergency room of safety net hospitals and receive free health care, regardless of their ability to pay, regardless of their socioeconomic condition or even whether they are a citizen of this country. And as long as we have that system, then that system is very much at risk if we allow the continued increase of illegal immigration into this country.

Now, they also say all we really care about, you people in Washington need to know is that you secure the southern border and slow and hopefully stop the influx of illegal immigration across the southern border.

I had a person ask me this past Saturday, at home at a meeting, what about the Canadian border? Well, it is important, too, but that is not where the influx of illegal immigration is coming across. It is the southern border.

So you have got to go, you know, the hunters go where the ducks are. You know, if you are trying to stop the flow of illegal immigration, you go where it is happening. And the lawless environment on our southern border demands action.

People say, well, you can't build the Great Wall of China on the southern border. You don't have to. In this day and age, you can put a protective fence around your yard of your home to keep your animals from leaving that you can't see. If you can do that, you can have the technology with a protective barrier. Some of it is going to be a fence, literally. Some of it is going to be the latest in technology.

But, listen, and I know the gentleman who is sitting in the Chair tonight knows from his extraordinary service in Homeland Security, we have not deployed the technology that we have available to us in the area of homeland security. You talk about US VISIT. It is going fast now. But through biometrics and the latest in technology, we are actually going to be able to keep track of people from all around the world. We really are.

We are almost at 300 million people in this country. But in terms of our intellectual capability and the advancement of technology, we are so close to being able to keep track of these people coming across the border and also deploy systems, technologically, to detect people coming across the border, all across the southern border.

So job one is secure that border. The other thing my people are concerned about are illegal immigrants tapping into Social Security, which we already know is under great stress and duress, and Medicare. The greatest government expenses now are Social Security and Medicare. These are guarantees to people that reach a certain age in the work force or 65 for health care, and we cannot allow a system that invites people into that system that haven't paid into that system.

And I have got to tell you, the legislation we see coming out of the other body, it is a recipe for more Social Security deficits in this country, because it will invite illegal immigrants into the Social Security system. We cannot tolerate that. So if anybody thinks we are heartless, we are protecting, honest to goodness, we are protecting seniors by securing the border and not going for an amnesty plan to blanket people into this country.

Listen, I had a young lady come up to me a few years ago, not more than three, in Cleveland, Tennessee. She was from eastern Europe. She came up to me; and she, too, had a teary eyed, choking voice and said, Congressman, it took me over 5 years to become a United States citizen. I worked an hourly job, and it cost me several thousand dollars for a long period of time to become a U.S. citizen. And the day that I received my citizenship, she had a real strong eastern European accent, she said, it was the happiest day of my life. And her eyes gleamed, and she said, please do not dishonor my commitment by granting citizenship to people who came here illegally.

Let me tell you, that is something that is lost in this debate. What about the people who did go through the effort to do it right? What about the people who we, you know, we embrace immigration. The history of this country is embracing immigration. We want people to immigrate here; and, frankly, we want people to come here and work.

I have got to tell you, a lot of people that are coming across the southern border are hard-working people. No question about it. But just because they are hard-working people and just because they are providing a benefit to us doesn't mean we have to say, okay, we are going to stamp you as a citizen because you came here illegally.

No. That doesn't mean that. As a matter of fact, that means we are throwing the rule of law out the window. We are watering it down. Let me tell you, once you go down that slippery slope of not honoring the rule of law all the time, that is one of the things that on this floor is debated and frankly in strong support for making sure that everyone is held accountable under the rule of law and that no one is exempt from the rule of law. No one. No Member of Congress is exempt from the law. No one is. So why would we embrace this notion that illegal immigration is okay and that those folks too will become citizens? No. There is a process that you go through, and we want to honor that process and honor the commitments made by those who came here legally.

Another tough issue, no question, and we face many. I think the fundamentals are as challenging as they have been in 30 years right now in this country. But as I said earlier, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. It is time for us to step up. Every generation sooner or later is called on to meet these great challenges, and our generation is meeting those great challenges.

