Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I was just walking out when I heard the gentleman mention the great Henry Hyde of Illinois, and I just wanted to add my words as a guy who watched him in monumental debates that affected this Nation and the world over the last 26 years.

Henry Hyde has been a giant in the House of Representatives and in America, and I want to thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I rise in support of S. 3930, the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Mr. Speaker, as we debated this bill just a few hours ago, again, I say that I can't think of any better way to honor the fifth anniversary of September 11 than by establishing a system to prosecute the terrorists who on that day murdered thousands of civilians and who continue to seek to kill Americans both on and off the battlefield.

Mr. Speaker, I think that Justice Thomas described best the backdrop against which this legislation is being considered when he said, and I quote, ``We are not engaged in a traditional battle with a nation state but with a worldwide hydra-headed enemy who lurks in the shadows conspiring to reproduce the atrocities of September 11, 2001, and who has boasted of sending suicide bombers into civilian gatherings, has proudly distributed videotapes of beheadings of civilian workers, and has tortured and dismembered captured American soldiers.''

So, Mr. Speaker, we have debated this precisely, this bill, which is precisely the same coming back over from the other body as the bill that we voted on in the full House, where I think we had a robust debate on the issues. But I would just say that this gives us a new body of law that provides a construct under which we can carry out our charge.

And this is an interesting charge to this body and to both Houses of Congress. We were not only requested to do this by the President, but the Supreme Court in the Hamdan case essentially invited, in fact said that we were an essential part of the construct of any tribunal legislation that would set up the new tribunal process; that it had to be a construct that was participated in by

Congress. So you could say, I think, Mr. Speaker, that we have been charged not just by the President but by the Supreme Court with doing our job and putting together this process.

We have pursued the terrorists across the globe. We have captured some, and we have killed many. We have pursued them literally to the ends of the earth. We have caught them at 10,000 foot elevation mountain ranges in caves where they thought they were safe, in so- called safe houses that turned out not to be safe houses. We captured some who, according to our intelligence personnel, helped to design the attack against New York and Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania. And I can think of no more important way to memorialize 9/11 than to produce a justice system that allows us to bring to justice, to bring to the courthouse and show justice to the widows and orphans of 9/11, to the American people, to our fellow citizens and to the world. This system is going to allow us to do this.

This system is a product of extensive negotiations, hundreds of provisions that have been agreed upon and worked and looked at by counsel for both this body, the other body, the U.S. Senate and, of course, the administration. I think it is sound. I think it is solid. I think it will allow for the expeditious prosecution of people who attacked our country.

It gives them a lot of rights. It gives a lot of rights to the terrorists that they would never have in their native land. It also gives them rights that American soldiers don't have. There is no American soldier that has the right to an attorney, to a combatant status review and, if he doesn't like that review, to an appellate court, like the D.C. Circuit Court, to prove that he really was not a combatant in that particular conflict.

So as the American people watch these trials unfold, Mr. Speaker, and they watch the defendants, including some of the people who hurt our country and helped to cause the death of thousands of Americans, they are going to watch them with their taxpayer-paid-for attorneys exercising their rights against self-incrimination, their right to a proof standard beyond a reasonable doubt; they are going to watch a jury system or a commission system that uses a secret ballot so that superior officers can't influence junior officers; they are going to watch all these safeguards that we put in place for justice, and I think the American people are going to say, although there will be some who will say they still didn't have enough rights, but I think the American people will come down on the side of what we have done here in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 3930, the ``Military Commissions Act of 2006.'' I can think of no better way to honor the fifth anniversary of September 11th than by establishing a system to prosecute the terrorists who, on that day, murdered thousands of innocent civilians, and who continue to seek to kill Americans both on and off the battlefield.

This is vital legislation important to the national security of the United States.

Our foremost consideration in writing this legislation is to protect American troops and American citizens from harm.

The war against terror has produced a new type of battlefield and a new type of enemy. How is it different? We are fighting a ruthless enemy who does not wear a uniform. A savage enemy who kills civilians, women and children and then boasts about it. A barbaric enemy who beheads innocent civilians by sawing their heads off. An uncivilized enemy who does not acknowledge or respect the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions or any of the guarantees which are recognized by civilized nations.

Justice Thomas put it best in Hamdan. He said we are ``not engaged in a traditional battle with a nation-state, but with a world-wide, hydra- headed enemy, who lurks in the shadows conspiring to reproduce the atrocities of September 11, 2001, and who has boasted of sending suicide bombers into civilian gatherings, has proudly distributed videotapes of beheadings of civilian workers, and has tortured and dismembered captured American soldiers.''

How is the battlefield new? First, it will be a long war. We don't know if this enemy will be defeated this decade, the next decade, or even longer than that. Second, in this new war, where intelligence is more vital than ever, we want to interrogate the enemy. Not to degrade them, but to save the lives of American troops, American civilians, and our allies. But it is not practical on the battlefield to read the enemy their Miranda warnings. On the battlefield we can't have battalions of lawyers. Finally, this is an ongoing conflict and sharing sensitive intelligence sources, methods and other classified information with terrorist detainees could be highly dangerous to national security. I am not prepared to take that risk.

So what we have done is to develop a military commission process that will allow for the effective prosecution of enemy combatants during this ongoing conflict. Without this action, United States has no effective means to try and punish the perpetrators of September 11th, the attack on the USS Cole and the embassy bombings.

We provide basic fairness in our prosecutions, but we also preserve the ability of our warfighters to operate effectively on the battlefield.

I think a fair process has two guiding principles:

First, the government must be able to present its case fully and without compromising its intelligence sources or compromising military necessity; and

Second, the prosecutorial process must be done fairly, swiftly and conclusively.

Who are we dealing with in military commissions? We are dealing with the enemy in war, not defendants in our domestic criminal justice system. Some of them have returned to the battlefield after we let them out of Guantanamo. Our primary purpose is to keep them off the battlefield. In doing so, we treat them humanely and if we choose to try them as war criminals we will give them due process rights that the world will respect. But we have to remember they are the enemy in an ongoing war.

In time of war it is not practical to apply to rules of evidence that we do in civilian trials or court-martials for our troops. Commanders and witnesses can't be called from the frontline to testify in a military commission. We need to accommodate rules of evidence, chain of custody and authentication to fit the exigencies of the battlefield. If hearsay is reliable we should use it. If sworn affidavits are reliable, we should use them. I note that the rules of evidence are relaxed in international war crime tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia.

The Supreme Court has suggested that Congress act here to fill the legal void left by the Hamdan decision, but in doing so let's not forget our purpose is to defend the nation against the enemy. We won't lower our standards, we will always treat detainees humanely, but we can't be naive either.

This war started in 1996 with the al Qaeda declaration of jihad against the United States. The Geneva Conventions were written in 1949 and the UCMJ was adopted in 1951. These documents were not written to address the war we are now fighting. In that sense, what we are required to do after Hamdan is broader than war crimes trials, it is the start of a new legal analysis for the long war. It is time for us to think about war crime trials and a process that provides due process and protects national security in the new war.

So what do we do with these new military commissions? We uphold basic human rights and state what our compliance with this standard means for the treatment of detainees. We do this in a way that is fair and the world will acknowledge as fair.

First, we provide accused war criminals at least 26 rights if they are tried by a commission for a war crime. While I will not read them all, here are some of the essential rights we provide.

Right to Counsel, provided by government at trial and throughout appellate proceedings;

Impartial judge;

Presumption of innocence;

Standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt;

The right to be informed of the charges against him as soon as practicable;

The right to service of charges sufficiently in advance of trial to prepare a defense;

Mr. Speaker, since I am inserting my entire text in the Record, I will not read them all at this point.

The right to reasonable continuances;

Right to peremptory challenge against members of the commission and challenges for cause against members of the commission and the military judge;

Witness must testify under oath; judges, counsel and members of military commission must take oath;

Right to enter a plea of not guilty;

The right to obtain witnesses and other evidence;

The right to exculpatory evidence as soon a practicable;

The right to be present at court with the exception of certain classified evidence involving national security, preservation of safety or preventing disruption of proceedings;

The right to a public trial except for national security issues or physical safety issues;

The right to have any findings or sentences announced as soon as detennined;

Right against compulsory self-incrimination;

Right against double jeopardy;

The defense of lack of mental responsibility;

Voting by members of the military commission by secret written ballot;

Prohibitions against unlawful command influence toward members of the commission, counselor military judges;

\2/3\ vote of members required for conviction; \3/4\ vote required for sentences of life or over ten years; unanimous verdict required for death penalty;

Verbatim authenticated record of trial;

Cruel or unusual punishments prohibited;

Treatment and discipline during confinement the same as afford to prisoners in U.S. domestic courts;

Right to review of full factual record by convening authority; and

Right to at least two appeals including to a federal Article III appellate court.

We provide all of these rights, and we give them an independent judge, and the right to at least two appeals, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and access to the Supreme Court. No one can say this is not a fair system.

I know some of my colleagues are concerned about the issue of reciprocity. I ask them to look at the list of rights I just summarized. And also keep in mind, that these are rights for terrorists. If we are talking about true reciprocity, then we are only concerned about how the enemy will treat American terrorists. These are not our rules for POWs. We treat the legitimate enemy differently and expect them to treat our troops the same.

How do we try the enemy for war crimes? In this Act, Congress authorizes the establishment of military commissions for alien unlawful enemy combatants, which is the legal term we use to define international terrorists and those who aid and support them, in a new separate chapter of Title 10 of the U.S.C. Code, Chapter 47A. While this new chapter is based upon the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it creates an entirely new structure for these trials.

In this bill we provide standards for the admission of evidence, including hearsay evidence and other statements, that are adapted to military exigencies and provide the military judge the necessary discretion to determine if the evidence is reliable and probative.

I want to talk a little bit about how we handle classified evidence. We had three hearings on this bill in addition to briefings and meetings with experts. I asked every witness the same question. If we have an informant, either a CIA agent or an undercover witness of some sort, are we going to tell Kalid Sheik Mohammad who the informant is? This legislation does not allow KSM to learn the identity of the informant. After several twists and turns in the road, after meeting with the Senate and the White House in marathon sessions over the weekend, we have crafted a solution that does not allow the KSM to learn the identify of the informant, yet provides a fair trial. How do we do this? We address this in Section 949d(f) of Section 3. Classified evidence is protected and is privileged from disclosure to the jury and the accused if disclosure would be detrimental to national security. The accused is permitted to be present at all phases of the trial and no evidence is presented to the jury that is not also provided to the accused.

Section 949d(f) makes a clear statement that sources, methods, or activities will be protected and privileged and not shown to the accused, however, the substantive findings of the sources, methods, or activities will be admissible in an unclassified form. This allows the prosecution to present its best case while protecting classified information. In order to do this, the military judge questions the informant outside the presence of the jury and the defendant. In order to give the jury and the defendant a redacted version or the infornant's statement, the just must find: (1) that the sources, methods, or activities by which the U.S. acquired the evidence are classified and (2) the evidence is reliable. Once the judge stamps the informant as reliable, the informant's redacted statement is given to both the jury and the accused. It removes the confrontation issue, yet allows the accused to see the substance of the evidence against him. I think these rules protect classified evidence and yet preserve a fair trial.

Unauthorized disclosures, not only of classified information, but also of our interrogation techniques, are extremely damaging to our intelligence efforts. Our personnel have encountered enemy combatants trained to resist disclosed interrogation techniques thanks to leakers in our media. I'm pleased that with the current Military Commission legislation moving forward, we have reaffirmed our strict adherence to the U.S. anti-torture laws, while at the same time allowing our CIA to move forward with an effective interrogation program whose techniques will not be published in the Federal Register, or God forbid, in another newspaper disclosure. This legislation preserves the necessary flexibility for the President and the CIA to utilize all lawful and effective methods of interrogation. Let me be clear: the bill defines the specific conduct that is prohibited under Common Article 3, but it does not purport to identify interrogation practices to the enemy or to take any particular means of interrogation off the table. Rather, this legislation properly leaves the decision as to the methods of interrogation to the President and to the intelligence professionals at the CIA, so that they may carry forward this vital program that, as the President explained, serves to gather the critical intelligence necessary to protect the country from another catastrophic terrorist attack.

