Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Chairman, this is about the most basic part of our military strategy. The gentleman who just spoke said if we do not use these weapons, they are a total waste, and people used to say why do we have all these nuclear weapons that could kill the Russians 100 times over? The reason we had them was so we would never have to kill a single Russian because we would have a deterrent.

Whom do we have to deter? Do we deter a private in a barrack? Do we deter a housewife in her home in the land of our adversary? Do we deter children in a school or people in a hospital?

The answer is no. The very best deterrent target is the people who pull the trigger, and that is the leadership of the adversarial nation, that is, the people who make the decision to attack the United States. Those are the people who like to go deep.

Hitler had a bunker. Saddam Hussein had a bunker. The people in North Korea have bunkers. We have to have this type of a program to hold the leadership at risk. This is deterrence. Vote ``no'' on this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I offer amendments en bloc.

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

Mr. Chairman, this is a number of amendments, some of them technical in nature, others amendments cleared with both sides. They include amendments by myself, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks), the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings), the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Manzullo), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Brown), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Johnson), the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird), the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith), the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Marshall), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson) and by the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I just want to take this time, because I always have to follow the leadership of the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) in this area, to just thank all the staff that have been working this armed services bill. The committee staff has been tirelessly working this bill, putting it together in the subcommittees, full committee and now on the floor, and I want to thank everyone who has been part of this product.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes).

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, that is correct. It is an unfortunate error that the amendment was not printed in the report. The Ortiz amendment was adopted by the full committee.

Mr. Chairman, I support that request.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman has analyzed it correctly. We call this ``Fresh Start.'' It is based on the premise that the tanker fleet is the keystone to the projection of American air power. Even our tactical air, coming off of carriers in Afghanistan, for example, had to drink four or five times from tankers going to target and coming back. Of course, the long-range stuff, all of our deep-strike capability hinges on tankers.

So our idea was, we take the mess, that is, all the personalities, all of the charges and countercharges, and we move that all aside; and we say, we are going to address the one thing we should be addressing, which is the requirement for our country.

We are going to take the requirement, and we are going to have a ``Fresh Start'' on tankers and use a blue ribbon panel of people with good judgment, and they are going to pass judgment on the business deal.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, let me just say to the gentleman, I think it would be a massive mistake for the United States to buy foreign in this very important part of our national security.

Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson).

(Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

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

Mr. Chairman, we have no further requests for time.

Mr. Chairman, we have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

I appreciate all the comments from both sides of this debate, and Mr. Chairman, Taiwan is our friend, and these are people of freedom who fought for freedom and who recessed to that island across the straits to maintain a free society. We have many relationships now with Mainland China that are very clear economic relationships in principle. We reserve the right to have friends, and encompassed in that friendship is the right to have our military establishment relate and interrelate with their military establishment. That is not a bad thing, and that is very simply what the Ryun amendment does.

I have read the statement by DOD that they support it. They say the requirement for a senior official/officer education and training program is supportable. The amendment properly focuses on areas in the defense of Taiwan which pose greatest threats, submarines and missiles.

We know that greater China is acquiring a vast military arsenal, much

of it being acquired with their vast surplus of trade cash. It is absolutely appropriate that we maintain this friendship with Taiwan and in that friendship engage our military leadership, and I would support the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

I do, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remaining time.

Mr. Speaker, I think that the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) said it well. The interesting thing about this entire mess in Abu Ghraib is the fact that General Sanchez, just 3 days in January after that first soldier came forward, started the investigation on his own. There was no media. There was no CNN out there with an investigative reporter. The general did that on his own, and he then announced to the world in a press conference, kept it secret except for the 50 million people watching television, that we Americans were investigating ourselves over what happened in that prison. He started that investigation and it worked its way on down, and it has now culminated in the first conviction that took place just yesterday in Iraq.

So the military has done well, and we held full blown, full Committee on Armed Services hearings here. They had them obviously in the other body. We have spent more time on this than we have any weapons system, any military operation, and we have done a good job.

We have embedded some of the recommendations that were made in the Taguba report in the bill my colleagues are about ready to pass. We have embedded some of those recommendations. We have made some changes and some reforms in that bill.

Now, it is time to refocus, and let me tell my colleagues why it is time to refocus. In the last 24 hours we have had 66 attacks on American and coalition forces in Iraq. We suffered 14 people wounded. We suffered two KIA. We have to return our focus to this war.

About 3 years ago, we started this very complex and difficult military operation. It has been tough. We have had reluctant allies. We have had tactical problems. We have had enormous challenges, and through all of this, our troops have carried us, our great American troops. They have killed the enemy at 10,000 feet in the high mountains of Afghanistan. They have engaged him in these fierce fire fights in the choke points in Iraq. They have done a wonderful job, and the 300,000-plus Americans who have served honorably and purely in the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters have received almost no publicity.

When Master Sergeant Bill Pryor attacked an enemy position by himself, killing the four people that he took on and killed the last one in hand-to-hand combat, he received no publicity except maybe among a few of his platoon members that he saved. When Gunny Sergeant Jeff Bohr laid down his life by putting his body between his wounded marines and the enemy, he did not appear on any front pages.

We have attended the Abu Ghraib mess with more press coverage than probably any military operation, including the invasion of Normandy. It is time to refocus. Let us refocus on those great and wonderful 2.5 million people that wear the uniform of the United States. We do that by giving them the tools to get the job done, and this bill, put together by Democrats and Republicans, does that. It gets the job done. Please vote ``yes.'' Vote down the motion to recommit and let us move this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that in the engrossment of the bill, H.R. 4200, the Clerk be authorized to correct section numbers, punctuation, cross-references, and the table of contents, and to make such other technical and conforming changes as may be necessary to reflect the actions of the House in amending the bill.

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

I want to talk about this bill that was put together in the Committee on Armed Services, which was voted out with a 60 to zero vote, put together and shaped by Democrats and Republicans. I want to thank my friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), my partner on the committee, for all the great work that he has put into it, as well as the subcommittee chairmen, ranking members and all the folks who fill those seats in the Committee on Armed Services who really care about our troops.

In keeping with that, this is the Year of the Troops. We have endeavored to focus on those troops, and in doing that, we have got this 3.5 percent pay raise across the board. We have not increased money for hazardous duty pay. We have increased money for separation pay for folks that are away from their families. And beyond that we try to give our troops the tools that they need to get the job done.

The gentlewoman has mentioned armor, up-armoring of Humvees and trucks, and munitions and surveillance, in all the things that those folks need, those 135,000-plus folks in Iraq and thousands in the Afghanistan theater who are out there fighting right now, braving enemy fire, increasingly oppressive heat, difficult living conditions. And they are doing that for us. They are doing that all as volunteers, and it is our job to give them what they need to get the job done. That is what we do in this bill.

And appended to all of the great things that we have done, and I really applaud the gentleman who just spoke on this rapid acquisition initiative for a battlefield commander. When he is taking casualties, he can say, I want a system and I want it now. And you either have a system within contract of 15 days or you explain to the people in the field or to the Congress why that is not possible. That is very important.

Troops are important. And right now we have put into this bill an additional 10,000 Army troops each year for 3 years for a total of 30,000 troops. We have also put in an additional 3,000 Marines each year for a total of 9,000 additional Marines. And for everybody that hears from their Guard and Reserve and active forces, from the members of their family who say, you know, it looks like it is another Christmas that I will not be home, having more troops helps to alleviate that pressure because the more people you have, the less time an individual has to spend in theater, on duty, in rotation. So that takes a little bit of pressure off these troops.

