Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, tonight, I thought that I would discuss some of the lessons learned since 9/11 and discuss some of the current events that we are seeing happen on a daily basis and put them into some historical perspective.

First of all, 9/11. Let us note that 9/11 was not an unavoidable natural occurrence. 9/11, an attack upon the United

States by an organized group of terrorists, happened because past American policies toward Afghanistan were wrong and because during the Clinton administration our general policy of weakness led our enemies to the conclusion that they could attack the United States of America and murder our people by the thousands and that there would not be the type of repercussions that they have had to endure since they did attack our country on 9/11.

I have spoken extensively about the past policies about Afghanistan which led to the establishment of a Taliban, an extremist Islamic state in Afghanistan, which then was used as a base of operations for a terrorist organization that was committed to attacking the United States of America and killing as many of us as possible.

I have also spoken in the past about 9/11 representing not only a mistake in policies but also a major, major screw-up on the part of America's intelligence organizations. 9/11, while the policies that we had as a country helped lead us to that situation, we should have at least been protected by our CIA, the FBI, and the national security administration. But what happened?

We were blind-sided. We were blind-sided not just in an attack that cost the lives of thousands of Americans, but we were attacked by an organization, the al Qaeda, which had already been declared the number one enemy of the United States and the number one target of our intelligence community. The number one target of America's intelligence community, a community made up of organizations: the CIA, the FBI, the NASA, DIA and many others. These people receive tens of billions of dollars a year in order to protect us; yet the number one target of American intelligence carried off an extremely complicated plot against the United States that spent tens of millions of dollars putting a minimum of 100, if not hundreds, of people in the field who must have known about this; yet they were able to carry it off and to bring down the Trade Towers in New York and killing 3,000 of our fellow Americans. Let me add, had this happened a half an hour later or an hour later, it would have been tens of thousands of Americans and not 3,000 Americans.

Let me just note that we have learned a lesson from 9/11. The CIA since 9/11, I am happy to report, has gone to great lengths to make up for their shortcomings prior to 9/11. The same with the FBI. The same with NASA. Apparently they learned the lesson.

I remember when I worked in the Reagan administration back in the 1980s; and in 1983, almost just about 20 years, a little more than 20 years ago, right as we speak, Ronald Reagan put America's military forces on alert and sent them to the island country of Grenada in the Caribbean, which was going through a turmoil when a radical group of Communists took over that country. I remember that inside, that was a victory supposedly for the Cold War, and we did return democracy to Grenada; but the liberation of Grenada itself was a catastrophe.

All of our military forces found that they could not communicate with one another. Most of the casualties we suffered, and we suffered almost as many casualties in Grenada as we suffered in taking on Iraq and Afghanistan and Grenada was just a tiny little country, but most of the casualties in the liberation of Grenada were friendly fire casualties. Most of those who died in our military, it was because our own military people were not cooperating. They learned that lesson, I might add.

The leaders of our military took it to heart what they had seen and how embarrassed they were that they were not being serious about their job, and they reconfigured our national military; and today we have such a superb military, headed by, I might add, a man of vision and a decisive leader, Mr. Rumsfeld; and Secretary Rumsfeld and the leadership of our military have just given us one of the most profound military victories, one of the most astounding military victories in the history not only of the United States but of the world.

We took on, with very few casualties on our part, fewer than 200 casualties, we liberated Afghanistan, and we liberated the people of Iraq and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan was, of course, thousands of warriors against us and a terrorist army of thousands. Then in Iraq, we had one of the 10 biggest armies in the world, one of the biggest armies in that region who were certainly a major force; yet we took them on in just a matter of weeks. That is because we did what was necessary to reform our system back in the 1980s and to equip our people with the technology they needed.

The CIA, the FBI, the NSA are now going through that same kind of reform and soul-searching that took place in the 80s after Grenada. Already there have been some major successes. Many of them have not been announced to the public, but our CIA, for example, I know thwarted an assassination attempt on King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan, and there were no praises sung for this; but yet people in the know realized that since 9/11 and over these last few months and last years we have seen a new attitude emerge.

Perhaps it is due to the leadership our President, President Bush, is giving; and I would certainly say that our President has risen to the occasion and since 9/11 has shown himself to be a world-class leader and historic leader of our country.

This President has learned we should, when possible, have our local allies do the fighting for us. Let them fight for their freedom, and let us be there to help them. This is what President Bush, the strategy he laid forward in Afghanistan; and it is very similar to the strategy that Ronald Reagan laid down and was called the Reagan doctrine and how he ended the Cold War. Reagan's doctrine was let us not just do it just with the American military might, but let us depend on helping local people win their own freedom; and that is what we did in Afghanistan, and President Bush also made sure that the people of Iraq knew that our purpose was there to help them liberate themselves, not to occupy their country.

Of course, we learned, and it was confirmed, that America's investment in weapons technology was well worth it, and we did go through a time in the 1990s in our predecessor's administration when there were dramatic decreases in the defense budget; and yes, certain decreases in the defense budget were warranted after the Cold War, but we managed to keep those technology weapons alive; and those developments of the laser systems that are offshoots of missile defense and other types of programs, we managed to keep them in the budget and not just is the defense budget being used as a social welfare distributing system for different systems for different groups that were preferred that our people wanted to make political fronts with. Instead, we kept it a fighting unit; and that was one of the accomplishments of this Congress, as well as working with the Clinton administration.

What did that lead us to? It led us to fewer than 200 American deaths in liberating Afghanistan and Iraq. What an enormous achievement that was.

Let us now make sure that we pay attention to what was learned; also what have we learned from what we have gone through, what we should have learned that we should not pay attention to the liberal whiners who always have seemed to be around.

There is a myth that during the Reagan years the Cold War was ended because of some kind of bipartisan cooperation. I will tell my colleagues from the inside of the White House, we did not see much bipartisan cooperation. Yes, there were about one-fourth of the Democrats who were willing to stand by the administration when the fighting was hardest with the Communists; but by and large, every time Ronald Reagan tried to make a stand against the Communists during his 8 years as President, there was an active group of people on the other side of the aisle who were doing their best to fight those who were fighting Communism. They were anti-, anti-Communists; and it is a miracle that the President was able to succeed in the way he did with the type of people who were undermining his efforts.

The Communists invested in a whole bunch of intermediate range missiles they put into Europe and immediately said let us have a freeze and left them in a position of superiority, and then we have the nuclear freeze movement which was supported by, unfortunately, many people on the other side of the

aisle; and Ronald Reagan stepped forward and said, no way, we are not going to freeze them into a superior position, and then offered, as Ronald Reagan always does and always did, a positive alternative, let us bring the number of missiles down to zero, let us agree to eliminate the class of intermediate range of missiles in Europe which, by the way, he was called names. He was made fun of. They called him an amiable dunce. They were suggesting he does not know what he is talking about, the Russians will never agree to that; and of course, within 5 years there was an agreement signed with the Russians to do precisely that.

These whiners have been with us every time America takes a stand, and it is not just against Communism. We are talking about, these are people predicting doom whenever we try to act. It seems there are people that are part of our political system, part of our political spectrum here that have a compulsive lack of faith in America itself, and they were suggesting all kinds of horrible scenarios of what was going to happen if we took a stand and acted against Saddam Hussein; and they were the ones claiming within a very short period of time after Afghanistan started, oh, are we bogging down in Afghanistan.

After 1 week of fighting, well, remember, let us not forget these predictions and let us learn from them. It was predicted that there would be a major tank battle, Saddam's Republican Guard was going to engage us in a major tank battle outside of Baghdad. Whatever happened to that? I will tell my colleagues what happened to it. We had the technology to destroy most of those tanks before they started moving up to any position where they could threaten our troops. What tank battles there were were limited. Our people were very brave; but by and large, that major tank battle, historic tank battle that would be on the scale of El Alamein and all the rest never happened.

What about the gas attacks and the nuclear attacks that were going to vaporize our soldiers, this fear which immobilized so many people. We have to stop our President from putting our troops in or they were going to be gassed and vaporized by nuclear weapons. That, of course, never happened.

Some ask what happened to the weapons of mass destruction the President was talking about? Let me just note I have been a strong supporter of the President from the very beginning. I have called for eliminating Saddam Hussein for many years. When I was first elected is when we went to the war in the Gulf and I told Dick Cheney and Colin Powell then not to start this fight unless we are going to finish it. And yes, I have been critical of President Clinton, and now let us be critical of President Bush's father. He did not finish the job. He left us vulnerable, and left a homicidal maniac in charge of the country of Iraq. Well, that was not the responsible course of action, just like many things that Clinton did were not responsible, but we had to make up for it.

I have never suggested that Saddam Hussein had to have weapons of mass destruction for us to justify joining with the people of Iraq or helping liberate the people of Iraq from this dictator or monster because he had a blood grudge against us. It was prudent for us to eliminate that dictator before he was able to amass these mountains of money that were predicted because of the oil revenues that Iraq could expect in the future years, these tens of billions of dollars. He would have bought himself a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon. He would not have to build it; he would have bought chemical and biological weapons. He would have overthrown the Saudis with the tens of billions of dollars of oil money that he was about to reap. No, it made no sense to leave that man there.

We can be proud our President made the stand, even while everyone was throwing up their hands and nitpicking and naysaying and predicting horrible things. How many times did we hear: Why did we rush to this? The President took month after month after month trying to work it out peacefully, and then he was castigated as if he was rushing into war.

We should remember that because those who were predicting weeks of house-to-house combat, building by building would have to be taken, and urban fighting. That never materialized. It never materialized. We kept saying the people of Iraq do not want to live in a dictatorship. And yes, President Saddam Hussein did have his gang of thugs that were somewhat of a threat, but the people of Iraq have by and large been on our side.

What about the massive demonstrations that were going to be precipitated by America's adventurism overseas? And of course as the war ran its course, opposition actually declined. The number of people going into these demonstrations and saying and having all of these very negative thoughts about our country and troop deployment, they decreased over the days of this military operation. And of course now that it has ended in a very successful way, no one is out demonstrating.

Remember if we did this, there were predictions that there would be chaos and destabilization throughout the Arab world and the region and there in the Persian Gulf. Oh, the instability this would create. There would be wars springing up everywhere and regimes falling and it would create a much less safe world. That did not happen, did it?

But we heard all of these predictions. Let us not forget them. Let us not forget who was making those predictions and the speeches we heard right here on this floor by people making these very same predictions and doing their best to make sure that the American people had no confidence in their President's leadership during this vital moment in our history.

So what about the chaos and destabilization? It did not happen. What about the urban fighting that was supposed to go on for weeks? It did not happen. What about the vaporization of our troops with gas and nuclear weapons? That did not happen.

What about the Shiites rising up? There have been a few Shiite demonstrations, and most have been religious marches because under Saddam Hussein they were restricted from demonstrating their faith for 20 years. Finally, there are hundreds of thousands of them marching for their religious faith; but the left wing of this country, the news media, ends up characterizing that as being anti-American. No, the power play by some Shiites who are politically motivated in that direction numbered a couple thousand people, and we have made it clear to the people of Iraq that they are going to elect their own leaders and we are going to set up a system, we are going to work with them for a couple of years, and set up the institutions necessary for them to elect their own leaders.

Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt some Shiites are going to be elected, but they are not going to be elected in the name of establishing a theocracy like Iran. They just got rid of their dictatorship. Clearly the people of Iraq would like to live in freedom; and yes, there are some powermongers there, but we are not going to let them get away with it, and the people of Iraq are not going to let them pressure their way into power.

Remember the predictions about the Turks. They were going to invade the Kurdish areas in the northern part of Iraq. These Turks were going to come in and grab the oil and there would be bloodshed and chaos. Funny thing, that prediction did not come true either. Just remember who made these predictions.

All I am suggesting is let us learn, America, from what we have just gone through so when people get up in the future and undercut a President who is trying to make a tough stand to secure the blessings of peace and liberty for future Americans we will be able to stick behind him and we will know that the naysayers will always be with us, and the naysayers will always try to undercut a President that is acting on the behalf of the United States of America perhaps because psychologically they just down deep have such little faith in our own system because they only see the flaws in America.

I see the flaws. There is no doubt that America has a multitude of flaws. Look, we had slavery in this country. We had slavery long after Great Britain eliminated slavery. We have had racism in this country over the years.

Let me point out that race relations to almost all of the other countries in the world in those days, they were just as bad as we were; but that does not excuse us, a country that Thomas Jefferson wrote down such wonderful founding principles as ``Rights are given by God to every person.'' These are children of God, and we have not done right by many people here.

American Indians were not treated well, we know that. We know over the years we have had our share of corruption, but we know we, as Americans, have other things that we can be so proud of, that the average person has had so much more freedom here than in other countries. Even though there has been racial discrimination, we are going to try to work to end that. We have made a lot of progress in this.

Our Army during the Gulf War, if we look at who made up that Army, it was a little bit of America. Every American was there and represented, the leadership of the Army and the leadership of our country with Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld standing side by side along with our President, George Bush.

We have throughout the administration and in Congress seen these great examples of progress, and throughout the countryside and cities throughout our country, there is not the racial hatred and animosity that there was. I personally sense since 9/11 a wonderful rebirth, if not a rebirth, maybe it is a birth for the first time, of a feeling of goodwill among all Americans. We have gone through these times before, but I think 9/11 has unified us as never before, and we are building upon that. This President is building upon that goodwill to try to help us improve this country.

One day in the Los Angeles Times, when we talk about what the President has put up with and the pessimism, and this is the day before yesterday, they had a front-page story talking about the quagmire that we are in in Iraq. Talk about naysayers. But what happened just today, look at the Los Angeles Times. The very next day they have a story detailing the emergence of new leadership in Iraq.

Something is wrong here. We cannot have a story one day where we are in the middle of a quagmire and the next day have a new democratic leadership emerging in a country that has been under a dictatorship for so long. The problem is we had critics and naysayers who have been speaking out in loud voices and repeatedly they have been wrong, they have been wrong, and they have been wrong.

What we need to do tonight and what we must do in the weeks and months and years ahead is not forget what they have been saying and how wrong they have been so we will not listen to them and take their advice and base it on pessimism, on just undue pessimism in the future.

America in the future, as we have had now, and thank God we have had a President that is not afraid to act, we cannot be afraid to act if we are to be a prosperous people and if we are to live at peace and if our freedom is to be protected. We should have no apologies about acting in our own country's interest.

Let me repeat that because many of the people who are attacking our President are doing it based on some global strategy or some notion of what is going to happen in the world. We should have no compulsion about holding back when it is our country's interest, and I mean long- term interest. In the long-term interest of our country supporting the cause of freedom, supporting the cause of peace and freedom in this world, of liberty and justice for all as we say, this is in America's interest.

Ronald Reagan demonstrated that acting on the behalf of freedom, acting on behalf of liberty and justice, helping to support the various people struggling against the Soviet Union and supporting those people that believed in democracy, that helped end the Cold War; and now President Bush has clearly demonstrated that America's most powerful and successful strategy is not based on coalition building and some international acceptance or global strategy. Instead, our most powerful and successful strategy is one that is based on promoting human freedom.

Look at what happened in the last few months. Our foreign policy establishment seems obsessed with pleasing the international foreign policy establishment. Our own State Department, these are the people who are supposed to be doing our bidding, their liberal allies in the press and the leadership of the Democratic Party, had George W. Bush jumping through hoops. And as President of the United States, they had him going from here to there groveling before the United Nations and begging our NATO allies to join with us or to at least give us your approval.

Why should we need the approval of the United Nations or of our NATO allies to go forward and to do what is in our national security interest as long as that is consistent with promoting the cause of human freedom? By the way, again, if we are not furthering the cause of freedom and democracy, we probably should have second thoughts about what we are doing. But our enemies are the enemies of freedom. The Taliban in Afghanistan, al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, these people are enemies of the United States because we represent what is best in Western civilization.

We do not and should not need the approval of the United Nations to defend ourselves and to support other people who are struggling for freedom and democracy in far-off lands. Unfortunately, this has almost become a cliche about the United Nations. People think of the United Nations as our best hope. The United Nations is not our best hope. The United Nations is our worst nightmare. I hope the American people after looking at what has happened these last few months will understand that too is a lesson that we need to have learned. The United Nations is still with countries that are vicious, ugly dictatorships at the same level of Saddam Hussein. The world's worst human rights abuser, Communist China, has a veto power over anything the United Nations will do. We see the United Nations putting countries up that are dictatorships and human rights abusers. Fidel Castro ends up on the Human Rights Commission; and we end up being removed. Syria, you name it, these countries that do not have democratic governments, do not permit political opposition, end up in pivotal, decision-making positions.

Let us note that if we depend on the United Nations, we are going to pay a price anytime we have to do anything; and in this case it took so long, it almost undermined our entire effort in Iraq because it was just taking so much time, it would have put us in the middle of the summer and it would have compromised the entire military operation. But our President, trying to prove that he is going to do everything he can to bend over backwards in order to convince our allies and convince the United Nations that we respected their institutional prerogatives.

But what does it mean when you get the U.N. behind what you are doing? What it means is you have had to buy off the Communist Chinese. I do not know if we made any agreement, if our government ended up making an agreement with Communist China. I do not know. But I will tell you in the future, look very closely when people have a United Nations-based strategy. Perhaps in order for us to do something in our national security, they may demand that we never mention Tibet again. So we just write off the people of Tibet. Or how about other religious believers in China? Is that worth the price of getting their little approval in a vote in the United Nations? I say that is baloney. I say that is not worth it at all. There is no trade-off there. To get them to vote in the United Nations, that is worthy of us giving up millions of people in China who believe in God and so we will never mention it because we do not want to break our word to them that we are going to let them run their internal affairs now?

And then there are people in our State Department and throughout academe and the press who are trying to build this global strategy for America, yes, based on the United Nations which, as I say, very precarious, but then they want to, of course, set up an economic organization, the world trading organization, that will control trade and economic decisions so that we will have economic harmony, another great dream just like the United Nations. But if you look real close, it is a disaster. It is a disaster waiting to happen. We will have panels set up that

will be making decisions for what? It will be making decisions on whether or not our economic policies are consistent with the international agreements. Who will be on the policy boards and the commissions? And who will be running these structures and making these determinations? People from third-world countries, like Burma. How about Nigeria? How about Bolivia or Colombia? Do we really want countries like this to be making determinations if we are in compliance with international economic regulations and agreements? The people who will be serving on these boards from those countries will be bought off in a heartbeat by the Communist Chinese. We will not buy them off because we are moral. We want to go by the system. But they will not think twice; our enemies and the thugs of the world will not think twice about this.

You do not want to go through the U.N., and you do not want to set up a world organization run by countries that are not democratic in order to depend on a prosperity and a peace for the people of the United States of America. We also do not want to rely on NATO and our NATO allies anymore. NATO served its purpose, and its purpose was to deter the Soviets from invading western Europe and that is done. That is totally done. The Soviet Union is gone. Now we have a democratic Russia, a Russia who is struggling to be democratic. We do not need NATO to protect the peace. NATO is a bureaucracy, and now we find that our NATO allies whom we believe that we can depend upon are not dependable allies. We find out that NATO is worthless, that France, Germany and Belgium and even our neighbor Canada are fair-weather friends, fair-weather friends who we cannot depend upon to help us when our liberty is being threatened and when we feel compelled to act.

We have just spent in the last decade billions of dollars to help these NATO allies out in the Balkans, which is part of Europe, part of their responsibility. Yet we spent billions of dollars, put our military people at risk, and they in return gave us the back of their hand. By the way, we still have thousands of troops in Kosovo, thousands of troops in Kosovo. Yet our German, our French, our Belgian and other allies cannot get themselves to help us at a time like this. We did have, and I will say something inspiring, a new concept. As the President moved forward, he said we will have an alliance of the willing. That was extraordinarily inspiring. Great Britain, of course, stood with us. Yes, I think Tony Blair should be given an honorary citizenship in the United States of America. He and the rest of the British people are our great friends. But the people of Spain stood with us. Poland. We found our friends in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic and, yes, we found that our Aussie friends, the Australians, stood by us and proved themselves to be there when it counted.

Let me note, when the Australians come to us, I may be a bit suspicious about the World Trade Organization and setting up a grand alliance with everybody in the world, democratic or not, and having those rules apply and be applied by an international organization controlled by all these countries. I have no problem with the free trade agreement with Australia. They have proven themselves to be our friends and they are democratic.

What about one other country that I have not mentioned here a bit, a lesson that we may have learned in these last few months? What about Russia? They were not with us, were they? I have paid close attention to Russia; and I have separated it out from the rest in terms of an analysis of their potential and how we should relate to them. The Russians, I believe, first and foremost wanted to be on our side in the crisis from which we have just emerged. They requested, however, that if they would be on our side in any attack on Iraq, that the $8 billion that Iraq owes to Russia should not be canceled. They have a very weak economy right now. They are struggling in Russia. It was a very reasonable request for them to make, that if they were going to stand side by side with us, that we not let their economy take the $8 billion hit of a cancellation of the debt the Iraqis owed the Russians. They also said, let us be part of rebuilding Iraq. Those were two reasonable requests. We did not follow through.

We could have had Russia and the United States standing together. It would have been an awesome picture to the world. It would have presented a picture of strength that would have been very difficult for anyone ever to ignore. It would have shown a new alliance for democracy in the world. It was just a very sad thing; and I believe that if the administration has made mistakes, and all of us do, it was a mistake in passing up this opportunity and not following through on it and putting the energy into making it work with Russia as we could have. Just as I say, the vision of Russia and the United States standing there would have so overshadowed the French and the Germans and the other whiners in Belgium and elsewhere, that everyone would have known it is a totally new world. But with Russia, sort of playing games with them and being sort of part of their team, it did give a greater image of strength to those opposing us than need be.

