Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the next speaker on our side be Senator Kyl. He has asked to be in line on this side.

Mr. President, I last came to the floor to speak on the subject of the way ahead in Iraq. Since that time, significant events, both good and bad, have occurred. First and foremost, General Petraeus has presented to the Congress a candid and encouraging assessment that the new strategy in Iraq has shifted the momentum in our favor. The testimony by the general and by Ambassador Crocker reinforced what I and my congressional delegation in May saw in Iraq and what I have heard directly from troops on the ground. The Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy, which is clear an area, move in with local forces, hold it, and then help them build their community, enlisting the locals in fighting the terrorist and showing them security is working--this is the strategy which, last year, I and many of our colleagues were asking for. The old strategy without enough people, without a permanent presence in the community, was not working. Well, it is starting to work now. But General Petraeus has proposed minor immediate withdrawals, withdrawals that are based on the commander's recommendations and security conditions, not Washington politics or micromanaging from this wonderful air-conditioned building.

The President used the term ``return on success.'' That is the term I hope we

will embrace. These brave men and women went over there as volunteers to accomplish a mission. We need to allow them to work with the commanders to accomplish that mission. Even General Petraeus testified that the new strategy had reversed the trajectory of the war. He said: ``Al Qaeda is on the run. Security incidents'' since the surge began have fallen in 8 of the last 12 weeks. Civilian deaths have decreased by 45 percent. Ethno-sectarian deaths are down 55 percent, and attacks in Al Anbar are down 85 percent.

For all the attempts by the antiwar movement to discredit General Petraeus--and I will address that--he demonstrated enough military progress from his new counterinsurgency strategy to conclude that ``we have a realistic chance of achieving our objectives in Iraq.''

Secretary Gates on Monday gave a speech in which he said:

For America to leave Iraq and the Middle East in chaos

would betray and demoralize our allies there and in the

region, while emboldening our most dangerous adversaries. To

abandon an Iraq where just two years ago 12 million people

quite literally risked their lives to vote for a

constitutional democracy would be an offense to our interests

as well as our values, a setback for the cause of freedom as

well as the goal of stability.

We must realize and recognize that the institutions that

underpin an enduring free society can only take root over

time.

Secretary Gates was absolutely right. One only needs to look at our own history to understand this. After a long, bloody revolution, a civil war, a struggle for women's suffrage, and a civil rights movement, some 150 years later, democracy is still a work in progress.

Just as Ambassador Crocker testified:

Iraq is experiencing a revolution, not a regime change.

Difficult challenges remain. Political progress in Iraq has been too slow. They have done some things. Actually, they have passed a few bills. In this body, we haven't passed an appropriations bill or a Defense authorization bill yet. We took August off ourselves. It is kind of tough for us to claim that the Iraqi Parliament is not doing its job when we can't seem to get our job done.

On the political front in Iraq, the Government is already sharing oil revenues among provinces. They are reaching out to former Baathists, allowing them to participate in the army and the Government. As I said, millions turned out to vote. It will take time for them, just as America's revolution did, but the benefits of a stable Iraq as an ally to the United States in the most volatile region of the world would be a major blow to terrorism, al-Qaida, and Iran's religious extremists.

Let me be clear: Our national security interest for the near and intermediate term is preventing chaos, genocide, and a regionwide war. That is our interest there, that is why our troops are there, because if they left, we could be facing far greater challenges, likely attacks on the United States and potentially a regionwide war. Our Intelligence Committee has long warned that precipitous withdrawal would create chaos and those impacts. If we were to be driven out of Iraq on the terms of terrorists and political timelines, terrorists from the Middle East to Southeast Asia to Europe to Africa would be emboldened to spread their fear, oppression of women, death and destruction, just as they were emboldened when we failed to respond appropriately to bombings of the USS Cole, Khobar Towers, embassies in Iraq, and the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center--all instances in which civilians and servicemembers were murdered.

Despite General Petraeus's testimony, despite our intelligence community warnings, and despite Secretary Gates's recent remarks, some war opponents continue to want to cede defeat. They refuse to listen to the advice of commanders. They ignore the consequences of a political withdrawal and the problems about which the Intelligence Committee warned.

I am very concerned about the amendment before us. I urge my colleagues to think about it and then vote against it. This is an amendment which would micromanage the war. Even a few of its supporters have been forthright enough to admit that it is a backdoor way of achieving what they want, which is defeat in Iraq by a premature withdrawal, because they know the chaos this would spread. They know what would happen if we tried to implement this into law. As Secretary Gates said on FOX News, such congressional meddling would mean force management, make problems that would be extremely difficult, and affect combat effectiveness and perhaps pose greater risk to our troops. He said when lawmakers intrude into this process, they could produce gaps during which one unit pulling out would not be immediately replaced by another, and as a result, they would have an area of combat operations with no U.S. forces, and the troops coming in would be at greater risk.

Contrary to the notion of its supporters that the measure would give the Armed Forces relief, it actually might force greater use of the National Guard and reservists. I am concerned about the National Guard and Reserve; they have been overstressed. I am concerned about our military; they have been overstressed. You know what happened? After the first gulf war in the 1990s, we slashed the size of our military. We slashed it far too much. The President recommended; the Congress went along with it. We slashed it too far. We are starting to rebuild. We have a very dangerous world. We need to have a military ready to respond.

Let me talk about the troops. I hear from a lot of them. I hear from my son, who is on his second tour in Iraq. He is a sniper platoon commander. He says he can only speak for 30 or 40 marines, but the one thing they understand is they want to complete their mission. They want to come home. Sure, they would like to be home. But they signed up for a mission. They don't want to withdraw, see all their contributions and sacrifices go for naught. They know that meddling in the war strategy, cut and withdrawal, cut and jog, or tying up the management of the war would be a disaster. They know that al-Qaida and the enemy is hoping that will happen.

This amendment is not as straightforward as cutting funding or withdrawing the troops, but it is perhaps more dangerous. That is why I urge my colleagues to stand up for the men and women who might be put at greater risk, and our national security interests, by refusing the amendment.

I want to talk about another part of this debate that is very shameful. MoveOn.org's attack depicting General Petraeus as ``Betray Us'' should be condemned, period.

It was an attack on the integrity of an intellectual, distinguished, and patriotic officer serving his Nation during a time of war, with the confidence of his troops behind him.

Make no mistake about it, discussing and condemning MoveOn.org's ad is not a sideshow or a distraction. In fact, it is paramount in a time of war we condemn the trashing of decorated military officers highly respected by their troops, and this one unanimously approved by this body, in order to achieve a political objective.

Marty Conaster, commander of the American Legion said:

As Americans, we all have a duty to speak up when our

uniformed heroes are slandered.

He went on to say:

The libelous attack on a general is not the American

Legion's primary concern about the anti-war movement. Our

concern is for the private, the sergeant, the lieutenant and

the major. If a distinguished general could be attacked in

such a manner, what can the rank-and-file soldier expect when

he or she returns home?

Sadly, the MoveOn.org ad is emblematic of a broader struggle by opponents of the war to muzzle other experts and discredit their views.

It is this tactic of desperation and, ironically, one that attempts to distract the American people from the realities of the threat our Nation and our allies face from terrorism.

Sadly, Mr. Presiident, this effort is being used to attack another distinguished military man approved by this body. It has to do with the field of intelligence, and this is another area we learned is critically important on our Intelligence Committee delegation to Iraq in May.

When we were in Iraq, one of our key generals expressed his great frustration that old provisions of the FISA law were blocking him from keeping our troops in the field safe. Well, I have some good news on that front, and I

thank the Members of this body on both sides of the aisle who, on a bipartisan basis, approved the Protect America Act on August 3 and August 4. That has opened up the lines of communications, the lines of intelligence for our troops in the field, for our safety here at home and homeland security. It has been very important and it eliminated a blockage that was critical.

Now, after we passed it, I have heard some critics, most recently, notably, in the House who have been trying to rewrite history and say the law did things it did not do. They have tried to discredit ADM Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence. I am compelled to set the record straight.

As vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and sponsor of the Protect America Act, I was the lead negotiator during the final hours as Congress acted to pass a critical short-term update to our Nation's law governing terrorist surveillance. As one who was there, I dispute the misinformation being spread by some, and largely those who were not there, and I will outline the events as they occurred. For my colleagues and members of the press who are interested in the other side of the story, here is what happened.

First, the timeline of events:

In January, the President announced his Terrorist Surveillance Program was being put under the FISA Court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court. Our Director of National Intelligence, the DNI, subsequently stated that after that time the intelligence community lost a significant amount of its collection capability because of the fact that the law, as interpreted, did not square with the technology now in place and it was imposing unwarranted limitations we had not had when we were collecting radio communications, and he asked the Congress to modernize FISA sooner rather than later.

As I said, when we toured Iraq in May, our Joint Special Operations Commander, LTG Stan McChrystal, told us the blockage in electronic surveillance by FISA was substantially hurting his ability to gain the intelligence he needed to protect our troops in the field and gain an offensive advantage.

On April 12, the DNI sent his full FISA modernization proposal to Congress. On May 1, DNI McConnell presented it in open session to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Immediately following the admiral's testimony, I urged that our committee mark up FISA legislation. The reply was until the President turned over certain legal opinions from the surveillance program, Congress would not modernize FISA.

That Congress would hold American security hostage to receiving documents from a program that no longer existed was disheartening. We have received an inordinate amount of documents from the Department of Justice and the DNI. Yet I do not dispute the desire or the right of Members to seek a few important documents from the executive branch. In fact, I have joined in requesting those. But I did disagree with holding up FISA modernization when those documents are not necessary to do that. Now, despite the urging from the DNI and knowing this outdated law was harming our terrorist surveillance capabilities, for more than 3 months Congress chose to do nothing.

In late June, Admiral McConnell briefed Members of the Senate again urging us to modernize FISA. Finally, his pleadings began to gain traction.

In mid-July, Members of Congress agreed to discuss a short-term, scaled-down version of FISA to protect the country for the next few months before we could address comprehensive reform this fall. Admiral McConnell immediately sent Congress his scaled-down proposal.

Over the next week, Admiral McConnell was given nearly a half dozen versions of unvetted proposals from various congressional staffs across Congress and then pressed for instant support of these proposals. The admiral returned a compromise proposal, including some of the provisions requested.

Finally, we in this body on August 3 and in the House on August 4 passed, on a bipartisan basis, the Protect America Act.

I am pleased that the admiral and I could include in the measure we passed several important changes suggested by members of the majority party. We recognized this legislation still needs to be clarified, but it allowed the intelligence community to collect very important foreign intelligence targeted at foreign sources to keep our troops and Americans here at home safe.

After the passage of the act, I spoke with a number of members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I am confident now that we will be able to craft an improved, permanent version of FISA. So there is good news on that front. But now that I have laid out the timeline of sorts, I do need to address some recent attempts, primarily in the other body, to discredit our Director of National Intelligence, Admiral McConnell.

As I said with General Petraeus, unfortunately, the M.O. for some is attacking military leaders. Here, as others attacked Petraeus, they are attacking personally another honorable man. I am disappointed with those who are charging Admiral McConnell with partisanship and duplicity for their own political gains.

Despite accusations to the contrary, Admiral McConnell never agreed to any proposal he had not seen in writing by congressional staff. There were indeed several dialogs where concepts were discussed, but I noted that Admiral McConnell at the end of every discussion said he needed to see and review with these leaders the congressional language in writing before he could support it. It is a good thing he objected because I was present when several elements of FISA were agreed to that the DNI and I wanted but subsequently and notably were absent from congressional proposals later sent to the admiral.

Unfortunately, this bait-and-switch during negotiations was not the only disappointment. There were efforts by some to circumvent the committee process and craft legislation behind closed doors without input from the relevant committee or from the minority side of the aisle. Even as the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I was excluded from most of the key meetings. Not only was I excluded, but most members of the Intelligence Committee, Republicans and Democrats, were left out of the process. Despite attempts to leave out key Members of Congress during the last negotiations, I think we are on the right track. I am confident the Senate Intelligence Committee can pass comprehensive FISA reform, and we have engaged in very positive and encouraging talks, not just--obviously, I have talked with the chairman, Chairman Rockefeller. The Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are making great progress. We are working on the issue, and I have confidence that colleagues on both sides of the aisle can come together on this issue.

Unfortunately, again, today, another Member of the House is trying to demonize to the American public the Protect America Act that we passed in August, saying the bill went too far and was a power grab of executive power. They wrongly claim the law allows warrantless searches of Americans' homes, offices, and computers and reduces the FISA Court to a rubberstamp. That is absolutely flat dead wrong.

While I agree, as I said earlier, the law can be improved, clarified, nothing could be further from the truth. Quite the opposite, the law gave the FISA Court a greater role than it was ever meant to have when FISA was passed in 1978. This Protect America Act in no way allows for warrantless physical searches of Americans' homes, offices, and computers. This sort of inaccurate fear-mongering should have no place in this debate.

I am counting on cooler heads to prevail in the Senate Intelligence Committee, and in the committee we are making real progress. I think with the members we have on our committee, we have a great chance to get an even better bill forging bipartisan solutions that will deal with some questions probably not contemplated when the initial proposal came up to us. We have a lot of different opinions, but all our members want to do what is best for national security and best ensures privacy protections. The key is working out just the right balance, and I am optimistic we will do so.

