Floor Statements

Will the Senator yield?

For a question.

I understood that the junior Senator from Massachusetts referred to the NIE. I would like to ask a question because my interpretation was totally different. The NIE that was released yesterday states that worldwide counterterrorism efforts over the past 5 years have constrained the ability of al-Qaida to attack the homeland and have led terrorist groups to perceive the United States as a harder target to strike than on 9/11. It is a significant judgment that shows that our counterterrorism efforts have been working. It also notes that al-Qaida leadership continues to plot high-impact attacks, and the safe haven it enjoys along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has likely increased its capabilities to attack the United States. This doesn't mean, as some erroneously reported last week, that al-Qaida is as strong as it was pre-9/11. It does mean that al-Qaida may be strong enough to carry out an attack on the United States.

The question I would ask, reading in context from the NIE, is, Do you agree with this interpretation?

Mr. President, first of all, let me say to the previous speaker, the junior Senator from Colorado, I reviewed what he and Senator Lamar Alexander have put together, and I think of a lot of the options out there, that is one that is fairly reasonable. But I disagree with the offensive nature that people have taken with some of the terms, such as ``resolution of surrender'' and ``cut and run.'' In reality, I believe that is what we are talking about.

A couple things were said. First of all, it happens in the case of former Senator Max Cleland, he was one of my closest friends. We actually were in a Bible study together. We were together every week, spending quality time and intimate time together. Never once did anyone question his patriotism.

Max Cleland--I heard the story from him, what happened to him in Vietnam. Then I also saw the campaign that came up. Yes, they talked about votes, how perhaps his votes were different than the person who was opposing him who was serving in the House at that time. Never once was his patriotism questioned.

Mr. President, I will yield to the Senator from Colorado.

Yes. I understand.

Mr. President, reclaiming my time.

I am glad to yield for a question, but we already heard this speech in terms of the interpretation of the vote we will have at 11 o'clock. We have an honest difference of opinion, I say to my good friend, the junior Senator from Colorado. He has expressed his opinion, and I want to express mine.

For one question. Go ahead.

That is correct.

Let me reclaim my time and expand on that a little bit.

There is still a continued troop presence in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and other places. There always is a troop presence. And after this is over--depending on what the outcome is--I would assume there will always be a troop presence there regardless of how we vote on any resolution today.

Now, let me say a couple other things that were stated on the floor. I was sitting here at about at 5:15 or 5:30 this morning, when statements were made by the junior Senator from Massachusetts as to our troops who have been involved with IEDs, who have lost their lives, and that nothing changed after that, nothing was accomplished after that. That is another way of saying they have died in vain.

Let me tell you, I have been in the AOR of Iraq, not always in Iraq, but this AOR, 14 times. I probably have talked to more troops, gotten a better feel as to what people are about over there than any other Member. I think to even suggest that someone has died in vain is totally outrageous.

Now, one of the things that has been stated over and over again that I do agree with by the opposition over there is we have a problem with our equipment. We have a problem with the funding of the military.

Let me suggest to you, in America, this is the only democracy where if people at home want to know how their Member of Congress--from the House or the Senate--is voting on issues, they can find out. I suggest to you that the worst way to find out how someone is voting on issues is to ask them. You do not want to do that.

But if you are concerned, for an example, as to how we are voting on a tax issue--if you are for tax increases, you do not ask the guy, you do not say, Senator Salazar, are you for tax increases? No, you do not want to do that. But you can look at the ratings. We have ratings on every conceivable subject. The National Taxpayers Union will tell how each Member votes in terms of tax increases.

Are you conservative or liberal? Well, I suggest to you the ACLU loves the liberals. The ACU loves the conservatives. I am proud of my rating. It happens to be No. 1 out of 100 Senators. So people will know. They do not have to ask me.

If you are concerned about how a Senator is voting in terms of supporting small business, the National Federation of Independent Business rates all Democrats, Republicans, House and Senate, on those issues.

If you are concerned--this is what I am getting around to now--if you are concerned about who is supporting the military, there are groups that do that. The Center for Security Policy, for example, says the average Democrat supports the military 17 percent of the time, the average Republican 79 percent of the time.

Now, if you question that, let me show you the chart I have in the Chamber.

For Democrats to stand on this floor and talk about the problems of the strained military, the problems of overdeployment, the problems we are having, look at what has happened. I do not think there was a month that went by back during the 1990s, during the Clinton administration-- when they were cutting the military, cutting our force strength, cutting money out of our military--when there wasn't this euphoric statement: Oh, the Cold War is over, so we do not need a military anymore. That actually was floating around these Chambers. So what happened during the 1990s?

If you take what the benchmark was in 1993, fiscal year 1993--that would be this black line shown on the chart--and do nothing but consider inflation, then this goes up here. In other words, if we get nothing except maintaining what we had in 1993, this would be the black line.

President Clinton's budget request came in at this red line. You see the

difference between the red line and the black line: $412 billion less than just maintaining the status quo.

Now, it was during that time that I was making statements on the floor: We have very serious problems in terms of our modernization program. We are going to have to do something about this. I was so proud of GEN John Jumper, and this is before he was the chief. He stood up as, I believe, a lieutenant general at that time and he made this statement. He said: Our potential adversaries have equipment that is better than ours. He was talking about strike fighters. He was talking about China having bought, I believe it was 240 of the SU-30, SU-35 series that the Russians were making and saying that they are actually better in many respects than our F-15s and F-16s.