One other point I want to make for the record. As I mentioned earlier, we have modified the rules of evidence to adapt to the battlefield. One of the principles used by the judiciary in criminal prosecutions of our citizens is called the ``fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine.'' The rule provides that evidence derived from information acquired by police officials or the government through unlawful means is not admissible in a criminal prosecution. I want to make it clear that it is our intent with the legislation not to have this doctrine apply to evidence in military commissions. While evidence obtained improperly will not be used directly against an accused, we will not limit the use of any evidence derived from such evidence. The deterrent effect of the exclusionary rule is not something that our soldiers consider when they are fighting a war. The theory of the exclusionary rule is that if the constable blunders, the accused will not suffer. However, we are not going to say that if the soldier blunders, we are not going to punish a savage terrorist. Some rights are reserved for our citizens. Some rights are reserved for civilized people.

Mr. Speaker, this is a complicated piece of legislation. In addition to establishing an entire legal process from start to finish, we address the application of common Article 3 of the Geneva conventions to our current laws.

Section 5 clarifies that the Geneva Conventions are not an enforceable source of rights in any habeas corpus or other civil action or proceeding by an individual in U.S. courts.

Section 6 of the bill amends 18 U.S.C. Section 2441, the War Crimes Act to criminalize grave breaches of common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. As amended, the War Crimes Act will fully satisfy our treaty obligations under common Article 3. This amendment is necessary because currently Section (c)(3) of the War Crimes Act defines a war crime as any conduct which constitutes a violation of Common Article 3. Common Article 3 prohibits some actions that are universally condemned, such as murder and torture but also prohibits ``outrages upon personal dignity'' and ``humiliating and degrading treatment,'' phrases which are vague and do not provide adequate guidance to our personnel. Since violation of Common Article 3 is a felony under the War Crimes Act, it is necessary to amend it to provide clarity and certainty to the interpretation of this statute. The surest way to achieve that clarity and certainty is to define a list of specific offenses that constitute war crimes punishable as grave violations of Common Article 3. This is something we need now, because of the Hamdan decision.

Section 6 of the bill also provides that any detainee under the custody or physical control of the United States will not be subject to ``cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment'' prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, as defined by the U.S. reservations to the UN Convention against Torture. This defines our obligations under Common Article 3 by reference to the U.S. constitutional standard adopted by the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

Section 7 of the bill addresses the question of judicial review of claims by detainees by amending 28 U.S.C. Section 2241 to clarify the intent of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 to limit the right of detainees to challenge their detention. The practical effect of this amendment will be to eliminate the hundreds of detainee lawsuits that are pending in courts throughout the country and to consolidate all detainee treatment cases in the D.C. Circuit. However, I want to stress that under this provision detainees will retain their opportunity to file legitimate challenges to their status and to challenge convictions by military commissions. Every detainee under confinement in Guantanmo Bay will have their detention reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Mr. Sensenbrenner and my other colleagues are going to speak on the rest of the bill, but before I finish I want to make one point very clear. This legislation does not condone or authorize torture in any way. In fact, we make it a war crime, punishable by death, for one of our soldiers or interrogators to torture someone to death. Let me emphasize this again. In Section 6 of this bill, we amend 18 U.S.C. 2441, the War Crimes Act. In this amendment we explicitly provide that torture inflicted upon a person in custody for the purpose of obtaining information is a war crime for which we may prosecute one of our own citizens. While most of this legislation deals with how we handle the enemy, I want to make it crystal clear that nothing in what we are doing condones or allows torture in any way.

There is more to this bill than military commissions, however. H.R. 6166 addresses an issue that Supreme Court created in the Hamdan case. The Court in Hamdan decided that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions--a article that many assumed only applied to regular armies--applies to terrorist organizations, like al Qaeda. As a result of this decision, our brave personnel in the military and other national security agencies are faced with an unpredictable legal landscape because the meaning of certain elements of Common Article 3 are vague.

For example, would a female interrogator of a male Muslim detainee be guilty of violating Common Article 3 because the mere scenario constitutes an outrage upon personal dignity? Such a situation is untenable. It is unfair to our personnel out in the field trying to protect lives here at home. It is Congress' responsibility to draw the lines of what conduct will be criminal.

As a result, we need to amend the War Crimes Act to make clear that only grave breaches of Common Article 3 constitutes a war crime under U.S. law. Let me be clear, under international law a party to the treaty is responsible for incorporating only grave breaches of Common Article 3 in its penal code. My point is simple: Today the Congress is complying with our treaty obligations under Geneva Conventions and today the Congress is following the guidance of the Supreme Court in Hamdan (even though many believe that the Court's decision was ill construed).

Now, some have suggested that H.R. 6166 condones torture or that this bill implicitly permits ``enhanced torture techniques''. These suggestions are absolutely false and they fly in the face of the very words that appear on the pages of this bill.

First--it is illegal under U.S. law to torture. This was true before H.R. 6166 and it will remain true. Moreover, H.R. 6166 makes torture a war crime that can result in the death penalty. This means that under the War Crimes Act, any U.S. personnel that engages in Torture will be subject to prosecution for committing a war crime. Additionally, in the context of military commissions, a statement obtained through torture is not admissible.

Second--this bill makes clear that the way we treat our detainees is guided by treatment standards set by the Congress--last year--in the Detainee Treatment Act, also known as the McCain amendment. This standard is based upon the familiar standards of the U.S. Constitution. Thus, ``cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment'' under this section means the cruel, unusual, inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, as defined by the U.S. reservations to the UN Convention Against Torture.

I believe that the Constitution, which provides the fundamental, underlying protections for the citizens of the United States, provides more than sufficient protections for unlawful enemy combatants. Why should accused terrorist enjoy protections that exceed what the Constitution provides to United States citizens?

Mr. Speaker, in summary, I believe that this legislation is the best way to prosecute enemy terrorists and to protect U.S. Government personnel and service members who are fighting them.

I urge my colleagues to support this vital legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will yield myself such time as I may consume to say, first, that I appreciate the gentleman's participation in the hearings and the briefings and the markup that we had on the initial bill that came out of the Armed Services Committee 52-8, and I would remind my colleagues that, in fact, the appellate route in this particular bill provides for the court of military review, a new court to be set up as a first appellate stop; and secondly, the D.C. Circuit Court. And in channeling all of the actions to the D.C. Circuit Court, we are going to a court that has lots of experience, is building a body of experience in this type of work, and that will keep us from rifle- shooting actions out throughout the country.

I think that makes for an efficient process, and it provides now two appellate reviews, whereas the Democrat substitute had only one appellate review before you would apply for final review by the Supreme Court, which might or might not occur. So instead of one review, we have two reviews. And I think that that is a strengthening, if you will, of this bill that is one more measure to ensure that as we move forward on this process of bringing to justice those who attacked our country, we give them a robust right of appeal.

Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer), who is the chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee and a former JAG officer himself.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer).

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

Mr. Speaker, let me just go to the Detainee Act. It says that review is done by the District of Columbia relating to any aspect of the detention of an alien, and we have expanded it from Guantanamo Bay to anywhere, who has been determined by the United States District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in accordance with the procedures set forth in section 1405. So there is a process whereby the review is made with respect to the status of that alien.

Let me go to a second point. The gentleman spoke about hearsay evidence being allowed. That is true. Hearsay evidence is allowed, with certain restrictions. The judge has to find that it is probative, that it is relevant and that it is reliable.

The war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda allow hearsay evidence. As I recall, the bill that was offered by Mr. Skelton, that was voted on in the HASC, in the Armed Services

Committee, also allowed for the use of hearsay evidence.

So hearsay evidence, I would say to my friends, is not excluded and has not historically been excluded in war crimes trials in Rwanda, in Yugoslavia.

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

Mr. Speaker, let me just make a comment about the fact that we enumerate the crimes that might be committed, what we call the grave offenses under article III.

I think that it accrues to the benefit of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines and our intelligence agents that they know what the crimes are when they have people in custody, and the fact that those grave crimes, and they are enumerated, are defined, gives clarity to our folks so they know what the offenses are. I think that serves the purpose. It does not disserve the purpose.

But the idea that we have also reserved to the President on nongrave offenses, and again, one of the examples that was given by expert testimony was if you use the term ``degrading,'' you could charge that a female colonel JAG officer interrogating a Muslim male is in and of itself degrading, because it is a female interrogating a male, and in their culture that would be considered to be degrading.

I think it is important not to expose that female JAG officer to liability. And it is important, therefore, when you have what you might consider to be minor infractions to not label that person, that American, a war criminal, but to allow the President as Commander in Chief to put forth regulations.

So I think this is a good fit, and it gives the thing that is most important to personnel, and that is clarity.

I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

I yield myself such time as I may consume, Mr. Speaker. And let me make five points here.

First, there is nothing in this language that directs people to pick up or not pick up people. This is the language. This bill designs and constructs military commissions. On page 8 of the bill it gives the jurisdiction of the commission, and it says: ``A military commission under this chapter shall have

jurisdiction to try any offense made punishable by this chapter or the law of war when committed by an alien unlawful enemy combatant before, on, or after September 11, 2001.'' That would allow us also to try those folks from the Cole and the Embassy bombings.

With respect to habeas, there is no soldier in the world, no POW in the world from our research who has a habeas right.

And let me go to Mr. Wu's point. Mr. Wu said, when we pointed out the Detainee Treatment Act provided for review, he said that he thought it expired because it was attached to an appropriations bill and expired annually. That is not so. It is a permanent code. So the Detainee Treatment Act is in place. And if the gentleman can show me where it is expired, we will be happy to entertain that.

Secondly, the gentleman also said that it was procedural only. I am referring to the Detainee Treatment Act that says that the court has the jurisdiction to review relating to any aspect, and I am quoting, any aspect of the detention of the person in question, relating to any aspect. And, of course, that would go as to whether he was a combatant. So it was not as you stated, it is not simply a procedural review.

So I just want to go over those points.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the distinguished chairman of our Veterans Committee and former JAG officer, Mr. Buyer, for our closing remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask to submit a conference report. I just wanted to say that this conference report is largely the product of Mr. Bob Cover, who after many, many years is leaving the Office of Legislative Counsel. We appreciate his great service to our country.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. And the only reason I am rising is to set straight the record which, sadly, has been not accurate that has just been laid out by my colleague, the gentlewoman from California.

I was taking a bunch of marines who were up hunting up in northern California down the California coastline, and one of them brought up the point that Santa Rosa Island off the coast, which is owned by a private company and which has deer and elk on it, was going to see those deer and elk exterminated, and wouldn't it be a great place for our wounded people returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than exterminating these animals with helicopters in the end, which is in the court order, to allow our people who like to pursue hunting in the Armed Forces who have been wounded to have a place to go and have a great time with their families.

Taking that under advisement, I put a provision in to allow that to happen. I have never put in a provision that was intended to have the Navy brass or VIPs or Army brass or Marine Corps brass out there hunting. This is for wounded people, and right now it is operated by a private company.

The ranching family, whom I have never met, I will tell the gentlewoman I have never met them. I have never had discussions with them, except one of them called up and asked me to tell the Park Service that I have never met him because my name was an anathematism. We say simply, listen, the island is going to be turned over by the private family to the Park Service in 2011. The court orders that all the animals be wiped out, be exterminated, be killed; the entire herd be killed. All we say is, don't exterminate the animals. Don't shoot them from helicopters, as the court order now directs. Let the herd stay and let us let our disabled veterans hunt.

Now we had the Paralyzed Veterans go over and check out the island. They wrote a letter back saying this is not their cup of tea. It is pretty rough terrain. It is hard to get over to the island. That is why almost nobody from the public comes over. The number of people who visit this 50,000-acre island per day, it is extremely small. There are almost more Park Service people on the island than there are members of the public. And this would only be for a short time during the year.

All we are asking is that they don't shoot the animals, don't exterminate them, and they let the disabled veterans hunt.

Now after the Paralyzed Veterans said this is not our cup of tea, because of the spartan circumstances over there, it is going to be tough for people with spinal cord injuries to really enjoy this island, so the Wound Warriors went over.

That is a great organization that takes wounded GIs and Marines and Navy and Air Force personnel, takes them skiing, takes them on outdoor outings and shows them a good time. They went to the island, and the report I got back, and I will give the letter to the gentlewoman, said they really enjoyed it. They really liked it, and they would like to have this opportunity. All we say is, don't exterminate the herd. That is the real import of this bill.