As we saw in the strong bipartisan support for the Protect America Act,

we can act in a bipartisan manner to protect terrorist surveillance--a critical early warning system--while protecting the civil liberties of ordinary Americans.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have a brief editorial from Investor's Business Daily called ``Mettle Vs. Meddle,'' referring essentially to the amendment before us, printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

section 8 housing payments

Mr. President, I raised this issue on the Senate floor on Monday. I certainly believe this is a real difficulty, and I certainly believe HUD needs to meet its contractual obligations. I also agree that we need to create provisions that will assure that HUD makes its housing assistance payments on time.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I congratulate and thank Senator Murray for being such an agile partner and such an effective leader. We finished the bill in almost record time. For a bill of this complexity, I might even claim it is record time.

The legislation is very complex. You have seen that it is controversial and can even be very political, as we saw with the Mexican trucking issue.

As always, Senator Murray deserves a great deal of credit and accolades for her ability to balance the many tough and controversial issues that make up the legislation, and to do so with a smile and good humor despite circumstances that would have brought out a more difficult response from a lesser person.

We also thank her crack staff, including Peter Rogoff, Bill Simpson, Rachel Milberg, Meaghan McCarthy, and Teri Curtin. I also thank my staff for a great job: Jon Kamarck, Ellen Beares, and Matt McCardle. Each of them brought special contributions, as well as hard work, to the bill, spending many late nights and weekends to make sure the HUD fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill would reflect a balanced and bipartisan approach to the legislation that could be supported by Members on both sides of the aisle. We thank the overwhelming majority who voted for it. A special thanks goes to our Republican and Democratic floor staff for bringing their special expertise and making us all look the part of respectable, hard-charging legislators and untangling the knots that sometimes occur in the process.

As I did on Monday, I want to brag about our ability to include funding increases above the budget request for HUD's housing and community development programs. These are important programs to help build our communities and without which a number of persons--a significant number of persons--would be placed at risk of homelessness. That would have been a particular hardship on many seniors and persons with disabilities.

I also want to repeat my gratitude that we were able to include $75 million in section 8 funds for the VA Affairs Supportive Housing Program. It is critical as service people continue to return from Iraq and face new realities

that can include the need for housing and other services. This program will become even more worthwhile as young, disabled service men and women make the difficult adjustment to civilian life.

As Members know, after 2 full days on this bill, with regard to FAA, this bill continues to support the beginning stage of the NextGen Air Transportation System. This bill also contains funds above the administration's request for flight inspection and certification personnel.

These funds are needed and will ensure the continued safety of the National Airspace System. I also want to note the additional funds for the Airport Improvement Program, which has been and remains an important bipartisan priority for this subcommittee.

In addition, the bill meets the guarantees of SAFETEA for highways and, and for the most part, transit. We include the revenue aligned budget authority, RABA, which was not included in the President's budget. In addition, we have included some $1 billion in obligation limitation as a starter account for the inspection of our aging bridges after those tragic deaths in Minnesota when the bridge collapsed.

Finally, as I noted previously, there are some issues that we will have to address before the bill can become law. For example, we include the revenue aligned budget authority which was not included in the President's budget. The bill also contains a $2.89 billion rescission of highway contract authority apportionments to the states, used as a budgetary offset. The bill also includes an additional $43,359,000 in Admin CA and another $172,243,000 in an unused transportation innovative financing infrastructure account, TIFIA, contract authority for a total offset of spending of $3.495 billion. HUD also includes a rescission of $1.1 billion.

Finally, I continue to be concerned over HUD's and OMB's failure to provide adequate funding for HUD's section 8 project-based housing program for fiscal year 2008. This is not an option but is a contractual obligation. Most important, this is a critical and important program that serves many of our most vulnerable citizens such as extremely low-income families, including seniors and persons with disabilities. HUD has been unable to fund fully or timely many of these contracts during fiscal year 2007, and I understand that this problem will only get worse in fiscal year 2008 with HUD facing a shortfall in its section 8 project-based account of $2 billion or more. I know this program enjoys wide support in this Congress and I would fully expect OMB to provide the necessary funds for the program through a budget amendment or as part of a continuing resolution or through emergency supplemental legislation.

And while I am pleased with much of the bill, especially needed spending in critical programs, I am concerned that we are on a collision course with the White House on the spending levels contained in this bill. I fear that both sides are going to have to make adjustments. I just hope that any adjustments do not result in the loss of any of the positive investments made we have made in this bill.

I will conclude by again thanking my colleague, Senator Murray, her staff, my staff, and the floor staff. Thanks for the help of everybody.

Mr. President, may I ask the Senator from Minnesota a couple questions? Obviously, we are all concerned about this collapse. We know the burden. We want to make sure we provide responsible help that is necessary. Senator Coleman has indicated he wants to speak on the amendment.

I would like to know, No. 1, if this includes transit funding in that $195 million. Is it emergency highway funds, emergency bridge funds, or is it just designated as an emergency that does not come out of any of the existing highway or bridge funds?

Mr. President, I appreciate that. We need to work with DOT to make sure we have the details worked out. I appreciate the Senator agreeing to work with us so we can. Senator Coleman wants to be added as a cosponsor. We may get further information as we go to conference, but we will try to get this resolved today.

If the Senator would add Senator Coleman, I would appreciate that.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island. He has been a very effective advocate on housing and the wide range of topics he has discussed. His assistance and support for the bill is very important. We work with him on many issues and appreciate the opportunity to do so.

Yesterday, we had some very interesting discussions. I am sorry the Senator from North Dakota is not here, but I am hoping he will perhaps be watching because I do have some answers to the questions he raised about the Department of Transportation's inspector general report. The first thing he asked was how could the Department of Transportation-- the DOT--act so quickly when they received the IG report on Thursday night, September 6, and came out with their truck order for the pilot program on Friday, September 7. Well, the fact is that the DOT, similar to Congress, had been fully briefed on the contents of the report on August 27. I think everybody who is familiar with audits knows that before the audit is released, there is an audit conference and the auditee--in this case the DOT--gets an opportunity to comment on it. The report that the DOT issued was based on the inspector general's draft.

We were able to confirm--they were able to confirm they felt they had complied with the concerns raised by the inspector general.

Specifically, on the inspection of every truck, every time, the IG said that as of July, the DOT didn't have a plan in place with DHS to make sure Customs and Border Protection checked all the trucks. Since that time, however, DOT has executed agreements with Customs and Border Protection so every truck, every time is checked. That is departmental policy, rather than a statutory requirement, but that is what is being done.

The third item: It was alleged that DOT does not have independent access to accident, driver's license, and other data if it is not voluntarily provided by

the motor carrier. DOT tells us that is not true. Motor carriers who want to participate in the program willingly and promptly turn over all records pertaining to their proposed operation. If the Federal Motor Carriers Agency feels there is a need for more indepth data, the Mexican Government will provide it. That is exactly the same process that is in place for Canadian carriers, Canadian drivers who come from north of the border.

There was a question about State enforcement and DOT has addressed that. The Federal Motor Carriers Agency has developed a significant program to train State officials on the enforcement where FMCSA officials are not available, and it would include testing English language proficiency.

Having covered that, I think it might be useful for our colleagues to know there is some strong support for allowing these trucks to run in the United States. I had a letter that was e-mailed to me, and I assume to others, today. It is actually dated June 6; I think it is one they had previously issued. But it says:

The undersigned U.S. food and agriculture groups are deeply

disturbed by congressional efforts to block the 14-year-old

commitment of the North American Free Trade Agreement to

allow Mexican and U.S. trucks to deliver international

cargoes . . .

And they state:

These efforts imperil U.S. food and agriculture exports,

which have grown dramatically under the NAFTA, and could

inflict serious harm on U.S. farmers, ranchers, and

agribusinesses.

They go on to say:

The NAFTA is a huge success story for U.S. farmers and

ranchers. U.S. exports of food and agricultural products to

Mexico have tripled under the NAFTA, climbing from $3.6

billion in 1993 to $10.9 billion in 2006. Mexico is now the

top-value export market for U.S. beef, dairy, rice, corn

sweeteners, soybean meal, soybean oil, apples and dry edible

beans and the second largest for U.S. pork, corn, poultry,

soybeans and a stable and reliable market for U.S. cotton.

They go on to talk about how this action is unwarranted. It would signal to the world that the United States is willing unilaterally to renegotiate terms of existing trade agreements. Secondly, they say it enhances the likelihood that Mexico will likewise disregard commitments that it made in the NAFTA, such as terminating the remaining tariffs on American agricultural exports, and it notes that Mexico could legally retaliate against the United States and retaliate against U.S. exports to Mexico. That is why Mexico's U.S. Ambassador correctly calls this a powerful symbol of the state of our bilateral relations.

I think that if you will humor me for just a minute, I want to tell you who is behind this letter. For anybody who has agricultural interests in your State, the people supporting it are the American Bakers Association; the Cotton Shippers; Farm Bureau Federation; Frozen Food Institute; Meat Institute; Soybean Association; Corn Refiners Association; International Dairy Foods; National Barley Growers; Cattlemen's Beef Association; Chicken Council; Corn Growers; Milk Producers; Oilseed Processors; Pork Producers Council; Potato Council; Sorghum Producers; Turkey Federation; North American Equipment Dealers; North American Export Grain Association; American Millers' Association; Produce Marketers; Sweetener Users; Fertilizer Institute; U.S. Apple Association; Dairy Export Council; Wheat Associates; Dry Bean Council; Hide, Skin and Leather Association; Dry Pea and Lentil Council; and the Rice Federation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the letter printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to read this because if they are concerned about what NAFTA has done for U.S. agriculture, I think this is a fairly impressive list of agricultural associations, touching almost every facet of American agriculture, that see the amendment pending on the floor as a great threat to the trade that keeps agriculture strong and provides revenue farm families in rural communities need throughout America.

Mr. President, what is amendment No. 2810?

Madam President, I always enjoy a discussion with our colleague and neighbor from the State of Oklahoma. His comments that earmarks have caused bridge deficiencies and tragedies is a bridge too far. I believe as well-intentioned as this amendment is, it fails to understand how the States go about rehabilitating their bridges and maintaining the bridges in their States.

There are many points I can make about this amendment, but I think it is important to note that according to the conditions and needs report of the Department of Transportation in 2006, we need to invest approximately $12.4 billion annually to eliminate the existing backlog and correct other deficiencies, and we are currently spending over $10 billion a year.

As Secretary Mary Peters said in testimony on September 5 before the House Transportation Committee, the number of structurally deficient bridges has been declining significantly from 18.7 percent in 1994 to 12.0 percent now. Obviously, that is still too much, but it is not just deficient bridges.

As I pointed out yesterday, we have tremendous highway safety needs. The Chair and I and the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Committee, the THUD Committee, held a hearing on highway fatalities. We kill about 43,000 people a year on our highways. We went back and asked the Department of Transportation how many people were actually killed on bridges, either bridges that collapsed or bridges that were too narrow. Over a 5-year period, it came out to about 400. We kill 400 people a year on bridges, and roughly 43,000 on highways.

Why is this important? As the occupant of the chair, my colleague from Missouri, knows, we have done a study of what causes highway fatalities. Our Missouri Department of Transportation has estimated that approximately one-third of the deaths on our highways are caused by inadequate highways, outmoded, old-fashioned highways. We have two- lane highways that are carrying traffic that should be on four lanes. Those two-lane traffic jams get people to take unnecessary chances.

When we are talking about the problems of safety, we cannot forget the fact that the biggest safety dangers are the inadequate highways and not just the bridges. In our State, the department of transportation has embarked on an ambitious program to bring 800 bridges up to standards, and every department of transportation in this Nation realizes they have bridge problems, that they need to inspect them, and, as I said yesterday, it is important that we find out what caused this particular collapse. Were the inspections adequate? Was the design adequate? Were there unusual loads that were put on the bridge? These are the kinds of issues we need to deal with immediately. But we also have money going, under the bridge program, to States to deal with these deficient bridges.

Earmarks are not taking away money from bridges. I can tell my colleagues about earmarks in the State of Missouri. Every single earmark in our State, everything that has been earmarked is on the State implementation plan. It is a priority, and most of them are highly significant priorities for safety, whether it is bridges or highways.

I am not surprised that an executive branch agency doesn't like earmarks. Way, way a long time ago in the dim past, I was an executive, and I did not like the legislative body exercising its power of the purse. As a matter of fact, I had all kinds of problems when the General Assembly would pass something, and I vetoed a couple of them.

So legislative earmarks are efforts to exercise the legitimate control over the purse and are always resisted by the executive.

Let's take a look at what happened in last year's Transportation appropriations bill. There was about $853 million worth of high- priority projects that Members had asked for in their States and the bill contained. That bill never got to final passage. So the Department of Transportation took that money. They took the money from high- priority projects all across the Nation and put it into something called Urban Partners. They are going to reduce congestion. In one city they are going to use the money to start having rush-hour traffic drive in breakdown lanes. What happens when somebody breaks down in the breakdown lane? They have a tremendous jam. There are many things going on.

Oh, and by the way, under Urban Partners, $853 million went to Miami, New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Seattle. As far as Oklahoma, Missouri, and other States, we were left out. Frankly, I think I can do a better job of working with my colleagues to determine where some of that money should go rather than what I think is a not very well thought out Urban Partners program to just five cities.

My colleague from Oklahoma says he really likes authorized projects. I have been an authorizer, too, but the bridge to nowhere, which gained such infamy, was an authorized project. It was put in by the chairman of the conference committee on SAFETEA. Three months later, the Transportation appropriations bill that year unearmarked that earmark, and we are pleased to say that it is no longer federally earmarked.