Let me just note this. That does not mean we had to just go along. We could be creative. We could just go along and say, The Iraqis can't cancel their debt to Russia. I understand some of our diplomats were saying that, saying if they end up having to pay the debt to Russia, that is, if they end up paying the debt, it will be a burden around the new democratic Iraqi government's neck. We cannot burden the Iraqi people with having to pay back Russia so that is why we did not take them up on that offer. That is what I have heard. That is just a one- dimensional look at this issue. If we honestly felt that we wanted to have a democratic Iraq that was capable of acting without having to have that type of burden around their neck, we should have then told Russia, we will support your cancellation of Soviet-era debts to the German and French banks. That has been a burden around their neck all this time. We could have fulfilled their desire in a different way using a creative approach by letting the Russians cancel the debt to the German and French banks. That would have sent a very good message and at the same time protected the new democratic government in Iraq from having too much debt and a millstone around its neck. But we did not do it. As I say, it is something that is past now; but we are going to have to work to make up for that what, I believe, is a mistake.

There are ways that we can work with Russia. We need to help the reformers in Russia. I know that just a couple of weeks ago there was a liberal reformer who was assassinated in Russia, showing us that we have got to stand by the good people in Russia who are struggling and even putting their lives at risk to try to build a more democratic and more decent place in what was the Soviet Union. So let us give the Russians a way to work in partnership with us and not to be considered an outsider. We did not do that during this Gulf War, this Gulf War II; we did not go out of our way to do that as we should have. The Columbia shuttle disaster, however, let me note, I am not only on the Committee on International Relations but I am also the chairman of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee of Science, so I oversee NASA.

Let me say, the Columbia shuttle disaster, yes, it was a horrible thing and sometimes, as the Chinese say, opportunity and challenges are part of the same word. We have great opportunities in how we are going to deal with the shuttle disaster Columbia. It permits us a chance to work even closer with Russia in the satellite area and in the area of the international Space Station and space transportation. They have rocket engines in Russia that are superior to the rocket engines of the United States. We need not spend money to develop rocket engines in the United States when we can buy that type of capability from the Russians themselves. Let us let them get into the game of selling their services to the world; and when they do have something to sell, let us not cut them out by protecting our own industries. Our industries have to compete with them. Instead of spending money replicating what the Russians can do, let us spend our research dollars developing newer technologies and leapfrog technologies that will put us ahead of the game.

I know that there are some restrictions on Russia, especially in cooperating with Russia in this arena, in the

space arena, because Russia is building a nuclear power plant for the Iranians. I agree, they should not be doing that. The Iranians have oil and natural gas. They do not need a nuclear power plant. There is only one reason that they would want that and that would be to build a nuclear weapon and we will not permit that to happen. But we cannot just lay it on Russia, It is in our interest not to have the nuclear power plant built, and walk away, just like we were saying to them, you are going to have to join us and have the risk of losing that $8 billion in Iraq, you are going to have to absorb the cost.

This is a country that is just struggling to have a decent economy to help their people raise their standard of living which has been going down for years. Now they have a chance to raise it. We should not be trying to undercut them, but let us use some creativity here. If they cannot build a nuclear power plant for Iran because Iran is controlled by hostile powers, let us help the Russians build a nuclear power plant for Turkey. Or how about Australia? Or how about the Philippines?

These are countries that need electricity. We could probably arrange and guarantee a loan from the World Bank, and it would not even cost us any money. We would just have to help guarantee it and arrange the business deal, and then the Russians could build that; and they would be building something that would not be a threat to us like it is in Iran, and then we could move forward with a number of space-related projects in which both countries would benefit. But it takes creativity and a commitment to freedom in American foreign policy. And the struggle for freedom, the direction of Russia, is one of the pivotal fights in our time. If Russia goes in the way of democracy in the West and builds up these economic relations with the people in the Western democracies, especially in the United States, our world will prosper and will live in peace. If it goes the opposite direction, if it begins to more align itself with China, which has an anti-view of Western Civilization and is a belligerent country to democracy or if it starts to align itself with the thugs of the world, then there will be a lot of trouble in the world ahead and the Russian people and the American people will suffer because of it. So let us have a freedom-based policy and work with those people in Russia and elsewhere looking to promote a freer society.

Unfortunately, that is not the basis of what our State Department uses to decide upon American foreign policy. After looking at the American State Department up close now for about 15 years, actually probably more like 20 years now because it has been 7 years in the Reagan White House, I would say that if there is one word that is the goal of the State Department, it is not globalism, it is stability. They believe in a foreign policy which they call a pragmatic foreign policy, which is based on a formula for stability.

Ironically, and this is what is so ironic, pragmatism as a strategy does not work. It is idealism and the ideals of freedom and democracy that work, that help to build a more stable world. We receive stability when we put freedom and liberty and justice into the equation while we are trying to figure out what we should be doing in various parts of the world; and it is only when we have liberty and justice as part of that decision-making concept that we will find that peace is possible.

For example, in Kosovo here we are still. Years and years and years we have been in Kosovo. I remember when I was down on the floor predicting that it was going to be a decade before we got out of Kosovo, and we were assured by all those people who voted for this at President Clinton's request, it will be 1 year, a 1-year deployment. Sure. We should not forget that either. We should remember all the lessons we have learned over these last few years. We are still in Kosovo, and do the Members know why we are in Kosovo? We have got thousands of troops in Kosovo because our State Department has basically convinced themselves that we cannot recognize Kosovo's right to have their own country. In Kosovo 90 percent of them are Muslims; they are Albanian extraction. They want to have their own country just like the Croatians want their own country, just like the Slovenians want their own country, and they have got their own little country; and there is no reason why they cannot, except that would make the Serbs really mad. So in order for the Serbs not to get angry, to make sure that there is not a crisis, to ensure stability of the moment, we have kept our forces in Kosovo all of this time.

We should have worked a long time ago in order to build a consensus and reach compromises within the Kosovo society for there to be free elections and there to be a referendum; and the people of Kosovo should decide with a vote, with their own vote, whether or not Kosovo should be independent. I have no doubt that they would vote for their independence, and then we should support them in building their own defense forces to protect their borders and just let the Serbs know that, I am sorry, they cannot attack the Kosovars. They cannot attack the Macedonians; and whatever they declare their national sovereignty, they cannot attack the Slovenians, the Bosnians. I am sorry, but Serbia has got to be enough for them. By the way, each one of those countries has a map of a greater Serbia or a greater Albania or a greater Croatia, claiming that their borders used to be way down here and thus they should control it even though the vast majority of the people in those areas are no longer Croatian or Serbian or whatever, no. Where the majority of people want to be part of a government, we let them vote on it; and if they want their independence, they have a right to declare their independence. God gave them the right to control their own destiny through the ballot box.

That is what the United States of America is supposed to be all about. We developed a system which works. It is practical, but the basis of the system is an understanding that people have a right to control their own destiny through the ballot box, and they have a right to live in peace and freedom and dignity.

In Afghanistan we are making the same kind of mistake as we are making in Kosovo. And our State Department has again proven itself totally incapable of appreciating America's experience and America's ideals of how we solve things. In Kosovo they will not let these people have their own country even though the vast majority of them want their own country because it might make the Serbs mad. In Afghanistan there are many, many different ethnic groups. And in Afghanistan the major ethnic groups, they call them the Northern Alliance right after we were attacked, and this Northern Alliance is an alliance of ethnic groups, which compose about 50 percent of the population; they were the ones who fought the Taliban, those people, and they have militias. And their militias and their generals, which they call them warlords, which is very pejorative, they fought the Taliban and kicked the Taliban out while a huge chunk of the population of Afghanistan did not fight the Taliban. They sort of sat it out. They are called Pashtans, and the Pashtans of course share Pakistan and Afghanistan. And guess what? Now our State Department, so we do not make the Pakistanis mad, we have to have the Pashtans in power in Afghanistan.

That is not what this is all about. We believe in democracy. We believe in people controlling their own destiny through the ballot box. Our State Department is pushing the French model in Afghanistan. The French model is when there is a strong central government and it appoints the police chiefs, the head of the local schools, the people who provide local services; and they do not have local government really. They have a strong central government. What do the Members think about these five ethnic groups that fought alongside the United States against the Taliban and we are telling them they have to disarm and basically let the strong central government, which is now dominated by another ethnic group who did not fight the Taliban, control them?

I recently went to Afghanistan and helped work out a compromise, and the compromise is very easy. The warlords supposedly, their ethnic groups or their militias, will disband their armies. They will demobilize. They will disarm. But they have to be guaranteed

the right to elect their own mayors and city councils, to elect their own provincial governors, just like here in the United States. Why is it the State Department cannot understand what made America successful? This is what made America successful. We do not centralize power in order to bring about a more peaceful society. We diffuse power and we let everybody share in it, and we have people electing the people who will most affect them.

I will tell the Members I do not understand why the State Department does not understand, but they are pushing the wrong way in Afghanistan. It will not work there, and it is going to cause more trouble and it is not working. It is keeping us tied up in Kosovo. We need to make some decisions here, and we should not be leaving it up to the professionals of the State Department. The professionals at the State Department, when they are negotiating, they are not negotiating, as I have just pointed out, from the idea of what is best for America or even what is most consistent with the American way of government. Instead, they have an ideal of their own in mind. It is a worldwide pragmatic organized world based with United Nations, with the WTO, with all of these world health organizations, world trade organizations, and this is the dream of the people who are representing us. So when we go into negotiations and we try to have our government directed one way or the other, we end up not having America's interest and America's ideals in place. They are not part of the bargaining table. The people on the other side of the bargaining table, they know that they are bargaining for what is good for their country. Our people are bargaining for what is good for the world, what is good for the global vision of the world.

A few years ago the Euro was in trouble. The Euro was in trouble. The dollar of the European Economic Alliance was in trouble. Why is it in our interest to help them build an economic coalition that is aimed at undercutting us? Why should we build our competitors up in Europe? Why should we help them build a currency that permits them to undercut the United States of America? Why did we do this? And this was about 4 years ago, the Euro was collapsing, and we took money from our own account here in the United States that should be aimed at stabilizing the American dollar, and we took it over there and we stabilized the Euro. We should not want our competitors to do well. Our job is to watch out for the people of the United States of America. Instead of these large grandiose worldwide treaties based on economics, we should be going individually to countries like Australia, for example, and having agreements, Japan and elsewhere, having bilateral agreements that we will insist on being enforced with other democratic countries rather than putting ourselves at the mercy, at the mercy, of organizations that will be controlled by people from countries that do not share our ideals. Yet our own State Department has this type of world as their goal.

Let me just note that during the time when our President was trying to do the bidding of the State Department and trying to jump through the hoops, trying to have a strategy based on what they wanted him to do, things seemed to bog down. It looked like we were weak and that our President lost his purpose and was not going to be following through. He kept saying that he was, but it became tiresome. It was frightening for a moment to think that he might back down. Instead, that all changed when the President gave a speech before the American Enterprise Institute, and that is when he outlined the moral basis, not just the pragmatic basis. They were going to have regime change. Remember? They were going to have regime change. That was their goal. When he spoke at the American Enterprise Institute, and I believe that was the end of February, he outlined for the people of the world and for the people of Iraq that our goal was freedom and justice for the people of Iraq and that we will only stay there long enough to help them build a democratic system.

After that our effort was energized. After that there was no stopping the United States of America because we were the freedom fighters, and those who opposed Saddam Hussein and wanted democracy were our allies, and the President allied himself with those people all over the world who believed in freedom and justice and democracy, and most importantly he allied himself with the people in Iraq who believed in those things.