What I would like to see is a situation in which those people, only those people, only disabled American veterans get to hunt there. Because it is a wonderful outing. They can take their families. Their families can visit the seashore. They can take pictures. They can have a wonderful outdoor time while these people who gave so much to our country have a special place to go.

They don't have to pay any money because this will be when it is turned over to the government by the ranch family. All we are saying to the ranch family is, when you turn it over, don't exterminate the deer and elk. Leave them for the veterans. That is all they have to do. Inaction is what we are asking for.

I would tell the gentlewoman she has my word I will never hunt on that island. The only thing I will do is help the wounded veterans get over and help them in any way to have a good time. I think this is absolutely appropriate. It is not going to push a single member of the public off that island. Almost nobody goes to it right now because it takes a boat ride or plane ride to get to that island. This will bring happiness to many, many military families. I think it is appropriate that we do this.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to the time when maybe the gentlewoman and I could go over with some of our wounded guys and watch them having a good time over there and agree that this is a good thing.

I thank the gentleman for letting me speak.

That island is over 50 square miles. Can the gentlewoman tell me how many people from the public visit the island per day on a given day?

I yield to the gentlewoman.

Reclaiming my time, if there are 5,000 people per year, that means roughly 20 people per day on that entire island. That's 5,000 people. With 365 days a year, 10 people a day, so 3,000 people and if you double that, 20 people a day for 50-square miles. That means there is one visitor from the public per 2 square miles on that island per day.

Now we have many, many places in America where we have mixed use, where you have hunters and fishermen and members of the public. These disabled veterans, they are not going to push anybody off the island. If you compare that to our other parks like Yosemite, with thousands of peole coming per day, 10 or 20 people per day on a 50-square mile is no density whatsoever.

In fact, I bet you that the park employees, the U.S. Government employees, on many days outnumber, because there are more than 20 of them at any time on the island, I bet you they outnumber the number of visitors.

I will tell the gentlewoman, because you have to take a boat trip or an airplane to get to that park, you will never have the type of visitors you get in parks where people can drive up. So that makes it perfect for these wounded people, these great American veterans, to come on over and have a great outdoor experience.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1062, I call up the conference report on the bill (H.R. 5122) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2007 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on the conference report currently under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, let me start out by saying this is a tough job for a lot of our members of the committee and the subcommittees that make up the Armed Services Committee. It involves a lot of travel to the warfighting theaters. Almost every member on our committee has gone multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan. It involves a lot of time away from families and a lot of tough work in committees. It involves a lot of analyses to try to figure out how to manage the logistical problems of all of the problems that attend the war fight in two theaters, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the war against terror around the world, and at the same time look over that horizon and try to exercise some vision as to what the next conflict may be and what we have to do to prepare for the future.

Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, I could have no better partner in that endeavor than the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton).

Mr. Skelton is a tremendous, tremendous guy. And he has got kind of a corporate memory in terms of military history. He has got a recommended reading list for all of us. He analyzes the present situation through the prism of history. We all appreciate that. And today we actually dressed in uniform. That is amazing. And without design, I might say. We simply came in with the same outfits because this is

the military and you have got to be in uniform.

Mr. Speaker, this is an immense bill, $532-plus billion. We did something very unusual in this bill and I think unprecedented, and that is that we added to the bill that includes lots of money for force protection, for body armor, for up-armored Humvees, for surveillance capability to fight the IED war in Afghanistan and Iraq, lots of things to support the troops, and, of course, all of the quality-of-life issues for the troops.

This pay raise this year means that over the last 80 years, we will have increased pay by a little more than 40 percent for our men and women in uniform. The base readiness of our forces and military construction and all the things that combine to make America's defense apparatus the strongest in the world, we did all of that, but this year we did something extra. We asked the Army and the Marine Corps to come in and testify to our committee, largely in classified session, as to what shortages they had that they needed to be funded so that they could take the tanks, the trucks, the fixed-wing aircraft, and the helicopters and all the other platforms and pieces of equipment for the Marines and the Army and reset them, that is, repair them as they come off the battlefield so that they can be ready to go again.

A massive analysis. And they came forth and they gave us that analysis. And when we got finished, we funded, we authorized on top of the defense budget $20-plus billion to make up the total reset cost, every dime, that was submitted to us by the United States Marine Corps and the United States Army. And the appropriations committees, God bless them, did the same thing and followed the authorizing committees on that. And that is a tribute, I think, to all of our Members, all of our colleagues who worked on and voted on that very important piece of funding.

So, Mr. Speaker, this is a great bill. I want to mention that we have wonderful members on both sides of the aisle that make up this committee.

And Joel Hefley is leaving after many, many years, a great personal friend and a guy who is kind of architect of privatization of housing so that American military families, many of whom were living in homes that were built 40, 50, 60, and 70 years ago and were under some sort of disrepair, now live in new homes that afford a great quality of life. And many of the developments now that they have come in and built on military bases have community centers. I have been in a number of them, where families can come in and enjoy swimming pools and recreation and moms can come in and work out and have their toddlers in a little room right off the exercise room and keep watch on their kids while they are having a little relaxation and a little rest and where families can get together for social activities.

This new military construction that is springing up all over the United States at our bases is largely a function of Mr. Hefley's foresight and vision, and he is leaving us after those many years. I have often said Joel Hefley was the best cowboy in Congress. He used to rodeo with the great Casey Tibbs and a number of other rodeo greats. He is a wonderful guy whose word was his bond and still is, and we wish him the very best.

And along with him now leaving us and running for Governor in Nevada is Mr. Jim Gibbons. Jim Gibbons also brought a great deal of background and expertise to our committee. As a fighter pilot who worked the Desert Storm I operation and who understands tactical aircraft as well or better than any member of the Armed Services Committee or the full House, Jim Gibbons brought a special insight to our committee. He also brought a great love for the National Guard and has been a great and powerful advocate for them. I know he is going to continue to do that in his new role. But Jim Gibbons, like Joel Hefley, is one of those quality guys that you just enjoy working with and you know when he comes to the job every day, he cares about the service, he cares about the people that wear the uniform.

There is a real joy in working on this committee, Mr. Speaker, and those gentlemen are people that every one in this House likes to work with and understands the value added that they bring every time they walk into this Chamber or into the committee room. So our many, many thanks to them.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to listen to my great colleague, who had a great taste in coats today because we came with exactly the same outfits here. Mr. Skelton, the fine gentleman from Missouri, has done a wonderful job working on this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 8 minutes to the chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, Mr. Hefley, the gentleman who is departing after 18 years of great service on this committee.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield on that point?

Mr. Hefley, I appreciate that. Let me just say the fact that we were able to bring this bill to the floor and do as much work as we did on it, as big as it is and as comprehensive as it is and with so many people dependent on it and at the same time do the bill that will allow us to prosecute terrorists, do all that, that was largely a product of this tremendous staff, this wonderful bipartisan staff that we have on the Armed Services Committee.

They have done a fabulous job, and that is why we are able to juggle these two important challenges at the same time. They are great, great people, and what professionals, and also people who can work very effectively when they have been up for 24 hours. That has always astounded me, frankly, but they have done a great job, and I think they deserve a lot of thanks from this committee.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

You know, we went into this thing. I thank her for all of the great work that she did and lots of other Members who really worked this hard. I know Mr. Davis brought some important elements to this package.

We wanted to have a package that would make the sergeant majors who saw their kids going out and paying massive loan fees trying to pay off their loan, they could not pay it off, having the loan rolled over, and then seeing higher and higher fees stacked on top of that. In fact, I think it was Mr. Davis' provision that barred the roll-overs.

We want to see those sergeant majors see a bill come out of our committee and out of conference that, as I said, would make them throw their hats in the air and shout: Hooray, Congress has done what it took for our kids.

And we kept them apprised, as we moved this conference report along, as the gentlewoman knows in working on the team, to protect our people. And when we showed them the product, they threw their hats in the air, and they yelled hooray, and they felt like it was a good product.

You know, the other thing we have got to do is we have got to get these credit unions that are in the base, the guys in the institutions we allow to be inside the perimeter of that base, to reach out and establish short-term loans for our servicemembers so servicemembers go there instead of feeling they have got to go a to a loan shark to get that loan.

I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership and her great work on this.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding.

I just want to thank the champion of Groton for his hard work and all the work that he and Mr. Langevin, and as you said, Mr. Taylor and Mr. Bartlett, have done. I want to thank all of them for their great work and also to the gentleman for his hard work on payday lender and trying to make sure that our troops have a good situation now and will not be the victims of loan sharks and what to do on that.

You have brought a real insight to undersea warfare that has been important to us and especially in a Taiwan scenario or another type of scenario in the future which could be very, very critical to American sea power.

I thank the gentleman.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

My colleagues, let's get this straight, the Supreme Court did not say that Congress did not have the right to prescribe this new structure under which we are going to prosecute terrorists. They said we had the obligation. They said that the President couldn't do this himself, that it had to be participated in by Congress and we should put together these rules and regulations.

We have put together a structure that will allow us to prosecute terrorists efficiently and effectively, and at the same time, understand the exigencies of the battlefield.

If you use the UCMJ, which I know a lot of folks on the other side want to do, under the testimony of our experts, and that means JAG officers who have tried hundreds of cases, you would have to give Miranda warnings to an insurgent who shot at you outside of Kabul, Afghanistan, at the moment you captured him and threw him over the hood of your Humvee. You can't do that. You can't follow the UCMJ in that respect.

We have given a boatload of rights. We have given the right to counsel, the right to an impartial judge, presumption of innocence, standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, right to be informed of the charges as soon as practicable, right to service of charges sufficiently in advance of trial, right to reasonable continuances. This list goes on and on. So Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was alleged to have designed the attack on 9/11 that killed thousands of Americans, will have a greater body of rights, as Mr. Lungren has said, in his trial than anybody under a similar tribunal system has ever had.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, let me make a point about an error that was just made in the statement of my good friend, the gentlewoman from California.

The President cannot redefine torture. The grave offenses are prohibited and defined as war crimes. You cannot do them, and torture is defined as one of the grave offenses. The President cannot redefine torture. All the President can do is do administrative regulations with respect to offenses that are not grave offenses, and that includes torture. The President cannot redefine torture.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1042, I call up the bill (H.R. 6166) to amend title 10, United States Code, to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 6166.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6166, the Military Commissions Act of 2006. I can't think of a better way to honor the fifth anniversary of September 11 than by establishing a system to prosecute the terrorists who on that day murdered thousands of innocent civilians and who continue to seek to kill Americans, both on and off the battlefield.

Our most important consideration in writing this legislation is to protect American troops and American citizens from harm. The war against terror has produced a new type of battlefield and a new type of enemy. How is it different? We are fighting a ruthless enemy who doesn't wear a uniform, an enemy who kills civilians, women and children, and then boasts about it; a barbaric enemy who beheads innocent civilians by sawing their heads off; an uncivilized enemy who does not acknowledge or respect the laws of war.

Justice Thomas put it best in the Hamdan decision. He said, ``We are not engaged in a traditional battle with a nation state, but with a worldwide hydro-headed enemy who lurks in the shadows conspiring to reproduce the atrocities of September 11, 2001, and who has boasted of sending suicide bombers into civilian gatherings, has proudly distributed videotapes of the beheadings of civilian workers, and has tortured and dismembered captured American soldiers.

So how is the battlefield new? First, it will be a long war. We don't know if this enemy will be defeated this decade, the next decade or even longer than that. Second, in this new war, where intelligence is more vital than ever, we want to interrogate the enemy; not to degrade them, but to save the lives of American troops, American civilians and our allies. But it is not practical on the battlefield to read the enemy their Miranda warnings.

Finally, this is an ongoing conflict, and sharing sensitive intelligence sources, methods and other classified information with terrorist detainees could be highly dangerous to national security, and we are not prepared to take that risk.

So what have we done to develop a military commission process that will allow for the effective prosecution of enemy combatants during this ongoing conflict? Without this action, the United States has no effective means to try and punish the perpetrators of September 11, the attack on the USS Cole and the embassy bombings. We provide basic fairness in our prosecutions, but we also preserve the ability of our warfighters to operate effectively on the battlefield.