Back in the 1990s, we were cutting back on the modernization program. We were not moving forward with the modernization and going toward the F-22s and the F-35s and the future combat system and things we are doing today. This is what happened, and our troop strength went down, our ships went down from 600 to 300. It is the downsizing that we have been paying for. Now what happens? This President came in, and 9/11 took place in 2001. When this happened, all of a sudden we are faced with a situation where we had a downsized military. We had to start reembarking on our modernization program. But all of this we had to be paying for.

We have had amendment after amendment that says we are going to have to do something about our deployments. Yes. Our deployments are unreasonable at this time, but it is because we went through this cycle back in the 1990s. I think it is very important that people understand where we came from and how we got in this position we are in today.

Now, a lot of things have been lost in this debate. I think the other side--the Democrats, the liberals--would like to have us believe that this is just the United States. They have completely forgotten or disregarded the global nature of this problem, this war which is out there. It is global. Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, the United States, France, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, Indonesia, Great Britain, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Algeria, Yemen, and Tunisia are just a partial list of the countries which have had terrorist attacks.

The National Counterterrorism Center reported that approximately 14,000 terrorist attacks occurred in various countries during 2006. Now, they say that half of those were in Afghanistan and Iraq. That means 7,000 terrorist attacks happened all over the world outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. We remember just in the last 30 days the terrorist attacks. A car bomb exploded outside Somalia's Prime Minister's residence, killing six people. These are all in the last 30 days. A bomb exploded in front of a crowded tea shop in Thailand, killing a woman and wounding 28; an explosion outside the Ambassador Hotel in Nairobi, killing a man and injuring 37 others. A bomb exploded outside a clothing shop in Istanbul and more in Peru and other places. So it has happened all over. The suicide bombers drove an SUV into the Glasgow Airport, injuring six people, just 2 weeks ago. A suicide bomber drove into a convoy of Spanish tourists, killing nine people. That was just last week. This is the global nature of this war.

What has this President been doing after 9/11? People don't realize what has happened and the results, the very positive results of these things that took place. We passed the PATRIOT Act, which broke down the walls between Federal law enforcement and intelligence communities, created the Department of Homeland Security, created a position of Director of National Intelligence, created the National Counterterrorism Center, and worked with all of the intelligence systems.

My predecessor--when I came over from the House to the Senate--was David Boren, Senator David Boren, who is now the president of Oklahoma University. After I was elected, he said he wanted to talk to me about a problem which he had been unsuccessful in resolving. You might remember that he was the chairman at that time of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said: We have a problem, a serious crisis in our intelligence system. He said: We have, the NSCA and the CIA and the DIA and all of these people, but they are not talking to each other.

It is a crisis we started approaching, and it wasn't until this came along--the efforts of this President--that we got our intelligence act together to a much greater degree. What kind of results are we having? Well, the President made a statement, and I think it is worth repeating: The terrorists only have to be right once; we have to be right 100 percent of the time.

Have we avoided, because of all of these efforts the President has made, a disaster here in this country? I really believe we have. We captured an al-Qaida operative named Ali Saleh al-Marri in the United States who was targeting water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange, and the U.S. military academies. We broke up two other post-9/11 aviation plots, one targeting the Library Towers in Los Angeles and the other targeting the east coast. Four men were indicted for an alleged plot to attack the John F. Kennedy International Airport by blowing up the jet fuel supply. We disrupted a plot by a group of al-Qaida- inspired extremists to kill American soldiers at Fort Dix. We have worked with the Brits and other countries. Together, we successfully broke up a plot in the U.K. to blow up passenger airlines going to America which could have rivaled the tragedy of 9/11. Of course, we know what happened down in Piccadilly Circus in the theater area, the plot, the terrorist plot that was planned there that we stopped.

So I guess what I am saying is we know these things were going on. There is no way to say for sure that thousands of Americans are alive today because of the efforts of this administration, but I believe it, and everything I have mentioned here is all documented in terms of plots against this country that perhaps we would not have been able to defend ourselves against prior to that time.

It does bother me when we talk about how this isn't a surrender resolution, this isn't a cut-and-run resolution. Sure, it is. We see al-Qaida--they see the victory in Iraq as a religious and strategic imperative, something they have to do. This is not something which is optional for them; they have to do it. In fact, Osama bin Laden called the struggle in Iraq a war of destiny. This is Osama bin Laden. That is how he characterized it. It reminded me, when I heard that, of one of the great speeches of all time. It was given by Ronald Reagan way back before he was even Governor of California. It was called ``A Rendezvous With Destiny,'' using the same words--the characterization of Osama bin Laden when he talked about the ``war of destiny'' that is taking place. ``A Rendezvous With Destiny.'' I have often said it should be required reading for all schoolkids.