Yes, it is when we stay true to our ideals, it is when we have a morally based, a freedom-based foreign policy that America becomes unstoppable because our goal is not to dominate the world but to create, yes, a better world that is based on freedom, not based on more bureaucratic organizations, but on freedom and on people treating each other decently, on liberty and justice for all, as we have said many times.

We would hope that as we face these challenges in the future, that the people of the United States remember what we just went through and learn the lessons. Our military learned the lessons of the seventies and eighties. Our CIA and our intelligence agencies have learned the lessons of 9/11. But the American people need to learn the lessons of what we have just been through.

There will always be naysayers. There will be pessimists, people who do not believe in our system. There will be people who believe in a global approach, but not believe in America as a leader. But we must lead the way.

The President of the United States is doing a terrific job for us, but we as the American people must stand behind any President that is willing to act in the cause of freedom. We must lead the world, because, if we do not, there will be no courage on the part of the people who believe in freedom and justice anywhere in the world, unless they know that the United States is with them, and we are with everyone throughout the world who would side with liberty and justice and against tyranny.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 47 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, May 7, 2003, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to identify myself with the gentleman's remarks and I am very happy I was able to yield those 5 minutes because I could not agree more with the gentleman.

Tonight I would like to discuss a matter very similar to what we were just hearing. I would like to talk about American foreign policy.

First and foremost, when we talk about America and talk about some of our basic policies, let us note that America is not like every other country. America is a unique country in the world, and I have always believed that God has a special place for the United States of America. Why is this? Because America, unlike other countries, represents every ethnic group, every religion, every race and every kind of human being that you can imagine. We represent the world here. We have people from all over the world who have come here to live in freedom and enjoy opportunity, to better the lives of their family, and they have come here from every place in the world to try to live in harmony with one another, but also to enjoy our freedom and opportunity. We have this place here between two oceans, this incredible land that was given to us that has vast natural resources.

Our Founding Fathers understood this. They thought that there was divine province in the establishment of America and that gives us a very special responsibility to the world. And also a responsibility to those Founding Fathers was not to waste this gift that they have given us.

Our Founding Fathers were extraordinary people. And they had a profound understanding of human nature and of special organization. The Declaration of Independence, to this day, is the most revolutionary of all national charters. It talks about God-given rights, about the consent of the governed, as these two things being the basis of freedom, of liberty. Later, our Constitution would detail a system of checks and balances and of limited and layered government that would protect the freedom of the people while ensuring our society stability and our society the type of government it would need to progress.

We were, back as long as our history started, back in 1776, through our history and on and all the way till today, the hope of the world. We were the hope to those people of the world who longed for liberty and justice, the people who hoped in the world that there was a better way, and we were there to show them a better way, and they could identify with us because we were the world. We are the people who represent every race and every religion. And we do not define ourselves by just a geographic area but instead by beliefs in liberty and justice for all. Beliefs that are at the heart of our system, instead of a religion or a race or even a locale.

This is not to say that the United States of America has been a perfect country. And I disagree with many of my conservative friends who try to idealize the past of our country and try to say that we were a bunch of puritan moralists or something like that and very religious. I am a religious person myself, but it is very easy to see that many Americans were very rambunctious people over the years ago. There were hell raisers. There were frontiersmen, and there were saloons and brothels in our history and gangsters. That does not mean those things should overshadow the fact that there were also churches and educators and philanthropists and people that helped each other and cared about each other.

Let us not say it was perfect here. Let us also remember that the taint of slavery was around from the very beginning, and how we treated our black population and the minority populations in the past should be an area of concern for us. We should not ignore it. We should try to make sure that we commit ourselves for making up for that in building a better America for everybody in the future. But there was racism in the past and there is some racism that exists even today that we should be working on because we want America to live up to its promise.

We have seen in the past scandals and manipulation of government that match some of the very best in various parts of the world. But the fact is we also know that at the basis of America is a system of government that gives us the opportunity to correct the mistakes and to make things better and a system of ideals that call out for all Americans to respect each other and to work together to build a better country and to build a better world.

Constant vigilance on the part of our citizens and the part of every American is required to make sure that our country continues to be free and that we continue to solve problems as they emerge, and that is something that sometimes is a little hard to do. I mean, when you talk about constant vigilance, sometimes it becomes nothing more than a slogan or some sort of a phase that may or may not have any meaning. But what we have to do, I mean by constant vigilance is we have to make sure our people focus on these ideals of our country and focus on our government enough to make sure we are doing what is right.

And it is so easy for our citizens in a free country just to focus their own lives because they are free to do so, and they are free to try to improve the lives of their children. Thus, they are out with their children at ball games and they are helping their communities and, thus, sometimes these good and decent people who make up America just rely on our government, and especially on our government and the people who work for our government to do what is right, to do what is right domestically, but also to do what is right in those areas that our people really cannot focus on and know all the details on American foreign policy.

I would say that America has, at times, let the American people down, but the American people have not let us down. American people have remained the most charitable people in the world, bar none, and I know that. I am, by the way, just not talking about our government and the government's services. I do not consider that a reflection of benevolence. I consider that to be a bureaucratic solution. And quite often some government programs are just established so we do not have to think about a problem, and it is a way of soothing many people. The liberals soothe their consciences by setting up a program that may not work but at least they can say they are trying to work on a program rather than trying to do something in and of themselves. But our people are willing to commit themselves. And they have committed themselves and provide more charity and more help to each other and more help to people in need around the world than any other people.

Of course, liberals do not like to admit this because they claim we do not give enough; and, of course, most of the time they are just basing it on the level of foreign aid or the level of donations we make to the United Nations. But that is not the way to judge the benevolence of the people. No, that is not the way to judge at all.

How much are we giving as individuals to help people in need? Many of our groups, many ethnic groups, as I say, from various countries that return to their homeland where they came from or from where their ancestors came from and give all sorts of assistance, thousands and thousands of dollars and any help, not only just in times of crisis but in other times. This is part of the benevolence of our country that these people return to their homeland and give vast sums of money to help the people who were left behind.

Also, we have given in emergency situations. There are people that can always come to the United States and we are always there to help. But also in a crisis, but also what we have not been given credit for is our people are willing to go out and put their lives on the line to preserve the peace of the world. That we never get credit for. In fact, even in the United Nations, when we sent peacekeepers out, our peacekeepers and the amount of money that they cost, we pick up their paycheck and we are not even accredited for that in the United Nations as a contribution to the United Nations.

And then my liberal colleagues who criticize us for not giving what we should to the U.N. If you count in all the money for the peacekeeping operations and all what we have done to keep peace in the world, we probably give more money than the rest of them combined. But we need to make sure that when the United States takes a stand in the world, that we are doing it in a way that is consistent with the ideals of our Founding Fathers.

I am here tonight to discuss a morally-based American foreign policy. It is more than simply giving money in foreign aid or even benevolently giving money voluntarily as citizens to help people in other countries, and even more than participating in U.N. peacekeeping operations. It is what we stand for and what our government pushes for overseas and what we fight for at times.

In the last 100 years, we have saved the democratic world. We have saved western civilization in World War I in World War II. In the Cold War it was the American people that stepped forward to save civilization at a time of great peril. The threats that led to World War II and the threat during that Second World War and during the Cold War, of course, were much easier to understand than many of the challenges that we face today.

Today many of those challenges are less definable and they are less understandable. So today our role is much more complicated. But we must be willing to act just as our Americans moved in the last generation and the generations before were willing to act. In order to be a force in this world for the ideals that were laid forth back in 1776 by our country's founders and to make this world a more peaceful place and a place, because if this world is not

peaceful, America will pay a price. Because technology has shrunk this planet so that each of us are affected when a terrorist or a dictator has his way in different parts of this planet.

So we must be willing to pay the price, and that price is involvement and that price is engagement and that price is, yes, there is an economic price in having the technology and the weapons and the military that is capable of defending the United States and having the foreign policy establishment educated and committed to the ideals of the United States engaged in pushing the world in the right direction.

September 11, I believe, was a result of bad policy. What we faced, the disaster there, and it was not a disaster that was a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster. And it was something that could have been averted had we had different policies. Yet, we had policies that led to 9-11. And in 9-11 we lost more people, there were more casualties in New York on September 11 than there were casualties by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

And the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the main target there, of course, were our soldiers and sailors, members of our military. So this heinous attack on 9-11 was much more brutal and much more aimed at our society and much more of an egregious assault on us than was the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I would submit that, as I say, 9-11 need not have happened. It started with our policy in Afghanistan. And just a short brief on that. People understand I have had a long history in Afghanistan, from the time I worked in the Reagan White House. I was in the Reagan White House for 7 years. During that time, as part of Ronald Reagan's strategy to defeat the Soviet Empire and bring it down and prevent it from being a threat to the United States and the free people of the world, we supported people in Afghanistan and elsewhere who were fighting Soviet expansionism.

We helped the Afghans fight against the Soviet Army that occupied their country. We provided them with weapons and equipment, and they fought bravely and courageously. It was their blood and their courage that helped end the Cold War because they drove the Soviets out of their country and broke the will of the communist bosses in Moscow. That is one of the major battles that helped us bring down the Berlin Wall and end the Cold War so that we were able then to enjoy a decade of relative peace and prosperity.

Yet the Afghans were left alone to fight each other in the rubble, with no assistance or help from the United States. We abandoned our Afghan friends after the Soviets left. We abandoned them because we made an agreement. I have not seen the agreement, but I am sure it was made. All the evidence is there. We made an agreement with the Pakistanis and the Saudis that they would be the ones to oversee Afghanistan. That in and of itself was not the right thing to do. It is the people of Afghanistan that we owed a debt to. It is the people of Afghanistan who fought bravely against the Soviets. Any agreement that was made about what would be happening in Afghanistan should have been focused on the consent of the governed, meaning the people of Afghanistan, and not a political power play among Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.

So what ended up happening was that we simply left. We went and enjoyed our freedom and our prosperity at the expense of these people. What happened? Well, what emerged in Afghanistan was truly evil. It was a regime based on an extreme faction of Islam, based on the Wahhabi part of Islam, which is a very small faction of the Islamic religious faith. It was superimposed on them by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Having been in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets, and I was there working with the Afghans, fighting with the Afghans against Soviet troops back in 1988, I can tell you that those people are devout in their faith, but they are not fanatics like those that we picture when we think of the fanaticism of the Taliban. They were devout Muslims. They really hold God in their heart. They call God Allah, but it is the same that we say when we say God. They were not people who were insisting that everyone else pray the same way they did.

But the Taliban, as I say, is a derivative of the Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia who were superimposed on Afghanistan; and they had no help from us. The people of Afghanistan had no help from us, and the Taliban took over Afghanistan and turned it into a horror story for the people of Afghanistan and a horrible threat for the people of the Western world. But the Taliban, did, as I say, did not just emerge in power. It was there because the United States policy permitted it to be or even acquiesced to it or even supported the creation of the Taliban in agreement with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

I worked for years, after the fall of the Soviet Union, and after the Soviets left Afghanistan, to try to offer Afghanistan some help. I went to every country around Afghanistan to get support for a return to Afghanistan of the old king, Zahir Shah, who had been overthrown by the Soviet puppets back in 1973. Zahir Shah had been king of that country for 40 years, and they had peace and they had prosperity. He was a very moderate force in that society. His wife actually took the burqa off and threw it into the street one day. So he was trying to bring more democratic government. He was trying to bring more liberalization of their society.