Additionally, I think we looked at this thing as a committee and said, having additional forces available that are not obligated in the field, that are available for deployment, are insurance for our country. And we decided as a matter of policy that we wanted to have more insurance. So we have those additional forces.

Now, additional to the base bill this year, this $422 billion bill, we have got another thing, and that is this $25 billion authorization for a supplemental that we have bolted onto our bill. And we put that money in because we want to make sure we have plenty of money for operations in the closing months of this year, plenty of money for surveillance.

We have lots of surveillance platforms in here. We want to be able to see the bad guys when they are putting out those IEDs or putting up ambushes or other things. And we want to leverage our technology to do that so we have that additional surveillance money.

We have additional munitions money to put in so the troops have everything from the large rounds right down to M-16 ammunition, and we put in a lot of money for that.

Additionally, we have given the money to the Chief of Staff of the Army, to General Schumacher, to reshape his forces. And I would commend any Member of the House, and all of our members of the Committee on Armed Services have seen this, to have a sit-down with General Schumacher and listen to his blueprint for reshaping our force. He feels, under his blueprint, he can increase the Army from 33 active brigades to an additional three this year, three more next year and four more the next year. And we are helping him do that by putting in this supplemental for equipment for this reset.

I notice the ranking member had stood up to speak, and I just want to recognize him if he had anything to say. Then I know also the gentleman from South Carolina also had a position.

I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to just correct my friend because he may have missed it, but we did lift the housing cap for privatization of housing. That was done pursuant to the Miller amendment in the committee. So we did two things, both the survivor benefits and the housing cap.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

I just say to the gentleman, it is permanent removal of the housing cap.

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

The gentleman concurs, as I think our common ground here is that we have permanently lifted this cap, with the lift starting in 2006. However, the housing program can continue under the current cap for the time being. And it is not a certain thing that we are definitely going to run out of money.

I would just say to the gentleman that I would be happy to work with the gentleman and the Committee on the Budget to attempt to accommodate 2005 and make sure there is not a seam between 2005 and 2006.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is not a certain thing. So telling all the families that they absolutely will not have housing is not a certain thing at this point.

I think the gentleman and I and others can work to make sure there is not a seam between 2005 and 2006.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 4200.

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

Mr. Chairman, this is a bill that was put together with the bipartisan work of all members of the House Committee on Armed Services, the defense bill for the United States. It was engaged in with a great deal of detail by Republicans and Democrats to try to do the very best we could for the people that wear the uniform of the United States.

Beyond that, Mr. Chairman, we have had enormous publicity the last number of days about the mess at Abu Ghraib. I estimated we have probably devoted as much media attention to that mess involving now, as identified, some seven personnel, as we did to the Normandy invasion, and that is an imbalance. It is time to refocus.

The subjects of the refocus should be the 135,000 great personnel doing their job in Iraq and the tens of thousands doing their job in Afghanistan and around the world in this war against terrorism. So I just thought I might start out, Mr. Chairman, by reminding my colleagues that while that much-publicized mess was taking place with just a few people at Abu Ghraib Prison, Master Sergeant Tony Prior was taking on an enemy position in Afghanistan and was single-handedly taking out four insurgents, the last one in hand-to-hand combat to win the Silver Star.

Jeffrey Bohr, Gunnery Sergeant Jeffrey Bohr was over in Iraq laying down a field of fire to protect his wounded Marines who otherwise would have been killed, and he laid down that field of fire until he himself was killed.

I have dozens of such citations, Mr. Chairman, on the leadership desk, and I would hope that Members walk down. And if their heads are filled with all of the publicity about a few bad apples at Abu Ghraib Prison, I want them to pick up those citations and read about the good apples, the great Americans who fill out this 2.5-million-person force that wear the uniform of the United States, active, Guard and Reserve.

This bill is a big bill, and my great partner, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the ranking member, have worked on it along with all of the members of the committee. Almost all of our members have gone to Iraq now. A lot of them have also gone to Afghanistan, some of them multiple times. We have visited troops, held extensive hearings, and we put together a bill that we think supplies the wherewithal, the equipment for our troops to get the job done.

Let me go over a couple of those things, and then I want to listen to my colleagues on the Democrat side of the aisle who have been such great partners in this endeavor.

First, we have tried to focus on this theater in Iraq because our people need equipment, they need to have the very best equipment. They are over there in the heat and in enemy fire with oppressive living conditions. We have devoted and focused our dollars on that theater, so we pulled some money out of some areas that are not right now relevant, closely relevant, to that warfighting theater, more long-range things, things that are peripheral.

We focused that money on things like force protection, up-armored Humvees, steel for the trucks, the 5-ton trucks for the Army, 7-ton trucks for the Marine Corps, replenishment of ammunition, surveillance capability so we can see the bad guys and engage them before they can get in tight to our troops. All of the leverage we can give them with high technology, we give them in this bill.

We also look to their families. We have this 3.5 percent pay raise across the board, we have an expansion of the amount of money that our troops now get for hazardous duty and for separation from their family. We have also put in a survivor benefit for the widows of our military people and for the widowers of our military people so they will not have this offset against Social Security.

We have tried to do a lot of things on the people's side. We have a great bill with our military housing, our MILCON projects. We have privatization, the cap removed from 2006 on, and we are going to work to make sure there is no seam between 2005 and 2006.

Beyond that, the ranking member and I and a number of other folks have been working and looking at force levels. We now have 10 Army divisions; we used to have 18 in 1991. We have a relatively small Marine Corps, roughly 177,000. We realize we are going to need more people.

And for families who say, How come Joe is not here again for Christmas, whether he is Guard, Reserve, or active, one answer is, we have such a small force that the people have to go more often. And so we have increased in strength by some 10,000 this year, 10,000 next year and 10,000 the next year, and that coincides with Chief of Staff of the Army Schumacher's plan to increase the fighting strength of the U.S. Army by three brigades this year, three brigades next year, and four brigades the year after to add 10 new fighting brigades to the Army for a total of 43. We have also increased the U.S. Marines Corps by 3,000 personnel per year for the next 3 years.

To do that and to do a lot of the other things that we are flowing to the troops, we have also bolted onto this package a supplemental for $25 billion. That supplemental will handle the closing months of this year to make sure that our troops do not run thin on supplies or replenishment or new capabilities in the last few months of this year. It also helps General Schumacher to stand up this new modular force that he is putting into effect and reshaping the Army.

So we have that $25 billion bolted on, and that has lots of good stuff for the troops. It helps to sustain us through any tough things that we may see in the last several months of this year.

Now, we are going to need a new supplemental. We all know that. The chairman of the Committee on the Budget, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) talked about that and put a $50 billion wedge in the budget, acknowledging that fact; and we are going to have to come around at some point and have a new supplemental to get through 2005. It all depends on how far we can reasonably project. We think this $25 billion bolt-on that we are doing will do the right things for the troops.

We have gone right down through the unfunded requirements list, things that our Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and our Air Force sent to us, things that they said we need, Congress, we do not have the money for them. And we went in and paid for those things so we can pull them out and deliver them to the troops in this supplemental we have bolted on.