I have to say that I think the Greatest Generation, the World War II generation, from September 11 forward is looking at our generation saying, I will be darned, they do have what it takes. They have stepped up. I know that a lot of people say we are the ``me'' generation and that we are selfish. No. I see people giving back. I see a lot of our sons and daughters, every parent of a person in our military today, they are giving back. Our sons and daughters are giving back. They are stepping up to meet our generation's challenge. So we have got to pull together, Mr. Speaker.

And I thank the gentleman from Iowa for letting me weigh in.

Mr. Speaker, 11 days ago in this House, we had a partial limited debate on the war in Iraq. The same day, it was reported in a number of the area newspapers that there was consideration of giving amnesty to those Iraqis that killed, maimed, or injured U.S. troops or citizens. A few of us took to the floor during the Iraq debate and raised the issue of amnesty. Is this what we are fighting for in Iraq, the type of democracy that gives people who kill American soldiers amnesty?

Last week, I joined with Democratic leadership, Mr. Larson, Mr. Clyburn, Mr. Murtha, Mr. Skelton, Mr. Abercrombie, and others, and introduced House Joint Resolution 90, which says: Disapproving the grant of amnesty by the government of Iraq to persons known to have attacked, kidnapped, wounded, or killed members of the Armed Forces of the United States or citizens of the United States in Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, proposing amnesty for Iraqis who have killed our troops is another stunning example of the failure of this administration's handling of the war and their overall policy. I, like the rest of the American people, would like to know, what did the President know about this amnesty and when did he know it? I find it coincidental that the day after the President comes back from his secret trip to Iraq, we start hearing these reports in newspapers about an agreement on amnesty.

In 3 years of war, we have lost more than 2,500 of our best and brightest Americans. The war in Iraq now boils down to amnesty for insurgents who attack and kill U.S. troops? This amnesty proposal appears to have the tacit agreement of the Bush administration and the Iraqi government officials, as they were quoted in the Washington Post as saying, and I quote, ``There is some sort of understanding between us and the U.S.-led multi-national force in Iraq that there is a patriotic feeling among Iraqi youth and the belief that those attacks are legitimate acts of resistance and defending their homeland. These people will be pardoned definitely, I believe.''

So officials in the Iraqi government believe that this is a done deal, and that attacking U.S. troops is a courageous act of self- defense. We could not disagree with it more, and that is why we have our House Joint Resolution 90.

I want to know, who agreed with the Iraqi government? How did they get this understanding that it is part of the policy of the United States that it is okay to kill U.S. troops? Was it someone in the Department of Defense, someone in the Secretary of State, or, again, during the meeting the President had in Iraq a few weeks ago, was that part of it?

The amnesty was reported in the papers the same day that two U.S. troops were found to be tortured and mutilated in Iraq. Do we give their torturers, their killers amnesty? Is this what the Commander-in- Chief does, lead troops into war, and then it develops into a civil war and those who kill U.S. troops get amnesty?

We ask the Republican leadership to bring House Joint Resolution 90 up before this floor. Let's bring it up before the Fourth of July recess, pass this House resolution, it should move quickly, and it should be a bipartisan resolution.

There is a lot of talk in this town, and some people like to use the word cut and run. Let me ask this. If the administration and if this Congress accept a policy that says it is okay to kill U.S. troops, what sort of message are we sending to the Iraqis on the street that it is okay to kill U.S. troops? But, more importantly, what sort of message are we sending to the 130,000 troops that are over there fighting in Iraq? To me, a proposal giving amnesty to those who have murdered Americans is the real definition of cut and run.

I urge the Republican leadership to allow our resolution to come to the floor, House Joint Resolution 90. No amnesty in Iraq, no amnesty for those who kill, maim, torture U.S. troops or our citizens in the country of Iraq.

If the gentleman will yield.

I profusely thank you and hope you will join us in signing H.J. Resolution 90 that we have put on the floor and we hope to bring to a vote before the 4th of July so that we send a very specific message.

I think that is something that everyone in this Chamber will agree with.