Every time I see the Senator from Florida, the junior Senator from Florida, Mr. Martinez, I think about his trip from Cuba over to this country, and it reminds me of the speech Ronald Reagan made when he said ``a rendezvous with destiny.'' He talked about the Cuban who had escaped from Cuba, and as his small craft floated up on the shores of Florida, a woman was there, and this Cuban started talking about the atrocities of Communist Cuba and of Castro and the problems that were over there, and she said: I guess we in this country don't know how lucky we are. And he said: How lucky you are? We are the ones who are lucky because we had a place to escape to. What he was saying is that we have been this beacon of freedom in this country for so many years.

I can remember--and the occupant of the chair was there at the same time I was, in the other body, back during the war in Nicaragua. At that time, the Communists were trying to take over. One of the great things Ronald Reagan did was to kill communism in Central America at that time, and that endured for some 20 years afterward. But at that time, in Nicaragua, I was going down there quite often because we were watching Daniel Ortega and we were watching the Sandinistas and we knew what was happening down there. So we would go down to see these brave people who were fighting for their freedoms.

I can remember going to a hospital tent in Honduras, just across the border from Nicaragua. I went down there several times. I would just look and

marvel at these young kids. Keep in mind, at that time, those who were defending their freedom against communism were young people because all the older ones had been killed already. They had a hospital tent. I remember the hospital tent was about half the size of this Chamber. All the way around the peripheral of this hospital tent were beds. In the middle was an operating table with no shield or anything up, and they were operating on these young kids as they came back and getting them ready to go back into battle to fight for their freedom against communism in Nicaragua.

I remember going around the room and talking to these individuals in their language and saying: You know, I admire you so much. You are just fighting against impossible odds. How can you keep driving yourself to go back? I remember getting the answers as I went around the room.

I came to a little girl. Her name was Maria Elana Gonzalez. She was a little bitty girl. She might have been 90 pounds. It was her third trip to the hospital tent. She wouldn't be going back into battle because that morning they had amputated her right leg and the blood was oozing through her bandage. She looked up at me after I had asked that question and she said: Es porque han tomado los campos, han tomado las casas, han tomado todo de lo que tenemos. Pero, de veras, ustedes en los Estados Unidos entienden. Porque tuvieron que luchar por su libertad, por lo mismo que estamos luchando ahora.

What she said was: How can you ask that question? We are fighting because they have taken our farms, they have taken our houses, they have taken all that we have. But surely you in the United States understand this because you had to fight against the same odds for your freedom.

That little girl couldn't read or write. She didn't know her history. She didn't know if our Revolutionary War was 10 years ago or 200 years ago. But she knew we were the beacon of freedom, the beacon of freedom. I wonder what is happening to that beacon of freedom.

We are looking at this war now, the serious nature of this war.

Winston Churchill said--and I quoted this several times on this floor, but I think it is worth repeating. He said:

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and

easy. Always remember, however sure you are that you could

easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man

did not think he also had a chance.

That was just as true in World War II as it is today.

So we are facing an enemy today that is adaptive. He is willing to do anything. You can't negotiate with him. It is not a country. In a way, it is more dangerous. We compare this war and certainly some of the terrorists who are running the other side with Hitler and with Stalin. Those things in some ways were not as dangerous because they were more predictable. This is not predictable. You can't defeat a country and say the war is over because it is not over. As I mentioned, this is global, the attacks that are taking place. Any plan to leave Iraq before we have had a chance to understand the outcome of the troop surge does two things: It tells the enemy that they have been successful and their methods worked, and secondly, it gives them the patience to wait us out.

One of the things I learned in my many trips over there is the culture of the people is different. They don't think of today and tomorrow or next week; they think of long periods of time. Oh, we are not going to be there 2 years from now? Oh, fine. We will just go into hibernation. We will wait for 2 years. Everything is going to be fine. We will just wait until that happens. You can't win by--they can only win by attacking our resolve.

When we talk about the resolve, I wonder about that beacon of freedom, when that little girl in the hospital tent looked at America. What has happened to it since that time? You look at our resolve that has been lost in Somalia. It wasn't until they dragged the naked bodies of our troops through the streets of Mogadishu that finally we didn't have the stomach for it, and so that beacon of freedom went out. We saw it in Vietnam, in Lebanon, in the Khobar Towers.

I recognize, and everyone recognizes, there have been mistakes in this thing. The President recognized this in his speech on January 10. He said a lot of things that I think were very profound observations at that time that I will address in just a minute. But when you look at the consequences of a premeditated withdrawal, when the enemy knows what we are going to be doing in the future--one of the great generals of our time is General Maples. He was actually the commanding general down in Fort Sill in Oklahoma at one time. He is now the DIA Director. He said:

Continued Coalition presence is the primary counter to a

breakdown in central authority. Such a breakdown would have

grave consequences for the people of Iraq, stability in the

region, and the United States strategic interests.

John Negroponte and General Hayden both agree with that.

It is not too late to avoid this. I don't think it is time to start cutting our losses and just hope that all this goes away. If we can assist the Iraqis and reach that point of sustainable self-governance, then we can bring defeat to our enemies and stability to the region. We all want this. All those who have not personally seen the changes, the visible changes that are taking place in Iraq, seen the girls who can now get an education and seen that they can now have weddings in the streets without the fear of having troops come in there and kidnap all the girls and rape them and bury them alive--people have forgotten already how bad things were at that time in Iraq.