So this is a great bill. I want to commend the ranking member and all of the great members of the Armed Services Committee. We have great subcommittee chairmen who have worked some very tough issues; their ranking members have worked them hard, and we have brought this bill, in what is a

contentious political season, we brought this bill out on a 60-0 vote. It was a 60-0 vote because we have common ground, and that common ground is the Armed Forces of the United States and their well-being.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the very distinguished gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), chairman of the Subcommittee on Readiness, the subcommittee which oversees the biggest increment of the defense budget, all operations, maintenance and military construction.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Colorado and the gentleman from Texas for their great work.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), who chairs the Subcommittee on Terrorism which oversees all of our special operators and who has spent a ton of his time this last year going to some very inconvenient places to make sure that our troops get what they need.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger), who has great expertise in the area of defense.

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

I want to thank the gentleman for his hard work and the fact that he has been in Iraq and Afghanistan more than any other member, which is very important to this committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett), the very thoughtful chairman of the Projection Forces Subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Everett), the chairman of our Subcommittee on Strategic Forces which oversees our nuclear component, space assets, and many critical aspects of national security.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), a very distinguished member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman who just spoke for his hard work on this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Chocola).

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder) for his hard work on the bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hayes), a gentleman with a real heart for our soldiers.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller), the gentleman who is the author, the father of this great benefit package for military survivors that was embedded in this bill and is good news for hundreds of thousands of families.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Let me just say in response to my colleague who has just spoken that we did something that was unprecedented in this bill, which was look into the future, into the last several months of this year, and decide that, even though we all agreed and the budget chairman announced on the floor and to the world that we were going to need supplementals of $50 billion this next year, we decided that we did not want to have any strain on the troops in the closing months of this year before Congress, after the election, could put together another supplemental.

So we provided this bridge, which even the gentleman will admit carries us well into the next year, into the next calendar year; and we did fully provide for the additional forces that we have in the field, the 1st Armored Division, which is going to be an additional $750,000. For all of the armor upgrades, we have got roughly $1 billion for armor upgrades in Humvees and trucks, for all of the modernization that the chief of staff of the Army needs for modularity, that is, building this new brigade centric force for the U.S. Army.

The reason we do not go off into the new year and say, okay, should it be $50 billion, should it be $75 billion is very simple. We cannot see the future. We do not know how much weight this new Iraqi military is going to be able to take on their shoulders, how fast we are going to be able to make this handoff; and all of those things drive the costs of operation. But this takes good care of the troops for a long period of time during this bridge period; and that is the reason we did it, to give the troops confidence.

It is above and beyond the $422 billion bill that we have. I think, Mr. Chairman, it does a good job in looking out for the troops.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, whose subcommittee oversees the most massive part of modernization and our biggest programs for aircraft and land systems, who has done a great job working this issue.

(Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh), who chairs the Subcommittee on Total Force, which oversees the 2.5 million Americans in uniform.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer).

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for his hard work and his urging that we try to retrieve an additional 10 B-1 bombers. We now have 67.

The Air Force was going to cut that down to 60. We moved it back up where we retrieved seven of the bombers that were going basically into the bone yard, and the gentleman worked hard with myself and other members of the committee to make sure we retrieved an additional 10 bombers. So we are taking the B-1 up to 77 bombers.

That B-1 has been a great asset for the projection of power for the United States. It has got great speed, it can hold a tremendous payload, and it can literally put a precision munition right through a goalpost. In fact, we went after Saddam Hussein early on in the war in Iraq with the B-1 bomber.

So the gentleman has been a champion of the B-1. I want to thank him for that, and I hope he is here with me when we roll out those additional 10 that we are bringing back from retirement.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to thank the gentlewoman who just spoke, my seatmate in California, to say something about contractors.

God bless our contractors. The last figure I saw was that the contractors for Halliburton, who have to run Ambush Alley, bringing our convoys, bringing food to the troops up through the heart of the insurgency country in Iraq, have now lost 34 of their personnel, killed in action supplying American troops.

We have always had lots of contractors for the very simple reason that for every troop you have out there with a rifle, you need roughly 10 people to support him down the supply line; and a lot of those people have always been contractors. We have had them in all theaters of the war in this last century and, obviously, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The four individuals who were killed in Fallujah were American heroes, and they were trying to advance the American cause with every bit as pure a heart and sense of honor, in fact, as mostly former military personnel, as any of our people in the United States Marine Corps or Army in that area of operation.

So I think that we should appreciate our contractors perhaps more than has been noted on the House floor.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), a very good member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), who has worked so hard on the chem-bio protection issues.

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

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I would just say to the gentleman, no, I am not familiar with that situation.

Mr. Chairman, I would just say to the gentleman that I will be happy to work with the gentleman from Missouri on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), chairman of that very important committee, the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

The gentleman is correct. The size and location of the demonstration project have been left to the discretion of the Secretary of Defense. I will add, however, the whole point of doing a demonstration project is to test whether a legislative idea will produce the results that its proponents intend. The Secretary should conduct a thorough and complete demonstration program.

I would just say to my good friend that he and his colleagues from New Jersey and others can certainly count on my support.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), who has done so much great work on this committee.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, first, let me just say that this is a program that shares support on our committee among Democrats and Republicans. This aircraft capability is something that is very important to our country. We just did a briefing on the emerging aerospace industrial base in China, their new high-performance aircraft, which at some point may threaten American interests. This aircraft is vital, it is needed, and it is an important follow-on. We will keep working on it. I thank the gentleman for his hard work on it.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), a very distinguished American from San Diego, the Navy Top Gun who was nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor for actions over the skies of North Vietnam and who has a real heart for the servicemen.

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

Having heard the eloquence of my great colleague, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and preceded by the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), my old compadre, I do not think I can add anything to what they said.

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

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, this is an attempt to once more state the strong position of this House against the abuses at Abu Ghraib. I have noticed that the first conviction under the court-martial system has taken place today.

This is also an attempt to say good things about the hundreds of thousands of men and women who are serving in uniform, the 141,000 or so in Iraq who are serving honorably, and to put us solidly on record in support of the prosecution of wrongdoers and the continuing strong support, Mr. Chairman, of our forces who are locked in combat in the Iraq theater, in the Afghanistan theater, and let them know we do not support them any less because of the publicity of the last several weeks.

I think it is pretty consistent with what my great friend and colleague, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and I have said over and over in the full committee hearings that we have had on this issue and the briefings that we had, and I would hope that all Members could support this amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to thank the gentleman for his important work in this area, and also mention that the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) and I worked up a provision that is in the base bill also, that I think, after reading the Taguba report, very much follows the Taguba report in terms of clarifying policy.

Let me go over a couple of things that we require to be done.

Ensuring that commanders of detention facilities and commanders of interrogation facilities provide all assigned personnel, including contractor

personnel, with training, and documented acknowledgment of receiving training, regarding the Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners; and establish SOPs, standard operating procedures, for the treatment of detainees.

We also provide that periodic unannounced and announced inspections be made by officers, something that was sadly lacking in the research and investigation that we have done and the review of the Taguba report. Also prohibiting contact between male guards and female detainees and between female guards and male detainees, except in exigent circumstances.

Clearly, there are many dimensions of a prison that are akin, in ways, to locker rooms, and it makes no sense to have substantial contact between male guards and female detainees or female guards and male detainees. So we have spelled that out.

So we have put in, working this in a bipartisan way, we have put in a number of new clarifications, which, while they are manifested into standard operating procedure, represent the emphasis that we would like to place on them in light of the Taguba report and the hearings and briefings that we have received in this matter.