I know our colleague from Oklahoma doesn't like putting in money for bike paths. It may surprise him to know I am not a fan of that either. I voted against it. But it was in the authorized bill. Yes, that is what the authorizers put in, $100 million to go to bike paths. I think bike paths have their place, but given the state of congestion on highways, I think with the danger on highways and bridges, we probably should not be putting $25 million there. But since the money was in there, I did, in the authorization project, get $25 million for bike paths, and that has been spent. If the Senator from Oklahoma wants to change that, I think we need to change the underlying authorization, and I would certainly vote for that.

I think trying to blame earmarks on deficient bridges is a bridge too far, and I would urge my colleagues to oppose the Coburn amendment.

We have nothing on this side.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 2799

It is cleared on this side.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 2823

There is no further debate on this side.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 2803

There is no objection on this side.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, we have had a good discussion with the Senator from Oklahoma earlier in the day. Just to recap for those who may have missed it after he gave his eloquent pitch, I would say on behalf of those of us who worked on the bill--certainly the great leadership of our chair, the distinguished Senator from Washington-- that when we put in earmarks, when we target specific investments to our State, they reflect the judgment of each Member of this body on what is important in his or her State based on what we hear from elected officials, transportation officials, and community leaders who say these are their top priorities.

Now, my friend from Oklahoma is earmarking money for bridges. If he believes Oklahoma is not putting in an adequate share of its money for bridges, then we would be happy to entertain earmarks. But don't tell us to earmark ours. I work with the Missouri Department of Transportation officials. They say our highest needs are mostly in highways. We don't want to lose that money from highways.

Mr. President, before my friend from Oklahoma leaves, we talk a lot about safety. This is one of the problems when we try to take a meat ax to all earmarked programs in the States that have been worked out. I was working on another amendment, so I didn't hear whether he mentioned the $750,000 for the Heart of America Bridge in Kansas City. But in the interest of full disclosure, yes, we put in a retrofitting of a bridge to provide a barrier-separated crossing for bicyclists and pedestrians crossing the Missouri River from north Kansas City to downtown Kansas City.

I will be happy to yield.

Amendments Nos. 2812, 2813, and 2814, En Bloc

Mr. President, the reason we put in a barrier on this bridge between north Kansas City, a vibrant growing community, and, of course, the heart of Kansas City, MO, is that many people cross that bridge on foot and on bicycles. The traffic is getting so heavy that there is great danger to the pedestrians and bicycle riders. For those who like exercise and like conserving energy, many people commute between north Kansas City and Kansas City, MO, by foot or on bicycles. But for them to continue to do that, they need to be separated from the traffic.

I drive on the streets of Washington, DC, where bicyclists are not separated from traffic. It is always with great fear and trepidation as I am driving in two lanes of traffic coming to work in the morning and I see a bicyclist riding down the street between us. I just hope and pray that I am not the one who hits that bicyclist and that nobody hits them.

But if we are going to have bicyclists using roadways, please, let's put a barrier to separate the bicyclists and the pedestrians from the traffic. If we are talking about safety, I believe this is one of the easiest points to understand, and that is why I object so strongly to saying that any earmark we put in our States that deals with bicycles should be struck.

Where is the sense in this body to tell the people of Kansas City and north Kansas City they cannot have a protected pedestrian and bicycle means of ingress and egress between north Kansas City and regular Kansas City? It makes so much sense that I really hate to bring it up. That is what this amendment would do. That is why I will strongly oppose the amendment.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, shortly, I hope we will be able to clear my amendment No. 2832, which deals with mitigation assistance to eliminate the default and foreclosure of mortgages of owner-occupied single family homes. As we all know, the subprime market collapse has caused great distress in the marketplace and in many of the entities that are engaged in issuing these subprime loans, and others, including hedge funds, which were dealing in the secondary market with them.

I am not so much concerned if large institutions made bad gambles. We don't want to engage in the moral hazard of bailing out large financial institutions that get out too far on the fringe and find out that interest rates rise and they can't make the profits they thought. But we are very much concerned about the individual homeowners who may find that this subprime crisis is costing them their housing.

Therefore, this amendment we propose would take $100 million from the HOME program within HUD to allow for foreclosure mitigation activities. The amount would go to organizations such as FHA, Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, and State Housing Finance agencies to help identify foreclosure alternatives and offer some homeowners, specifically in subprime mortgages, an alternative to the prospect of foreclosure.

Recently published data from the Mortgage Bankers Association for the second quarter of this year shows that one in seven U.S. homeowners was delinquent in their payments. Delinquencies in general rose to the highest levels since 2002, to 5.1 percent of all mortgages, not just subprime. These estimates also show that more than 600,000 homeowners are facing the prospect of foreclosure and repossession.

These numbers are the tip of the iceberg. Action needs to be taken to ensure that where possible, good borrowers who happen to be in the subprime category are not unfairly hurt by the housing downturn facing this Nation. While price corrections are natural, and perhaps needed in some markets today to balance against speculation and overt risk- taking, rapid rates of foreclosures will only build additional inventory in an already flush housing market and may lead to an overcorrection and a true recession in the housing market. Depending on the severity of the housing downturn, this could create a major drag on other aspects of our economy and pull us into a recession.

However, we should not be quick to attempt to bail out or otherwise create moral hazard in the mortgage markets. This amendment, therefore, seeks to build cooperation between entities and the Federal Government needed in the future in terms of preventing foreclosures and preventing a truly catastrophic mortgage crisis. I strongly believe this is a good step forward to help stem the tide of foreclosures without bailing out risky lenders and speculators from the market. I urge my colleagues to accept this amendment.

I would also note that sometimes people who have limited incomes may not be in a position to buy a home but may be better off renting. I have been in rental housing in my lifetime, as many of us have been. I think the recent efforts by the administration to push for home ownership without regard, in too many instances, to the ability of the homeowners to meet the payments is pushing the envelope too far. Some of the no-downpayment schemes that have been offered have put not only homeowners at risk but whole neighborhoods at risk, where one or two foreclosures may totally cripple a vulnerable, but otherwise healthy, housing neighborhood.

So we need to take a look carefully at the subprime market. We also need to look at those practices which unnecessarily put at risk families of modest income who may not be able to take on the responsibilities and the financial burdens of home owning but would be better off renting.

So with that, I yield the floor, and I look forward to hearing our colleagues talk about Mexican trucks.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

No objection on this side.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Change of Vote

Mr. President, my sincere thanks to Senator Murray for being such a good partner on this bill. It is a very challenging bill, particularly under the constraints in which we are supposed to work. It is always a difficult bill and many complex and controversial issues.

I begin by echoing her comments; we know there will be amendments. We urge our colleagues to come down as soon as possible and offer those amendments so we can deal with them. We have a hard deadline of Wednesday noon. I hope we can get the issues resolved before then. But that is a deadline which the Senate schedule imposes on us. We do want to get it completed.

Senator Murray deserves a great deal of credit for balancing the tough issues that are included in this bill; she referred to them. These are important programs that help build our communities and without which a lot of persons would been placed at the risk of homelessness.

This would have been particularly harsh on seniors and persons with disabilities. I also especially am grateful for the programs Senator Murray described that we were able to include $75 million in Section 8 funds for the VA Supportive Housing Program.

I think it is a critical program that calls attention to some of the many needs that face our returning service people. There are far too many returning service men and women who come back and are without housing. This is a start on dealing with this serious problem that I know the VA and HUD are familiar with.

We want to give them the authorization and the direction to move forward on it. I think the worth of this program will become even more evident as young disabled service men and women try to make the difficult adjustments to civilian life.

Now, the next item that is going to be discussed is the Minnesota bridge collapse. This was surely a catastrophic event. Our hearts go out to all of those families who lost loved ones in that horrific tragedy. In response to the bridge collapse, Congress immediately authorized $250 million in emergency relief spending to rebuild this vital infrastructure in Minnesota.

I think a welcomed awareness has arisen from this event, brought a higher degree of understanding and appreciation that new methods for inspecting and rating our bridges are necessary. People are even talking about infrastructure and the need for infrastructure.

Well, that is what we have been talking about in this committee and on this floor for many years. We are delighted to have our long-time supporters and some new friends agreeing with us on it.

Now, as far as this bridge collapse, we are anxiously awaiting further information from the National Transportation Safety Board on what the root cause of this tragic accident was and how we can further improve our Federal oversight of critical infrastructure. There are a number of items which have been raised which may point out specific causes for this collapse and which will be a warning to other States and other localities as well of steps they must take and things they must do to avoid bridge collapses.

But I understand why my colleague, Senator Murray, has offered the amendment that would add $1 billion in obligation limits for bridges in reaction to this tragic event. I share that concern. But I do have a feeling we should not overreact to the Minnesota bridge collapse by spending more money out of the highway trust fund than is available until we have time to work on a comprehensive reauthorization of the underlying legislation, SAFETEA.

Part of this process must be a comprehensive review of our Nation's infrastructure problems, including how best to prioritize and fund those needs. Obviously, we are going to be looking at bridge safety as well as the other aspects of transportation safety.

I know in my home State of Missouri, and I assume in every State

transportation department across the country, this event brought renewed attention to bridge inspection. In my State, the department of transportation is embarking on a major program to rehabilitate 800 bridges that are of varying levels of deficiency. But while we need to avoid and prevent a future repeat of the Minnesota tragedy, we also must minimize the risk of death or injury posed by the broad spectrum of our aging infrastructure.

This measure would cause serious problems with the declining balance in the highway trust fund and leave us with an additional $1 billion greater shortfall for highway trust fund funding in the 2009 appropriations cycle. Everybody in this building, all my colleagues know or should know that we have significant problems in the highway trust fund because we have seen the impact of higher gas prices on fuel consumption. People are driving less. Economics does work. But when they drive less and use less gasoline, use more efficient conservation measures, which is all to the good, it results in less money coming into the highway trust fund than had been anticipated and lessens the amount of revenue we have available to use on bringing our highway and bridge infrastructure up to the needs of the 21st century. We are not there yet.

Chairman Murray and I held a hearing in April on the question of rising highway fatalities. We agree--and everybody would agree--we cannot ignore the fact that 43,443 Americans were killed on the highways last year and some 2.7 million more were injured. From my State, our highway transportation department estimates that one out of three of these people is killed by reason of inadequate infrastructure. In our State, the major problem is too many two-lane roads carrying traffic which should properly be on four-lane roads. I suspect other States are fighting that problem.

The vast majority of highway fatalities are not on the Nation's bridges but, rather, on the highways. The best estimate we have from the U.S. Department of Transportation is that approximately 2,200 out of the 43,000 deaths occurred on bridges. This leads me to suggest that we cannot overreact to such a horrible and tragic event such as that in Minnesota by micromanaging our Federal aid dollars solely to bridges, unless that is where a State, through its unique local vantage point and knowledge of its situation, wants to focus its efforts in Federal apportionment.

So this is something we will be discussing further. We are both concerned about safety on highways and bridges. We look forward to working with our colleagues to see how this can be resolved.

With respect to the Federal Aviation Administration, I again thank Senator Murray and her staff for their close cooperation in working through these issues. The chronic delays experienced by numerous travelers this year and specifically this summer have not gone unnoticed by the committee. As ranking member, having spent a wonderful 2\1/2\ hours sitting on an airport runway after we landed, I have a personal interest in dealing with this. The bill continues to support the beginning stage of the NextGen Air Transportation System, which we believe is a much needed step toward providing additional capacity and relieving many of the delays at our Nation's airports. The bill also contains funds above the administration's request for flight inspection and certification personnel. Almost all of us use airplanes frequently, and we understand the need the flying public has for greater assurance of safety. We think these funds will ensure continued safety for the National Airspace System.

I also note additional funds for the Airport Improvement Program. That remains an important bipartisan priority for this subcommittee. I can't tell my colleagues how many small airport operators and community leaders in those cities and towns around my State have expressed their strong support for the program.

There are some issues we will have to address as the bill moves forward. For example, we include revenue aligned budget authority, that which we call RABA. When Members hear the term ``RABA,'' it is not the name of a dog or somebody's pet name; it is ``revenue aligned budget authority.'' This was not included in the President's budget.

The bill also contains a $2.89 billion rescission of highway contract authority apportionments to the States used as a budgetary offset to meet the other pressing needs my colleague already described. The bill includes an additional $43.359 million in administrative contract authority and another $172 million in the unused transportation innovative financing infrastructure account--the TIFIA--contract authority, for a total offset of spending of $3.495 billion. In the HUD section, we include a rescission of $1.1 billion.

Finally, I raise one issue we have not been able to address; namely, HUD and OMB's failure to provide adequate funding for HUD's section 8 project-based housing program for fiscal year 2008. To my colleagues and to OMB and to HUD, I say: Let's get serious. This is a critical and important program which serves many of our most vulnerable citizens-- low-income families, extremely low-income families, seniors, and persons with disabilities. If we don't fund it, they are out on the street. None of us wants to see that result. HUD has been unable to fund in a full and timely fashion many of these contracts during fiscal year 2007, and this problem is only going to get worse in 2008 to the extent that HUD could have a shortfall in its budget of as much as $2 billion or more which is needed to meet its obligations to these contracts in the next fiscal year. If we don't act in this bill, we are going to see a $2 billion shortfall. Think of the number of people who would be put out on the street if we don't solve that problem. It is unacceptable.