I think a fair process has two guiding principles, Mr. Speaker. First, the government must be able to present its case fully and without compromising its intelligence sources or compromising military necessity. Second, the prosecutorial process must be done fairly, swiftly, and conclusively.

Who are we dealing with in military commissions? I have shown the picture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is alleged to have designed the attack against the United States that was carried out on 9/11. We are dealing with the enemy in war, not defendants in our domestic criminal justice system. Some of them have returned to the battlefield after we let them out of Guantanamo.

Our primary purpose is to keep them off the battlefield. In doing so, we treat them humanely, and, if we choose to try them as war criminals, we will give them due process rights that the world will respect. But we have to remember that they are the enemy in an ongoing war.

In time of war, it is not practical to apply to rules of evidence the same rules of evidence that we do in civilian trials or court martials for our troops. Commanders and witnesses can't be called from the front line to testify in a military commission.

We need to accommodate rules of evidence, chain of custody and authentication to fit what we call the exigencies of the battlefield. It is clear, Mr. Speaker, that we don't have crime scenes that can be reproduced, that can be taped off, that can be attended to by dozens of people looking for forensic evidence. We have in this war against terror a battlefield situation.

If hearsay is reliable, we should use it. And I might add that hearsay is utilized and has been utilized in tribunals like the Rwanda tribunals and the Kosovo tribunals. If sworn affidavits are reliable, we should use them. And, Mr. Speaker, we have not expanded the use of hearsay beyond what is being used in those tribunals, Rwanda and Yugoslavia.

The Supreme Court has tasked us with an adjustment, but in doing so

let's not forget our purpose is to defend the Nation against the enemy. We won't lower our standards; we will always treat detainees humanely, but we can't be naive either.

This war started in 1996 with the al Qaeda declaration of jihad against our Nation. The Geneva Conventions were written in 1949, and the UCMJ was adopted in 1951. In that sense, what we are required to do after the Hamdan decision is broader than war crimes trials. It is the start of a new legal analysis for the long war. It is time for us to think about war crime trials and a process that provides due process and protects national security in this new war.

So what do we do with these new military commissions? We uphold basic human rights and state what our compliance with this standard means for the treatment of detainees. We do this in a way that is fair and in a way that the world will acknowledge is fair.

First, we provide accused war criminals at least 26 rights if they are tried by a commission for a war crime. While I will not read all of them, here are some of the essential rights we provide:

The right to counsel, provided by government at trial and throughout appellate proceedings. An impartial judge. A presumption of innocence. A standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The right to be informed of the charges against him as soon as practicable. The right to service of charges sufficiently in advance of trial to prepare a defense.

And, Mr. Speaker, I am going to insert the balance of those 26 basic and fundamental rights in the Record, so I won't read them all at this point.

The right to reasonable continuances;

Right to peremptory challenge against members of the

commission and challenges for cause against members of the

commission and the military judge;

Witness must testify under oath; judges, counsel and

members of military commission must take oath;

Right to enter a plea of not guilty;

The right to obtain witnesses and other evidence;

The right to exculpatory evidence as soon as practicable;

The right to be present at court with the exception of

certain classified evidence involving national security,

preservation of safety or preventing disruption of

proceedings;

The right to a public trial except for national security

issues or physical safety issues;

The right to have any findings or sentences announced as

soon as determined;

Right against compulsory self-incrimination;

Right against double jeopardy;

The defense of lack of mental responsibility;

Voting by members of the military commission by secret

written ballot;

Prohibitions against unlawful command influence toward

members of the commission, counsel or military judges;

2/3 vote of members required for conviction; 3/4 vote

required for sentences of life or over 10 years; unanimous

verdict required for death penalty;

Verbatim authenticated record of trial;

Cruel or unusual punishments prohibited;

Treatment and discipline during confinement the same as

afford to prisoners in U.S. domestic courts;

Right to review of full factual record by convening

authority; and

Right to at least two appeals including to a Federal

Article III appellate court.

We provide all these rights, and we give them an independent judge, and the right to at least two appeals, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and access to the Supreme Court. Nobody can say this is not a fair system.

I know some of my colleagues are concerned about the issue of reciprocity. Look at this list of rights. And we are going to put it up here, Mr. Speaker, so that all the Members can see this. And also keep in mind that these are the rights for terrorists. These are the rights for the people who struck us on 9/11 and killed thousands of Americans. If we are talking about true reciprocity, then we are only concerned about how the enemy will treat American terrorists. These are not our rules for POWs; these are how we treat terrorists. We treat the legitimate enemy differently, and expect them to treat our troops the same.

How do we try the enemy for war crimes? In this act, Congress authorizes the establishment of military commissions for alien unlawful enemy combatants, which is the legal term we use to define international terrorists and those who aid and support them, in a new separate chapter of title 10 of the U.S. Code, chapter 47A. While this new chapter is based upon the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it creates, Mr. Speaker, an entirely new structure for these trials.

In this bill we provide standards for the admission of evidence, including hearsay evidence and other statements, that are adapted to military exigencies and provide the military judge the necessary discretion to determine if the evidence is reliable and probative. And he must find that it is reliable and probative before he allows it to be admitted.

I want to talk a little bit about how we handle classified evidence. We had three hearings on this bill in addition to briefings and meetings with experts. I asked every witness the same question: If we have an informant, either a CIA informant or an undercover witness of some sort, are we going to tell Kalid Sheikh Mohammed who the informant is? The legislation does not allow KSM to learn the identity of the informant.

After several twists and turns in the road, after meeting with the Senate and the White House in marathon sessions over the weekend, we have crafted a solution that does not allow the alleged terrorists to learn the identity of the informant, yet provides a fair trial. And, Mr. Speaker, that is critically important to all of us in this Chamber, because that American agent or informant may have information that saves thousands of lives. He may be of enormous value added to the security of this country. We can't divulge his identity, and we can't divulge it to the alleged terrorist, and doing so would allow that information to go back quickly, as it has on two occasions: one coming out of the first bombing of the World Trade Center where we now have established that Osama bin Laden did come into possession of classified evidence that was moved up through those court proceedings, and once in Guantanamo. So it is very, very important that we protect classified evidence and that we protect the identity of our agents.

We address this in section 949d, subsection (f) of section 3. Classified evidence is protected and is privileged from disclosure to the jury and the accused if disclosure would be detrimental to national security. The accused is permitted to be present at all phases of the trial, and no evidence is presented to the jury that is not also provided to the accused. Section 949d(f) makes a clear statement that sources, methods, or activities will be protected and privileged and not shown to the accused.

However, and this is how you move the essence of an undisclosed agent's testimony to the jury without disclosing the identity of the agent, the substantive findings of the sources, methods, or activities will be admissible in an unclassified form. This allows the prosecution to present its best case while protecting classified information. In order to do this, the military judge questions the informant outside the presence of the jury and the defendant. In order to give the jury and the defendant a redacted version of the informant's statement, the judge must find, one, that the sources, methods, or activities by which the U.S. acquired the evidence are classified; and, two, that the evidence is reliable.

Once the judge stamps the informant as reliable, the informant's redacted statement is given to both the jury and the accused. It removes the confrontation issue. And this, again, to my friends who said we want to follow the UCMJ and we want to give these people all the rights that we give our uniformed servicemen, our analysis is that we would not be able to keep from disclosure the identity of our special agents if we followed the UCMJ. That is designed to protect American uniformed servicemen, and it is not something that we should apply in the case of alleged terrorists.

I think that these rules protect classified evidence and yet preserve a fair trial.

One other point I want to make for the record. As I mentioned earlier, we have modified the rules of evidence to adapt to the battlefield. One of the principles used by the judiciary in criminal prosecutions of our citizens is called the fruit of the poisonous tree

doctrine. This rule provides that evidence derived from information acquired by police officials or the government through unlawful means is not admissible in a criminal prosecution.

I want to make it clear that it is our intent with the legislation not to have this doctrine apply to evidence in military commissions. While evidence obtained improperly will not be used directly against the accused, we will not limit the use of any evidence derived from such evidence.

The deterrent effect of the exclusionary rule is not something that our soldiers consider when they are fighting a war. The theory of the exclusionary rule is that if the constable blunders, the accused will not suffer. However, we are not going to say that if the soldier blunders, we are not going to punish a terrorist. Some rights are reserved for our citizens; some rights are reserved for civilized people.

Mr. Speaker, this is a complicated piece of legislation. In addition to establishing an entire legal process from start to finish, we address the application of common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to our current laws.

Section 5 clarifies that the Geneva Conventions are not an enforceable source of rights in any habeas corpus or other civil action or proceeding by an individual in U.S. courts. Mr. Speaker, this protects American troops.

Section 6 of the bill amends 18 U.S.C. section 2441, the War Crimes Act, to criminalize grave breaches of common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. As amended, the War Crimes Act will fully satisfy our treaty obligations under common article 3. This amendment is necessary because section C(3) of the War Crimes Act defines a war crime as any conduct which constitutes a violation of common article 3. Common article 3 prohibits some actions that are universally condemned, such as murder and torture, but it also prohibits outrages upon personal dignity and what is called humiliating and degrading treatment, phrases which are vague and do not provide adequate guidance to our personnel.

Since violation of common article 3 is a felony under the War Crimes Act, it is necessary to amend it to provide clarity and certainty to the interpretation of this statute. The surest way to achieve that clarity and certainty is to define the list of specific offenses that constitute war crimes punishable as grave violations of common article 3.

And, Mr. Speaker, this is very important. This protects our troops, it gives them certainty, it gives them clarity. You don't want to have our troops so paralyzed by what they see as prosecutions arising out of common article 3 that you will have a situation where a female officer in the U.S. military will not interrogate a Muslim male on the basis that she is afraid that that action may be defined or projected as being a humiliation of that particular prisoner being interrogated and therefore subjecting that female American officer to a war crimes accusation.

So what we have done is we have taken the offenses that are considered to be grave offenses under article 3, and then I have enumerated several of those, and we define those as the offenses which will be applicable upon which prosecutions can be brought, and then we give to the President on what I would call infractions of Geneva article 3 or lesser violations of Geneva article 3, we give him the right to put together regulations that account for and treat actions that are defined under those minor offenses.

Section 6 of the bill also provides that any detainee under the custody or physical control of the United States will not be subject to cruel, inhumane, or degrading punishment provided by the fifth, eighth, and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution as defined by the U.S. Reservations to the U.N. Convention Against Torture. This defines our obligations under common article 3 by reference to the U.S. constitutional standard adopted by the Detainee Treatment Act that we passed in 2005. And, Mr. Speaker, all parties, both Houses, decided that it was appropriate that we define this type of treatment, degrading treatment, especially under the reservations to the convention that is mentioned, the U.N. Convention Against Torture. We decided that that was good enough for putting together the Detainee Treatment Act; it should be good enough for this particular body of law.

Section 7 of the bill addresses the question of judicial review of claims by detainees by amending 28 U.S.C. section 2241 to clarify the intent of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 to limit the right of detainees to challenge their detentions. The practical effect of this amendment will be to eliminate the hundreds of detainee lawsuits that are pending in courts throughout the country and to consolidate all detainee treatment cases in the D.C. Circuit Court.

However, I want to stress that under this provision detainees will retain their opportunity to file legitimate charges to their status and to challenge convictions by military commissions. Every detainee under confinement in Guantanamo Bay will have their detention reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

So what we are doing here is channeling the suits to a particular court which has great expertise in this area, rather than let them be put in rifle-shot fashion or form-shot fashion to other courts throughout the United States.

Mr. Sensenbrenner and my other colleagues are going to speak on the rest of the bill. But, before I finish, I want to make one point very clear. This legislation does not condone or authorize torture in any way. In fact, we make it a war crime punishable by death for one of our interrogators to torture someone to death.

Let me emphasize that again. In section 6 of this bill, we amend 18 U.S.C. 2441, the War Crimes Act. In this amendment, we explicitly provide that torture inflicted upon a person in custody for the purpose of obtaining information is a war crime for which we may prosecute one of our own citizens. While most of this legislation deals with how we handle the enemy, I want to make it crystal clear that nothing in what we are doing condones or allows torture in any way.