Having said that, I want to thank the gentleman from Missouri and the gentleman from Massachusetts for working on this language also, and all the Members that worked on it.

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

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to reclaim the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and let me just say something briefly in response to my colleague who just spoke.

We are not abdicating any oversight on this issue. In fact, we have had as much congressional hearing time as we have had in the past going to war, sending the entire Nation to war. We have had massive hearings on this issue. We have had briefings.

In fact, we finished a briefing yesterday, with the majority of the House, with the Secretary of Defense and experts on this issue that carried well until after 6:30. The majority of the House Members, by my count, appeared. The Secretary did not leave until the last question was answered.

In my estimation, we have given as much publicity to this as we did to the invasion of Normandy, looking over the old stacks of publicity that attended that fairly important event.

Now, I would say this to my dear colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman). We have 141,000 people whose lives are in danger. They need their leadership. Their battlefield leadership is now back here rehashing this issue. The first conviction was made today on this issue. Does the gentleman think we need to have congressional oversight overlooking the court-martial that just concluded in a conviction and a punishment being meted out?

And I would say to my friend that the punishments in the military system are meted out much swifter and much more surely than they are on the domestic side. We have already had a conviction. So your statement to the effect that there is no oversight, your implication there is no oversight is not true. It is false. There is massive oversight.

And in looking at the Taguba report and embedding many of those recommendations in this law, we have actually made changes that are a function or have arisen from that oversight. So the question is one of balance.

We have 141,000 people who need leadership in their operations. We need to make sure they have all the equipment that they need. We need to make sure they have their operational leadership.

So does the gentleman want another 15 hearings? Maybe we should cancel every piece of congressional business for the entire year so that the issue at Abu Ghraib can be milked until the election. I do not think that is good for either side of the aisle.

We have given an enormous amount of publicity to those seven people. I have a stack of Bronze Stars on my desk. Those people will never get any publicity. They certainly will not hear the gentleman from California talking about them, and probably not me, because we will not have a chance to get to them because we will be concentrating on those seven bad apples ad infinitum.

Judgment and balance are important in this business. And for that reason, I think after massive hearings on both sides of the Capitol, after enormous publicity, with six full investigations now attending these seven people, separate investigations, and prosecutions and court-martials going forward, I think we need to lead our troops and we need to provide them what they need; and that means we need to refocus on this war, and we need to win this war.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton).

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

No, the gentleman has not heard from every single officer in the U.S. Army on this subject.

We have heard from the Secretary of Defense, who is responsible for delivering the Taguba report to us.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Apparently, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) did not understand. Let me be clear: We had a major public hearing on this issue. It was a full-blown hearing, and the briefing that the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) attended is one that the gentleman attends perhaps on an infrequent basis, but one that we have on a regular basis, and have ever since the operation in Iraq started, to let Members of the House know what is happening. That is why the gentleman was invited.

And I am not going to yield to the gentleman because I have a point to make. I have listened to the gentleman's point, and I am going to close. I

am going to talk about some things that are important to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman).

Let me tell Members why it is important to have General Sanchez back leading his troops and not here when you have massive operations and you have conflict and you have people being taken, casualties being killed and wounded in that theater.

General Sanchez, who is in charge of that theater, who is a combat leader in that theater, has issues stacking up on his desk, and he has challenges; and a lot of those challenges affect our constituents.

I presume that the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) has young men and women in the Armed Forces in the gentleman's constituency, who are stationed in Iraq, whose very safety depends on General Sanchez making good decisions. He has to be there to make those decisions. He has to make convoy decisions, IED decisions, operational decisions, and that is why we need him back there leading his troops, not being pulled back here for political theater.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, pursuant to section 4 of House Resolution 648, I hereby request that the following amendment be considered out of the order printed in House Report 108-499: amendment No. 14.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Chairman, I want to say I do not think we need to take time on this side except to just say I think we have got a good work product here, and I think this reflects some pretty good bipartisan work in what are fairly useful sessions where we have briefings by SEC DEF and the other relevant leadership in DoD.

He brought up the fact, and we talked about the fact, that in the Abu Ghraib prison situation you had General Sanchez starting an investigation immediately after the soldier came forward, and the investigation proceeded apace; and under the UCMJ, the prosecutions proceeded apace; but nobody flagged this as something of particularly extraordinary or explosive impact. So we did not have a system that flagged something.

In this age of television and instant communications, these pictures were out in the press before SEC DEF knew about it or we knew about it or other people knew about it.

So I think this is a good result of the gentleman understanding that, talking it back and forth with DoD. The gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) worked on it, and we looked at it and worked on it; and I think the gentleman has a good work product here. It is a way in which they can do essentially what I understand the Air Force has right now, which is when you have something that could have enormous impact, it is flagged up the line so the Secretary and the other leadership can act on it.

I think the gentleman has done a good job, and I appreciate his thoughtfulness and his hard work on the committee; and I think this is a good amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the time, and let me just add to the remarks made by my colleague, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton). I think it is absolutely appropriate that Iraqi resources be used to rebuild Iraq, and we have no objection to this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, first I just want to commend the chairman pro tempore, the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Simpson), who has presided over the last several hours of debate. I thank him for a great job.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that during further consideration of H.R. 4200, pursuant to House Resolution 648, the amendments I have placed at the desk shall be in order as though printed in House Report 108-499 and numbered 29, 30, 31, and 32; and

amendment No. 13 in that report be modified in the form that I have placed at the desk; and

the amendments and the modification that I have placed at the desk shall be considered as read for purposes of this unanimous consent request.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is time for us to refocus. The focus should be on the fact that we have had over 300,000 Americans in uniform serving in this theater. The vast majority of them have served honorably and courageously, I would say to my colleague who just spoke who said, sure, we have some criminal acts, but why can we not convict more people up the chain of command for those acts.

The facts are in this country when somebody commits a criminal act, they are held accountable for that act. They are being held accountable. I want to remind my colleagues once again of the numbers. The numbers are 300,000 Americans serving honorably in Iraq. The numbers further at this point are that six of them have been recommended for criminal prosecution under UCMJ for these acts.

Once again, I saw in The Washington Post this morning that picture of that same lady undertaking a reprehensible act with respect to a prisoner. We have seen thousands of pictures. The ones that I have seen at least that have come forward all have the same several individuals. My point is 300,000 people serving honorably, over 3,000 Purple Hearts awarded, thousands of Bronze Stars awarded, 127 Silver Stars awarded for valor, four Distinguished Service Crosses or Navy Crosses awarded for valor in this war, and our troops in contact right now.

So while we have potentially six bad apples, and I want to set the record straight, three have been recommended to the court martial convening board for court martials. It is the convening board's decision whether or not those court martials go forward and when. So three out of the six who have been recommended for court martial under article 32 are now before the court martial convening authority. That is six people.

Sure, investigations may show more people, but they do not show thousands of people. They do not show tens of thousands of people, and what the record in Iraq does reflect is 300,000 courageous Americans serving our country.

One other thing that we put in this resolution, while all of this national media and international media is going to the six, to the six bad apples who have been identified so far, and the careers have been ended of about seven superior officers up through the chain of command up to the general who is the brigade commander, not because they knew anything about it, in fact, in some cases probably because they did not know anything about it, but because it was on their watch it happened, those careers have been ended.

We have thousands of acts of compassion and nation-building and government-building carried on by the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States. They have started city councils, repaired sewage lines, and inoculated kids so they will not get sick. They have done great things, and we put that in this resolution because they deserve a little attention, not just the six bad apples.