So I just have to say this: Regretfully, I have been sitting here since 5 o'clock trying to get on the floor, and now we are running out of time. But I would say this, and I think it is something which is very significant; that is, the President, in his speech on January 10, talked about the necessity for victory in Iraq, but he used a term that nobody heard and nobody remembered and nobody listened to, and it is called from the bottom up. A ``bottom-up victory'' is what he wanted. This President is talking about it with the people.

Let me tell you what has happened. On my last trip--keep in mind, I have made some 14 trips to the AOR, and the last trip was after the surge was announced. We saw a number of things. First of all, it didn't go unnoticed by the people over there that there are some resolutions like the one we will considering at 11 o'clock today, and consequently that got their attention. I think some good came from that. But that, along with David Petraeus going over there as commander in chief, along with the surge, has really had some results. For the first time over there, I saw changes.

A few minutes ago, one of our Republicans was talking about the change in Ramadi. It was the senior Senator from Utah. In Ramadi, if you remember a year ago, that was getting ready--or, as we say in Oklahoma, that was fixing to be the terrorist capital of the world. It is now secure. In Fallujah--this is just less than a month ago, in Fallujah--it is secure, and it is secure by our security force--by the Iraqi security force and not by ours. In other words, they are taking care of their own over there. The joint security stations where our troops, instead of coming back to the Green Zone, will stay over there and bed down with the Iraqi security forces, develop intimate relationships with them, and learn to love each other--this is what is happening right now.

I was mistaken. All these years, we have been talking about Maliki and all the political leaders. I am beginning to think really that the successes that are taking place and the bottom-up success right now after the surge are actually coming from the religious leaders. We monitor--and we do this as a matter of course--all of the mosque ceremonies. I think they meet once a week like most churches do, and up until December, 85 percent of the messages that were by the clerics and by the imams in the mosques were anti-American. They started dropping off until in April of this year, there wasn't one anti-American message. The results are there. As a result of that, we are having many of the citizens, just on their own, as the Senator from Utah mentioned--because he was there a short time after I was there, and he said they are doing things now that they haven't done before.

Just as we have, in Tulsa, OK, and in all of our cities in Oklahoma and here

in Washington, DC, a Neighborhood Watch Program where the neighbors volunteer to go out and watch, this is happening in Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi, all throughout Iraq right now.

These are people who are going out and risking their lives with spray cans, spray-painting circles around undetonated IEDs, and it is being done successfully. I think there is a level of panic setting in on those individuals who have gone over there and seen that the surge appears to be working.

I don't think we should be cutting and running at this stage. We have a huge investment there. We have taken out a ruthless leader, one who would rival Hitler in the atrocities he has committed. Now that we have an opportunity to do that--to have a different form of government in the Middle East--and people who say it wasn't Iraq all this time, sure, it was Iraq. There were training centers in Iraq training people to do different things. In the town of Salman Pak, they were training terrorists how to fly airplanes into targets. Did they train the 9/11 terrorists? There is no way of knowing that. Nonetheless, the training camps are not there anymore. We have had successes.

I know people want to talk about the failures, but I will say to you this is a very critical vote. If we vote at 11 o'clock today to leave before the job is done, that would be a crisis and a slap in the face for our troops over there fighting so bravely for our freedom back here. I am a product of the draft of many years ago, and I believed you would never be able to have an all-volunteer force and have it with the quality we had in the draft. I realize now that I was wrong all those years ago, that we have the finest young people in the world in our military. They understand what the mission is. They understand the threat facing them. The first thing they asked me is: Why is it the American people don't understand, or the media? They don't ask that question now because they have the benefit of having talk radio. They have FOX instead of depending on CNN International, and they realize the American people are by their side.

So this is critical. Is it worth staying up all night for? I think it is. I look forward to defeating the effort of the Levin-Reed amendment taking place at 11 o'clock today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first of all, let me say to my good friend from Iowa that while there are so many things in which we find ourselves in agreement as the months and years go by, in this area we find disagreement. I have to say this. I wasn't going to mention Guantanamo, but since that is a subject of interest to everybody--and it certainly has the interest of the Senator from Iowa--I only mention this. I have done this before on the Senate floor. I am very much concerned about this obsession we seem to have in this country politically to take care of these terrorists who are responsible for committing acts and killing Americans.

I was down at Guantanamo several times. One time was right after everything started escalating and they started arriving there. Everybody was concerned about the methods of questioning these individuals, interrogating the prisoners. I remember going down and seeing a lot of them doing everything they could to antagonize the troops that we had down there to police that situation. It was really kind of pitiful. You sit there and look at these people, and these are prisoners who probably have never eaten better in their lives, have never had better medical attention in their lives, have never really lived better than they are living in Guantanamo. Yet these are individuals who are terrorists. These are the worst, and some have killed Americans. We all seem to have this propensity to be more concerned about them than we are for the lives of Americans.

I want to give a different perspective. I have had the honor, I believe, of being in the Iraqi AOR--not always in Iraq, but the area of responsibility--more than any other Member. I have watched this on a monthly basis since we have gotten into this thing. As I look at it, I very carefully chose the word of ``invasion'' on Iraq as opposed to a ``liberation'' of Iraq.