I know this program enjoys wide support, and I expect and hope that OMB will provide the necessary funds for the program through a budget amendment or as part of a continuing resolution or through emergency supplemental legislation. To my good friends at OMB, I say: You cannot walk away from this problem. This problem is real. It must be addressed or we are going to see a tremendous tragedy for the Nation's lowest income and most needy housing residents.

While I am pleased with much of the bill, especially spending in critical programs, I have to say that we are on a collision course with the White House on the spending levels contained in this bill. Both sides are going to have to make adjustments. Some of the adjustments we have outlined are absolutely essential, and we cannot lose the benefit of the positive investments we have made in this bill. This is a very important bill. It is a very difficult bill because we have some extremely serious challenges to face. We understand the need to be sensitive to the budget needs, but there are real pressing human problems we must meet in this bill.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I appreciate all the comments of my colleague. He had some very interesting things to say. I don't believe I can let it pass, as vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, without clarifying some of what has been said about the danger to this country.

First, we have never taken our eyes, our efforts off getting the leaders of al-Qaida. There were times in the past, in the nineties, when we had an opportunity to get him, and apparently, according to published reports, from one of the people who was with Osama bin Laden, we came close, but we have not been able to find him. I can assure you, without going into the details, that we continue to make a major effort to find Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 man. If any Senator wants to come to the Senate Intelligence Committee in Hart 219, we will be happy to brief them on the efforts made there.

As far as the threat to the United States, the greatest threat to the United States from abroad is having al-Qaida establish a safe haven where they can recruit, have training facilities, issue command-and- control orders, and develop weapons of mass destruction. We have no better authorities than Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri that they still seek to establish that headquarters for their effort in Iraq because this is where they believe their caliphate should be headquartered. They would be far more capable of operating against the United States and others if they could go back to establishing their safe havens in Iraq, as they had in Afghanistan prior to our eliminating the Taliban.

I believe anybody will tell you that this country is safer because we have denied them a safe haven. Yes, some of the leaders are hiding out in the rugged mountains in that region. Their communications are very difficult. Their training facilities have been interrupted from time to time by our and allied efforts. We continue those efforts. They know they cannot operate safely there with impunity, but they are denied the operational freedom of a safe haven in Iraq. That is their goal--that and attacking the United States. Establishing a foothold in Iraq would give them not only the training facilities and recruiting and command- and-control capacities, but it would give them access to tremendous oil reserves, so they would have the funding from the oil resources, potentially putting tremendous economic pressure on us if they cut off Iraq's oil supply to the free world. But they would have the oil resources.

As far as Iraq is concerned, the intelligence we had before we went in was not good. We pointed out in the Intelligence Committees where it fell short. But we have also had the report of the Iraqi Survey Group, David Kay, which said Iraq was a far more dangerous place even than we knew. Before we went in and took out Saddam Hussein, we did not know the chaotic system in that country. The fact that there were terror groups operating in that country who sought weapons of mass destruction--and we know Saddam Hussein not only manufactured but used weapons of mass destruction--those terrorist groups in Iraq were seeking to get weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein's operations and his just-in-time inventory system.

There is a lot more to the story than we just heard, but I can assure my colleagues, from the intelligence standpoint, we are not giving anybody any safe haven where we have any reasonable knowledge of where they stand or in what way they are operating.

I wanted to make those comments. I thank the Chair. I note another colleague has asked to speak.

I yield the floor.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Reserving the right to object, I regret we have not been able to clear this request on this side. As much as we would like to, I have to object at this point.

Mr. President, I am under no illusion that I can change the mind of my good friend from North Dakota, but maybe I can ease his concerns, at least in several areas, because he did raise some things that I think should be noted.

Prior to 1982, Mexican trucks did operate throughout the United States without restriction. Since then, Canadian trucks have continued to operate through the United States. Surprisingly, even some of the Mexican carriers who were authorized to operate beyond the commercial zones in 1982 have continued to operate in the United States. As best we can tell, they have as good a safety record as the U.S. drivers. But, obviously, there are lots of arguments in terms of efficiency, in terms of commitments made under the North American Free Trade Agreement for carrying this out. But I want to focus just a minute on a couple of items of concern about meeting safety standards.

Mexican trucking companies, drivers, and vehicles participating in the demonstration program have to abide by stricter safety standards than U.S. and Canadian trucking companies, drivers, and vehicles operating in the United States. These safety standards include they have to have a U.S.-based insurance policy, full compliance with hours of service regulations, vehicle maintenance, driver qualifications, including the ability to communicate in English, and drug and alcohol testing. Every carrier satisfactorily completing the test has to have its drivers drug tested by U.S. labs.

In addition, as many of us would be concerned about the tremendous accident with hazardous materials, these carriers are prohibited from transporting hazardous materials in the United States. They cannot transport passengers, and they cannot pick up domestic freight going from point to point.

Every Mexican truck participating in the program has to pass a rigorous 39-point, front-to-back inspection and is required to display a valid Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance--CVSA--inspection decal that indicates it has passed this inspection. The decals are valid only for 3 months and can be renewed only by passing another inspection.

As far as who is going to verify that the trucks are following U.S. regulations, U.S. Federal inspectors perform, and Mexican trucking companies must pass, a preauthorization safety audit to get into the program, conducted in Mexico prior to granting the authority to operate beyond U.S. commercial zones.

The audit includes inspections of vehicles the company intends to use in long-haul operations in the United States and a thorough inspection of the company's records to ensure compliance with Federal safety regulations. Vehicles not inspected by the U.S. Federal inspectors cannot be used for long-haul operations in the United States.

Every inspector reviews Federal safety regulations with the carrier, including those concerning driver hours of service, to ensure the carrier is knowledgeable of and comprehends the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.

All the motor vehicles and drivers in the cross-border demonstration program will be subject to roadside inspections, just like U.S. and Canadian vehicles and drivers, and will be placed out of service, as any carrier would be, if they fail critical portions of the inspection.

I thought that might be of some comfort to my colleague who raised questions about safety inspections. I suggest that be taken into consideration as we review the appropriateness of this amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a question?

Through the Chair, I would ask my colleague if he wants to apply these same standards to Canadian truckers. Because it is my information, I do not have it documented, that the standards required of Canadian truckers are less than the standards required of Mexican truckers. The Canadian truckers coming into the United States, into North Dakota and beyond, do not have to have U.S. insurance.

I would ask my colleague if he is concerned about the Canadian trucks coming in as well and what he plans to do about those.

May I ask my colleague another question?

It relates to the fact that the U.S. Federal inspectors will be going to Mexico and making those inspections with Mexican trucks would satisfy his concern about the enforcement. Before the trucks can come in, U.S. Federal inspectors go to Mexico and make the inspections.

Does he think we ought to be doing the same thing in Canada, for example? What about requiring Canadian trucking companies to have U.S. insurance as well?

Mr. President, may I ask another question? We are not talking about packing houses where there was obviously a failure of sanitation. We are talking about a situation where U.S. Federal inspectors go down, conduct a pretest, a preinspection of the Mexican trucking operations, the vehicles coming in have to go through a U.S. overseen or implemented safety inspection every 3 months.

Now, I do not think we require Canadian trucks, and certainly we do not require U.S. trucks, to be inspected every time they travel on our roads. But we do have inspections, random inspections that will apply to United States, Canadian, and Mexican trucks.

What I am asking, if U.S. Federal inspectors are doing this--nobody ever said they are going to do it every time. Nobody expects to have inspectors inspecting every truck. But what is the difference, I would ask my colleague, between having U.S. inspectors every 3 months in Mexico and having random safety inspections--in what situation do either the Canadian or the U.S. trucks get the same degree of inspection?

I join with my colleague from Washington, the chairman of our committee. I urge my colleagues on this side of the aisle to bring in their amendments. Because of the timeline we are working under, we will be much more willing and able to work out the amendments that come in early. We may be able to cut off the time for filing amendments, I would hope, as early as sometime tomorrow afternoon. But I suggest that in case that happens, people come forward with their amendments as early as possible because we are facing a time deadline and need to get this bill amended, if desired, and passed. I would appreciate the cooperation of colleagues on both sides.

Mr. President, as we approach the sixth anniversary of September 11, 2001, we are reminded of the consequences of ignoring the threat al-Qaida and other ``mufsidoon'' terrorists pose to our Nation. Al-Qaida and radical extremists declared war, or ``Hirabah,'' on this Nation in the early 1990s, and not until 2001 did we finally take that threat seriously. While some in our own country refuse to believe this reality, that terrorists--Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri--agree that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, our entire intelligence community testified in open session before the Senate Intelligence Committee last January that to retreat from Iraq prematurely on a political timetable would invite disaster. They testified that a precipitous withdrawal of American forces would lead to chaos, regional sectarian conflict, Shias and Sunnis killing each other. It would create a safe haven from which al-Qaida could launch further and much more robust attacks on America, and it could lead to the possible deployment of troops, this time not to a fledgling democracy but to prevent the spread of a radical Islamic Caliphate, with a capital in Baghdad and borders reaching from Spain to Indonesia. A precipitous withdrawal would also send a message to the enemies of freedom all over the world that the American people lack the resolve to win; that while our brave military cannot be defeated, politicians in Washington can; that when the going gets tough, America gets going-- home.

Next week, General Petraeus will deliver a progress report on the new strategy in Iraq. I expect this report to show that finally we are seeing real progress in the security situation in several key areas. This issue should not be a political one, but unfortunately there are those who are politicizing our fight there. This battle is too important to be used by those who want to declare defeat in Iraq for their own short-term political gains in 2008, claims such as, ``the war is lost,'' and claims that the success of the surge ``misses the point'' are troubling at best and dangerous at the worst.

Sadly, there are some in this body who are vested politically in defeat. I find it disappointing that some in Congress would now say they will refuse even to believe General Petraeus, despite the fact Democrats and Republicans unanimously approved his appointment in February.

General Petraeus takes his responsibility for our troops on the front line seriously. He is highly respected, has an outstanding military career, and should be listened to. I am confident he will deliver a report based on facts on the ground and not political conditions at home.

I hope more of my colleagues will listen to our military leaders when they deliver Iraq's progress report. The worst case scenario would be for a majority in Congress to ignore our military leaders and continue to demand timetables, withdrawal dates, and attempts to control troop movements. Military decisions must be made by our military commanders on the ground, not micromanaged by Congress in our wonderful air- conditioned hall, thousands of miles away.

We have seen what has happened in the past when politicians have tried to run a war--from Vietnam to the Iranian hostage crisis.

On the political front, I agree that Prime Minister Maliki is not getting the job done, at least not getting the job done on the timetable that we have artificially set, but that much more work needs to be done. However, as we have seen for months now, progress is occurring from the bottom up at the local level. Our military, our leaders, and our troops in the field tell us that they are being successful. They are making progress. This is no time to quit.

The Al Anbar Province, where I and several Intelligence Committee members visited a few months ago, has been demonstrating tremendous signs of progress, even back then. This was the area controlled by al- Qaida just a year ago, where al-Qaida said they were going to establish the headquarters of their evil empire, the Caliphate.

In fact, today, General Jim Jones will be releasing his report that reached the same conclusion I did after my visit. You saw different headlines in the paper today about that report--not surprising. They wanted to focus on other sites. But today's Washington Post reported:

U.S. and Iraqi alliances with Sunni tribal forces in Anbar

province have produced ``real and encouraging'' military

progress and intelligence cooperation, and there are

promising signs they can be replicated elsewhere.

It is here, where local tribal leaders and sheiks are cooperating with American and Iraqi Army commanders to take their neighborhoods back from al-Qaida. As a result, we have seen a decrease in sectarian violence, an increase in weapons cache discoveries, and some relative stability.

This is a classic example of how General Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy, or COIN strategy, is working.

We should have had this policy 2 or 3 years ago. But General Petraeus has written a book, the Army and Marine field manual. When he talks about dealing with the counterinsurgency, you go in, you clear, you hold, you work with local forces, and you help

them rebuild. Show them that there is progress that can come when they cooperate with those of us who are trying to prevent violence and terrorism from taking over their country.

When we were there, the marines in Ramadi had just finished rebuilding the Blue Mosque, the sacred point for Sunnis in Al Anbar, and they are using that. We are working with them.

Our military is beginning to replicate these successful lessons in other parts of Iraq. Sure progress is slow, but progress is real. With a new counterinsurgency strategy in place, our military shows the momentum going our way, and with this momentum it is clearly the wrong time to cut the legs out from under them with a new strategy. We are witnessing the increasing likelihood that our troops can find success and return home victorious. Even previous critics such as the Brookings Institution's O'Hanlon and Pollack, writing in the New York Times, said this is ``a war we just might win.'' But let me be very clear about one thing.

Our U.S. national security interest is seeing relative peace and stability established and maintained in Iraq for the short and intermediate term because only by assuring that stability, and our coalition forces working with Iraqi security forces, can we ensure we will avoid the genocide among Shias and Sunni, the opening of Iraq to a safe haven for al-Qaida and its related terrorist elements, and the likelihood of a regionwide sectarian war, bringing in other countries in the region, creating havoc, chaos, threatening Israel, cutting off oil supplies, and having an international crisis.

Long term, we have an interest in seeing real reconciliation and political accommodation accomplished by the elected officials of the Iraqi Government. Iraqis are going to have to make those decisions for themselves--who does it and how they do it--but we have to realize that before you can have political compromise and success, you have to have stability.