Mr. Speaker, let me just answer the gentleman who has just spoken. There are three investigations going on right now. There is a CENTCOM investigation, a criminal investigation going on right now. If there are other people involved beyond these six, those people will be picked up in that investigation. There is also a Department of the Army investigation and a Department of the Navy investigation going on.

Further, let me say to my friends, the ranking member, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), and I worked on this together. The Committee on Armed Services was the appropriate standing committee to do this. We worked on this until late last night, and the people who vetoed what we thought we had an agreement on were the Democrat leadership.

Let me tell Members the two paragraphs they vetoed. They wanted to kick out the two paragraphs that referred to the good works in terms of providing food, providing education, providing medical capability to the Iraqi people that were given by our people in uniform. I thought it was appropriate since we have 300,000 people who have done right to continue to mention the fact that they have done some good things in Iraq. I think the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) agreed with that also.

The Democrat leadership did not want to include those good things in this particular resolution, and that is why this had to come forward not under unanimous consent agreed to by the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and myself, but it had to come forward through the rules process.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would simply say, before we knew about this, the criminal procedures were going forward. It was the United States Army soldier, not a press, not an IG who brought this forward. It was a United States Army soldier who brought this forward. Criminal investigations are going on, undertaken by the Army. The court martial process is in process.

Mr. Speaker, let me say to my colleague that when the publicity flush is finished on what was done by who we have identified as some six individuals now, they will have received thousands and thousands, as much time and publicity as the 300,000 good Americans who have served this country, and as much attention from this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 628, I call up the resolution (H. Res. 627) deploring the abuse of persons in United States custody in Iraq, regardless of the circumstances of their detention, urging the Secretary of the Army to bring to swift justice any member of the Armed Forces who has violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, expressing the deep appreciation of the Nation to the courageous and honorable members of the Armed Forces who have selflessly served, or are currently serving, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, during the debate on the rule, I think every Member who was listening to the debate as they listened to a number of speeches being made over and over, sometimes the same things being said by different Members, they understand the subject which we are addressing today, which is the criminal acts of what has been identified so far as six individuals, with three of them having been recommended under article 32 of the UCMJ to the court martial convening authority for general court martial for abuse of prisoners, assault, and dereliction of duty.

That is one of the purposes of this resolution, for this House to condemn those activities. Understand that the criminal prosecutions have not taken place yet, the trials have not been held and that we are not passing judgment at this point on people who are being focused on as potential defendants in these cases. But I thought it was important, Mr. Speaker, to talk about the other people, because the tendency of the media and the discussion has been to forget about the 300,000 uniformed Americans who are serving our country with bravery, with compassion, with ingenuity and doing great things, not in their own communities, but in communities thousands of miles away where the only reward they may receive is from a kid that they have given a soccer ball to like hundreds of the 101 Airborne members, or for people whom they have hooked up a water supply as people have done in all of the cities throughout central Iraq or children that have been vaccinated by American medics. The only thanks they are going to get, obviously, is not going to come from the American press at this point because the American press is fixated on what you might call the six bad apples who have been identified to date, and there may be more. We all know that.

But the 300,000 who served honorably, they are not going to get too much attention here because it is not in keeping with a good sound bite today if you want to get on television to talk about the good things that have been done in the country.

My great partner on this Committee on Armed Services, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), was in full accord with this. We wanted to make sure that the good people got talked about and that this did not turn into the action of the demoralization of our fighting forces in Iraq.

So we wanted to talk about the good things they have done. And this resolution, and I would commend it to every Democrat and Republican, from the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) and all of the others who may have had trouble or problems with this resolution, I would commend it to them to approve and to support and to vote for.

I just wanted to say, Mr. Speaker, I am looking at right now some of the untold stories; and I wanted to cite an untold story to you, a couple of them. It is true that there were abuses so far by six people who have been identified in this Abu Ghraib prison; but while that was going on, Gunnery Sergeant Jeffrey Bohr of the United States Marine Corps was awarded the Silver Star posthumously for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy while serving as Company Gunnery Sergeant, Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 5, 1st Marine Division.

While moving through narrow streets toward the objective, the convoy took intense small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire. Throughout this movement, Gunnery Sergeant Bohr delivered accurate effective fires on the enemy, while encouraging his Marines and supplying critical information to his company commander. When the lead vehicles of the convoy reached a dead end and were subjected to heavy enemy fire, Gunnery Sergeant Bohr continued to boldly engage the enemy while calmly maneuvering his Marines to safety.

Upon learning of a wounded Marine in a forward vehicle, Gunnery Sergeant Bohr immediately coordinated medical treatment and evacuation. Moving to the position of the injured Marine, Gunnery Sergeant Bohr continued to lay down a high volume of suppressive fire, simultaneously guiding the medical evacuation vehicle until he was mortally wounded by enemy fire.

Yes, we had abuses by some six people. We have had apparent abuses by some six people who are now going through the criminal justice system of the U.S. Army, which I think our Members will find moves a lot faster than the domestic justice system. But at the same time, Corporal Marco Martinez was undertaking actions which led to him being awarded the second highest award that our government can give for heroism, the Navy Cross.

So I thought I might take a little bit of this time that was intended to beat up the U.S. military, to congratulate some of those 300,000 people who have served U.S. so well.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hayes).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Jo Ann Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Simmons), one of our great veterans.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address what the gentlewoman just said because she has made a mistake. She said that the 3-month-old investigation has only now come to light. I have in front of me the news release that I will give to the gentlewoman. As of January 16, which was 3 days after the soldier came forward and gave to his commanding officer the evidence that bad things were taking place at the prison, CENTCOM released a news release to every news agency in the world stating that an investigation has been initiated into reported incidents of detainee abuse.

So they announced to the world 3 days after the soldier came forward in January that an investigation had been started; and General Kimmet announced to the combined audiences of Fox News, MSNBC and CNN, by my calculations over 20 million people, on January 16 that an investigation had been started. Outside of that, nobody was told.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. Speaker, I will tell the gentlewoman the entire world was told by this news release.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think this is a very important point. The soldier came forward on January 13 and gave this evidence to his commanding officer that prisoners were being abused. CENTCOM announced to the world through their official news release that they were investigating this 3 days later; and General Kimmet, who was before an audience of some 20 million people three days later, January 16, announced it was in fact being investigated.

So the statement that the investigation has just now come to light is not accurate.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I would say that the investigation, there are now six investigations ongoing, the investigation that was started has identified some six individuals. Those are all people wearing uniform.

If the investigation reveals further people who are civilian contractors, those people can be punished under the laws of the United States which have been extended to theater.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry).

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

I say to my good distinguished colleague I invite him to come to our committee hearing in which we are conducting oversight in this matter at 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon, and I also remind him that we have now carried out by those people that we have trusted in uniform in the Iraqi theater and elsewhere, six investigations now ongoing into this particular matter, six investigations.

I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, I would say to my colleague that we have three of the people involved in this who have been bound over to the court-martial convening authority for general courts martial, that is, for criminal prosecutorial activity, and to say to my colleague again, who has told me many times about how much he respects our people in uniform, that our people in uniform themselves, starting with the private who reported this, have six investigations ongoing. And I think part of our job is not just to have oversight, but also to trust to the honor and integrity of the people who wear the uniform, and we now have six investigations going forward.