I remember so well right after the first Iraqi war, I was honored to go over to Iraq the day that it was actually declared to be over. This was in Kuwait City. We had a thing called the ``first freedom flight.'' Tony Cohelo was on that flight with me. Certainly, the Chair remembers him well.

We also had one of the Kuwaiti nobility and his young daughter with us at the time. We got there, and they were burning the oil fields. It was obscure. Even during the daylight hours you could not see anything. The Iraqis didn't know that the war was over--those who were down there at that time. I remember so well seeing the devastation.

This little girl, I think, was 7 years old at the time. They wanted to go back to Kuwait to go to their mansion on the Persian Gulf, a beautiful place, so she could go up in her bedroom and see her little dolls and animals. I remember going up there with her, and we found out that their residence had been used as one of Saddam Hussein's torture chambers. I remember going up to her bedroom with her and, in fact, that bedroom had been used as a torture chamber, one of Saddam Hussein's headquarters. There were body parts--ears, hands, just strewn all around the room. You thought: What kind of a monster could this Saddam Hussein be? This guy had spent 30 years of his life terrorizing his fellow citizens. We saw things like a little boy with his ear cut off. He was 9. The reason it was done was he had a little American flag in his pocket, and I guess they found that on him, and they considered that to be inappropriate.

Looking into mass graves and hearing the stories of individuals going through grinders and begging to go head first so they would not torture them quite as long, being dropped into vats of acid, begging to be dropped in feet first. These are the kinds of terrorists that we are talking about over there. This is what Iraq was like. This is what Saddam Hussein was like.

While I don't want to get into the debate about weapons of mass destruction, I never had that as the argument. It is a fact that training was taking place there; whether it was al-Qaida or not we don't know. In Salman Pak in Iraq, they were training terrorists to hijack airplanes. Whether they trained in that area the particular 9/11 perpetrators, I have no way of knowing. Nonetheless, this is something that had to be--all you had to do was look into the mass graves and hear the stories about weddings taking place and how they would raid them and rape the women and bury them alive. That was the scene, and that is what we were doing over there.

I really came to the floor to voice my objection to the Levin-Reed amendment, No. 2087. Winston Churchill once said:

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and

easy. . . . Always remember, however sure you are that you

could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other

man did not think he also had a chance.

That was just as true in World War II when Churchill made the statement as

it is today. Today, we face an enemy that is determined and willing to go to any means of terror and violence to win. He cannot be negotiated with. You cannot negotiate with a terrorist. We keep hearing that we need to negotiate with them, but we cannot do that. They will not be satisfied until the whole world is brought under their dreadful ideology. We have seen this kind before in Stalin and Hitler, but never before has our enemy metastasized this way.

In a way, you could say it is more dangerous now than it was back then during Hitler and Stalin because the mentality is different. These are people who want to die and who are willing to die. This is their way of going to heaven. It is a totally different environment than under the other cultures in the different wars. There is no centralized headquarters or one leader that we can eliminate. There is no country involved. I don't think we have ever been involved in a war against an enemy who didn't have a country. When you defeat a country, you win the war. Well, there is nothing centralized that we can point to. Victory would come the way it always has: Destroy the enemy, undermine the support network, and expose the fact that they cannot win.

Any plan to leave Iraq before we have had a chance to understand the outcome of the troop surge tells the enemy, first of all, they have been successful and that their methods worked. Those individuals who were perpetrating the crimes of terrorism will come back and do them again. It gives them patience to wait us out.

Do you believe they do not watch our news or that they are not watching us right now, scouring our media for any chink in our resolve? Their survival depends on it, and they cannot win by force of arms. They can only win by attacking our resolve.

Our country represents the light of freedom and democracy. Yet I fear that we have begun a terrible introspective and downward cycle. Our resolve lasts for a few months, or maybe a year, but all it takes is enough time and then we break. Our enemy knows this. Look at our mission in Somalia. I remember it so well. So does the Presiding Officer. They were dragging the naked bodies through the streets of Mogadishu and our resolve was broken. Look at our reaction to the bombings in Lebanon at Khobar Towers. Look at Vietnam.

I am saying that we have to realize that while this introspection guarantees our freedom, it is also our greatest weakness. I recognize there have been mistakes made in Iraq. In his January 10 speech, the President also recognized this and has taken full responsibility for mistakes, which are made in every war. Yet we still find ourselves in difficult situations about the best way ahead.

These decisions affect many lives, both of our soldiers and the American people they pledged to protect.

We should debate. That is what the Senate body intends to do. It is what we have been doing. But how we fight and when we leave will determine the fight our grandchildren face. I think we all agree that it would be disastrous to leave Iraq precipitously. If we do, we know what we can expect: increased levels of violence and the spread of extremist ideology. Iraq itself would collapse into anarchy. We know this.

A personal friend of mine, DIA Director General Maples, said this:

Continued coalition presence is the primary counter to a

breakdown in central authority. Such a breakdown would have

grave consequences for the people of Iraq, stability in the

region, and U.S. strategic interests.

DNI John Negroponte and CIA Director General Hayden have also agreed with that statement and analysis. It is not too late to avoid this breakdown. I don't think it is time to start cutting our losses and hope all of this will somehow disappear, somehow it will go away. If we can assist Iraq to reach the point of sustainable self-governance, then we can bring defeat to our enemies and bring stability to the region. We all want this to happen.