Secondly, political reconciliation takes time. It took a long time to put the United States of America together. If you read, as I hope you have, the book about Lincoln's Presidency, ``A Team of Rivals,'' you see even in 1860-1864, we were still fighting those battles in a war at the same time, but Abraham Lincoln persevered and we came through.

So not only as a policymaker but as a father concerned about our future generations, I understand the tremendous sacrifice our troops have made in support of a policy in Iraq. Our troops on the ground have told me, in many different ways, they understand they are making progress. They understand they are making these sacrifices; they are willing to do this for the good of our country. One particular quote sticks in my mind when they were first told about the possibility that Congress would set arbitrary time limits for withdrawal. Their response was: We have made far too many contributions and too many sacrifices to see it all be for naught.

This coming from troops on the ground who have seen their colleagues shot up and sent the belongings of lost comrades back home. They made a contribution to the peace and security of the United States, and they do not want us pulling the rug out from under them.

Let's remain committed to seeing the job done to protect this country from the radical and extremist attacks of al-Qaida and others. Our Nation's security, our credibility in the world, the freedom of millions of Iraqis and many other people threatened by this kind of terrorist attempt to establish a caliphate are depending upon us.

I urge my colleagues to listen carefully and accept the recommendations of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, two men of unquestioned integrity who will be presenting the situation on the ground, not as we view it on TV, not as some mischaracterize it but from the people who have the responsibility for our missions, our vitally important missions, important not only for Iraq and the Middle East but to our own national security.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak on behalf of the Foreign Operations bill, and I thank the managers of the bill for putting forward an excellent measure.

I have a couple of areas I wish to speak about at some length, but let me give the framework in which I will talk about it. I come to the floor a lot--I spoke this morning about military action, but I come to the floor to talk about intelligence. We are, at least in my thesis, in a worldwide war against those who have declared us to be their enemy. It is an ideological war. I think, by any stretch of the imagination, most people realize that a war against this kind of enemy is only 20 percent kinetic, it is 80 percent economic/educational.

What we are doing in this bill some people object to--spending money on foreign operations--because they think, oh, it is do-gooderism; it is trying to make us feel good, helping people in the world. Well, clearly we are carrying out an important mission to help less developed countries throughout the world. That is certainly one of the areas where America's generosity has always shown through. Our private charities are even more robust than what we do through government.

I continue to hear people back home saying: If we just cut out foreign aid, we could do this and we could do that. But foreign aid is minuscule. I, frankly, think it ought to be more. If we are going to turn the tide against those who are committed to radical views, to misusing and misinterpreting their religion to declare war on us, we have to

deal with them not only kinetically when they pick up arms or when they threaten to bomb us, but we have to help create the conditions in those countries where people are not driven to earn a small amount of money for planting a roadside bomb or an IED or even get a little more for their family by committing suicide in a terrorist attack.

There are some things we can do through this bill that I think are very important to connect with those countries which view us with suspicion. We can help change the attitude--not of everybody; not of the committed mufsidoon. Those are people who, in the name of Islam, kill innocents, men and women, fellow Muslims. They are too often called jihadists. They are not for jihad. Jihad is a legitimate self- fulfillment and improvement by Muslims. They commit hirabah, which is the terrible form of violence these Muslims commit. We need to show people in the countries from which they come that America can be a force for good.

There are a couple of things that are very important. No. 1 is establishing and improving educational exchanges. No. 2 is economic assistance to help them build their economy. I will talk about that later. No. 3 is getting Americans on the ground.

I have traveled to a lot of countries, and I have spent a lot of time in Southeast Asia. They keep telling me that the best emissaries the United States has are Peace Corps members, the Peace Corps members who have been here, and those in other volunteer organizations--if they come with a church, if they come with a charity or a nongovernmental organization, if they come with the volunteers in the financial services program. When Americans come, even as tourists, they can make a difference.

I wish to talk just a minute about the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps, as I said, is one of the important weapons we have, not only to help them understand us but to help us understand them. At no other time in this Nation's history has the work of the Peace Corps and its volunteers been more vital or valued. Peace Corps volunteers are the good face of America in the developing world. They provide practical, hands-on experience while spreading compassion and good will, which is vital in winning the hearts and minds of people all over the world. The United States is no longer the only game in town, and we can no longer take for granted that countries will line up to want to support the United States.

China, for example, with over 1 trillion U.S. dollars, is aggressively engaging in courting countries all over the world on economic, diplomatic, and cultural fronts, frankly shutting us out, moving us out of the game by establishing what the Chinese call their Confucius Institutes, thus promoting their language and culture through internationally affiliated institutes. The Chinese Ministry of Education estimates that by the year 2010 there will be approximately 100 million people worldwide learning Chinese as a foreign language. And it plans to set up 100 more. They will be learning Chinese, not English.

I ask, why are we reducing and not increasing our efforts to promote American values, our culture, our way of life? As I said, to fight the war on terror, our efforts are 20 percent kinetic, 80 percent public diplomacy--international exchanges, education, aid, and community development. In other words, I believe that putting more sandals on the ground will prevent having to put boots on the ground in the future to fight militarily what we could have won economically with education and diplomacy beforehand.

Only about 20 percent of Peace Corps volunteers are serving in predominantly Muslim countries. There are far too few. In key areas, there are just not enough. Why? We just do not have the money. The money stayed stable, and costs have gone up. We have been declining in Peace Corps participation. Why is it important to have them in Muslim countries? Because they provide alternatives to the Wahabist view of life, financed too often by our Saudi Arabian friends. They are too often promoting the Salafists' radical agenda--barbaric ideologies, trying to reach impressionable Muslims.

Numerous accomplishments have been achieved over the past 6 years by our American volunteers, and the Peace Corps is poised to meet not only the growing demands from interested countries but from thousands of Americans who want to serve as well. I believe the Peace Corps should obtain its full request in 2008 in order to expand opportunities to enter these countries, vitally important countries in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, and I hope we will get a more robust request from the administration next year. It should not be hindered in expanding the number of volunteers in countries where the Peace Corps already exists and is advancing American ideals and building good will. Budget tightening has already occurred at many posts, and program closures are likely without additional funds.

Many of our diplomats and host country officials say that the Peace Corps is the most effective and cost-efficient U.S. agency in getting a better view of America.

I look forward to working with my colleagues in the conference committee. I hope we will be able to restore the President's full request for the Peace Corps. It is an investment in an effort vitally important to improving the lives of those in the developing world.

I also wish to talk about another initiative. I have been on the floor talking about it a long time; that is, effective grass roots development for agriculture in Afghanistan. Agriculture is the main building block of the Afghan economy, but it has suffered from disinvestment and neglect. Over 70 percent of Afghans live in rural areas and derive their income from agriculture. Yet the public and private support infrastructure for agriculture is yet to be rebuilt.

I talked to some Missouri farmers--I will discuss it more later--who were over there with our National Guard. They tell us that they believe the Afghans could move a tremendous leap forward if we got them 19th century, not 21st century, not 20th century, but 19th century tools and equipment because they are that far behind.

I thank the managers of the bill. They have used in this bill $20 million for USAID to set up and develop a nationwide agriculture extension system. It would establish and execute a strategy through a consortium of U.S. land grant universities, integrating the program into Afghanistan institutions, guided by local councils, comprising community, private sector, and government education leaders. Our U.S. education extension service transformed American agriculture over the last hundred years, and it can do a lot to improve the livelihood of the people in Afghanistan and counter the other influences, such as the cultivation of poppies for the drug trade.

Unfortunately, we have given money to USAID in the past, and it has been largely ineffective. USAID has refused to set up an extension system in Afghanistan. They continue to rely on large, DC-based contractors who apparently have had no impact. They lack that expertise and capacity-building know-how and expertise which will create sustainable development.

Over 5 years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, after USAID has been spinning its wheels, Afghanistan now accounts for 92 percent of the world's opium supply. I recognize USAID and the Department of State are large bureaucracies that cannot operate as effectively as the military can in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the community development efforts they are tasked with are paramount to establish a strong economy that will allow the Afghan farmers and the Afghan people an alternative to opium production. When I was in Iraq, for example, I observed our warfighters taking action and picking up the mantle where State and USAID's hands were tied.

In Ramadi, we saw the marines, after they had pacified Ramadi, went in and rebuilt the Blue Mosque, the absolutely central Sunni mosque for that entire region. There was a tremendous amount of goodwill created, showing them we supported their religion.

In Afghanistan, a member of my staff, a month ago, returned from Nangarhar Province with members of the Missouri National Guard. As a result of my working with the Guard and what we saw on the ground and the fact that the President, Hamid Karzai, had asked for extension service assistance but USAID was not able to produce it,

I asked the National Guard to send an agricultural development team over to see what could be done. They came back with a very promising response.

The team and subsequent others we hope will be established by the Department of Defense through the National Guard will be composed of citizen soldiers who come, in their civilian lives, from farming, agribusiness, and construction trades. Each AG team will have extension service experts--whether it is in soil or meat technology or other things that have been identified as pressing needs. They are going to focus on more efficient use of irrigation, crop rotation, cold storage, harvesting, processing, and agribusiness. They will not just be giving farmers seeds, they will be building real, long-term relationships and capacity-building that will sustain agriculture in Afghanistan, to bring it into the 19th and even into the 20th century. They will be doing so in a place where building trust with the populace is paramount.

From my time as Governor, I have always been impressed with not only the capacity and the ability and dedication of our National Guard throughout the United States but their flexibility. The National Guard structure, capabilities, and the skill-set of the citizen soldiers in the Army are uniquely positioned to execute a position that many others are incapable of fully executing. I hope the USAID and State Department will follow the lead of its Department of Defense cohorts in Iraq and Afghanistan. As I said, 80 percent of the war on terror is nonkinetic-- agricultural development, education exchanges, Peace Corps volunteers, and public diplomacy. If USAID continues to rely on giving large chunks of money to cumbersome contractors in its foreign aid, it will fail, and I will see if I can convince my colleagues to choose another route.

Efforts in Afghanistan, like the land grant extension initiative and the agricultural development teams, are models for how we should be conducting the nonkinetic war we must fight against those who vowed continuing war against us and the way of life we espouse.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair.

I hope I have the attention of all of my colleagues because I believe we have an opportunity--we have an absolute necessity--to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act modifications prior to leaving for the August recess. It is absolutely critical for our national security that we change the law which currently, by its application, is denying our intelligence community a very significant portion of the signals intelligence they could collect on al-Qaida and other terrorist sources who may well be planning another 9/11 attack on the United States.

It has been publicly disclosed that al-Qaida's discussions are more active now than they had been since 2001 and even more since 2001, but we are, because of the application of this law, partially deaf to those communications. If we are to protect our homeland, the people of America, as well as our troops in the field, we have to collect better intelligence because that is our only significant weapon to fend off the attacks of those, through their misguided ideas, who want to inspire terror and kill as many Americans as possible.

The Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, whom I believe the people in this body have come to know and respect, told us in April that it was urgent that we reform the FISA law. He sent us a proposal on April 27. He appeared before our committee in open hearings on May 1 and discussed at length the challenges and the threat we face and the need for revision of the FISA law. I had hoped we would move on that at the time, but some wanted to get more Department of Justice opinions. Nothing happened. I offered my version. My version, on behalf of Republican members, drew no response.

The DNI, Director of National Intelligence, Admiral McConnell, came before a session of the entire Senate in S-407, our classified security area, a month ago, and he told us about the need to reform the law and to reform the law now. A significant number--not a majority--of this body was there, but everybody who heard him speak recognized the absolute, compelling necessity to move. Since time was running out, he offered a slimmed-down proposal.

There are a number of things which need to be done with respect to FISA that can wait, and to accommodate the concerns of some on the other side of the aisle, he agreed to hold off dealing with issues such as carrier liability and streamlining FISA. But he presented to us a measure that he said was critically important, that must be passed so we don't remain deaf during August to discussions of threats being carried on by al-Qaida and others seeking to do us harm.

As a result of the submission he made, we had another hearing for all Members of the Senate on Tuesday night, and at that Tuesday night session, several Democratic chairmen raised concerns with him about his proposal and their desire to have a different form. I was not privy to their

negotiations, but through the good efforts of Director McConnell, I found out what they were proposing, and it was obvious to me, as it was clear to Director McConnell, that this would not allow him to do what he needed to do and would not allow NSA to move forward on collection of vital information needed for his job to keep America safe.

The next day, the admiral modified his original proposal to take into account some of the reasonable concerns the Democrats raised, things he thought he could live with. Leader McConnell and I introduced that on Wednesday evening. Since that time, there have been several more iterations coming from Democratic staff and some Democratic chairmen that have been presented to Director McConnell. He has reviewed them, and they do not meet the needs. He has responded to them, to try to find ways to accommodate them, and he has not been able to accommodate them.

The admiral now is traveling and out of contact. He said that given the lateness of the hour and the fact that this is such a critical issue, the negotiations are over, and he said he would make one more accommodation to meet concerns of the majority party. So he has agreed that he would support and urge the President to sign the McConnell-Bond measure introduced on Wednesday night, with one accommodation; that is, to add a 6-month sunset to provisions of the law allowing the operations to continue under the orders put forward at that time.

It will be my intent, after discussions with the leaders, to attempt to call this measure up so we can go to work on it and get it done, to keep our country safe and to allow us to come back after the recess and work on other portions of the FISA law that may be necessary and I think are very necessary. But right now, to keep the country safe, we need to pass this measure.