So let us have this hearing tomorrow and see where we go from there, but

my feeling is we have good, competent, honorable people undertaking these investigations.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), who cares so much about America's men and women in uniform.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds.

To address the distinguished majority whip, the distinguished majority whip, like the previous speaker, is wrong. The statement was put out by the Army on January 15 that this investigation was taking place, 2 days after the soldier came forward. And 3 days after the soldier came forward, it was given in General Kimmitt's address to the combined audiences of Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. That is not turning a blind eye.

I will give the gentleman the notice. It was put out on January 14. He can look at it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, let me just say to my friend, you say some knew about this. The combined audiences of Fox News, MSNBC and CNN heard this in the daily briefing in January. So your statement that the administration turned a blind eye to it is not true. They initiated an investigation, once again initiated by General Sanchez, 3 days after the soldier came forward.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer), a former member of the Committee on Armed Services, who is a colonel in the Army Reserve and was in fact a JAG officer at our POW camps in Gulf War I.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume just to reiterate the same thing that I have been stating, and that is that 2 days after the soldier in January reported to his superiors that abuses were taking place, the United States announced to the world in their press release that we were undertaking an investigation. And a few days after that, 4 days after the facts came forward, we announced to the combined audiences of Fox News, MSNBC and CNN, millions of people, that the investigations were taking place.

The investigations proceeded. We now have three individuals who are being recommended to the Court-Martial Convening Authority for court- martial for prisoner abuse, assault, dereliction of duty, and a large number of people in the chain of command have had their career ended, not because we found any connection between them and the acts, but because it was on their watch that these things took place.

I want to say just one thing about Mr. Rumsfeld before I recognize another speaker, Mr. Speaker. We have 135,000 good, hard-working, courageous uniformed men and women in theater. They are in contact in firefights on a daily basis. The job of the Secretary of Defense is to see to it that we win this war. He assigned to the legitimate, appropriate departments this investigation and told them to go forward, which they did, resulting in the criminal prosecution machine being set in motion under our court-martial authority, and he went back to trying to win this war. That is the appropriate action for the Secretary of Defense.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my good friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson), a great member of the 173rd Airborne in the Vietnam War.

Mr. Speaker, I yield our remaining time to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take this opportunity with a number of colleagues on the Committee on Armed Services to discuss the subject on which America is most closely focused right now because we have troops in combat and that is the Iraq theater of war and the progress that has been made and the portent for the future.

We all recall when our great servicemen, the 1st Marine Division, the 101st Airborne, the 3rd Army Division, and the many other supporting elements in the Navy and the Marine Corps and the Army and the Air Force and the U.S. Coast Guard made that lightning drive for Baghdad and doing something that most of the critics felt they could not do, drove past choke points, bridges, oil fields, and other places that we thought the enemy would blow or disrupt; but the movement was so quick and so well coordinated that, in fact, we seized most of those difficult areas before the enemy could take advantage of their capability to blow them or to make them impassable for our soldiers.

So we drove up right through the center of Iraq, up through the heart of

Iraq; and we took Baghdad and we started the second chapter of this centerpiece of the war on terrorism and that is to turn Iraq into a nation that has a benign intent with respect to the United States, that is not an enemy of the United States, and, in fact, can be counted on to be a friend and in that very, very difficult part of the world lying between Syria and Iran, can be a force for good and an ally of the United States. It is a very important aspect of our war against terrorism.

Now we have started the second chapter, and it is a tough chapter. We have troops engaged in combat right now in areas like Fallujah. We have the United States Marines in firefights, as we speak, trying to knock out the resistance to those who do not want to see democracy.

And I think for those who looked at this June 30 hand-over of initial sovereignty, taking it away from the United States and handing it over, starting that turn-over of political power, most of us anticipated that there would be an up-swell in violence. There has been an up-swell in violence.

And the Marines right now are fighting tenaciously. And we see with our embedded reporters and our real time television in the city of Fallujah and other areas, difficult areas, we see clerics like al Sadr taking advantage of the occupation in an attempt to foment anti- Americanism and strikes against our troops. We see still the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, those people who had it so good in the days of the palaces who want to get back into power.

And we have a message for the United States that, I think, is derived against that background. That message is hold firm. Stay steady, because we are making steady progress.

And there are people in Iraq who want to be part of this new government. We have hundreds of little community governments that have been started up, interestingly, by our military leaders, by these great wonderful military leaders who are skilled in leadership, who know how to bring people together, who know how to engineer teamwork. And they stood up city councils and what I would call county governments across Iraq.

And those people are working on getting those sewage systems hooked up, getting that electricity hooked up, getting that water supply to the neighborhood that does not have it.

And we are also doing great things for the children of Iraq. We are now at a record level of school attendance. We are doing everything we can to make sure that Iraqi children are able to go to school, get an education. We have stood up hospitals. We have allowed a religious freedom that is unprecedented in modern times where people can go to the areas that were forbidden by Saddam Hussein. We are hooking up electrical capability and turning on that great resource for the Iraqi people, and that is the oil fields.

Now we have had a major, major redeployment of American troops, one of the biggest in history. And in that redeployment we moved the 1st Infantry Division up to that very difficult area of operations, up to the area of Baghdad where the 4th Infantry Division was in place. The 4th Infantry Division is now rotated out. We have moved many elements from the 1st Marine Division into the area of operations to Fallujah and points west where the 82nd Airborne was in place and where the 1st Armored Division was in place. In Baghdad we have moved now the 1st Cavalry Division. And we have kept most of the 1st Armored Division in place which, I think, in light of this up-swell in violence, is a very, very prudent decision by Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and the President of the United States.

So stay steady should be the order of the day. And we are doing that. And our troops are doing a wonderful job for us. We know we have got a ton of National Guard and Reservists in place. And they are doing a wonderful job for us. And when we finish in Iraq, we cannot guarantee that the Iraqi people will have freedom forever, we cannot expect them to turn into Republicans and Democrats. But what we can expect is to have a nation that has a benign intent toward the United States, that is has a good relationship toward the United States and refuses to be a jumping off point for terrorism and a point for unrest and disruption in that part of the world.

And I still in my mind's eye, I know it was a long time ago and images move off that TV screen quickly, but I remember the pictures of the dead Kurdish mothers holding their babies, killed in mid-stride where that poison gas hit them. I remember those images.

I remember the images of the mass graves that they have uncovered, many more to be uncovered where people are just now discovering what happened to their father or their brother.

I remember the story from the farmer who said that every day bus loads of people would be brought up to his farm and that backhoes that had dug the trenches the day before would be standing by with new trenches dug, and the firing squad that worked bankers hours, 9 to 5, would appear; and they would move people out of the buses from grandmothers right down to little children, move them up to the edge of the trenches, and they would each receive one bullet in the back of the head, and then they would be bulldozed into the trenches.

He recounted one day where the firing squad ran out of ammunition so they just bulldozed them into the trenches alive. That is the story of what happened before in Iraq.

And so for people who ask their mothers and fathers when they look through history and see terrible things in that land, they say why did we not as Americans do anything about it, they can, with respect to Iraq, say America did something about it.

Right now we are in a difficult time. Our troops are in battle. Now we should stay firm. We should stay steady.

Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to yield to my colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline), who had a great career in the United States Marines, who does a great service on the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his very eloquent remarks. I am reminded that we have a lot of folks fighting the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and in other parts of the world. We are equally grateful to them. I thank him for the experience he brings to the committee and his good judgment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my great colleague, the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley) for any remarks he would like to make.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield on that one point, I remember one story in the Post and I believe it was fairly well-documented about a high school class in Baghdad where the high schoolers, several of them wrote anti-Saddam Hussein remarks on the blackboard. They disappeared, and their families discovered after some years they had been hung. So high schoolers were taken out and hung for making anti-Saddam remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I might just ask the gentleman what his basic take was on the GIs that he met with while in Iraq?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his trip, and I want to thank all the Members who have gone, Republican and Democrat. We have had a great majority of the members of the committee go to Iraq and spend a lot of time with the troops. We really appreciate that.

Incidentally, I would ask my colleagues, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Forbes) and the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Jo Ann Davis), the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Schrock), and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner), I will ask the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner) to talk to us a little bit next. But if anybody needs to leave early, we will make sure that they get a chance to speak before we go on.

I want to thank the gentleman for his great work on the Committee on Armed Services. It is a big commitment to go to Iraq and take that big block of time, and it is not easy, not convenient and under the rules and the tough aspects of flying into some of those areas now it is a little bit of an ordeal. I want to thank the gentleman for taking the effort and really caring about our troops.

Mr. Speaker, I recognize the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner) for any remarks he would like to make.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to thank the gentleman for his great service in the Committee on Armed Services and his expertise to the markups we have had; also to his commitment to our people in uniform.

Let me ask the gentleman his ideas on the morale of our troops. I understand this is a tough and difficult time. What is your take?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

Let me ask the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Forbes), who actually arrived first for this special order. I want to thank him for his special efforts and all the great service on the committee, and all the work he does for the people who wear the uniform for the United States. Please tell us about your experience in Iraq.

We are all working together.

On that point, too, I would say to my good friend from Virginia, one thing that I think Americans understand is that we now live in an age where we have to preempt, we have to go abroad, we have to go after the bad guys. That is what this President has done aggressively. He has gone after the bad guys. Up to that point we had had attacks on the Cole, we had attacks on embassies, we had terrorist acts around the world and we threw a few cruise missiles. We got a pharmacy knocked out, a pharmaceutical plant, and a relatively empty training ground in Afghanistan and two Chihuahuas and I do not think we hit the Chihuahuas under a previous administration, and I am being facetious. Actually, they were not effective enough to get Chihuahuas. So we had a very limited response to terrorist acts against our people. It killed our people.

This President has gone after the bad guys in a furious way, and we have taken out terrorists in places where they never thought we would show up.

We had the 10th Mountain Division guys come up over the top of those mountains at 10,000 feet elevation and, they killed these guys at close range in their foxholes and their fighting positions.

We had people who went to meeting places where they thought they were totally meeting in secret, except for a team of Navy SEALS who had shown up before they did by great exertion and got there ahead of them.

We have got American Marines right now locked in firefights at close range in Fallujah, where literally one mud wall may separate our forces and automatic weapons fire coming from the other side.

So we have gone after the bad guys aggressively and there have been some rewards, and I think Americans reflect on those rewards.

Mr. Khadaffi, who caused us enormous problems and caused us to have to take military action after he killed American servicemen through terrorist activities in Germany, and I remember the strike on the Gulf of Sidra that was made under Ronald Reagan. He decided, and I think one reason he decided was because of what he saw on his television set, he decided to start turning his nuclear program over to the United States and turning over tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment, and I think that is because he looked at his television set and he saw Saddam Hussein being led out of his spider hole and decided that he did not want to be in that position some day, and so we are now disarming Libya of its nuclear program without firing a shot. That is one result, one reward of having a President who has gone aggressively after the bad guys, and I think Americans understand.

I thought what a great thing as I drove up from the gentleman from Virginia's (Mr. Schrock) district the other day, through the gentleman's district and through the gentlewoman from Virginia's (Mrs. Jo Ann Davis) district, what a wonderful thing that we, millions of Americans, live this great life, springtime in America, and you can drive up that highway, you can see the new rose buds coming out and the dogwoods blossoming, and we live this wonderful life with our families in security because we have great people in uniform who are aggressively going after the bad guys.

We found out in 9/11 what happens when we do not aggressively go after the bad guys, when we bomb an empty pharmaceutical plant in response to killings of Americans.

So I think the American people kind of understand that, and I think that has been reflected in every poll, and these things never come wrapped, I have discovered, in neat packages. Nothing ever flows smoothly. Lots of mistakes are made in wars. You have lots of problems with your logistics lines.

I would like to see our armored situations coming along faster than they are. Even though we now have some 7,000 out of our 12,000 Humvees in theater, are now totally remanufactured Humvees or they are up- armored, I would like to see all 12,000 that the Army has up-armored. I would like to see more gun trucks, more armored five tons, seven tons.

This President has aggressively gone after the bad guys, and in those actions and the actions of our great people in uniform we have put the United States in a much better position than we were just a few years ago, and I thank the gentleman for talking about this.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for a very, very eloquent statement and for his great service to our country and as a great member of the Committee on Armed Services and his caring for our people in uniform. Thank you very much.

It is a pleasure to call on the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Jo Ann Davis), who also is a great supporter of the U.S. military and a great member of the committee. Thanks for being with us.

(Mrs. Jo Ann Davis of Virginia asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks, and include extraneous material.)

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her great service on the Committee on Armed Services and her dedication to our people in uniform. What a wonderful, wonderful statement she has made, and especially relating it to the people that wear the uniform, because they are literally America's heart and soul over in that military theater.

So I thank the gentlewoman from Virginia very much, and now I would like to yield to the gentlewoman's colleague, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Schrock), who has done a great job on our committee and works very hard and has served our people in uniform, so he has a little background there himself.

Let me ask the gentleman what his take is on the situation in Iraq right now. How does my colleague see it?

I think the gentleman understands, too, that there is no substitute in terms of a dramatic picture on the television screen for a burning truck or for an explosion or bullet-riddled vehicle. That, unfortunately, tends to sell more Coca Cola

I would compare it to some of the TV stations who say we are going to make our 5 o'clock news wall to wall wrecks. We are not going to have a lot of content, but we are going to have wall to wall wrecks, and we will get a certain viewership just from doing that. I think nationally you see the same thing. So they do not see the good things. An electric line being hooked up will put you to sleep, and it is nothing like a burning vehicle. I think that is one of the things that we are fighting against. I am glad the gentleman is here to talk about the accomplishments.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for those great statements because he has worn the uniform for a long time himself. The gentleman's feeling is that our people have good morale?

What is interesting, too, Mr. Speaker, is that those who have stepped back from the fray, some of the Arab nations, like Saudi Arabia, have now discovered that they are targets; that you cannot, by staying away from this fight that the Americans have taken on, because we face our threats head on and take them on, they thought somehow they could stay out of the battle and they could stay away from the brutality of the terrorist groups. But they have discovered now they cannot do that. Jordan is discovering it cannot avoid this conflict.

And I think there is another thing, too, that the world understands, and perhaps more leaders in the world need to be educated on this. We won World War II. We could have enslaved Germany and Japan. And certainly after what Japan did to us with the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese people were told by their military leaders to expect us to be as brutal to them as they had been to other people. They decapitated our POWs. They killed about a third of them. They killed 100,000 people when they took Nan-King, China. They speared live people on their bayonet courses. They captured Chinese civilians.

They did all these brutal, horrible things, and they warned their people, they are now going to do to us what we have done to them. But American GIs walked down the streets of Tokyo and handed out Hershey bars. That character has not changed.