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I heard at least one Member on the Democrat side say that this gives the President the right to define what torture is. That is not accurate. Torture is forbidden, and there are specific criminal penalties for torture.

In summary, I think this legislation is the best way to prosecute enemy terrorists and to protect U.S. Government personnel and service members who are fighting them.

Let me make one final statement with respect to the right to Miranda warnings and all of the evidentiary rulings that accompany an application utilizing the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, in battlefield situations if we had done that, which we did not.

In the hearings we had, we had at least one experienced officer in the Judge Advocate Corps state that it was his opinion, having tried hundreds of cases, that if you applied the UCMJ, as a number of Members on the Democrat side said they would like to do, to constitute the body of law under which we are prosecuting terrorists, in this officer's opinion once a corporal had captured a terrorist on the battlefield, maybe seconds after that terrorist had shot at him, and threw that terrorist over the hood of a Humvee, if you used the UCMJ, he would at that point have to give him the Miranda rights and then call up a lawyer and assign that lawyer to that alleged terrorist, and then all of the statements and all of the evidentiary rulings that could flow from that activity would then trigger.

Mr. Speaker, we can't have a battlefield where platoon leaders and company commanders are bringing up fire teams and with those fire teams they are bringing up teams of lawyers. That is why we needed a new type of structure for this new type of battlefield.

Mr. Speaker, I think we have responded to the mandate of the Supreme Court that Congress involve itself in producing this new structure to prosecute terrorists. I think we have done a good job. We have worked hard with the Senate and White House. We have made dozens and dozens and dozens of agreed provisions in here that have been carefully looked over by the Senate, the White House, and the House of Representatives. I think we have a package that will allow us to leave this

body in the next several days having put into place a system under which we can try individuals who are now waiting at Guantanamo, people who are alleged to have designed the attack against the United States on 9/11 and which we can now begin the prosecution of those individuals.

I want to thank everybody who has participated in this long and arduous procedure. We have had lots of hearings in the Senate and in the House. My good colleague, Mr. Skelton, was involved himself in these hearings and on the original markup that we did on the bill.

We have differences of opinions. I think this is a time when we should come together and pass what is an excellent body of law that will be a very important part of fighting this new war against this new type of enemy.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 3 minutes now to the gentleman whose subcommittee oversees the policies for our 2.5 million folks in uniform, Mr. McHugh of New York.

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

Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman who sits on both the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee and has put enormous focus on this particular bill, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry).

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield at this time 2 minutes to a gentleman who is himself a veteran and a former JAG officer and the chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee and a gentleman who has paid a lot of attention to this important subject, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer).

Mr. Buyer, that is correct. It is the intent of the legislation that the detailed military counsel shall act as an associate counsel during the course of self-representation. As you stated, should this right be revoked, the military counsel will then proceed to represent the accused throughout the rest of the trial.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I want to thank him for his valuable contribution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I want to set the gentleman straight who just spoke. Every single person held in Guantanamo has the right and will have the right under this legislation to contest whether or not they are, in fact, combatants and the status of their being swept up on the battlefield inadvertently or being, in fact, true enemy combatants. They will have that right.

That is, in my estimation, an important type of habeas corpus. That is preserved in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Boustany).

I want to take 30 seconds, Mr. Speaker, just to remind my friend who just spoke that this bill is largely the product of not only this body but Senator Warner, Senator McCain, and Senator Graham. Shortly, they are going to be introducing the precise same bill in the other body.

And, Mr. Speaker, in this bill, military commissions, if you will check on page 7, to answer the gentleman who just spoke who thought his wife might in some wild circumstance be prosecuted under this bill, this bill gives jurisdiction and military commissions, on line 24, page 7, to alien unlawful enemy combatants. It does not take away the habeas rights of U.S. citizens.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer).

We just have one other speaker, then I am going to reserve the balance.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer) for a response.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I would like to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger).

Mr. Speaker, at this time I reserve the balance of my time, which I believe is 2 minutes, and move to the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all my colleagues on both sides of this debate.

This great Nation, this shining city on a hill, was attacked on 9/11. We undertook aggressive action against the terrorists who attacked us. We killed a lot of them. We found them in places where they never thought we would find them, in caves at 10,000-foot elevation mountain ranges, in deserts, in cities, and we captured some of them. And some of those who designed the attack against the United States and New York and Pennsylvania and Washington have been captured. And they are now in Guantanamo or going to Guantanamo. And the Supreme Court of the United States has charged this body with building a system with which to prosecute these terrorists, and we are responding with that system.

Now, I would say to those who say that this is not fair, that we haven't given them enough rights, I think we have given them plenty. We have enumerated those. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee went over many basic rights. But the world is going to see these trials. And as I watch these defendants, these people, including those who designed the attack on 9/11, being presumed innocent; being given lawyers by the United States; being set against a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt; being protected against self-incrimination; being given the right to exculpatory evidence; being given the right to two appeals, not one appeal, as the minority had in the initial markup coming out of the Armed Services Committee, the American people will have an opportunity to see whether or not they think that the alleged terrorists have been given enough rights. So let's do what the Supreme Court asked us to do.

We have put together an excellent product. It is agreed on. It will be introduced shortly in the U.S. Senate. For those who say they want to see the product of Mr. Warner and Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham, they have had a great deal of input into this, and they will be introducing this piece of legislation in the other body. So let's get on with this. It is our duty to pass this bill, to construct this system, construct this court, and bring justice before the eyes of the widows and orphans of 9/11, our fellow citizens, and the world. Let's do it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the majority leader, Mr. Boehner.

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I do rise to oppose this motion.

First, let me thank my colleague, Mr. Skelton, an outstanding gentleman and friend and a guy who cares about our country, and all the folks

who have really worked this issue and participated in the hearings and the briefings that we have had and the discussions with military experts.

Let me tell you why I oppose this. First, Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court not only gave permission but invited the Congress to put together this new system to try terrorists. And I want to direct my colleagues to the opinion of Justice Breyer, where he said: ``Nothing prevents the President from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary.''

So the point is the Supreme Court has not only given us permission. They have given us the obligation of putting this together. The American people have given us the obligation of putting this together.

The idea that we are going to pass this legislation with an uncertainty, with a lack of confidence, sending a message that somehow we need two permissions, is, I think, exactly the wrong message to send to the world.

And I just remind my colleague Mr. Skelton that when we had our initial hearings and our initial markup, Mr. Skelton, you held up Senator Graham in the Senate and Senator McCain as having the gold standard with respect to this legislation and you offered their legislation. Let me tell you that this legislation will be introduced by them. The gentlemen that you said had the gold standard and judgment on what is fair, they will be introducing this in the other body very shortly.

So, my colleagues, this is not a time to seek a second permission before we have passed the first legislation that actually sets into force and effect this important structure with which to try terrorists.

Let me just go to the second problem with what Mr. Skelton has. Mr. Skelton has a sunset provision. This sunsets a very important part of the bill. It sunsets the commission. So it says we have to go back and redo it, that we don't have confidence in what we have done, and we have to redo it after 3 years.

The other bad part about this motion to recommit is it sunsets section 5 and section 6 which protect American troops. They say that you cannot sue American troops under Geneva article 3. You can't sue them civilly. Now that is a bad thing. That means that you would have, if this sunset goes into place that Mr. Skeleton is asking for, that you will have American troops exposed to civil suit by terrorists in American courts for alleged violations of Geneva article 3.

It also does away with this distinction that we have made between grave offenses under Geneva article 3. The real grave offenses, the murder, the torture, all of those things, goes away with the cleavage between that. And maybe an American female colonel interrogating a male Muslim, and therefore being construed as having degraded him and his culture by having an American female interrogate him, that distinction between that and a bad offense would now be erased and American troops would be exposed to civil liability and civil suits under Geneva article 3.

I would just ask my colleagues, if you have confidence in what we have done, and this has been a product of this body, of the other body, and of the administration working night and day to put together a solid package, if you have confidence in that, and you have confidence in this list of rights that we have enumerated, that we give to the defendants, that we give to the people who designed the attack on 9/11: the right to counsel, the right to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the right to a secret vote in the jury so that a colonel cannot lean on a lieutenant to get a guilty verdict, the right against self- incrimination, all of the basic rights. If you look at that package of rights and you think that is enough for the terrorists, then vote ``yes'' on this bill, vote ``no'' on this motion to recommit.

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I raise today to recognize Luan Rivera, a devoted and inspirational leader who has dedicated her life to the education and development of America's youth. As the 2005--2006 President of the California School Boards Association, CSBA, Luan has worked tirelessly to promote and strengthen educational opportunities in California's public schools and I would like to commend her for her efforts.

Luan was elected to the Ramona Unified School District Board of Education in 1994 and served seven years on CSBA's Delegate Assembly. Her impressive credentials include a master's degree from Roosevelt University in Chicago, completion of CSBA's Master in Governance Program, a multiple-subject teaching credential and an English as a Second Language certificate. She is also the former youth coordinator of the Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program and has participated in numerous activities designed to enhance tolerance amongst California's culturally diverse youth population.

Adding to this long list of achievements, Luan has also been active in the San Diego County Inter-Agency Coalition for Human and Civil Rights and, in 2001, she attended the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. These experiences and qualifications enabled Luan to serve as CSBA President with a high level of insight and an acute understanding of California's educational challenges.

Luan recognizes that stimulating and encouraging our children to learn is an investment in America's future. Her incredible devotion to improving California's education system has set a new precedent for CSBA's top leadership position and it is my hope that leaders like Luan will continue to step forward in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in thanking Luan Rivera for her service as a member of the Ramona Unified School District Board of Education and CSBA President. Thanks to Luan, California's public schools are a better place and she can take special pride in knowing that her contributions are improving the lives of children and families throughout the State.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

My colleagues, since 9/11 border enforcement became not an immigration issue primarily but a national security issue primarily. We have to know who is coming across our borders and what they are bringing with them. That requires a fence.

The fence in San Diego works. When we built that fence, we had border gangs robbing, raping, murdering, killing mostly the illegal aliens who came through, preying on those people. We had 300 drug trucks a month ramming across the open border, coming through the sagebrush. We had a border that was out of control. It was the primary smuggling corridor in the world for smuggling of people and narcotics.

We built the double fence. We stopped the drug trucks cold. We stopped the murderers. We stopped the border gangs. And the crime rate in the City of San Diego dropped by more than 50 percent, according to FBI statistics.

The fence works, and moving this fence across the Southwest before the next hot season, before the sun gets to be 110 in the shade, which will happen next summer, getting that first stretch of fence across the hot Arizona desert will save many lives because about 400 people a year die in that desert of dehydration or sunstroke after their smuggler tells them it is just a few miles north to the road and it turns out to be 10 or 20 miles.

The fence works. Let's replicate this fence across the Southwest border so we know who is coming into the country and what they are bringing with them.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good colleague, Mr. King, for yielding.

And I listened, as you probably did, to some of the Democrat Members who were decrying the state of the world and ``woe is me'' and things are going

terribly, according to them. And as the gentleman took the floor, as I watched him take the floor, and started talking about the Republican legacy in national security that they were complaining about and the Republican legacy of peace through strength, I was reminded about coming here in 1980 when a guy named Ronald Reagan was running for President. And we just finished with a President who was very, very similar to Jimmy Carter, the gentleman who had his tenure in office somewhat truncated by Ronald Reagan, and that was Bill Clinton. And I thought of the fact that the Democrats entered the Clinton administration with 15 Army divisions, combat divisions, and when they walked out of the White House and that administration left, they had cut the United States Army by about 40 percent. They were down to 10 divisions, and many of those divisions were undermanned, and then I was reminded that they were the same people that complained that we didn't have enough people on the ground when we went into Iraq. And then I was reminded that, as we are talking about Iraq, and today there is a big hue and cry to get rid of Secretary Rumsfeld among the Democrats, in the Democrat cloakroom, thankfully, 6,000 miles away that sentiment is not shared by the Americans who are reenlisting in the combat zone, in places like the Sunni triangle, where the 101st is well over 100 percent of their expected reenlistment rate. The First Marine Division out in the very dangerous Anbar Province is up well over 100 percent of their expected reenlistment rate. So the people that serve in combat under Don Rumsfeld seem to like him.