The Director of National Intelligence said----

I would be happy to.

Mr. President, the Senator from Georgia--and a valuable member of the Intelligence Committee--is precisely right. What we have before us is what is absolutely necessary to keep our country safe. He asked for the basic provisions.

Basically, what Senator McConnell has proposed--which is not a Republican proposal, it is not a Democratic proposal, it is the proposal of Admiral McConnell as the Director of National Intelligence--is that the Government, the intelligence community, can listen in on communications from foreign sources, foreign intelligence, of somebody located overseas. If they find a suspect in the United States--and we call that a U.S. person--then any collection has to go before the FISA Court, which was established in 1978, before any collection can start against that target. It allows the Attorney General, with the Director of National Intelligence, to authorize that collection.

Now, the DNI's proposal has made a number of accommodations to the points raised by our Democratic chairmen at that Tuesday night meeting. It includes having the FISA Court review the procedures to ensure that the targets of our collection without a warrant are overseas. I don't think court review is necessary, but it is an added layer of protection that several key Democratic chairmen wanted.

I have been to NSA. I have seen how the procedures are so carefully monitored, with layers of oversight, supervision, reviews of attorneys, reviews of the inspector general, to make sure that the only intelligence they are collecting without a warrant is where the target is a person reasonably believed to be outside the United States.

I would be happy to.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 5 more minutes to answer the questions that have been raised.

I thank the Chair. I thank my colleague from Georgia for a very fine statement.

I don't remember all of the questions, but I do remember his last question, which was, is it imperative for national security that we adopt this now. The Senator is correct. We were unable to accept communications prior to September 11, 2001. After that tragedy occurred, the President instituted a program, which he revealed several years later, to intercept foreign calls from al-Qaida coming into the United States and, because of concerns and questions raised in oversight, the President put the program to intercept foreign intelligence under the FISA Court. Now, at this point, because of the change in technology since the time FISA was adopted in 1978, inadvertently the new technology being used comes under FISA and prevents, in many instances, the collection of information on a foreign target.

The foreign targets are the ones, as the Senator from Georgia so correctly pointed out, who were giving information, and still give information and direction and strategic operations, to terrorists who may well be in the United States. Yes, it is vitally important that we change this now. I hope my colleagues will review this and that we can get a large, bipartisan majority. This is not a Republican proposal. I tried my Republican proposal and didn't get a majority to support that. There are Democratic proposals and, to the extent they can be accommodated by the DNI and allow him to take the collections he needs against foreign

targets, without a warrant--unless we can change the law, he will be deaf and we will be endangered in August and thereafter.

Regarding the question my colleague from Georgia raised about terrorists communicating in the United States, if there is collection, if we have intelligence that there are terrorists communicating in the United States--they would be non-U.S. persons--we would still have to go to the FISA Court to get an order before anybody can collect on them. If a U.S. person receives a call, the U.S. person's participation is what they call minimized and it is put aside. That person does not become a target if he or she is a U.S. person, unless and until there is a FISA Court order included.

Yes.

Yes. I have a very important message from the DNI:

We understand that the FISA court judges urgently support a

more appropriate alignment of the court's caseload and

jurisdiction away from the focus on non-U.S. persons

operating outside of the United States. The judges have

clearly expressed both frustration with the fact that so much

of their docket is consumed by applications that focus on

foreign targets and involve minimal privacy interests of

Americans.

That is the end of the statement that has been communicated to us by electronics from the DNI--that FISA Court judges have asked today that we pass a law that gets them out of the business of overseeing foreign target collection.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Hampshire. I am not at liberty to disclose the amount, but it is very significant. I cannot give him the percentages, but it is more significant than the Senator has suggested.

I thank the Senator from Utah.

Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes. First, before my good friend, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee leaves the floor, through the Chair, may I address the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. The Director of National Intelligence is sitting right off the floor here, and he has not seen--he has just seen your bill. He does not support it. I ask if the chairman of the Intel Committee would step outside and talk to the Director of National Intelligence to see whether, in fact, he does or does not support the Rockefeller bill or the bill that we introduced on behalf of the DNI, which is now pending as amendment No. 1927.

Yes. Would you be willing to step off the floor to ask the

I, at this time, reclaim my time and thank the chairman for his answer. Let me tell you, none of us have seen this bill that is a total new draft of the measure until just a few minutes ago, and we are absolutely stunned that this bill adds new burdens to the already overburdened process of collecting against foreign targets. This bill says it can only apply to communications between foreign persons without a court order. You can't tell if it is a communication between foreign persons when you target a foreign source because you don't know with whom that person is communicating. That is why there are so many burdens now on the FISA Court.

The DNI has said explicitly--he has told us that he opposes the Rockefeller-Levin bill. The DNI has stated that the bill that Senator McConnell and I offered, S. 1927, which we filed on Wednesday night, is the bill that he supports.

Any one of my colleagues who wants to, I invite them to step out this northeast door and talk directly with Admiral McConnell because I think it is extremely important that you find out what his position truly is.

Let me be clear: The bill that was introduced by Senator McConnell and me was the bill that Admiral McConnell had modified after having comments to which he listened from several Democratic chairmen on Tuesday evening. He added the provisions for court review--they are court reviews within 120 days, 4 months--that would be adapted to the new requirements in FISA that did not exist before that will take some time to get together. And it also included a provision that there would be, in addition to that--that there would be the DNI who would be one of the people making the certifications--two things that were requested.

There is one other modification that I will ask unanimous consent to make, or offer an amendment to make, when we prepare to debate on the bills, and that is to include a 6-month sunset so we will have the opportunity to review this bill.

With that, I will have more to say about that later, but the DNI explicitly will tell anybody who steps outside that he does not support this bill.

It is in the bill, excuse me.

I thank the distinguished majority leader. But with that, I will yield the floor and allow other Members to communicate.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Virginia.

Will the distinguished Senator yield for a question?

Very quickly. Does the distinguished majority leader know that Admiral McConnell is here because three of his members specifically asked that he come over and comment on these bills, and at their request we invited him to come here to respond to their questions?

Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Connecticut.

I yield to the Senator from California 2 minutes.

Mr. President, I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Texas.

Mr. President, how much time remains on this side?

All right. Mr. President, first, I want to make a point clear. I had referred earlier to comments made by my good friend, the distinguished chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who thought the bill they introduced was a bill that Admiral McConnell had supported. Admiral McConnell has just released a statement saying that he appreciates the efforts to address critical gaps in our current intelligence capabilities: I cannot support the proposal. It creates significant uncertainty in an area where certainty is paramount in order to protect the country. I must have certainty

in order to protect the Nation from attacks that are being planned today to inflict mass casualties.

Really, there are a number of problems with the bill that has been presented on the other side. But the main problem is it says you do not need a court order to collect on communications between persons who are not located within the United States, and the rest of the collections are required to have a court order.

Now, this morning, I read on the Senate floor a declassified summary of an order issued by the FISA Court saying this provision, this statute, FISA, must be amended because due to uncertainties and technological changes, they are spending so much time having to work on orders for collection involving the foreign targets--foreign targets whose impact on the privacy rights of Americans is minimal.

Why is that a problem? The problem is, you do not know--if you are targeting a foreigner--whether that foreigner is going to call or communicate with another foreigner. If you do not, under the bill provided by Rockefeller and Levin, you would have to get a court order. You would have to get a court order if you could not prove the person they were communicating with was not in the United States. And you cannot do that. That is an impossibility. That is an impossibility. You cannot have an order that tells you they are going to be foreign communications only because you do not know until you intercept the communication to where it is going.

Now, there are a number of other questions about the bill. I just have to say the concerns that have been raised--and they are legitimate privacy concerns--are addressed by minimalization procedures. Under what is called the McConnell-Bond bill--which was requested by Admiral McConnell, who modified his original proposal--under that bill, if an American citizen is caught in a communication from an al-Qaida target or another foreign target, then that person's participation is minimized. And if it is not foreign intelligence, that is completely dumped.

Under our bill, like under the previous FISA provisions, you cannot target an American citizen or a U.S. person, including people here on green cards and here in the country, without getting a court order. That is what the FISA Court was set up to do--just to protect people in the United States.

There are protections for the U.S. persons who are caught, incidentally, and they are minimized. Their names are not even identified unless there is evidence of terrorist activities.

Now, the measure we have provided, the McConnell-Bond bill, S. 1927, is one which does meet the needs that were identified by the FISA Court and by Director McConnell to clear up the backlog because there is a huge backlog they cannot work through. The FISA Court is overburdened. They cannot work through and issue the orders because of the tremendous amount of paperwork.

So we must do this now. We must do this tonight to give the intelligence communities the powers they need to collect information at a time when the threat is heightened. If we do not do that, we are in great danger.

We have to do other things, and we will come back and revisit the other things, such as dealing with carrier liability and streamlining the process. Those we must do. That is why we included the sunset at a year.

Mr. President, I yield 1 minute to the Senator from Florida.

Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Georgia.

Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Pennsylvania.

Mr. President, I yield the remaining time on this side to the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, we all know and acknowledge that al-Qaida and other related terrorist groups are determined to strike at the U.S. homeland. But a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would only serve to fuel that determination and, as a result, surrender Iraq to al- Qaida, which would directly threaten the security of the United States and its allies.

Yesterday, we had a visit from Henry Kissinger who warned us that such a precipitous withdrawal would be revisiting the nightmare of Vietnam, where our withdrawal there created genocide among those who had supported us and other innocent Southeast Asians. This time, however, al-Qaida would follow us back to America. Al-Qaida would use Iraq as a safe haven, as it once had in Afghanistan. Only this time with oil revenues, in addition to a safe haven, it would be well positioned and financed to launch further enhanced attacks against the United States. Yet we continue to hear from the other side calls for withdrawal, despite preliminary reports of progress resulting from the surge, as my colleague from Georgia has so eloquently explained.

We continue to hear calls for timelines that would embolden the morale of our enemies and dissuade the populace from cooperating with U.S. and Iraqi forces, and the latest and most recent development in the string of defeatism has come from the House majority whip. This past Monday in the Washington Post, he stated that a strongly positive report on progress in Iraq by General Petraeus would likely split Democrats in the House and impede his party's efforts to press for a timetable to end the war.

Now it appears some in the Democratic Party leadership are so invested in retreat and defeat politically that despite whatever the news is coming out of Iraq and regardless of the consequences, they are committed to defeat.

Why, I ask, is the majority focused not on our national security but on scoring political points? I guess we should pull out, cede victory for the terrorists in Iraq, in order to keep the Democrats united for the general elections in 2008.

What we, the Iraqi people, and all freedom-loving nations face is a fundamental threat from barbaric cowards misrepresenting the true nature of peaceful teachings of Islam. The terrorists of mufsidoon, as they should be called, are condemned evildoers distorting the Koran. They are not jihadists. Jihad is pursuing a moral superiority. These people who commit these acts are not insurgents or jihadists. The clearer we define the true enemy, the easier it will be to defeat them.

What we have seen for some time now is encouraging signs this has, in fact, happened, coupled with the surge that is showing progress. Sunni sheiks in Al Anbar have been working with us to take back their neighborhoods and villages, fed up with the mufsidoon al-Qaida committing atrocities.

My colleague referred to the Sunday New York Times article. Two men who are strong opponents of the war in Iraq said, referring to al-Qaida and other Salafist groups, as well as Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army:

These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized

average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local

leaders and seized young women to marry off to their

loyalists. The result has been that in the last 6 months,

Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the

Americans for security and help. The most important and best-

known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less

than 6 months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the

best. Today, the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al

Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago,

American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last

week we strolled down its streets without body armor.

I observed the same when my CODEL visited Iraq in early May. The authors said ``there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least until 2008.''

So if two of the war's harshest, most longstanding critics admit we are making a difference, why can't the Democrats give victory a chance? Why can't they give millions of Iraqis a chance at freedom? Why can't they acknowledge the progress being made?

Pollack and O'Hanlon said that the soldiers and marines know they have a superb commander in General Petraeus.

. . . they are confident in his strategy, they see real

results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to

make a real difference.

It is time my colleagues in the other party who claim to support the troops actually do so in both words and deeds. Ignoring the progress being made by our troops because it does not suit the political ends of some Democratic leaders is an egregious outrage. Advocating for a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be a rallying cry for al-Qaida and other mufsidoon all over the world. What are we to say to the millions of Iraqis who have sided with us in taking back their country, only to see them slaughtered systematically after we leave the job before it is finished?

Our words should inspire our troops and those who are working with us. Rest assured our soldiers and marines are listening. A recent speech by Marine Corps Commandant Conway underscores the point:

I sat this week and listened to a United States Senator who

criticized the U.S. effort

in Iraq as being involved in an Iraqi civil war while

ignoring the real fight against terrorism that was taking

place in Afghanistan.

With due respect to the Senator, I would offer that he is

wrong on two counts. The fact is that there is no civil war

taking place in Iraq by any reasonable metric. There is

certainly sectarian strife, but even that is on the declining

scale over the past six months.

Ironically, this strife was brought about and inflamed by

the very terrorists some claim do not exist in Iraq. The

sectarian strife is a tactic aimed at creating chaos with

little risk to the instigator while it ties down coalition

forces.

Yet, Mr. President, the retreat-and-defeat crowd, despite encouraging signs the surge is working, despite the fact this new strategy has only been in place fully for just a couple of months, and despite the fact that the Democrats have failed to offer any constructive alternatives, other than the ones that would cede defeat, continue to push down that line.