To those who say we cannot win, I look to Bosnia. I have to say, Mr. President, I was wrong in this case. That was a situation that many said and I said was intractable, that we would be bogged down for years and suffer thousands of casualties. I really believed this situation. I went back to Bosnia. It is peaceful. This is directly because of our military involvement. So I learned a lesson in Bosnia.

When I heard President Bush ask for our support for a troop surge, I heard the same message from many soldiers whom I have talked to in Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit, Balad, Mosul, and other areas. They said they want to fight the enemy there and not at home. This is what the troops have told me on these 14 trips I have made over there. They said they are in a fight to win and that they will accomplish the mission. Their morale is very high, and they back this up by reenlisting in record numbers.

I watched one of the Sunday shows, and they are trying to say: Look at the dissatisfying level. You can ask a question of all the troops over there and pull out some kind of answer that can be misinterpreted. The true test is those individuals who are fighting the hardest and facing the most risk are the very ones who have the highest reenlistment rate we have seen in modern history. We are seeing reenlistments in record numbers right now, and the sacrifice our service men and women pay demand we pursue every possibility to leave stability in our wake.

The permanent Iraqi Government has only been in power since May. Many of the leaders have never had any kind of opportunity to run any kind of government before, let alone under the terrible circumstances they face. While Saddam was in power, they were in jail or were in exile. They were on the outside. Now they have to build coalitions and a democracy that took us many years to achieve in this country. I think sometimes we forget that fact.

Last week, Hassan al-Suneid, a Shiite legislator and adviser to Prime Minister al-Maliki, was quoted in the Washington Post. This is what he said, an adviser to al-Maliki:

If the Americans withdraw, the militias and the armed

groups will attack each other, and that means a sure civil

war. What concerns me really is that U.S. troops might submit

to the Democrats' decision and withdraw without thinking

about Iraq's situation and what will happen to the Iraqi

people.

We owe it to the sacrifice of the brave servicemember, we owe it to the Iraqi people, and we owe it to our children and grandchildren. Give our soldiers everything they need to win, and if Iraq doesn't step up, then it will be time to go but not until then.

We haven't given enough time to see if the surge is working. July 15 was supposed to be an interim White House update. We know the 16 benchmarks. It is my understanding eight are proceeding as planned, eight are not, and two are mixed signals. We know the surge has enabled a number of things to happen, such as a new engagement strategy, which I will talk about in a minute. It is called the joint security stations. We have gotten a huge increase in tips. Tips are pieces of information that come from the Iraqi people that tell us where IEDs are, that tell us where individuals are, where terrorists are. These are the qualified tips. They are accelerating on a daily basis. It has enabled us to stage offensives throughout Iraq without significantly diluting our troops in Baghdad. It has enabled the commanders to chase down al-Qaida and keep them from regrouping and attacking areas that have been historical sanctuaries of al-Qaida.

September 15 is when General Petraeus will give us a report. Let's not forget, that is what the law says. We passed a law. We passed a law either in March or May. The law says September 15 is the date he will come forth, this great general, General Petraeus, who is over there right now. It will give him time to say what our situation is and what we should do if a change is necessary. We owe it to him at this time.

A total surge, of course, has just been in place for 2 weeks. We have some good indicators that the time to make that kind of change is September. We cannot change the terms of the deal now. That was the deal, and that is written into law.

My colleague Senator DeMint stated it well:

If we're going to govern effectively, we can't change our

minds every week.

Let's not give a knee-jerk reaction to the headlines of IEDs and sectarian killings. This is exactly what the enemy is aiming its propaganda toward. I recognize this is not the fight we thought we were going to be getting

into, but it is the fight that is before us now.

I admire Prime Minister Maliki's assessment. I quote him again:

A fundamental struggle is being fought on Iraqi soil

between those who believe that Iraqis, after a long

nightmare, can retrieve their dignity and freedom, and others

who think that oppression is the order of things and that

Iraqis are doomed to a political culture of terror, prisons

and mass graves.

I want to share one last point. Before I do, I want to put up a chart. If my colleagues will remember, we had the Webb amendment which would have dictated terms of how we do our troops deployments. At that time, I used this chart. We have to keep in mind that one of the problems we had in orchestrating a surge and trying to address this now is that we went through a pretty tough climb back in the 1990s.

As this chart shows, if we look at the black line, this is the 1993 baseline increase by inflation. In other words, if we did just what we took in 1993 and only increased it by inflation, this is where we would be in the year 2000. The Clinton administration is represented by this red line. If we take the difference between the status quo and what his recommendation was in his budget, it is $412 billion total. We, in our wisdom, saw we were able to raise it to this green line in the middle. But it still is $313 billion less.

I suggest that a lot of that represents our troop levels because the most expensive thing we have in defense is the troop levels. We are in the situation now where we have to see if this is going to work, if it changes, the surge, General Petraeus and all his efforts are taking place.

I mentioned the President's speech of January 10. I did it for a reason because I went back and reread that speech. If you read it, it talks about the victory being in a bottoms-up situation. In other words, instead of the top down, from the top political leaders down, it is going to be from the roots, from the people in these various communities. That is exactly what I witnessed.