But I was reminded, as I listened to that ``woe is me'' discussion by the Democrats, that it is the Republican Party that is the party of peace through strength, and the American people rely on us to do that. And I think that is one reason they are trying to pull down Secretary Don Rumsfeld.

And I thought it was interesting today, as the President announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the attack that drove those planes into New York, into Washington, D.C., and into Pennsylvania, will soon be coming to a courtroom near us in the United States because he was captured and he was interrogated and others were interrogated in what the Democrats call inhumane methods, even though our lawyers and all of the people who scrutinized the methods of interrogation found that they were legal methods of interrogation, uncomfortable but legal and not torture, and that that person and others who joined him, his team of terrorists who joined him in masterminding the 9/11 attacks on America, will be coming to a courtroom near us, soon to be prosecuted, truly brought to justice because of the leadership of this administration and because of some of these methods of interrogation that have been associated with Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld. And the President laid out today how thousands of Americans had their lives spared, how we stopped attacks and we stopped plots to attack our country in mid course, including not only attacks that would include explosives but also attacks that would include things like anthrax, because we had a forward-leaning, tough, aggressive posture in this war against terror.

So as the Democrats sip their lattes and find themselves very comfortable in what they describe as a very uncomfortable world, the reason they are able to be here having enjoyed almost 5 years after the 9/11 attack with no further attacks on the United States is partly because we had a President with an aggressive, forward-leaning policy against terrorism; that he went out and took them on; that he hunted them down in places where they didn't think they would ever be found, with the leadership of Don Rumsfeld, and we kept them off balance. And because of that, because they were kept off balance, because we penetrated them, because we were able to get into their cells and we were able to discover who was masterminding these plots against the United States, we were able to keep our people safe.

And I am further reminded that when Don Rumsfeld's military, our military, led by General Tommy Franks, was driving that iron spearhead up toward Baghdad, you already had the Democrats complaining that there were not enough troops and that he would get bogged down. And as you saw them on talk shows, the talk shows in which Democrats were complaining that he would get bogged down were interrupted by news announcements that Tommy Franks had taken yet other stronghold of Saddam Hussein. And they would seem to be almost disappointed rather than joyous when they would hear that American troops had, in fact, mowed down another line of defense by Saddam Hussein; so they stopped criticizing for a while. Then after we took Baghdad, the criticism started again. And this time the criticism was what I called the ``both ways criticism.'' In the same discussion, a Democrat leader would say we need to have more troops on the ground and in the next sentence he would say we want to have an Iraqi face on the security apparatus. Well, how do you have an Iraqi face on a security apparatus if you stuff enough troops into that country to have a GI on every corner? The facts are you cannot have it both ways.

And then the other criticism was, we should have kept the Iraqi military intact.

The Iraqi military had over 10,000 Sunni generals. What do you do with 10,000 Sunni generals? You don't do anything. And that is what the army would have done to secure Iraq: nothing. The idea of having that army where corruption was the order of the day, where you had people who were simply following their own political agenda and making their own way and making their own profits and the idea that we would maintain that army as the new safeguard or security force in Iraq to protect this fledgling, newly elected, democratically elected government coming up makes no sense at all. The smartest thing we ever did was starting with scratch with that military and teaching the new army the chain of command; teaching them respect both up and down the chain of command; teaching them to take responsibility; teaching them to have a thing called NCOs, noncommissioned officers; teaching them to be decent to people; teaching them not to be corrupt. And that is why today the best force that we have in Iraq is not the police force, is not the security force. It is the military. And even people who have criticized this administration in the way they conducted the war concur that there is a strong core in this Iraqi army. That is because we built it from scratch, and we didn't start with 15,000 Sunni generals.

Now, the last thing, and I have mentioned it, that the administration was condemned for and that Don Rumsfeld became a lightning rod for was uncomfortable interrogation methods. Well, you know, the world is a tough place, and the people that we are dealing with are not made out of cotton candy. And the fact that we were able to get information from terrorists because they are the ones that have the information, not Americans, but because the terrorists are the ones that have the information, the fact that we were able to get that information from them and use that to stop other actions against the United States before they could mature, before they could result in American casualties accrued to the benefit of America's security.

So when I look at this ``woe is me'' and we have got the real security plan and if we had only taken the other road, you will notice that the road not taken is always the smoothest one, where we had all the Sunni generals, that we would have used those to somehow bring security to Iraq, or if we had stuffed enough GIs into Iraq that somehow there would not be any car bombings or would not be any violence, or if we would just ask people politely to give up the names of their co-terrorists, they would do that and we wouldn't have to be tough on them in interrogations. All those positions, I think, define why the American people, Democrats and Republicans, rely on Republicans for national security.

And I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Absolutely.

I think that comment that somehow this is a neat, tidy package and if we just confined ourselves to Afghanistan, somehow we would win the war against terror and we wouldn't have to worry about Iraq is a naive position.

The facts are that we learned after 9/11 that if we didn't change the world, the world was going to change us. And having an Iraq that has a modicum of freedom, that is not an enemy of the United States and will not be a springboard to future terrorism accrues to the benefit of generations of Americans. It is not something you can put on a bumper sticker, but having some change in that part of the world.

And one manifestation of that change that was little noticed was when, during the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, Hezbollah sought rearmaments from Iran, and Iran, according to reports, sent off a plane full of new missiles to throw at the defenseless civilian populations in Israeli cities, and Iraq would not let them fly over. So they said, okay, we will try to fly over Turkey. And Turkey said, You can come into our aerospace but only if you land and we can search your plane. And Iran then turned the plane around and took it back home and did not deliver the missiles.

Now, that is only a small thing. On the other hand, it could be a big thing for the people who might have felt the impact of those warheads in Israeli cities. But that was an Iraq whose government was not friendly to terrorists. That was an Iraq whose government was supportive of free people. And that was because of the American position in Iraq and the fact that we have changed the face of Iraq.

Now, there is something I think all American troops should see because they are hearing this constant drumbeat now from the Democrats that the casualties have been in vain, that their efforts have been in vain, that this is all a terrible fiasco. I think that every American who serves should be shown the excavations that are taking place in Iraq right now, those mass graves wherein if you watch the History Channel, you might have seen some of this about a month ago where American anthropologists and scientists are excavating the mass graves, where Saddam Hussein's people would herd hundreds and thousands of people and in many cases would shoot the mother holding her baby in the back of the head. And then when the scientists would examine the skull of the little baby, they would notice it too would have a pistol bullet hole in the back of its head. Double execution, mother and baby. I think all Americans that serve over there should see the photos of those Kurdish mothers whose bodies are strewn out across the hillsides still holding their babies, killed in mid stride by Chemical Ali.

And I am reminded of a Democrat President who stood on the west steps of this Capitol many years ago and said, Let the word go out, let friend and foe alike know that America will bear any burden to support the cause of freedom. And I am paraphrasing, of course, John Kennedy. What happened to those Democrats? What value do they place on those thousands of people who were pushed into mass graves?

In fact, I think one farmer testified about Saddam Hussein's executioners that they had an execution squad that would show up at about 9 o'clock on his farm. They had an excavation squad or team that would show up with construction equipment, and they would dig these big trenches on his farm in the morning, and then the execution squad would arrive, and then they would truck in the unfortunate villagers who were going to be executed. They would line them up and shoot them in the back of the head, push them into this big cut that they had made in the Earth, and then they would cover them up with bulldozers.

As I recall at one point, the farmer said that one day the execution squad, the logistics guy did not show up so they did not have any bullets. So he said, what the heck. They just pushed the people in alive and covered them up without shooting them. It did not make a lot of difference to them.

Those historical excavations, and that record of human suffering and human tragedy that was visited on those people, that should be shown. Because that is the work of Saddam Hussein. That should be shown to every GI, every marine, every navy corpsman that serves out there in that tough Fallujah area, and al Ramadi with the marines, every airman who flies those long lifts, bringing and keeping that logistical train going between American bases and that area of operation.

Every one of them ought to be shown the full story of what Saddam Hussein did and what he was. And the idea that we can turn that country where the ruler did that to those people, to a country who, when Iran says we want to fly these missiles over your air space so we can kill people in Israel says ``no, we are not going to let you do that. Go back''.

To me that is a remarkable thing. Now, you know, the freedom of the Iraqi people is not guaranteed by this operation in perpetuity. Nobody's freedom is guaranteed in perpetuity including our own. We are developing them, a freedom for that country. We are giving them a running start at freedom. I think it was Ben Franklin one time who said, we have our freedom, now if we can keep it. It will be up to them to keep it.

But we learned after 9/11 that if we did not change the world, the world was going to change us. This is far-reaching. This is visionary. This is going beyond Fortress America that somehow we must have said something wrong to these extremists to come after us and bomb us and do these things to us.

And you know, I have thought about this idea that somehow what did we do wrong to invite this strike against America? I thought about that. I thought about the last couple of wars we fought. Two wars ago it was the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. Kuwait is a Muslim country. We saved it.

And then we went in and we saved hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the Balkans, in Bosnia. We had that record. And the reward that we got from the extremists was for them to attack the United States of America. So what more could we do? So this idea of this flagellation of America is something that is reviving in the Democratic party. I think you probably noticed that. It is coming to the fore. It is, we did something wrong. And it is not Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the real devils in this operation, according to the Democrats, are not these people that we are going after who have tried to kill thousands of Americans, it is really our leaders.

Those are the people that they say are the bad people. And it is not the guys that our great intelligence agencies and military people manage to bring to justice that we will soon see in a court of justice being tried I believe for murder, among other things.

But it is the methods of these uncomfortable methods that were used to get them to tell about people that were planning to kill Americans and fly planes into our country loaded with explosives and do the other things that the President talked about today. This blame America first thing is reviving on the Democrat side of the aisle.

I do not think the American people are going to buy it.

Mr. Speaker, I think the last thing the gentleman said, and I appreciate you letting me come in and butt in here and talk a little bit. But you know Great Britain has nuclear weapons. But we do not fear Great Britain because Great Britain is free. France has nuclear weapons. We do not fear France because France is free.

The Soviet Union, former Soviet Union, now Russia has nuclear weapons, residual from their days as the center of the Soviet Empire. But they are becoming free. They are still a fragile country that is trying to move in that direction. Still with lots of problems. We have less worry about them today because they have more freedom than they had before.

So clearly bringing freedom to the world is an important part of America's own future, and an important part of our own security. And for those who think we can hold back in Fortress America and not change the world, and not worry about what the rest of the world is doing, that is a naive position.

It is one that politicians had a number of occasions in the last century, in which 619,000 Americans died on battlefields around the world. In many places and cases where we had forgotten that we achieved peace through strength, where we let our guard down, where we thought we could pull back into the United States and not worry about what was going on around the world.

This president is aggressive. He has been tough in the war against terror. He has been determined. That is probably his best quality. He does not read the polls every day. He does not check the wind every day to see which direction it is blowing. But his aggressive stance against the terrorists, running them down in places where they never thought that our forces could get to them, killing them at 10,000-foot elevation mountains in Afghanistan, taking them out in safe houses where they had no idea that we were on to them, going after them and taking them out and keeping them off balance is one reason that we have had 5 years without attacks on this United States.

So I thank the gentleman for talking about the Republican position on national security. It is too bad. I think it is too bad when we have to politicize or put a partisan face on national security. But I think it is appropriate when the Democratic leadership gets up and talks about the Republican position on security.

I think it is appropriate to remind them that we rebuilt our national security after we had the hollow army of the 1970s, we had 1,500 petty officers a month leaving the navy because they could not make enough money to feed their families. We had about 35 percent of our ships that could not sail, about 50 percent of our combat aircraft that were not fully mission capable.

And we rebuilt America from those days. We stood up to the Soviet Union and we disassembled the Soviet Union and we made the world a lot safer because we did that. We stood up to the Communist intrusion in Central America. When on this side of the aisle, the Democrats were writing Dear Commandante letters and talking about appeasement in Central America.

Because of that, those countries that were dictatorships when Ronald Reagan came into office are now fragile democracies where people get to vote, where they settle things with ballots not bullets. That is the legacy of the Republican Party. And it is the Republican party that rebuilt national security.