When we look at the guys walking down the streets of Baghdad with a bunch of kids standing around them, we see the same character. In fact, many of those guys are the grandchildren of people who served in World War II and the children of people who served in Vietnam.

That takes me to one thing, too, that I thought was very relevant, and that is the fight over the Presidency and Senator Kerry's participation in the Vietnam War, for which he should be credited, but also the accountability that he should take for what he said about his fellow GIs.

If we were to take three of the statements Senator Kerry has said, the one where he said 80 percent of us were stoned on dope 24 hours a day; the one where he said that we murdered 200,000 people, that was two of those statements; and the one where he said that we ravaged the countryside, cutting off limbs and murdering people in a manner, quote, reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, if Senator Kerry had said that our GIs in Iraq, as they were driving up that country, if he had come on television and said the American soldiers in Iraq are stoned 24 hours a day, 80 percent of them; that they have murdered 200,000 Iraqis, and they are ravaging Iraq in a manner reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, the American people would be picketing his office by the tens of thousands, and he would be on his way out immediately.

So if we just juxtapose and take off that word Vietnam from the statement he made in 1971, where he said American GIs were ravaging Vietnam like Ghengis Khan and had murdered 200,000 people, if we took out Vietnam and put Iraq on it, I think Americans today can understand why a lot of Vietnam veterans feel no close kinship to Senator Kerry. Because those guys that were driving up there through the heart of Iraq taking that shot and shell and heading for Baghdad, those kids were the same guys we had in Vietnam. Many of them were the sons and grandsons. Same character, same characteristics, same sense of honor, and doing the same great thing for the people.

Lastly, I remember the pictures of the people, of all the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who tried to swim after the Americans after we left Vietnam. I remember also the pictures of the people being held in the Hong Kong camps who were now going to be forcibly repatriated back to what I guess Mr. Kerry's cohorts would call the people's working paradise in Vietnam. They were holding on to the guards and they were shrieking and they were beside themselves. They would do anything and had to be sedated to be finally put on the planes to be carried back to Communist Vietnam.

That showed, to a large degree, the character of the Americans that had been in Vietnam. If we had been bad to the people, they would not have tried to swim after us after we left. And they are today in our populations by the hundreds of thousands.

So I thought about that when I watched that embedded news following our kids in the 1st Marine Division in Iraq and following the 101st Airborne and the 3rd Army and the 4th Infantry Division. Same people, same GIs, same good people.

Well, I think American Vietnam veterans should simply look at his statements, and if they agree with those statements, if they did those things, and they think that is accurate, then they should vote for Mr. Kerry.

Stay steady.

I thank the gentleman.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest the gentleman not praise me too much, because this Special Order has to stay credible.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his great remarks, and I now want to welcome the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), who is carrying on the great tradition of Floyd Spence, my great buddy and friend and former chairman of the Committee on Armed Services. I thank him for the sacrifices his family has made and he has made in being in the service, and for his dedication to our people in uniform.

I thank the gentleman for his remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding. I have been watching the national debate and, of course, all of the talk shows and all of the discussion about Senator Kerry's service to the country, the President's service to the country, who is patriotic, who is not patriotic. I think that it is important to lay out in lines of demarcation across what is fair political comment and what is not. I think that, first, service to our country gives any Member who has served, especially in a war like Vietnam, the platform, the right, to certainly have a position, a credible position on what we should do with respect to national defense. On the other hand, service in the military does not by and of itself mean that you are not accountable for, if you are elected to Congress, your voting record.

What I would like to do is to simply say that I have no quarrel with Senator Kerry's having served in Vietnam. I think that is a good thing and I think that being a veteran is something people should be commended for. On the other hand, I think it is very important to say that that is not a substitute for a strong defense voting record. I heard several people attacking the President the other day and Vice President Cheney in particular, saying that Vice President Cheney had a poor voting record on defense and that Senator Kerry had a good voting record on defense. So what I did was go to the Almanac of American Politics, which puts together a series of ratings on Congressmen and Senators. It is done by the National Journal. It is considered to be nonpartisan. It is considered to have a great deal of credibility. They give people ratings by groups that they think are good, honest brokers of where you stand in particular areas.

For example, I have, I think, a fairly low AFL-CIO rating. Other Members of Congress have a high rating. That rating is in the National Journal, where people can open it up and see my rating. Senator Kerry also has a rating from the American Security Council. He has a rating that was given at the same time that he was in the Senate that the Vice President, Richard Cheney, was in the House of Representatives, and in which a real barometer for being a good, strong defense Democrat, Sam Nunn of Georgia, was in the Senate. I looked at this rating. The rating at the time when they were all three in Congress, Vice President Cheney, at that time Congressman Cheney, had a 100 percent American Security Council rating for being strong on national defense as reported by the Almanac of American Politics. Sam Nunn, Democrat from Georgia, had a 100 percent rating for being strong on national defense under the American Security Council rating system as reported in the Almanac of American Politics put out by National Journal. Senator Kerry had a zero for a national defense voting record as rated by the American Security Council, as reported by the National Journal's Almanac of American Politics. Once again Vice President Cheney, 100 percent in votes in support of a strong national defense. Sam Nunn, Democrat from Georgia, 100 percent for a strong national defense. Senator John Kerry, zero.

I do not think we should continue to debate ad nauseam Senator Kerry's record with respect to Vietnam. I think his words when he testified to the Senate and said that American servicemen had murdered 200,000 people, I think he should be accountable for that. I think he should be accountable for the statement when he said that 80 percent of them were stoned on pot 24 hours a day and that they ravaged the country like Genghis Khan. But I do not think that we should ad nauseam debate his service. We should, though, debate his voting record and whether that voting record portends well for the United States of America in terms of a strong national security should he become President of the United States. I think that we ought to go to the record, we ought to get off this who shot John and who is bad and who is good and who served and who did not, but go to the voting record and analyze who would be best in terms of making a strong national security apparatus for our country. In my estimation, that is not Senator Kerry.

I again thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, when Americans watched U.S. troops take Baghdad through embedded media, they saw the American GI in his true character. They saw a GI who was compassionate, who was honorable, and who had great courage. In a way they saw also the GIs of Vietnam because in many cases those were the sons and grandsons and granddaughters of people who had fought in Vietnam, people who had the same character, the same honor, the same courage.

Yet we have had a person who is running for President, Senator John Kerry, describe those people as having murdered 200,000 people in Vietnam, being stoned on pot 24 hours a day, that is he said 60 to 80 percent of them, and ravaging the country in a Genghis Khan-like fashion.

I think Americans have a choice. If you feel that your son or daughter did those acts in Vietnam, if that was a true characteristic of American GI's in Vietnam if you served in Vietnam, if you think your husband conducted himself in that fashion, perhaps you want to vote for John Kerry. If you think that is a wild-eyed, nutty statement that is not an appropriate statement for somebody running for President of the United States, vote against John Kerry.

Mr. HUNTER (during the Special Order of Mr. King of Iowa). Mr. Speaker, I want to place in the Record at the end of the debate on the Transportation bill that the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) was going to vote on that bill, and I pulled him into a meeting that I thought was pretty important since he is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities on the Committee on Armed Services.

I was in charge of watching the clock, and I did not do that; and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) missed that vote, and I just want to apologize for that, and if it is any consolation, I missed it, too.

So I apologize to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) for that occurring.