But the communists manipulated the forces in that society, overthrew Zahir Shah with those forces, and then murdered the people who overthrew Zahir Shah and came to power themselves. And that is when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

Zahir Shah is a fine man. The people of Afghanistan loved him. We could have brought him back. Had we supported him, had the United States supported bringing him back, he would have ushered in democracy into that country. That is what he was pledged to do. Yet our government wrote him off.

And when I personally went to the countries around Afghanistan to try to get support for him rather than the Taliban, I was followed by a representative of the State Department at each of my meetings. At each of the meetings that I had with different political leaders in these countries, a representative of our embassy, meaning the United States State Department, was there saying Dana Rohrabacher is speaking for himself. He is not speaking for the United States of America. In other words, do not listen to Dana Rohrabacher.

For anybody who wants to know who is to blame for 9-11, you can thank those State Department elitists who decided that the Taliban was better than King Zahir Shah and undercut every effort to bring a moderate government to Afghanistan. They are the ones, whether they were in Pakistan or whether they were in Turkmenistan or whether they were in various countries of the world where meetings were taking place, who undercut those efforts of the Taliban's enemies, or let us say those people who would just offer an alternative to the Taliban. Every time the State Department interceded.

At one point, once the Taliban were in power, they became very vulnerable, because they had overstepped their bounds and their military had been defeated in the north and a swift reaction on the part of the anti-Taliban forces could have made the difference, could have eliminated them from power. President Clinton sent Bill Richardson, then our United Nations ambassador, and Under Secretary of State Inderforth to northern Afghanistan and convinced the anti-Taliban forces not to go into action but to seek a cease-fire, and to seek a cease-fire with an embargo of weapons, which would mean that they could talk out their differences.

Well, of course, with an emissary from the President and people at that high level to go up to talk to these so-called warlords in the northern part of Afghanistan, naturally they acquiesced. And, of course, immediately the resupply of weapons began to the Taliban and the cease-fire was immediately violated as soon as the Taliban were replenished with their weapons supply by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. We could have eliminated the Taliban then, or we could have prevented the Taliban from coming to power had we supported an alternative, like Zahir Shah.

I was always so frustrated about this, because I knew that the United States Government had a policy of supporting or at least acquiescing to this monstrous regime. For years, I was asking for our Secretary of State Albright to provide the papers to me as a senior member of the Committee on International Relations to see about America's support for the Taliban. And, no, I could not get hold of them. I will have to say that some people on the other side of the aisle were very condescending towards me when I suggested we needed to see that because there might be support for the Taliban.

Well, what happened recently? About 2 months ago the foreign minister of Pakistan came to visit in California and got up and publicly acknowledged that it was not just Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that created the Taliban, but it was the United States, your representatives were in the room, and so quit blaming Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Well, thank you, President Clinton. If there was a representative of the United States Government in the room, it was a representative of President Bill Clinton. It was a representative of our State Department. Want to ask who is responsible for 9-11? There you go. We now are dealing with national security threats that were passed on to us during the Clinton administration.

The world lost respect for us, and they certainly did not fear us at all after 8 years of Bill Clinton. Human rights under that administration was turned into America's lowest priority. It became a joke in the sense that we would have the President of the United States going to China, talking about human rights, and then having business as usual, even though those same human rights violations were going on. Dealing with gangsters and dictators and the likes of the Taliban became the order of the day for 8 years under President Clinton.

The number three man in bin Laden's terrorist operation, this operation that conducted the 9-11 attack on the United States, has told investigators that it was America's weak response to the embassy bombings, our embassies that were bombed in Africa, killing hundreds of people and many Americans, it was our tepid response to that, where we shot a few cruise missiles out into the desert, because we did not respond any more than that, it convinced these terrorists to move forward with their plan to attack the World Trade Center and kill thousands of Americans. That is the number three man in bin Laden's operation who has confirmed that that is what was on their mind.

Well, thank God we now have a President who acts forcefully and thus will prevent gangsters and terrorists and people like the Taliban from thinking they can attack Americans and kill us by the thousands and get away with it. No, our President is sending another message. It is a message of strength; it is of resolve, moral courage, and principle.

I am sure our President must know what Teddy Roosevelt said. One of Teddy Roosevelt's most favorite quotes of mine was, ``The greatest sin of all is to hit someone softly.'' You do not launch a couple of cruise missiles and hit the bare desert. After the attack on our embassies, they bombed a pharmaceutical factory that had nothing to do with the attack on our embassies. No, you do not do it that way. If someone attacks you and kills thousands of your people, you have got to act boldly, you have to act with courage, and you have to make them pay a price, or Americans will pay even higher prices in the years ahead. Again, thank God we now have a President that understands that principle.

In the months after 9-11, the President rose to the occasion. But let me add that in the months after just being elected President, in his first few months, I had three separate discussions in the White House about a policy that might eliminate the Taliban. So I was involved in discussions with the White House, this White House, the Bush White House, prior to 9-11, trying to make sure that we would move forward. I was having a very receptive audience on how we could rid the world of the Taliban regime. The President was, as I say, and his staff, were very, very receptive. And then 9-11 happened.

In fact, let me note that on 9-11 I called the National Security Adviser to the President. I actually called on 9-10, the day before the attack. Because of my contacts in Afghanistan and my analysis of what was going on, I realized our country was about to be attacked. I did not know exactly what form it would take, but I called the White House to warn the National Security Adviser. I called and I said this is an emergency, it is a national security emergency, I need to talk to Condoleezza Rice and the White House operative got back to me and said, Congressman, she is so busy today, but she will see you. He said she will see you tomorrow at 2 p.m. so on 9-11 I had an appointment at 2 p.m. in the afternoon to see Condoleezza Rice to warn her that our country was about to be attacked.

But let me just say that after the attack on 9-11, our President rose to the occasion. He has been an incredibly impressive human being in the days since 9-11. He has pledged to the American people that he will hunt down every one of those people involved, those terrorists, those murderers who killed our people on 9-11, and that we will do everything necessary to protect America's national security, and that is just what he has been doing over this last year and a half.

He has been handicapped, however, by the same State Department that traveled around after me all those years and stonewalled my efforts to get rid of the Taliban and to prevent them from getting into power, the same entrenched elite State Department is at play, and our President has had to deal with them all of this time in achieving his goals. They undermine elected officials whom they cannot control. And even with a world-class leader like Colin Powell at the helm, this entrenched foreign policy bureaucracy still seems to be in power and still has inordinate control over American foreign policy.

Afghanistan is an example. Even from the outside, the policy that we had towards Afghanistan seemed disjointed. It looked a little bit disjointed in the days after 9-11. It took our President and Secretary Rumsfeld to push aside a State Department that was committed, and get this, our State Department after 9-11 was still committed to keeping the Taliban in power, even after 9-11. It took all of the effort, as I said, our President and Rumsfeld to push that policy aside and trash- can it.

Let me note also, we were operating in Afghanistan after 9-11 almost blind. Members will hear that the CIA was involved in Afghanistan before the Green Berets, but let me tell Members and I cannot give the exact number but almost none, there was very limited CIA presence in Afghanistan. The State Department and the CIA did not know who the players were because they had pooh-poohed all of the anti-Taliban forces for so long they did not know who they were.

The plan at that point that the State Department was pushing was to leave the Taliban in power and to send a huge military force, an American force in through the south using Pakistan as a base of operations, and take control of perhaps Kabul or a city in southern Afghanistan and then to negotiate with the Taliban who controls the entire countryside for the return of bin Laden. That would have been a disaster, and it was based on leaving the Taliban in power, people who hated us, people who turned their country into a staging area for a terrorist operation intentionally. They knew what was going on. They hated America and hated the west, and we were going to leave them in power?

Well, let us put it this way. The best that our State Department could do and the CIA could do is probably that plan because they did not know anybody in the anti-Taliban forces. There was a team of people who went shortly after 9-11 to the Department of Defense, to the State Department, to the CIA, and made sure that our government at the highest levels knew the names and locations of those people who were fighting the Taliban who could provide thousands of fighters. We provided the names, the locations, the number of fighters available, and even the satellite telephone numbers of the so-called warlords who were in charge of tens of thousands of troops who would do our bidding on the battlefield against the Taliban.

That small team that went there to advise our government were made up of people like Charlie Santos, Paul Behrends, Al Santoli, Dusty Rhoades and myself. Meeting after meeting took place, and all this information was transmitted. At the DOD, people went to work immediately to try to put in place a plan that could dislodge the Taliban and destroy al Qaeda. The group in the DOD that took the ball and ran with it include Paul Wolfowitz, Peter Rodman, Bill Lutti and several others who acted immediately on this opportunity to work with the people of Afghanistan to help them throw out their tyrants.

We helped them liberate themselves from the tyranny of the Taliban. Thus, we accomplished our own foreign policy objectives by working with people and promoting our own ideals of freedom and democracy.

What was put into place was Task Force Dagger, one of the most successful military operations in U.S. history. It was turned from a plan into an historical accomplishment by the courage, skill and hard work of unsung heroes, yes, some of them in the CIA, and yes, many of them in the special forces. Special forces heroes like Captain Nutsch became legendary in Afghanistan but unknown to the people of the United States. Thanks to people like Special Forces Captain Nutsch, we won an incredible victory in Afghanistan, losing only about 35 people to hostile fire. We should be proud of our defenders and grateful to the Afghans who fought with them and destroyed the Taliban and bin Laden's forces in Afghanistan. For a second time, these people in Afghanistan did our bidding, rose up and fought America's enemy and defeated that enemy.

I recently visited the grave of a CIA officer who was there on the scene and helped fight this battle and helped organize this magnificent victory. I went to the grave of Mike Spann who was buried in Mazar-e- Sharif. I was there about 10 days ago. The local people are so grateful to Mike Spann they had a ceremony to honor him. They built a monument to him. It is a very inspiring monument because they realize that the Taliban oppressors would have never been defeated had the special forces teams not been there to help them with the logistic supplies and the forces that they needed to defeat the Taliban.

But let us not forget that as the battle in Afghanistan progressed, voices were heard here that were less than supportive of what we were doing. This was even after 9-11. The pessimists and naysayers were at work and they started talking, even after a week or two, talking about a quagmire that we were in, and they started a propaganda campaign against, and they are the ones who came up with the word ``warlords,'' they started labeling our people and trying to find out what was wrong with those forces who were fighting with us rather than being grateful that we had people who were working with us to destroy the Taliban and al Qaeda who had murdered thousands of our people.

Forces under commanders like General Dostum, Halli, Ata, Faheen, and Ishmail Khan led ground forces there in Afghanistan that drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan and defeated the al Qaeda forces. I will let Members know the al Qaeda were the Taliban's old home people who were engaged in this sort of cult, which represented about 10 percent of the people. They were Afghans, but al Qaeda was made up of foreigners, many from Pakistan but many Arabs as well, who had come into Afghanistan to use Afghanistan as a base of operations against the west. But also, anyone in Afghanistan that raised their head in opposition to the Taliban were brutally murdered by bin Laden and his thugs. They were grateful when we came to help free them from these radical fanatics who were coming in from outside their country and murdering them to keep the Taliban in power.