You know, we put $40 billion extra into the defense budgets during the Clinton years because President Clinton took our defenses down like a rock falling off a cliff. As I said, we had over 15-plus Army divisions when he came

into office. When he left we only had 10. When he needed money for other things in the budget, he just cut the military. We had to rebuild that force after that gentleman left office. We did it.

Today we are spending more than $100 billion more, not counting the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq than we did under the Clinton administration.

We still need to spend more. We are spending about 4 percent of GDP on defense today. Under John Kennedy, a conservative Democrat who believed in peace through strength, we were spending 9 percent of GDP on defense, and under Ronald Reagan, we were spending 6 percent. Probably, we are going to need to go up to about 4\1/2\ or 5 percent of GDP being spent on defense to make sure that we ensure security for the coming decades.

I thank the gentleman for his allowing me to come down and say a word or two this evening.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I just wanted to say that I am going to support this legislation. We have several important issues that we think were decided in the right way, particularly the one that gives the Secretary of Defense a veto of the process if he finds that national security interests are impaired or are affected. And that is very, very important to us.

There are several issues that we think still need to be resolved that are important to the Armed Services Committee, but we support the bill in terms of moving it forward into the conference and getting this very important legislation, intended to tighten up the CFIUS process, in place so that we can apply it to pending transactions.

So, Mr. Speaker, I intend to vote ``yes'' on this, but to work very closely with the gentleman from Ohio, my good friend, and with all the other Members who have been putting this legislation together as we move through conference to try to firm up a few other important defense issues as we go through the conference.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5683) to preserve the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial in San Diego, California, by providing for the immediate acquisition of the memorial by the United States, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the legislation under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to ask my colleagues' support for H.R. 5683, the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial Protection Act. Since 1954, a 29-foot cross has stood atop Mt. Soledad in San Diego, California, memorializing the sacrifices of American soldiers during World War I, World War II, and the Korean conflict.

This beautiful and historic memorial cross was erected and is maintained by a private organization, the Mt. Soledad Memorial Association, with the permission of the city of San Diego.

Over the years, the memorial association has added many elements to this memorial, including over 1,700 granite plaques commemorating individual servicewomen and men on concentric walls, bollards, pavers, and a flag pole proudly flying the American flag. The memorial cross now is fully integrated as a centerpiece of the multifaceted Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial. It is without question a world-class war memorial, dedicated to all of those, regardless of race, religion or creed, who have served our armed services.

In 1989, a single plaintiff brought suit against the city of San Diego because he stated he was offended by the sight of the cross. The district court found that presence of this memorial cross violated the California Constitution's guarantee of free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference and ordered the removal of the display.

The city of San Diego, like other municipalities faced with similar court orders, endeavored in good faith to divest itself of the memorial property by selling it to a private party who could choose to display the memorial cross.

In this case, however, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the method of sale violated the California Constitution's ban on aid to sectarian purposes. On May 3, 2006, the district court ordered the city of San Diego to comply with the original injunction.

The city has appealed that order to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has stayed enforcement of the order pending the outcome of that appeal.

In 2004, the United States Congress designated the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial a National Veterans Memorial and authorized the Federal Government to accept the donation of the memorial from the city of San Diego. The voters of San Diego passed, by an overwhelming 76 percent, a ballot measure providing for the donation. But in response to a complaint by the same lone plaintiff, a San Diego County superior court judge invalidated the citywide referendum as violating the California Constitution.

The vast majority of the citizens of the city of San Diego favor finding a way to keep the Mt. Soledad Memorial intact, even if that means giving up ownership of the parkland property on which it is located.

A 1994 ballot measure authorizing the sale of the property also passed with 76

percent of the vote, as did a 2005 ballot measure directing the city to donate the memorial property to the Federal Government.

The efforts of the city to vindicate the desires of the citizenry, however, have been stymied by one plaintiff and a few judges who find the city of San Diego's display of the decades-old memorial cross impermissible under the California Constitution.

H.R. 5683 vests title and possession of the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial, a national memorial honoring the war dead and veterans of the United States Armed Forces, in the United States. Once the memorial property belongs to the United States, the constitutionality of the property transfer, as well as the display of the cross as an element of the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial, will be determined under the establishment clause of the United States Constitution.

Applying the establishment clause to the government's display of religious symbols, the United States Supreme Court has determined that displays of religious symbols on government property are unconstitutional only if their purpose is entirely religious and they include no secular components.

Most recently the Supreme Court has determined that the establishment clause analysis of passive monuments like this one is driven by the nature of the monument and by our Nation's history. In the case of the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial, it is surrounded by a plethora of secular symbols. In fact, Mr. Speaker, there are some 1,700 memorials that make up this overall veterans memorial.

In accordance with the United States' long tradition of memorializing members of the Armed Forces who die in battle with religious symbols, the memorial cross serves a legitimate secular purpose of commemorating our Nation's war dead and veterans. Therefore, the display of the Mt. Soledad memorial cross on Federal property as part of a larger memorial is constitutional.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, we have many pictures of large crosses in national cemeteries and other national property or Federal property across this Nation, and we will display those at the appropriate time.

The memorial cross on Mt. Soledad is not only a religious symbol, it is a venerated landmark, beloved by the people of San Diego for over 50 years. It is a fitting memorial to all persons who have served and sacrificed for our Nation as members of the Armed Forces.

Passage of H.R. 5683 will preserve the beautiful memorial for the families of those who have died in service, for all current military servicemembers, for veterans, for the citizens of San Diego and for the Nation.

For the Record, Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit letters of support from Jerry Sanders, mayor of San Diego; San Diegans for the Mount Soledad National War Memorial; the American Legion; AMVETS; Veterans for Foreign Wars of the United States; Disabled American Veterans; the American Center for Law and Justice; and Robert and Sybil Martino, the parents of a soldier who gave his life in the war on terror and was honored for his sacrifice at the Mt. Soledad Memorial

Executive Office of the President, Office of Management

and Budget,

Washington, DC, July 19, 2006.

Statement of Administration Policy--H.R. 5683--Acquisition of Mt.

Soledad Veterans Memorial

(Rep. Hunter (R) CA and two cosponsors)

The Administration strongly supports passage of H.R. 5683

to protect the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial in San Diego.

In the face of legal action threatening the continued

existence of the current Memorial, the people of San Diego

have clearly expressed their desire to keep the Mt. Soledad

Veterans Memorial in its present form. Judicial activism

should not stand in the way of the people, and the

Administration commends Rep. Hunter for his efforts in

introducing this bill. The bill would preserve the Mount

Soledad Memorial by vesting title to the Memorial in the

Federal government and providing that it be administered by

the Secretary of Defense. The Administration supports the

important goal of preserving the integrity of war memorials.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from San Diego, California (Mr. Issa), who has been a real champion in this effort to preserve the memorial.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from San Diego, California (Mr. Bilbray), a gentleman who has worked tirelessly to preserve the memorial.

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

Just to make one point, what we are doing with this legislation is taking ownership that we have already designated by law the memorial at Mt. Soledad, the Korean war memorial. We have already designated this memorial as a Federal memorial. What we are doing is taking ownership of the memorial.

So for those who don't like it and who think that it is unconstitutional, that memorial will still be intact and will be subject to any attacks that they or others may want to make on the memorial.

What it simply does is transfer title of the memorial, of the property, to the Federal Government. I think that is absolutely appropriate in light of the fact that these are veterans from all over America who are represented on those 1,700-plus little memorials that make up this big memorial. So it is absolutely reasonable and appropriate that the Federal Government, having designated this as a Federal memorial,

takes ownership of the property as a Federal memorial.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his statement. How much time do both sides have left?

Do we have the right to close?

In that case, we would like to reserve our time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all Members for engaging in this debate. I think it is a good one and a healthy one, and I would like to point out to all Members that preserving this memorial, that is, transferring it to the United States of America, is supported strongly by the American Legion, by the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, by the Disabled American Veterans, and by AMVETS and by all of their national commanders.

Mr. Speaker, let me point out that there are dozens and dozens not only of crosses but of Stars of David and other religious symbols on Federal property throughout this country.

I noticed during the debate here that we are standing under a statement, ``In God we trust,'' that stands over the Speaker's chair, arguably a target for a constitutional argument that it violates separation of church and State.

Now, in answer to my friend from New York and his statement that why did we have to go and put this cross on this memorial, this memorial is 52 years ago. It is a memorial that has evolved and grown since not only the Korean war but actually right after the turn of the century, like so many memorials that we have.

Today, there is not really just one memorial. There are really 1,701 memorials in composite because there are 1,700 plaques to people that gave everything they had to the United States of America.

This last letter that I received in support of this from the parents of Captain Martino, who fell in Iraq last year, saying please do not let them tear down the memorial, reminded me to look back and look at some of the other people that are on this memorial. There is a thread of patriotism between every American alive today and those who served our country and those who fell for our country, those 619,000 Americans who died in the last century, those 2,500-plus Americans who have given their lives in Iraq and the 300-plus Americans who have given their lives in Afghanistan. There is a thread of patriotism between those people.

So for Captain Martino, who gave his life in Iraq just last year because of that, and for his family, somebody is able to teach at a synagogue or a church today or a college; because of a machine gunner in Belleau Wood early in this century, a businessman is able to operate freely in Cincinnati; and because of people who fell in the Korean war, a young couple is able to walk down the streets without being arrested in Washington, D.C.

So the freedoms that we have are combined by a thread to every single person who gave that full measure of devotion to our country, and whether we like it or not and whether the courts like it or not, the people, the families, the service people, think that those threads come together in little monuments and memorials throughout this country, not the least of which is Arlington Cemetery, but also not the least of which is 3,000 miles away on Mt. Soledad overlooking the Pacific Ocean where the 1st Marine Division embarked for those incredible fights in the island chains, taking back Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and other islands in the Axis Powers in World War II. That is a point of embarkation. It is a point where many families last saw their loved ones.

This memorial has a thread of patriotism and a thread of meaning to the people of the United States, not just San Diego, and it is fully appropriate that the United States of America, having made this memorial a national memorial, now takes ownership of the memorial.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin).

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

Almost, in fact a little bit more than 61 years ago, the 101st Airborne parachuted into Normandy. And a few miles away the Fourth Infantry Division was wading through bloody waters onto Utah Beach. And thousands of miles away, the First Marine Division was culminating a series of island operations, including Guadalcanal, Pelalieu and many others, very dangerous, very bloody. We call them the Greatest Generation. And you know, today, the 101st Airborne anchors the Sunni Triangle. The Fourth Infantry Division, including many of the grandchildren of those great members of the Greatest Generation, are in Baghdad. And the First Marine Division is out in that very dangerous al Anbar Province in towns called Ramadi and Fallujah. I call them the New Greatest Generation.

But there is a difference between them and their forefathers of the 101st and the Fourth Infantry Division and the First Marine Division, and that is that the Greatest Generation of World War II had a Congress that was united behind their mission. I think we owe it to this New Greatest Generation to unite behind their mission, and not just because it is their mission and we are Congress and we oversee national security, but because we gave them the mission. We voted overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives to go into Afghanistan and Iraq. We, not somebody else, we gave them the mission. They have carried out that mission. They have carried it out in thousands of firefights at 10,000- foot elevations in Afghanistan, taking down safehouses in Mosul and Tikrit and Fallujah and many other areas in Iraq, winning 45,000 bronze stars for valor and meritorious service, among many other medals; and you know, all the while taking on the enemy, they inoculated over 5 million children against diseases, re-stood up over 3,000 schools, built hundreds of hospitals, and they carried the free elections of the Afghan and Iraqi people on their shoulders. That is why we had free elections in those two countries.

Now, you know, when we started this thing, and if you look at the literature of al Qaeda and the terrorist organizations, they question the capability of the American troops. They no longer question that capability. Mr. Zarqawi does not question that capability. Saddam Hussein does not question that capability. They have been convinced of it in thousands of firefights. They don't question the troops' commitment to this mission. And the troops' commitment to this mission is manifested in reenlistments rates. For the Fourth ID, the Third ID, the 101st, the 10th Mountain Division, the First Marines, reenlistments, after multiple tours of more than 130 percent of the requirement.