Mr. President, I will share with you what I witnessed the last time I was there. Keep in mind that just a few weeks ago, long before the full surge effect was taking place, I spent a lot of time in Anbar Province in Ramadi, Fallujah, as well as in Baghdad. I saw some changes. I think a lot of it was due to the fact that we have had a lot of the cut-and- run or surrender resolutions and the Iraqi people are very much concerned that is what we are going to do, and that all of a sudden got their attention.

What I will share with you, Mr. President, I know we spend a lot of time and it is important we talk about the political leaders. Al- Maliki, we do talk about him. He is the Prime Minister. We talk about Prime Minister Jasim and Dr. Rubaie. What I noticed last time is a bottoms-up dramatic improvement, not coming from the political leaders but the religious leaders. This is what I witnessed.

My colleagues might remember, we stood on the Senate floor a year ago and said the terrorists are saying Ramadi will become the terrorist capital of the world. Now Ramadi is secure. If you go next door to Fallujah--and we remember the World War II type of door-to-door activities that were taking place there. The marines did a miraculous job, but Fallujah at the time I got over there on this last trip was secure. The important thing is it was secured by the Iraqi security forces. They were the ones providing security at that time.

I mentioned a minute ago the joint security stations. This is a bottoms-up type of thing. I noticed in Baghdad, where, instead of our troops going out into the field and coming back to the Green Zone at night, they stayed out there. They bed down in the homes with the Iraqi forces. I talked with people who experienced this, theirs and ours. I didn't see that in any of the previous trips over there.

If I can single out one thing that is causing the bottoms-up improvement we have seen so far as a result of this surge announcement that was made just a few months ago, it would be the attitude of the clerics and the imams in the mosques. We monitor these, by the way. Our intelligence is at all these mosque meetings where they meet once a week. As most of us do on Sunday in our churches, mosques meet at different times. Nonetheless, they have weekly services. In weekly services prior to January of this year, 85 percent of the messages that were given in the mosques by the clerics were anti-American messages. They started reducing, and by April we went through the entire month without one mosque giving an anti-American message. That is why we are getting the support of the people, the bottoms-up we are talking about and the President was talking about back on January 10. We are seeing these individuals doing the same thing.

I don't think there is a person watching us or present in this Chamber today who isn't from a State that has such programs as the Neighborhood Watch Programs. That is what they have over there right now, and they are watching and they are going around with spray cans and spraying circles around undetonated IEDs so that our troops don't get into them. This is the type of cooperation we have not seen before.

This is what the President asked for on January 10. I think anything prior to our legal timeline of September 15 and getting an ultimate report from General Petraeus would be a great disservice to our fighters over there as well as to Iraqis.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today, I want to reiterate something I talked about on Monday and maybe elaborate a little bit. I am one of the cosponsors of an amendment that several people will be discussing today, amendment No. 2020--it is primarily offered by my colleague, Senator Coleman, and myself and Senator DeMint and Senator Thune and, I believe, some others also--to prohibit the reimplementation of the Fairness Doctrine.

Over the past few weeks, the Fairness Doctrine has received quite a bit of attention. The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives had a vote on June 28, just a couple weeks ago. The House voted 309 to 115 to prohibit the

FCC from using funds to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.

Now, the Fairness Doctrine is a regulation the FCC developed to require FCC-licensed broadcasters to provide contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues. However, the FCC conducted a review of this regulation in 1985. I remember this well. This was back during the Reagan administration. They concluded--and I am quoting now the FCC:

[W]e no longer believe that the Fairness Doctrine serves

the public interest.

In explaining why the FCC reached this conclusion, the FCC wrote--I am quoting again further--

[T]he interest of the public is fully served by the

multiplicity of voices in the marketplace today and that the

intrusion by government----

The intrusion by government----

into the content of programming unnecessarily restricts the

journalistic freedoms of broadcasters. The FCC's refusal to

enforce the Fairness Doctrine was later upheld in the DC

Circuit Court of Appeals.

That is a little bit of the history that took place, and

there was not much controversy back in those days. Everybody

pretty much agreed this is something that should be driven by

the market, driven by the people, as opposed to being spoon-

fed to the people by some governmental agency or anybody

else.

So you might ask, why would a regulation that was found to be unnecessary over 20 years ago be controversial today? I can tell you why that is. It is because--and I happened to be in the middle of this when it happened--on June 22 I said something on a talk radio show that became quite controversial having to do with a statement I had made to a couple of the Senators of a more liberal standing in the Senate.

They believed the content--which it is--of talk radio has a huge bias toward the conservative viewpoints. Now, I had made the statement--and I hate to sound rash when I do this, but I want to be accurate--I said: Well, you guys don't really understand. This is market driven. The market is driving it. There is no market out there for your liberal tripe.

So it happened, coincidentally, that the day after I made that statement, the Center for American Progress came out with this report. It is called ``The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.'' Now, I am not critical of the people who are behind this. It is the people from the Clinton White House. Clearly, it is John Podesta, Mark Lloyd, and many others who are in charge of this program. I am not sure. I have heard that the Center for American Progress is supposed to be maybe another viewpoint from the Heritage Foundation. You hear all kinds of things. But this is what is interesting in this report. First of all, they go through and document the fact that in talk radio 91 percent of the content is conservative. I do not disagree with that. They say only 9 percent is progressive, or I would say liberal. I do not disagree with that.