Yes, we can be grateful to those people in Afghanistan. We can also be grateful to our special forces and CIA, and we can be grateful to those people in the United States. Again, these things do not just happen. They happen because we have planned for them. What happened is we had the high-tech weapons system that we needed to do the job. Yes, Bill Clinton during his years did permit some of these weapons systems to be built. He dramatically cut the defense budget, but that is okay. These weapons systems were permitted within the budget left.

But with those high-tech weapons systems, we were able, with the courage and cooperation and alliance with those people in Afghanistan, to get this job done. But what has happened in Afghanistan is not over. We need to do what is right diplomatically and make the right political decisions if we are to make sure that this does not happen all over again, that Afghanistan does not get drawn back into a morass of evil.

What we must do first of all is help them rebuild their country. Our President has laid out a plan that has been very committed even through the Iraqi operation to making sure the people of Afghanistan have the help they need. We have not given them enough as of yet, and there have been bureaucratic roadblocks to the rebuilding of Afghanistan. Although there has been about $1 billion spent and there are signs that things will be getting better, the pace has been inexcusably slow. We need to speed that pace up, and we need to make sure that they can rebuild their country and their aqueducts, rebuild their roads and hospitals and schools.

Mr. Speaker, ten days ago I was in Afghanistan. I drove about half the distance of that country on back roads, and I will tell Members it was a sight to see. There were burned out Russian tanks everywhere and rubble strewn. I saw a gang of kids, probably about 100 of them, and I stopped the car and went over to see them. I had an interpreter with me. It was kids who had arranged the rubble of a building that had been destroyed so they could sit down, and they were teaching each other to read and write. They were teaching each other to read and write sitting in the rubble. We need to work with those young people so they can learn to read and write, do their numbers, and so that they can be part of the community of nations, part of this great new world that we are building rather than be manipulated in ignorance by some extremist religious sect.

We also need to really make solid and right decisions about what is going on politically. Let me note that those people who helped us defeat the Taliban were basically from the northern part of the country where there are five different ethnic groups. These are not warlords and warlord armies, these are ethnic group militias that knew they had to arm themselves to be safe, just like our forefathers armed themselves and had their militias. That represents about half of the country in the north. That represents 50 percent of the Afghan population. The other 50 percent of the Afghan population are Pashtuns. Their territory is along the Pakistani border. Because they represent 50 percent of it, they represent a much bigger portion. Thus, in a central government we can expect that the Pashtuns will have much more influence than those 5 ethnic groups in the north.

But it was the ethnic groups in the north that were America's friends. They were the ones who put their lives on the line for us, and to a certain degree the Pashtuns did not fight very much at all; and, in fact, many of them were relatively sympathetic in one way or the other or at least acquiesced to the Taliban because they were cousins or whatever. This is what is happening today. Unfortunately, I am sad to report after my trip to Afghanistan, our government is again siding with those people who are not our friends, and they are trying to undercut our friends. The people who fought for us and helped liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban, those forces in the north, are being undermined, and they are doing everything they can to try to disarm those people even as skirmishes with the Taliban still occur in the southern part of the country.

And of course our government, the United States Government, the State Department, if I can put that in a more correct term, is pushing to have a system in Afghanistan totally out of sync with the American experience. In fact, they are using the French model in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan what they are doing is asking for a strong central government that will appoint local leaders. That is not what we do in the United States. We have layered government. We have federalism. We have

State and local people elected; thus, if someone takes over Washington, whether it is Bill Clinton or whoever, the whole country does not go crazy. They just say okay, we have different people in different parts of the country. We have checks and balances and separations of power. They want none of that in Afghanistan. They want a strong government that will be dominated by Pashtuns who were sympathetic to Taliban or dominated by an ethnic group that was sympathetic and at the expense of the people who fought for us.

The answer is very simple. Let us look to the American experience. Let us stand for American principles. Let us not model it after France. Let us have a government that we can support in Afghanistan that gives those people freedom like we have in the United States to control their own destiny through the ballot box.

And how should we do that? It is very simple. In Afghanistan let the people there enjoy the right to control their destiny through the ballot box through a federal system, and, that is, they should have the right to elect their local mayors like we do and like in Canada, like what is happening in Iraq. We are insisting they have a system in Iraq where the Kurds and the Shiites and the Sunnies all get to elect their local mayors and provincial governors, but the State Department in Afghanistan is insisting that we go the opposite direction. Why? Because a deal has been cut somewhere. That is what everybody believes. I have no evidence right in front of me that there is a deal any more than I had evidence for a long time that there was a deal with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia about the Taliban to begin with; but in the end if we follow what the State Department is trying to push on the people of Afghanistan, we will have a strong central government and the people in the north who are our greatest friends will be denied the right to elect their own local and provincial leaders. This is wrong. It is wrong, and it will not work.

Our Government works because our Founding Fathers had an understanding of human nature. If people control their own police force or their own schools locally, they will be less threatened by a central government that is someone who controls it who is a bit different than they are, perhaps of a different ethnic group because that person only has control over the national army, which it should, and road systems and communication systems and health care and such that are of national importance, but the people locally can control their own destiny through the ballot box, through electing their own mayors and governors and control their police force. If a policeman is beating someone up, we call the mayor whom we have elected, and the mayor is not an appointee of Kabul. He is our friend because he has been elected there, and he will make sure that we are being treated right by our government.

Or if our kids are not learning in school, I should not have to convince our State Department, Americans, that it is right for people to elect their own leaders, but yet that is what they are trying to foist on the people of Afghanistan, and of course there is a reaction from the north. The so-called warlords, are they going to disarm for that? When I was there, I went and talked to three of the so-called warlords. They are really people who are military leaders of militias of the various ethnic groups, and I got a terrific and a tremendous positive response to the idea of this, and this is what I have offered as a compromise, and of course our State Department, just like when I tried to offer the king as an alternative to the Taliban, I imagine they were trying to undercut this alternative all the way; and that is the military leaders in the north have agreed to disband their armies, to totally demobilize and to disarm if the constitution in Afghanistan, which our government is involved with pushing, guarantees the right of local people to vote and control their own destiny through the ballot box, meaning they can vote for their provincial governors and for their local city councils and mayors. Is that too much?

These so-called warlords who we are going to hear being vilified over and over again, these warlords are willing to disarm, to trade in their bullets in exchange for ballots. Is that not a wonderful accomplishment? And of course I am pushing that as a compromise, and I would hope that our government, just as I know we had to shame the State Department into giving up its notion that the Taliban would stay in power, I hope that the State Department is made to understand that we are going to have a democratic system in Afghanistan that permits all the people guaranteed rights through the same sort of guarantees we have in the United States. We want to use the American model, not the French model, in Afghanistan. That is what will work. That is what we need to do, and I would hope that we do not have a corrupt deal with Pakistan again to try to force one group into a controlled situation of all of Afghanistan.

That is the type of immoral decision-making and political power, wheeling and dealing that does not work. What works, fascinatingly enough, and makes it a more peaceful world and works for the security of our country is not wheeling and dealing pragmatism, which the State Department talks about, but instead principled, principled and moral decision-making. How about that? Pragmatism does not work. It does not make a better world. Principled and moral decision-making does.

So, by the way, just let me just suggest that I think that we too can make it work not only in Afghanistan, but that same idea works with Iraq. Our President showed his incredible leadership and his strength and resolve in liberating Iraq. And as I say, we can help bring those people to a more democratic society and a society where they can elect their provincial leaders. That is our policy in Iraq to let provincial leaders be elected, their governors and their mayors, but not in Afghanistan.

Whether or not Iraq under Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction is not relevant, and I know I keep getting asked this and my liberal friends keep pushing on this, when are we going to find the weapons of mass destruction? I do not care if we never find weapons of mass destruction. The fact is Saddam Hussein had a blood grudge against the people of the United States for what we did in eliminating him from power when he invaded Kuwait. We humiliated him in front of the world. He would have done everything possible to hurt and kill the people of the United States, the more power he got in his hands. And Iraq has vast new oil resources that are becoming available to it. Within a 5- year period had we not acted, Saddam Hussein would be the most economically powerful person not only in that region but in the world.

And is there any doubt he would have used that power to overthrow the weak and the fat Saudi regime and thus he would have become even more powerful, perhaps the most powerful man on the Earth, and we were going to let that happen? A man who hated us and had a blood grudge against us? Maybe he did, maybe he did not have a nuclear weapons program; but with the tens of billions of dollars available to him, 5 years down the road he would have bought as many nuclear weapons from China or Korea as he wanted to buy. That was definitely a threat. And unlike President Clinton, our great President, George Bush, decided not just to pass it on to a future generation. Now that the people of America were focused and willing to do what was necessary for our security, President Bush prudently decided that taking Saddam Hussein out and working with the people of Iraq to build a democratic Iraq was the most important thing we could do for our national security, and I am sure that President Bush is going to leave to the next generation of Americans a world that is safer and more secure and with more opportunity than what his predecessor left the world with, which was he left us with every problem that he did not solve.

I mean, President Clinton left us with the Taliban and al Qaeda; and, by the way, he also left us with a Korea that we now find has what? A nuclear weapon. By the way, the Clinton proposal that stopped the crisis over the nuclear weapons program in Korea was that President Clinton agreed to give lots and lots and lots of money to North Korea, one of the weirdest dictatorships in the world; and over the last 7 years, I guess it has been, over my objection and the gentleman from California's (Mr. Cox) and others, North

Korea has been the largest recipient of American foreign aid of any country in Asia; and now they tell us, guess what, we fed their people, and they use their own money to develop a nuclear bomb. Surprise, surprise.

If I have any complaint of our President during this crisis in our lead-up to Iraq was that he did not immediately talk about the moral basis for his decision-making. He was playing lots of games, and I am sure the State Department made him play those political power games at the United Nations and with NATO, but it took him a long time to do that, and he jumped through a lot of hoops trying to prove he was sincere; but I think that was a waste of our time, and, instead, it took him a while to get there, but when he gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, he laid the moral case out, and from that moment on we were out to liberate the people of Iraq, to work with them, to stand by them in building a more peaceful and a democratic society and to free them from this monster, Saddam Hussein, who not only had a blood grudge against the people of the United States but was the oppressor and the murderer of their people. So thus the moral case that the President made at AEI, I think it was a historic speech. I would recommend it to all of my colleagues, and I would suggest that was when our effort in Iraq took off. That was when the momentum was created that was unstoppable.

And sometimes I am asked why did the Iraqis not just jump up and start supporting us as we predicted? What had happened was 10 years before under President Bush, Sr., we had let the Iraqis down and they were not certain when our forces came in that we would stay there and actually help them liberate themselves from their tyrannical regime. But I think there is every evidence now that that country is going in the right direction and that country will be a light for democracy, and we will use this victory to spread democratic government and peace throughout this troubled region, a region that was handed to us by George Bush's predecessor in flames. The Shiite demonstrations that we see are much smaller than the people can see on TV. The Shiite people of Iraq are Arab-speaking people. The Shiites of Iran are Persian. They are not the same group of people. And also the people of Iraq just freed themselves, the Shiites, of a monstrous dictatorship. They are not going to replace it with another dictatorship of clerics or anybody else.