It is a huge disappointment to me, to others, to those who support our troops and the efforts to protect our homeland from the al-Qaida attacks that would surely follow a precipitous withdrawal. It is a huge disappointment that this debate is not about how we can achieve victory but how quickly we can declare defeat. This has become a political debate. The focus of our national security has been sidetracked. As I have said time and time again, we should debate legislation which provides our troops with a clear path to victory, a victory which, sadly, many in this body are ready to award to al-Qaida and mufsidoon all over the world without ever having given the surge a chance.

Mr. President, I thank the minority leader because he has brought to the attention of this body a measure of critical importance. Right now, we are missing a very significant portion of the signals and intelligence we could capture on al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations threatening to do harm to the United States. The reason is because the existing Federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act doesn't fit in with today's technology.

The Director of National Intelligence has asked us--begged us--to make these changes. He submitted a proposal to the Intelligence Committee in April, and then he came before our committee in May. He came and briefed as many Members of the Senate who wanted to show up last month, and 42 members did, and they understood the importance.

In my tenure as a member of the Intelligence Committee, I have spent a considerable amount of time looking at issues regarding FISA modernization. Since I became vice chairman, I have worked closely with Chairman Rockefeller to ensure that our oversight of this measure and this program has been comprehensive. We have held numerous hearings. Most of us have gone out and watched how the protections are implemented and where the information is collected at the NSA.

The DNI's proposal came up to us, and in April he warned that the current text of FISA is causing significant intelligence gaps during a period of increased threat. We all know that the threat of al-Qaida is severe now. We cannot afford to go home, to leave this place, and not take off the artificial barriers that prevent NSA from keeping our country safe.

The DNI has now provided us with a bare-bones FISA modernization proposal. It doesn't deal with all of the problems we in the Intelligence Committee must deal with later on in this session. We must do it.

Last night, we had a proposal delivered by Senator Rockefeller that did not come from the members of the Intelligence Committee. It was a counterproposal to provide what he argued was a temporary legislative fix to FISA. Unfortunately, the counterproposal will not close these significant intelligence gaps that the DNI has told us about. Instead, it requires the Government to get a FISA order when a foreign target communicates with a significant number of persons and calls into the United States. That, to me, is going in the wrong direction. We don't need to stop and get a court order to protect the privacy of a terrorist who is making lots of calls into the United States. That is moving in the wrong direction.

Our enemies are not naive. They understand our laws sometimes better than we do. They would realize that all they had to do, if they wanted to cover their tracks while a lengthy FISA court application procedure was done, is make a whole lot of calls to people in the United States to trigger the requirement.

It would be an unnecessary and enormous burden on the intelligence assets and operators. We don't want people who play an essential role in fighting terrorism to spend the bulk of their time processing stacks of FISA applications on foreign targets. We want them to do the intelligence work to keep our country safe.

Well, as a result of the proposal made by Senator Rockefeller, and others, the DNI was able to accommodate a number of these proposals and adopted their proposal for FISA court review of the procedures. They put a 6-month sunset on it. They added the DNI, Director of National Intelligence, to the authorizing process for acquisition of foreign intelligence. This is what is before us. The minority leader has presented it. I am proud to be a cosponsor.

The debate is about whether targeting foreigners overseas should require a FISA order. That was never the intent of the FISA legislation. It was intended solely to protect the fourth amendment rights of persons inside the United States--not foreign targets.

FISA needs to be modernized. Technology has changed. It is now no longer covered. The DNI's approach takes into account the changing technology and has adopted the reasonable suggestions made in the proposal made by Senator Rockefeller, and others.

Congress needs to act on this legislation, please, before we get out of town. Don't leave town leaving the NSA deaf to significant terrorist information that might save our country from attack.

I yield the floor.

I object.

Mr. President, I would comment that in the process of working out votes, the minority leader has offered to the majority leader to schedule votes on this and other amendments at an appropriate time. There is no need to do the all-night gig. It may make grand Hollywood theater, but it doesn't necessarily move forward what is an extremely important bill.

This is a bill that not only authorizes our war fighters, it provides additional resources. It provides them a badly needed 3-plus percent pay increase. We traditionally move these bills forward because, when we are fighting a war, we need to support the troops. But these amendments are designed to substitute the judgment of 535 generals in this wonderful air-conditioned Capitol for the judgment of the generals and the commanders in the field who every day go out and fight that battle to maintain peace, restore peace and security in the area, and to protect our home front.

The Iraqis have said they don't want us there permanently. I think we all agree we don't want to be there permanently. But they also said we need to continue to train their troops. We need to make sure they maintain security in the area. They are not ready to do that now.

Sunni sheiks in Al Anbar Province, which I was pleased to visit 2 months ago, are working with our forces and they are making great progress. They have been sending in their young Sunni men to be trained as Iraqi police and Iraqi Army. They need training. They are not ready yet. They are being very successful because our American marines are embedded with them. With them, they have taken Ramadi, the capital of Al Anbar, which was totally under the control of al-Qaida a few months ago, and made it a safe place not only for Americans but for everyday Iraqis to walk the streets, to do their business, to get back to a normal life.

I am here today as the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to talk about an important report issued today. Today, the Director of National Intelligence released key findings that could be made public on the National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, on the terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland. That report outlined a number of key findings of which I think our colleagues and all Americans should be aware.

First, today's intelligence report found that carrying the battle to al-Qaida, gaining worldwide cooperation in the war on terror, has set them back. They have made our country and other free countries safer because al-Qaida and its related radical Islamist groups are no longer able to have the free rein they had prior to our attacks to clean them out of Afghanistan and to keep them out of Iraq.

In fact, our efforts have prevented al-Qaida from attacking the United States since the September 11, 2001, attacks, and they have disrupted a number of terrorist plots outlined in the classified portion of the report, designed to take effect in the United States of America.

One of the good parts about it is that the terrorist groups are now telling each other the United States is a harder target. That makes them less likely to attack here. That is great news. It means the hard work of our men and women in the military, our intelligence services and our law enforcement in the United States, are doing their job--and they are succeeding.

While America is safer, there are still threats around the world, and we have to remain vigilant in fighting terrorists at home and abroad. The intelligence report notes that al-Qaida leadership continues to plan attacks. They have a relative safe haven in the northwest area of Pakistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA. They are increasing their capabilities from that area to launch attacks on the United States.

It is important to point out that these findings do not mean, as some erroneously reported last week, that al-Qaida is as strong as it was before the September 11 attacks, or even nearly as strong. It does mean that America must always be prepared for attacks on our homeland and continue to take appropriate offensive and defensive counterterrorism activities.

Unfortunately, the intelligence report, the NIE, also finds that international cooperation against terrorism may wane as September 11 becomes a distant memory. That ought to be a real concern to all of us. I hope my colleagues take note because this should serve as a warning to all of us, a warning for Congress, and the American people to remain vigilant and committed to the war on terror. Our responsibility in Congress is to continue to give law enforcement and the intelligence community the tools they need to track, interrogate, capture or kill and prosecute terrorists, such as the PATRIOT Act and the modernization of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--very important; Also, the 9/11 Commission recommendations on changing congressional oversight to make it effective in dealing with the new challenges put on the intelligence community today.

Knowing full well that the retreat-and-defeat crowd does not have the votes, I see the majority has opted for political gains and political theater. With apologies to our dedicated floor staff and the many wonderful men and women who keep this place operating, you are going to be operating all night long, around the clock, for a political show, not to achieve anything significant in terms of helping win the war.

Foremost, the biggest losers from all this grandstanding are our fighting men and women who are risking their lives on the line in Iraq, carrying out

their mission and the mission they believe they are carrying out successfully.

The majority has a political game plan. But, sadly, it is not about how to achieve victory, it is a plan blindly fixated on trying to embarrass the President, trying to figure out a way they can win votes for November 2008. It offers no help for the creation of stability and freedom in Iraq and thus continued safety for ourselves.

Our commanders and fighting men and women, while this debate is underway, are actually trying to achieve victory. But they have been listening to us and they have questions. They send questions to us saying: Why are you not going to give General Petraeus's plan, which he said he would report on in September, an opportunity to demonstrate it can work? Why have you no patience? We, who are sitting in the air- conditioned Halls of Congress while they are out in 130-plus degree heat risking their lives. They are willing to wait. But they are watching and listening to the cut-and-run arguments. So are our allies, Sunnis, such as the Sunni sheiks in Al Anbar Province who are risking everything if we run and leave because they have taken on al-Qaida. They don't want to live under al-Qaida. The neighbors of Iraq who are gradually realizing they have a role in helping Iraq be stable are seeing us falter and hesitate.

Do you know who else is listening? Al-Qaida and the violent terrorists with whom we are at war, and I suspect they are absolutely revelling in what they are hearing. I imagine they loved hearing our majority leader saying the war has been lost. That is not a great message for our troops but one that certainly brings cheer to the hearts of al-Qaida.

They call for troop withdrawal deadlines. They say the cost of war is too high. The constant barrage of negative news without the balanced report on the progress our troops are making--we need only listen to the words of the terrorists themselves who have identified Iraq as the central front on the war on terrorism. Osama bin Laden, in his audio message to what he hoped were his fellow Muslims in December of 2004, said:

The world's millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital

of the caliphate.

Our own servicemembers such as 1LT Pete Hegseth, an Iraqi war veteran and director of the Vets for Freedom recently, knows the importance of achieving victory. He said, as one who has been on the frontlines:

Iraq today is the front line of a global Jihad being waged

against America and its allies. Both Osama bin Laden and

Ayman al-Zawahiri have said so.

But despite this enormous effort, the retreat-and-defeat crowd still wants to micromanage this war 8,000 miles away from the fight and set timetables and troop movements and ultimately to engineer a defeat brought on by retreat.

These actions most egregiously send mixed messages to our enemies all across the globe that our Nation is fractured, weak, and does not have the will to see it through. This same message can discourage allies and the millions of Iraqis who are risking their lives for a chance at freedom by supporting us. For not only is the safety and security of our Nation and allies at stake but so, too, is our credibility.

Critics of us have frequently claimed the war has damaged the U.S. image and credibility throughout the world. Yet the retreat-and-defeat crowd ignores the irreparable harm that would be done here were we to leave this mission unfinished.

If you think our image and reputation has plummeted, wait and watch it nosedive if we were to leave Iraq before finishing the job. Think about what would happen to the millions of Iraqi citizens and leaders who took a stand against terrorism, who committed to take a stand with us to rebuild their country and fight against the forces of radical Islam and terrorism. What are we to say to the millions of Iraqis who trusted America and believed we would stay until the mission was complete, only to see them slaughtered by terrorists as a result of our abandoning them before they were able to stand on their own.

I mentioned on this floor before, what did we say to the thousands of South Vietnamese or millions of Cambodians who put their trust in America and were slaughtered after we abandoned them? History has taught us that when America abandons its commitments to spreading liberty and freedom, we are not the only ones who suffer. Hundreds of thousands may well suffer, but it will come back to harm us and haunt us in our homeland--not only our credibility.

In January of this year, before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the leaders--the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA Director, the Defense Intelligence Agency Director--testified in public session. They said if we pulled out on a political timetable, chaos would ensue. What would happen?

No. 1, there would be a tremendous increase in slaughter among Sunni and Shia in Iraq.

No. 2, al-Qaida would be able to establish a safe haven, a platform where they could get the oil revenues they needed to fund their efforts and significantly increase the threat to our United States of America and possibly even to foment a regionwide civil war, as other nations would come in to the rescue of their coreligionists in Iraq.

To ignore these considerations and questions simply because they are perceived to be more politically palatable than continuing the vital mission that our troops are fighting is shortsighted at best and dangerous at worst. Those who are attempting to end the war precipitously because they are vested politically in defeat do not want to talk about the fact that the war in Iraq will do anything but end-- in fact would only grow more dangerous--if we leave our enemies in Iraq, unlike in Vietnam, the victors. The victors would follow us home. The North Vietnamese did not follow us home after we lost in Vietnam. Al-Qaida will follow us home if we allow them to achieve victory over us in Iraq.

We have seen in recent weeks, since the implementation of General Petraeus's plan, movement has begun in the right direction. When I returned from Iraq in May, I observed, even at that point, some initial signs that the planning and working was moving in the right direction. Sunni sheiks in Anbar are now fighting al-Qaida; more than 50 joint U.S.-Iraq stations have been established in Baghdad, conducting regular patrols, resulting in increased security and actionable intelligence.

Muqtada al-Sadr has felt the heat. His followers, while perhaps have demonstrated against American troops, are not contesting them. They and Jaysh al-Mahdi, the Shia militant group, has stood down. The Iraqi Army and police forces are increasingly fighting on their own, with their size and capability growing.

July 16, the Wall Street Journal carried an article by Omar Fadhil. He said the surge is working, fully operational for barely a month. He defines the two most dangerous enemies in Iraq we face in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr's militia and al-Qaida, and he says:

Sadr's militias have moved the main battlefield south to

cities like Samwah, Nasiriyah and Diwaniyah where there's no

American surge of troops, and from which many Iraqi troops

were recalled to serve in Baghdad. But over there, too, the

Iraqi security forces and local administrations did not show

the weakness that Sadr was hoping to see. As a result, Sadr's

representatives have been forced to accept ``truces.''