They don't question the continued commitment of the President. They have seen this President go through highs and lows in the polls and continue his commitment to the mission that we launched together. The only question they have now is us. They question our commitment to this mission. And this resolution, Mr. Speaker, is a chance to unite this House of Representatives by restating our commitment to this mission. Let's do it so that tonight, when those troops come home from their patrols and their recons and their convoys and they look at the news, they are going to say the United States House of Representatives, they stand with us.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Lungren control the remaining 30 seconds of our time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman of the Intelligence Committee for allowing me to take a little time early in this debate, although I know the Armed Services Committee is going to come up a little later. And I wanted to talk about this war and touch on some of the subjects that my good friend Mr. Murtha has brought up over the last 15 or 20 minutes.

I was a new Member of Congress in 1983 when I went over to Beirut with a lot of those great members of the Armed Services Committee, and we got over there a couple of weeks before the Marines were blown up in the terrorist act that all Americans now have heard about and understand. And the reaction of the United States to that was basically to move out. And I know we all remember the Khobar Towers going up and a similar nonreaction from the United States. And we remember the embassies going up in North Africa and the national derision that followed the sending back of a couple of cruise missiles, one of which was alleged to have hit a drugstore, which was at most a symbolic response to the blowing up of those embassies in Africa. And I remember the Cole, and we all remember the Cole, and the destruction of that ship and the ensuing American casualties and the nonaction by the United States.

And then we were struck on 9/11, and we realized that it was wrong for us to treat these terrorist acts as isolated, compartmentalized acts that were unrelated. And at that point we struck back. And we undertook a mission first to Afghanistan, secondly a mission to Iraq.

And I do not think we have to plow old ground about Iraq. I think everybody understands Saddam Hussein, Gulf I. But I think it is important and it is good that my friend Mr. Murtha has pointed out that, in fact, even as we drove that armored spearhead north in this war against Iraq, taking Baghdad, Tommy Franks was intercepting communications even then from Iraqi officers to the effect that they were on the verge of using the ``special weapon,'' which we interpreted to be poison gas, a weapon of mass destruction, and he gave out orders that were right down to platoon and squad level, get ready for those weapons of mass destruction.

I can also remember giving a briefing, giving an invitation to every Member of this House, Democrat and Republican, before we voted on taking military action in Iraq, to come over and listen to intelligence experts in a closed briefing with no handlers, no White House personnel, and ask any question they wanted to ask about weapons of mass destruction. And they did that. Lots of them. We had over 100 Members at several of the briefings. And we had members of the intelligence apparatus of this country laying out differences. They talked about the aluminum tubes, how some people thought those were to be used in centrifuges for the conversion of uranium, the enrichment of uranium. Others thought they were to be used for rocket bodies. But we invited all the Members before they made that vote to give the President license to go into Iraq. They did that vote from an educated standpoint. They had an opportunity to pull all the information that they wanted.

Now, it has been stated that we did not have enough troops going into Iraq.

And I remember, as we were driving that armored spearhead north, and the Marines taking a piece of it, the Army taking a big piece of it, we had a number of experts appearing on national forums on a daily basis saying there were not enough troops. They used the term we are going to get ``bogged down,'' and what was interesting is even as they were on talk shows saying that there were not enough troops, the talk show would be interrupted with a news flash to the effect that Tommy Franks had taken yet another stronghold. And it was stated at the end of that drive toward Baghdad with what was described by some of the observers, some of the so-called experts, too few troops, that that lightning attack taking Baghdad would go down in history as an example of a low casualty level, and we did have an extraordinarily low casualty level, and a lightning advance in which the enemy in many cases was destroyed long before the American columns got to their land forces.

Now let us talk about troops in the occupation and the level of troops in the occupation because that has been brought up a number of times, and General Shinseki's statement about needing more than the number of troops that we had there has been used many times. There have been two arguments: one, that we needed to have more troops to make sure we could suppress the insurgents; and the other statement that was made, sometimes in the same speech, would be that we needed to put an Iraqi face on the security apparatus. Well, you can't have it both ways. You cannot have an American on every street corner and have an Iraqi face on the security apparatus.

And let me just say one last thing, which is a hard, tough truth for this House. But when the gentleman from Pennsylvania and I, as we watched the last of the 1990s unfold and the Clinton administration left the White House, we noticed in our defense committees that we went into that administration in the early 1990s with 15 American Army divisions. We came out of that administration with 10, count them, 10. Roughly 33 combat brigades. That is a fact of life. That is what we had to go into this operation with. Now we are moving and we are building toward 43 combat brigades right now. But we cut the military, we cut the U.S. Army, by almost 40 percent, and that is what we had to go into this war with.

Now, with respect to the gentleman's statements that in the first war we got lots of folks to chip in and pay for this thing, that is right. On the other hand, you had lots of self-interest. You had Saddam Hussein's tanks in third gear before we threw the 82nd Airborne in between him and his objectives, and you had everybody that had an oil well in that region scared to death and willing to pour money into this operation. So it is no surprise that countries out of self-interest will pile on and will help out. It is also no surprise that we have had lots of times in our national history when it has been tough to bring allies on board, when we had to have big pieces of this operation by ourselves and go it alone. And yet we were able to bring at least 20,000 coalition members into this operation.

And it is true we did not have the French and the Germans. But the French and the Germans were looking forward to major oil contracts with Saddam Hussein, and they did not want to go this time against their pocketbooks, and that is a fact of life.

I would be happy to yield.

I thank the gentleman. And, you know, that takes me to another point, which is the Iraqi Army. It has been said many times, and probably will be said again in this debate, that we should have kept the Iraqi Army intact.

Now, the road that is not taken is always the smoothest. But looking at the Iraqi Army, at Saddam Hussein's army, he had 15,000 Sunni generals. How are you going to maintain an efficient Iraqi Army that is responsive to a new fledgling civilian government with 15,000 Sunni generals running this thing?

We have had to build this army from the ground up. I think that history will show that that was the right thing to do. To have an efficient army, you have got to have a couple of things. You have got to have an army that has a chain of command which is responsive, that means that the private does what the sergeant says and the sergeant does what his platoon leader says, and right up the chain of command.

And you have also got to have an army that is responsive to the civilian government, to that new defense minister that was just put in place. I do not think you are going to do that with 15,000 Sunni generals. I have seen that statement tossed around so much that I hope to be able to talk to some of the folks a couple of years down the line when it is reflected.

Incidentally, people like Barry McCaffrey who have not been great friends of the administration's operation have said that looking at the Iraqi Army now, they see a core of strength, they see leadership emerging, and they see an Iraqi Army that is becoming effective.

So what are we doing? We have a mission, and the mission right now for the military is to provide a shield for this fledgling government as it goes into place, this new government. We are nation-builders. We are building a nation. It is also to train up the Iraqi military, and we are going to hand off this defense burden, that means our people come home after we train up and mature the Iraqi military.

If the question for us is, who is best equipped to decide when we take the training wheels off, when we let the Iraqi military go forward, I think we should leave that judgment up to the people who tracked down and brought to justice Mr. Zarqawi, a gentleman who said that he was going to take this war to Washington, DC, and London.

He is going to be a little late for that one, because we have an extremely competent American military on the ground in Iraq right now. I think the gentleman from Pennsylvania would agree with that.

So let's use that same judgment of those combat commanders who are training those Iraqi units in their areas of operation who say, okay, this battalion is just about matured, this one is not, this one needs more equipment, this one needs some more training. Let's rely on their judgment as to when we can hand that load off to them and let them bear the security burden.

Why should a Senator from Wisconsin or a Congressman from California try to impose an arbitrary date on when that maturity takes place. You cannot do it. So I would just ask my friends to give to those great Americans who are over there working this mission right now, let's send a united statement to them that there is value in this mission, there is value in their operation.

We are going to complete this mission. You know, they are lacking something that the Greatest Generation had. The Greatest Generation in World

War II had a united American public. When the 101st went into Northern Europe, they had a united American public. Let's give the 101st Airborne now in Mosul, and in that tough Sunni Triangle, let's give them the same support we gave them in Europe, a united American public and a united American Congress.

Let's give the 1st Marine Division that is out there in that tough province in the al Anbar Province out in Fallujah the same support we gave them when they were fighting Guadalcanal. The 1st Marine Division deserves a united American public and a united American Congress.

So let's send a message. The main message that is manifested in this resolution is that we should not have an arbitrary cut-off point, an arbitrary deadline, and, secondly, that we will complete this mission. Let's send this message to every soldier, every marine who is watching this thing from the mess halls in Mosul and Tikrit and Baghdad and Fallujah, the message that the United States House of Representatives stands with them.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

I think it is important to remember the two major provisions in this resolution, one that there is not going to be an arbitrary cutoff, that that would disserve the security interests of the United States to have an arbitrary exit date from Iraq; and, secondly, that we are going to finish the mission, we are going to fulfill this mission, and that we support the mission that is being undertaken by those 130,000 plus troops who are in Iraq right now.

Mr. Speaker, I was thinking about this question of who should determine when we leave Iraq. Over the last week, we have talked about the bringing to justice of Mr. Zarqawi, and everyone, Democrats and Republicans, have been talking about the extreme competence of the American military.

We have talked about the fact that they are extremely effective, that they know what they are doing, that they may be the best military we have had in decades, that we have great leadership. That is why their judgment on the ground as they stand up and train this Iraqi military should be the determinant of when that Iraqi military is able to carry that load and take that handoff from the American military and handle those security duties themselves. It shouldn't be a Congressman from California, it shouldn't be a Senator from Minnesota, it shouldn't be subject to a committee vote by those of us in Washington, D.C. It should be a function of the collaboration and the discussion and the analysis of the combat commanders on the ground listening to their captains and their majors and their colonels who are training up this Iraqi force. When they say they are ready, that is when we make that handoff.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), the chairman of the Terrorism Subcommittee.

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

Mr. Speaker, the reenlistment rate for the soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division, the 4th Infantry Division, the 1st Marine Division, and the 10th Mountain Division exceeds 130 percent in this last quarter. And a lot of that is the result of the great work by the gentleman of New York (Mr. McHugh), who has been the chairman of the Total Force and the Personnel Subcommittee and has presided over a major part of the 41 percent pay increase that we have passed over the last several years.

I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to clear up a point.

There are 340,000 sets of advanced body armor produced and fielded. That is more than two sets for every single person serving in uniform in Iraq.

I have made this statement for the last year, but if anybody has a relative who is serving in Iraq without body armor, please call me personally. I have not yet received a single phone call.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Drake) who does so much for the troops.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks), a Member who is a leader not only in supporting the troops but in humanitarian efforts in Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway), a great member of the Armed Services Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster), a very fine member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hayes), a very fine member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Otter), who has just welcomed home his old unit, the 116th Armored Cav.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite) for 2\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman who represents Dyess Air Force Base, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Ryun), a very distinguished member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin), a distinguished member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the chairman of the Air Land Subcommittee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to a very distinguished member of the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Calvert.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to say earlier the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder) rose and talked about what he called a lack of oversight on the Armed Services Committee with respect to Iraq. I want to enter into the Record, if I might, the fact of 41 full committee hearings, 21 on the war on terror, two on reconstruction, two on troop rotation, three on the Iraqi forces, four on force protection, four on detainees and five markups on that issue.

I would just point out that the most extensive investigation in the history of detainees was completed by General Taguba, who gave us a voluminous report with something like 116 annexes. I made that available to everybody, Democratic, Republican, on the Armed Services Committee, including Mr. Snyder, and a total of three members from the Democrat side of the aisle on our committee looked at that the report. It is still available for Mr. Snyder. When he gets finished reading it we will have more hearings for him.

HASC Breakdown of Iraq/GWOT Activities

Total Committee Events--93

Detainees--17

Force Protection--10

We have reserved the balance of our time. I think we have got a transition here, Mr. Speaker, with the next committee coming up.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

With great respect for Chairman Mica and Chairman Knollenberg, I support this amendment strongly.

This is a matter of priorities, and it is a matter of American ownership in a system that supported and that transported 93 percent of our military personnel to the warfighting theaters. It is a matter of priorities.

Dan McKinnon, Ronald Reagan's head of the Civil Aeronautics Board, who owned and sold North American Airlines and controlled it, said, ``As a rescue helicopter pilot with 61 saves, my number one priority would always be American security. If the country needed me, that's where I would send my planes.''

That is the kind of control, operational control, we need on American airlines. I strongly support this amendment.