Our job in Iraq, as the President has stated, is to help those people build democracy, and we will not let anyone pressure their way into that government. I know the President has the respect of the people of the world now; and when he makes that statement, they listen to him unlike they would any other President.

So I have every confidence that we will not permit anti-democratic forces to pressure their way into power, and that we will work with the good people of Iraq in building the infrastructure of a system that will permit them to democratically elect their leaders. And, when they do, we will leave, if that is what they want us to do. We will be happy to leave. The President has made that clear. The people of the United States have made that clear. Because in building democracy in Iraq and helping the other people of that region to have democratic government, it helps in our own security.

We are, with our commitment to freedom and democracy, building a better and more peaceful world. This is a world consistent with the dream of our Founding Fathers. This is a world that, again, is based on decision making, morally, in principle, based on decision making. That is the way to make a better world, not pragmatism that is making sort of power compromises and deals with people and regimes and gangsters.

It is when we stand up for our principles and we try to build democratic societies, that is when things get better. That is what works in this world.

So I am very grateful tonight to have had this opportunity to go into these details. We have challenges ahead of us, because there will always be people in the State Department and elsewhere who are thinking they are being pragmatic, but really are not living up to our principles. There always will be people who undercut our efforts and just do not believe that America can be a force for freedom overseas. That happened to President Reagan too, when he tried to fight the Soviets.

But we can, with courage, with a commitment from our people, we can build a world that is more prosperous, we can build a world at peace, and we can build a world that is more free. And our greatest allies are the people of Iraq, the people of Afghanistan and the people everywhere in those Third World countries and other developing countries that long for democratic process and for a better life for them and their children.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I rise with hesitation to oppose the amendment of my very dear friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), who, let me note, has always been one of my heroes in this body because he not only is an articulate champion of the things that he believes, but he is a man who has walked the walk as well as talked the talk. He is a legitimate American hero and, thus, I am hesitantly coming to oppose his amendment.

Let me suggest that the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) is right when he says that no Nation, including Turkey, should be able to slap the United States in the face and walk away without paying a price. They are paying a price. The fact is that earlier on we were willing to give them a huge aid package to join us in this war. It was a $16 to $30 billion package, and they are not going to get that now. This is a very much reduced package of about a $1 billion expenditure. So let us say that they have paid the price for not being true when the time was right.

But let us add that Turkey must also get the credit it deserves for being one of our most stalwart friends and allies over the years. The Turkish people have stood by the United States more strongly and more courageously than almost any other people on this planet for over five decades. They deserve to get a little leeway for that. We deserve for them to be given a little credit. We should give the Turks a little credit for the fact that when the Korean War was on, and our people were being brutally murdered and we were unprepared for that conflict, the Turks were the first ones to send help to our end and stand by us in that conflict.

In Vietnam, while they did not have troops there, they did support us in that effort while the rest of the world heaped abuse upon us. During the Gulf War, a decade ago, even though it was dramatically against their economic interest to do so, the Turks stood with us, and their assistance saved the lives of many and made that operation the success it was. We could not have done it without them.

Thus, we owe the Turks. Now, yes, they did not do what was right by us at this moment. It was a time of confusion in their history. They are paying for that mistake. But let us give them the credit that is due them for so many years of friendship, so many years of alliance, so many years when we could count on them. And let us look to the future. If we are going to have democracy develop in the Muslim world, Turkey will be an absolutely pivotal player. We will rely on them again to make this a safer and a better world. We will not succeed in the President's goal of bringing democracy to the Muslim world without the Turks there. They are giving us a good example. They are giving their fellow Muslims a good example. Let us stand by them.

Yes, let us say we were disappointed, but let us not treat them in a way inconsistent with the way that they have treated us over these many decades, which is as a friend and ally.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I will try to make this quick. I rise in strong support of this amendment. There is a limit to American magnanimity. There is a limit to how much we will just turn our heads and say we will forgive you. And yes, we will forgive those people who are our friends who betrayed us when we were putting the lives of our young people on the line. We will forgive them, but we will not forget; and that is what this amendment is all about, not forgetting those who would not stand with us, and remembering those who did stand with us when the lives of our people were at stake. I have no problem with that.

I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. Chairman, there is a much greater chance that American jobs will be lost if we do not make this declaration to the policymakers and to the bureaucrats and to the government officials who will enforce the law once we pass the law. We are making it very clear to them that American companies and companies from countries which helped us, which stood by us, will have preference over those companies from countries which stood aside at the moment when it counted or even harped and backbit our leaders when they were taking tough stands.

We will not forget what happened during these last 3 and 4 months. We will not forget the actors who play President of the United States, but spend their own time in the real world undercutting American Presidents who have had to make tough decisions about the national security of our country.

We will not forget the impotence of the United Nations. We are not going to place our faith in that institution again. We will not forget that NATO is dominated by the Germans and French, and we will not forget that the British and the Spanish not only stood by us but joined us and put the lives of their young people on the line as well.

Finally, I would like to end with one small story. I hope our French brethren are brethren. Dean Rusk in his memoirs talks about how Lyndon Johnson called him into the Oval Office in 1964 after Charles de Gaulle declared that France would be out of NATO and declared that all American troops would have to be off of French soil in 90 days. LBJ gave Mr. Rusk the job of going to France, talking to the General, and asking him a question and coming back and reporting verbatim what the General said. So Mr. Rusk, our Secretary of State, went to Paris and met with General de Gaulle.

He said, President Johnson has tasked me with asking you this question: When you demand that all American soldiers are off of French soil within 90 days, are you including those thousands of Americans buried in Normandy?

General de Gaulle was speechless. He turned away and could not speak.

I would hope that the French people, now that this war is coming to a conclusion with the great victories that we have had in these last few days, when they see that we have put the lives of our people on the line again, I hope they will become speechless, because I am sick and tired of hearing from a lot of those people, and so are a lot of Americans.

Offered By: Mr. Rohrabacher

Amendment No. 2: Page 3, strike line 19 and all that

follows through page 20, line 13 [section 3 of the bill] (and

redesignate subsequent sections and any cross reference to

any such section, and conform the table of contents,

accordingly).

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay homage and respect to Corporal Jose Angel Garibay, a 21-year-old Marine killed in action in Iraq a few days ago.

Jose Garibay was a proud American of Mexican American descent. He is now an American hero. He was born in Jalisco, Mexico. His family moved to California while he was still a baby. Like almost all Americans, his family came here seeking opportunity and freedom.

Corporal Garibay grew up in Costa Mesa, California. He exemplified what anyone would call an all-American kid. He was a source of joy and pride to his family. He was a star football player on the Newport Harbor High School football team; and he joined the Marines 3 years ago, shortly after graduating from high school.

He was a loving son to his mother, Simona; and he had hoped to use his military pay to help his mother buy a house. He put his own family first and foremost in his life, and through his sacrifice for our Nation in this war against tyranny and terrorism he proved that love of country and love of family are inseparably linked.

Corporal Garibay, his supreme sacrifice will not be forgotten. He will be remembered alongside the many brave American heroes who have gone before him in defending family, freedom, and country.

Today we send our greatest sympathy to the Garibay family. May God's love and the gratitude of our Nation comfort them and comfort the families of all of our fallen heroes.

Madam Speaker, with St. Patrick's Day only a few days away, it is appropriate for us to recognize and, yes, celebrate the role that Irish Americans have played in our history and in the development of our national character.

So many Irish Americans came here seeking refuge from tyranny and hunger in their own homeland. They never forgot that suffering that they left behind, which helped ensure that America has, over the years, sided with the oppressed and cared for the less fortunate.

Irish Americans passed on these values, along with a sense of decency and a commitment to justice, as well as a love of song and humor, from generation to generation. One of those proud Americans of Irish descent is Kathleen Casey of Orange County, California, who turns 80 years old today. We wish her a happy birthday, and will join her and other Irish Americans in the celebration of St. Patrick's Day this coming Monday.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to me.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Concurrent Resolution 36, which encourages the people of the United States to honor and celebrate the 140th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and commend President Abraham Lincoln's efforts to end slavery in the United States.

140 years ago a bloody war still raged across our land, a war that cost the lives of more Americans than all other wars in our history combined. This summer will mark the turning point of that war as we celebrate the 140th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Earlier, on September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln took the first step toward establishing as the object of the Civil War the total abolition of slavery. He and his political party, the Republican Party, had made as their first goal the restriction of the expansion of slavery. Now he would make the Nation's goal the abolition of slavery itself.

Boldly, Lincoln declared free all those persons held as slaves within the insurgent States as of January 1, 1863. This was a daring political move which was strongly opposed by the Democratic Party of that day. After the end of the Civil War and Lincoln's assassination in 1865, his fellow Republicans in Congress and in State legislatures got passed and ratified the 13th amendment to the Constitution, totally abolishing slavery in the United States.

Our Civil War was turned by President Abraham Lincoln, it was turned from just a civil war between States into a moral crusade against the abomination of human slavery. President Lincoln knew that all war brings suffering, and he knew that we had to make sure that the ends of any war must justify the suffering that war entails. As a Republican, I am proud to claim Lincoln's legacy for the Republican Party and the principles of liberty for all Americans, regardless of race and color.

Recently, I had the opportunity to appear in the Civil War movie ``Gods and Generals.'' I portrayed an officer in the Union Army staff of Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, and I was proud to wear that blue Union uniform that fought for the noble cause of ending slavery and freeing those held in human bondage.

Today our Nation stands on the brink of another war, a war that will also bring suffering, like all wars do, but will, like our Civil War, have noble ends. The liberation of people and destruction of evil are indeed noble ends.

In the movie ``Gods and Generals,'' Colonel Joshua Chamberlain understood that principle, and understood that these principles are worth fighting for and dying for. In one scene, he turns to his brother and observes: ``I will admit it, Tom, war is a scourge, but so is slavery. It is the systematic coercion of one group of men over another. It is as old as the Book of Genesis, and has existed in every corner of the globe, but that is no excuse for us to tolerate it here when we find it before our eyes and in our own country.''

The Civil War still has the power to stir modern-day controversy. Nevertheless, I hope that 140 years after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation that all Americans will join us in celebrating President Lincoln's efforts to end slavery; and this legacy, this legacy should unite all Americans as we strive to make this a country, even though we still have faults, though we have many things to overcome, to try our best to correct those faults that we have; but we can be united to try to make this a country with liberty and justice for all.

Mr. Speaker, happy birthday to Ronald Reagan. I am sure Nancy is watching, and she knows how much we care for and love Ronald Reagan; and she has been at his side from the beginning.

I met Ronald Reagan when I worked in his campaign for Governor in 1966. I worked on both of his presidential campaigns; and then, after he won his presidential race in 1980, I went with him to the White House for 7 years and worked with him as one of his principal speech writers. Let me note, I had never written a speech for anyone before I wrote a speech for Ronald Reagan as President of the United States. He taught me all about speech-writing. We always used to say, if President Reagan was not a President, he was a good enough writer to be the President's speech writer.