This may make things sound as if Sadr has the upper hand,

that he can force a truce on the state. But, the fact this is

missing from news reports is that, with each new eruption of

clashes, Sadr's position becomes weaker as tribes and local

administrations join forces to confront his outlaw militias.

And regarding al-Qaida, he writes that they, al-Qaida, have

not been any luckier than Sadr, and the tide began to turn

even before the surge was announced. The change came from the

most unlikely city and unlikely people, Ramadi and its Sunni

tribes.

He goes on to say: In Baghdad the results have been just as

spectacular so far. The district where al-Qaida claimed to

have established it Islamic emirate is losing big now, and at

the hands of its former allies who have turned on al-Qaida

and are slowly reaching out to government.

MG Rick Lynch, 3rd Infantry Division Commander, provided a telling example in yesterday's New York Times.

In the village of Al Taqa, about 20 miles southwest of Baghdad, Lynch said women and children were taping plastic pipes on streetlamps to warn Iraqi security forces of roadside bombs. He also stated that locals have exposed al-Qaida hideouts, helped troops locate 170 large caches of arms, and guaranteed organized armed neighborhood controls could keep safety.

While I would agree that there is no guarantee of victory, and we have a

long way to go, we certainly need to make every effort to achieve it. The war in Iraq is far more important on a front that is far larger than that battlefield. It is the global battlefield. That is why we are fighting in Iraq, to keep our country safe, to make sure al-Qaida does not get the upper hand, to make sure our troops, who are carrying out their mission to stop al-Qaida, can do so in Iraq rather than hand them the victory which will embolden them, which will allow them significant resources from the oil-rich Iraqi sands and give them the courage to expand recruiting and attack our country.

We cannot allow cut-and-run amendments to be added to a vital authorization bill to support our American troops.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate the chance to talk about the amendment before us and some of the other amendments. These amendments generally are intended to change our military policies, our presence in Iraq, and essentially to begin, one way or the other, a politically staged withdrawal from Iraq. We are talking about how we are concerned about and support the troops. Do you know what I hear from the troops? I have been there, I have talked to them, and I have heard from them at home. The one thing they say is: We are over here risking our lives. We are fighting a mission which we believe is succeeding. We are making progress. The last thing we want is Congress to declare a military end or take over the management of the war from our commanders. Time after time, they have told me: We have made too many contributions and sacrifices to walk away now and see all we have done go for naught. I will talk about going for naught later on. But the point is that, yes, America has made contributions, large-dollar sums of contributions. But families who have lost loved ones, who have had them maimed, and their comrades-in-arms know the sacrifices these men and women have made. The one thing they implore us to do is not to see these sacrifices be made in vain.

Well, we have seen a lot of negative stories. The media has more than adequately covered those. So people are concerned about what is going on in Iraq. We ought to be concerned. But we are not hearing the stories about what is positive, about the successes of this new strategy, the Petraeus strategy.

I was in Ramadi and Al Anbar 2 months ago and traveling elsewhere, and I found some amazing things. The new counterinsurgency strategy, with the cooperation of the Sunni sheiks who are now working with our military, has really essentially driven al-Qaida out of Ramadi, and they are driving them out of the Al Anbar Province. Make no mistake, when we heard ``civil war, civil war,'' the people over there--the marines, the soldiers--know they are fighting for and looking for al- Qaida. Al-Qaida is the driving force that is keeping it stirred up, and they are on the mission to search and destroy al-Qaida. Al-Qaida is there big time.

But we have been hearing lots of arguments now in favor of--and they are heartfelt arguments and people believe them--it is time for retreat; it is time to cut back; it is time to withdraw. The cost of lives and treasure is too high. The war has not been properly managed. The war cannot be won.

Over the last several weeks on break, when I was traveling, I had the opportunity to read ``Team of Rivals'' about Abraham Lincoln and the conduct of the Civil War. Over a century and a half ago, many of these same arguments were offered abundantly as reasons for President Lincoln to accept defeat of the Civil War, and they are now being made for President Bush to accept defeat in Iraq. As noted in historian Shelby Foote's ``The Civil War: A Narrative,'' Members of Congress playing general urged the troops to abandon the cause. That great Ohio Representative Clement Vallandigham, leader of the Copperhead Democrats, campaigned for office by calling upon soldiers to desert. He declared the South was invincible.

As noted in passages in ``The Civil War,'' in late 1862, ``Senate Republicans caucused and, with only a single dissenting vote, demanded that Lincoln dismiss Secretary of State Seward'' because they thought he was responsible for the conduct of the war.

Republican Leader Thurlow Weed observed that ``the people are wild for peace. . . . Lincoln's election is an impossibility.'' They were after him in

full force. I don't need to elaborate on the enormity of the Civil War, and I don't need to explain what would have happened had Lincoln relented to those politically popular sentiments at the time.

Lincoln chose to fight a bloody and unpopular war because he believed the enemy had to be defeated. Despite being reviled for staying the course, President Lincoln did stay the course. Unfortunately, too many of my colleagues today don't seem to be willing to see this one through. Here we are again, barely weeks into the full implementation of General Petraeus's surge, and the naysayers continue to argue for defeat. It was only a few months ago this body had been calling for and looking for a new strategy, which I believed we must have, which changed the unsuccessful strategy we had, which argued for the Baker- Hamilton report, which said in essence you have to have a new strategy, you cannot precipitously withdraw. We came forward and General Petraeus drafted a counterinsurgency strategy. That is what he told us he was going to do, supported by the surge. Now people want to pull the rug out from under him. He said at least give him until September to see if this new counterinsurgency strategy works.

They are bringing in American soldiers and marines to go in with Iraqi security forces, Iraqi Army, Iraqi police, embedded with them in command centers, barracks; they stay there, live among the people they are protecting, and they have cleaned out the areas. They have cleaned out Ramadi. Two months ago, four Members of Congress walked through downtown Ramadi, which had been an al-Qaida command center. Al-Qaida has been driven out, but naysayers continue to argue for defeat.

Now, there may be some short-term political benefits for those calling for withdrawal. There is popular sentiment for it. Some people honestly believe that. But let me quote 1LT Pete Hegseth, an Iraq war veteran and director of Vets for Freedom:

Iraq today is the front line of global jihad being waged

against America and its allies. Both Osama bin Laden and

Ayman al-Zawahiri have said so.

He is correct. Our intelligence services said so. They warned us in January in an open intelligence hearing that if we withdrew on a political timetable and took our troops out without making sure that the Iraqi security forces were adequate, there would be chaos. There would be chaos and greatly increased killings among Sunni and Shia. Al- Qaida would be able to establish a safe haven in which to launch recruitment, training, command and control, and weapons of mass destruction development. The violence and chaos in Iraq would likely bring in coreligionists from other countries of the region as they went in to protect their fellow religionists. We could have a regionwide civil war, Shia versus Sunni.

That is what will happen if we withdraw. Most of us concede there was poor management and costly mistakes were made in the post-invasion phase in Iraq. But they are not compelling reasons for why we should retreat and, like all mistakes, we should learn from them and not go back and commit them again by drawing down forces to the point where we don't have adequate troops to work with the Iraqi security forces.

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson recently pointed out that those who are calling for retreat are not learning from previous mistakes but repeating them. Gerson writes:

History seems to be settling on some criticisms of the

early conduct of the Iraq war. On the theory that America

could liberate and leave . . . force levels were reduced too

early . . . security responsibilities were transferred to

Iraqis before they were ready, and planning for future

challenges was unrealistic.

And now Democrats running for President have thought deeply

and produced their own Iraq policy: They want to cut force

levels too early and transfer responsibility to Iraqis before

they are ready, and they offer no plan to deal with the chaos

that would result six months down the road. In essential

outline, they have chosen to duplicate the early mistakes of

an administration they hold in contempt.

I agree with Gerson, we should not make those mistakes. We must fulfill the mission that over 3,600 brave men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice for.

To quote a Missouri guardsman, COL Bob Leeker, who just returned from commanding the 507th Air Expeditionary Group in Iraq:

I only hope that the American people will give us the time.

The American people must understand that this is not only

about Iraq, it is a fight against Muslim fanaticism, Muslim

extremists. If we pull out in the near term, or at the wrong

time, there will be an incredible amount of blood running

throughout Iraq, and the blood and sweat that I and my

brethren in arms have already given will be for nought.

These are compelling words. They ought not to be taken lightly. Not only is the security and safety of our Nation and allies at stake, but so too is our credibility.

Critics frequently claim the war has damaged the United States image and credibility throughout the world. Yet these same critics ignore what irreparable harm would be done were we to leave this mission unfilled. If you think our mission has made our image and reputation plummet, wait and watch it nosedive after we leave Iraq before finishing the job. Think about the millions of Iraqi citizens and leaders who have taken a stand against terrorism, who have committed to work with us, to rebuild their country, to fight against the forces of radical Islamists and terrorists. What are we to say to the millions of Iraqis who trusted Americans and believed we would stay until the mission was completed? We would, regrettably, see them slaughtered by terrorists as a result of our abandoning them before they were able to stand on their own.

What did we say to the hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese or millions of Cambodians who trusted America and were slaughtered after Congress dictated that we abandon them?

History has taught us when American abandons its commitment to spreading liberty and freedom, we are not the only ones who suffer. Rest assured, it will come back to harm us in our own homeland.

Just as our intelligence community has warned and terrorist leaders have stated, Iraq will become a base and safe haven from which to plan and launch future attacks.

Let me be clear, the enemy in Iraq consists of murderous, barbaric terrorists. They are not ``insurgents'' or ``jihadists.'' Let's get terms straight because we fall into the trap of taking their terms. Jihad in the Muslim religion is the individual journey to moral improvement. It has been misrepresented to be a philosophy that permits encouraging the killing of innocents, the slaughter of fellow Muslims, the slaughter of women and children. The real Arabic term for that is hirabah. The people who commit it are not insurgents or jihadists, but mufsidoon. These people are condemned to live with Satan because they have committed blasphemy. These are the people we are fighting. It is not a civil war. They are the people who violate the tenets of Islam. They try to hijack it, try to claim the Islamic banner; but they are not practicing the religion of the Prophet Mohammed.

Well, there is another reason these people want to sanitize the description we use of them. Calling them insurgents implies they have the support of the local population. But the local population is being victimized, killed, evicted from their homes, or beheaded by the so- called insurgents. That is why the Sunni sheikhs in al-Anbar are working with us. They have lived under al-Qaida. They want an end to the terror. That is why they are helping us to identify who they are, where the weapons caches are, and where the IEDs are hidden. They are sending in young Sunnis to sign up. They want to be free of the terrorists.

Precipitous withdrawal would be a rallying cry for terrorists and al- Qaida around the world. It would invite further aggression and attacks from the barbarians. It would be a total loss of freedom, liberty, and peace, and would be a victory for totalitarianism, terrorism, and treachery.

In a recent book by J. Michael Waller, a scholar at the Institute of World Politics, he defined terrorism as:

A form of political and psychological warfare; it is

protracted, high intensity propaganda aimed more at the

hearts of the public and the minds of decisionmakers and not

at the physical victims.

By Waller's definition and what I have heard from some people in this body and the media, the terrorists are

certainly hitting their targets. Our words should inspire our troops and the millions of Iraqi citizens who actually trust that Americans will not embrace defeat and leave them. Instead, the words of the retreat-and-defeat crowd inspire al-Qaida and the murderous terrorists attempting to ignite sectarian strife.

Now is not the time to pull out when we are seeing encouraging signs in places where the surge has been implemented. Al-Anbar Province shows tremendous signs of progress. Even the New York Times' Michael Gordon reported last Friday how young American soldiers are executing General Petraeus's new strategy on the ground, and how they are fighting and defeating al-Qaida.

Here is a quote from Frederick Kagan, a resident scholar at AEI:

Al-Qaida's operations in Baghdad--its bombings,

kidnappings, resupply activities, movement of foreign

fighters, and financing--depend on its ability to move people

and goods around the rural outskirts of the capital as well

as in the city. Petraeus and Odierno, therefore, are

conducting simultaneous operations in many places in the

Baghdad belt: Fallujah and Baquba, Mahmudiya, Arab Jabour,

Salman Pak, the southern shores of Lake Tharthar, Karma,

Tarmiya, and so on. By attacking all of these bases at once,

coalition forces will gravely complicate the enemy's movement

from place to place, as well as his ability to establish new

bases and safe havens. At the same time, U.S. and Iraqi

forces have already disrupted al-Qaida's major bases and are

working to prevent the enemy from taking refuge in the city.

U.S. forces are also aggressively targeting Shia death squad

leaders and helping Iraqi forces operating against the Shia

militias.

Why has this Senate chosen to debate timelines, restrictions, and retreat despite encouraging signs that the surge is working, despite the fact that this new strategy has only been in place fully for barely a month, and despite the fact that those who want to withdraw and retreat have failed to offer any constructive alternatives on how they would deal with a chaos that would ensue from their retreat? It is a huge disappointment that this debate is not about how we can achieve victory, but how quickly can we cede defeat.

This has become a political debate and the focus of our national security has been sidetracked. We should not pass legislation that provides our enemy a clear path to victory--a victory which, sadly, many in this body are ready to award al-Qaida, without ever having given the surge a fighting chance. The surge is indeed the best hope we have for establishing safety and stability in the area, which will allow the Iraqi security forces to take over and give the Iraqi Government the space to develop a workable government that can rule their country.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.