But more than that, his skill was his principles that counted. He had principles and ideals. He had a philosophy that included an economic philosophy and a personal philosophy. He brought about a change in the national spirit that saved America. He brought about a change in the economy that saved America. He brought about a change in America's strategic position that saved the world. His tax cuts turned our economy around and gave us the longest period of growth in American history. And yes, there were deficits. But had we not had Ronald Reagan's economic policy in place, those deficits charted out the way it was before Reagan would have been twice as big as what happened under Reagan's period of growth.

Bill Clinton could not even change the direction that Ronald Reagan started. That is how strong an influence he was on the American people. Remember, right up here, Bill Clinton declared the era of big growth or big government is over.

But what is most important, Ronald Reagan, criticized by people on the other side of the aisle, criticized as a war monger, criticized as someone who had a bad heart, stood firm and strong, supported freedom in the world, and demanded that Gorbachev tear down the Wall. This is what changed the world. It was his strength of character, even when he was being criticized personally and undermined every step of the way for political purposes, he stood strong and the will of the Communist bosses in Moscow crumbled, for the first President they ever had to stand up, who really believed in freedom and democracy and was willing to make that part of America's offensive policy against Communist tyranny.

That changed the world. It has made it safer. It gave us the opportunity to spend less money, hundreds of billions of dollars less on a national defense over the years. We would never have had that respite, except that Ronald Reagan stood firm. When people said, let us have a nuclear freeze that leaves the Soviet Union in a dominant position, Reagan said no. If we are going to do anything with nuclear weapons, it has to leave us both on par. We will have a mutual reduction of nuclear weapons, and that is exactly what happened. They said it could never be done, and they called him a war monger for demanding something that could never happen, that the Communist bosses would never agree to.

Mr. Speaker, we are all the recipients of Ronald Reagan's wisdom. We all are benefiting from the strength of character of this man who carried us from uncertainty and in retreat and left an America on the rise, an America that was growing economically, but an America that was reinvigorated in its commitment to freedom and justice and to treat the people of the world decently. We captured, we captured the hearts and souls of the people throughout the world, the young people, especially those in the Soviet Union.

Today, we should take heed of what Ronald Reagan did and remember, those people in Iraq are our greatest ally. Those people in China are our greatest ally, those people who want democracy and freedom and suffer under their tyranny; and we should be on their side and we too can make this a better and more peaceful world as Ronald Reagan did. We are grateful to Ronald Reagan. Happy birthday, Ronald Reagan. We are grateful to you. We really appreciate it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 11 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, today we mourn the life of seven heroes, the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia: Rick Husband, William McCool, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon.

These heroes are now departed from us, and they find their place in the memory and the hearts of all Americans who are grateful to them and grateful to the others who have given their lives to make sure that our country and all humankind advances into this next frontier and conquers the next frontier of space. There are casualties in the conquest of every frontier, and this is no exception.

Just as our heroes of the past frontiers are remembered and honored by this country, we will, once the space frontier is conquered, look back on these pioneers, and we will remember them on the honor roll of heroes.

The Columbia reminds me a bit of another vessel, another American vessel from 200 years ago, the good ship Columbia. Americans were always known as the leaders in transportation, whether it was railroad transportation or, before that, ship transportation; and we had some of the mightiest and most impressive ships on the oceans and one of those ships was the good ship Columbia.

Americans were so proud of the good ship Columbia that one of our first patriotic songs dealt with our pride in that ship, and that song went as follows, and every American knew these

words and sang this song 150 years ago: ``O, Columbia, the gem of the ocean, the home of the brave and the free, the shrine of each patriot's devotion, a world offers homage to thee.''

And, yes, today our thoughts go to the crew of the Columbia, another magnificent vessel that charted unknown waters, carried Americans and, yes, carried the admiration of the entire world.

I think one of the things that I have gleaned from this tragedy is just how much the American people associated themselves and identified with America's space program. Yesterday, as we went to Texas, it was not so much the ceremony that I remember as it was the people of Texas and how they took this tragedy personally. As we rode in our congressional buses to and fro to that ceremony of remembrance and dedication at which the President spoke, the people of Texas lined the roads and the streets. Little children were waving American flags. People would rush out of their houses as we drove by with their flags and little signs of support and encouragement.

I believe that if there is anything we can be grateful for when Columbia went down, it went down over friendly territory. It went down over Texas, where the people of that State feel so strongly about the space program and about their country.

I am proud to say that my constituents and others in California have had a long association with the space program as well, and we are just as proud of the achievements. But, yesterday, it touched my heart that the people of Texas were reaching out to us and to the families.

The Columbia tragedy has not diminished the commitment of the people of Texas nor the commitment of the people of the United States towards space exploration and space utilization. Our space program must and will go forward because the American people remain as committed today as they were last week, and today we have seven heroes to give us inspiration.

The American people over the last few years have been lulled into a false sense of security about space travel. We always considered the astronauts our heroes. Children would come out to see astronauts, but most Americans felt that manned flight into space was far less risky than it really is. They have been lulled into this false sense of security because NASA has been doing one terrific job and our astronauts have been doing one terrific job and our aerospace industry has been doing one terrific job. But it is still the riskiest of propositions.

I was in the White House in 1986 when the Challenger blew up, and I will never forget that day. We did what? We regrouped, we found what was wrong, we found the flaws, and we moved forward after correcting those flaws. Since then, once again, the American people came to believe space travel was routine. Well, pioneering a new frontier is never routine. The Space Shuttle Columbia's crew understood that. They knew the risks that they were taking.

Today we mourn; this week we mourn; but in the future we move on and up. Although we hope that the shuttle will fly again, this country is now committed to a space program, yes, that will remember the shuttle system and be grateful for how efficient and what a magnificent system it was, but we now know we must invest in the technology that will move us beyond our dependency on this now old system that should not be allowed to become even older and us rely on it even longer. But does that mean we will in some way diminish our commitment to space? I do not think so.

When we look back over the years of what the space program has meant to our lives, the benefits are beyond imagination.

I remember as a young boy that I was able to talk to my grandparents perhaps once a month. I did not come from a wealthy family. Those telephone calls were scratchy, and they were expensive. Young people did not have the same contact then as they do with their grandparents today. I think it was $5 a minute back in those days when $5 was enormous. Today, thanks to our investment in space, thanks to the space program, people can talk to their families who are in the far reaches of the world every day, and it is affordable, and it has increased the quality of life in our country dramatically in this level of caring between people because space has permitted us better communication between each other.

What about entertainment and television? We have now before us a plethora of options in which to take up our time because we have assets in space that are offering us communication skills that are not only used for entertainment but are used in the medical field to educate people in far-off countries how to conduct operations and also provide communications with schools throughout the world.

The GPS system is a navigational system, and it would be unthinkable for us to not use our space-based assets for navigation purposes, something that has saved countless lives in giving us precise navigation that has saved hundreds, if not thousands, of those seeking transportation.

And what about the weather and the fact that today we know when storms are coming? Again, thousands of lives have been saved because of our investment in space assets. We can predict where a hurricane will go or a tornado will strike, and we can prepare for it and save those lives, not to mention the billions of dollars saved by predicting weather trends in the industry of agriculture.

Mr. Speaker, what about our national security? It was our lead in space, indeed the space shuttle itself created the impression for the communists who led the Soviet Union that they could not compete with us and broke down their will and eventually caused a disintegration of their power base in Russia, which has left the world a much safer place.

We have invested also in a defense system in space, a missile defense system that even today will permit us not to be so terrorized by a possibility of a government in North Korea that is developing nuclear weapons because we have assets in space that will permit us perhaps to defend ourselves against that potential threat. So we have invested in space, and also it has saved us billions and billions of dollars and thousands and thousands of lives. It was the space pioneers like those on the Challenger and on the shuttle that have already given us these tremendous benefits, but we have only scratched the surface of what space can do to uplift the condition of humankind.

No, we will not be deterred by this tragedy. We will instead correct the flaws where they have been found and move on. We will move on and we will move upward. Will we continue? Will we Americans continue to move forward? Will there be another ``Good Ship Columbia'' someday charting the unknown waters or the unknown skies? You bet there will be. We remember and we will be grateful in those days to the crew of this ship Columbia as we were to the pioneers of generations past.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon), who has spent so much time and effort since he has been in Congress on issues of space and has diligently worked as a member of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the Committee on Science.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) who has been deeply involved in technology issues during his long tenure here in Congress and a strong supporter of the space program.

(Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), a young and vibrant Member of the House who has been very active in the last few years on technology issues.

(Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt), who has been an active member of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics and very involved over the years in technology development for the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite), a freshman from Tampa who specializes in seniors issues, but is very concerned and very supportive of America's space program.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary and former chairman of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics and chairman of the full Committee on Science.

Mr. Speaker, we have no more speakers. I will be closing the discussion.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the conquests of the frontier and the development of new technology is how we have defined ourselves as Americans from the clipper ships to the railroads to heavier-than-air flight, which was, by the way, established only 100 years ago this year by two American bicycle shop owners. One hundred years of heavier-than-air flight, and now we are engaged in the conquest of outerspace.

As man ascended into the air after the Wright Brothers successfully accomplished the first flight, many lives were lost in the historic task of creating the technology that now enables us to circumvent the world and has brought every person in the world together.

Now, as in the early stages of the engineering and development of technology that provided us with this conquest of the air, we are engaged in the development of engineering and technology that will move us into the heavens, into space. But there is a price to pay as America moves forward with technology and as America moves forward in the conquest of this last frontier.

Space pioneers, as those on the shuttles Challenger and Columbia, are those who take the greatest risk and have paid the heaviest price. That is why they are heroes. They risk their lives to lift all of humankind. It was over 20 years ago in 1981 when I first worked with President Ronald Reagan on his remarks when he met the first astronauts off of a space shuttle to return from that very first shuttle flight back in 1981. There he was in the Mojave Desert waiting to welcome our astronauts from the first shuttle flight.

The shuttle had proved itself to be a historic accomplishment, an inspiration to the American people; and in those days we needed inspiration. It helped lift our spirits as we saw it ascend to space and then land in California. The first shuttle, of course, that shuttle that landed was the Space Shuttle Columbia. Over the years it did a tremendous service for our country and for the world, as did all those astronauts that used and were on the Space Shuttle Columbia and the other shuttles.

As we mourn the loss of our astronaut heroes today, let us pledge to keep moving forward in their memory. Let us pledge to move forward with confidence that some day just as there was a Good Ship Columbia, which was the Columbia, the gem of the ocean that gave us such pride, just as there was the Space Shuttle Columbia that lifted our spirits and has given us such pride over these last 20 years, there will again be a transportation system named after Columbia, perhaps after this Columbia. And it will inspire Americans and the whole world in the future as it will lift us to new heights and new accomplishments in the area of science and in the conquests of those frontiers that lie ahead.

As we move forward today, we mourn this loss. We ask that the families understand that the sacrifice that their family members, that these astronauts have made is deeply appreciated by all of us here in Congress, by all of the American people, and by all of the people throughout the world. They have done well by America. We are grateful that they have lived and given their lives for us, and now we will move forward as is the task of all generations of Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.