After they make their case, they try to state that there has to be a correction for it. I am going to read just a few excerpts from this report.

They said:

These findings--

Now, the findings we are talking about are the 91 percent--

may not be surprising given general impressions about the

format, but they are stark and raise serious questions about

whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the public

airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans.

Now, that is really interesting, ``the listening needs of all Americans.'' What are the listening needs of all Americans? Who is going to determine that? Anyway, that is what they seem to be hanging their hat on. They said:

Our conclusion is--

I am reading from this report which is from the Center for American Progress. That is John Podesta and Mark Lloyd and the rest of that group.

Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and

progressive talk radio is the result of multistructural

problems in the U.S. regulatory system.

It goes on to explain this. And then--I am kind of a slow learner. But after I figured out what they were talking about, they were talking about there are regulations that could be violated, or the intent of regulations could be in violation here. So they talk about some prescribed regulations to correct this problem.

Now I move to page 11 of this report, and they come to this conclusion. They said:

If commercial radio broadcasters are unwilling to abide by

these regulatory standards or the FCC is unable to

effectively regulate in the public interest, a spectrum use

fee should be levied on owners to directly support local,

regional, and national public broadcasting.

You cannot get more socialistic than that in the comments. Now, the whole idea they are saying that not only then would talk show hosts who have a strong bias in one way or another lose their shows--let's say Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, any of the rest of them--but they also would have to be fined and that money would go to support public broadcasting. Now, that is what caused the interest after 20 years.

When I say it is market driven, if you do not believe that, look at the effort by Al Franken and other liberals who tried to start Air America. Air America was designed to be on the liberal side. The problem was, nobody wanted to listen to it. So this is the problem that is out there, that people want to get away from what is market driven.

We went through this same exercise, I might add, not too long ago, about a year ago, I think it was. We had various--let's see, Armed Forces Radio. I have it here somewhere. There are three different radio stations that reach our troops around the world--not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but around the world. So there was an effort to prescribe programming so it would be equally liberal and conservative. Then there was an uproar by our troops over there because they did not want that. So through their publications, the Army Times and some other publications, they determined what they wanted to listen to, and it was primarily conservative.

So that is what has brought this thing up, and several people in the House and several people in the Senate--in this body--have said: We need to get the FCC to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine.

Now, the amendment that was passed in the House of Representatives by that huge margin I just mentioned was to prohibit the FCC from changing its viewpoint as far as the Fairness Doctrine is concerned.

I have been outspoken on this issue for some time. For example, on the Defense authorization legislation we made quite an issue out of this. By the way, I might want to add, we won that battle. We ended up now so they are getting the programming they want, and it happens to be--this is quite a coincidence--it happens to be about the same--91 percent versus 9 percent--that the people are demanding today in terms of the market. The same principle applies again.

I have long said that talk radio is market driven. There simply is not much market for some of this other stuff that is out there. Some Senators have made it clear they intend to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, but free speech is fundamental to what it means to be an American, and it must be protected. Reimposing some form of the Fairness Doctrine threatens first amendment rights. We all know that. But really what is most important is it gets to be very similar to some of these countries we criticize all the time where the government is trying to take over what comes through their airwaves.

So I am pleased to join my many colleagues, including Senators Coleman, DeMint, and Thune, in supporting this amendment, and I urge the Senate to speak just as definitely against the Fairness Doctrine.

I have a letter from the National Association of Broadcasters. In this letter--I will not read the whole thing--it winds up by saying:

In the 20 years since elimination of the Fairness Doctrine,

there has been a veritable explosion in alternative media

outlets. Today, there are over 13,000 radio stations, more

than 1,700 TV stations, nine broadcast TV networks, hundreds

of cable and satellite channels, scores of mobile media

devices and an infinite number of Internet sites that cater

to every political persuasion and ideology. The Internet now

enables consumers to obtain, and communicate to the world,

virtually unlimited content.

Of course, this is a strong endorsement of our position by the National Association of Broadcasters. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding. It is my understanding--although I came down here thinking I had a little more time--that we are down to 2\1/2\ minutes or something.

Mr. President, let me, since we don't have the time I thought, explain why this is unique. We already voted on the Webb amendment. I don't see that there is any difference here. There is something that hasn't been talked about since I mentioned this last Monday and that is that this President inherited a situation that was a personnel crisis. We are dealing with that now--a personnel crisis. I remember back during the 1990s, we were cutting down--I am not criticizing anybody, but we had this euphoric attitude that the Cold War was over, and we didn't need a military anymore. They cut back our modernization program and our personnel and defense spending.

Let's look at this chart. If you look at this and put it into perspective as to why we should not try to micromanage this thing and let the military do it, this is where we were. During the early 1990s-- the Clinton administration--this black line represents the baseline from 1993 and where we would be in 2001, or at the end of that 8-year period, had we spent the amount of money we were spending from the baseline that was established in fiscal year 1993. If you take that and take what the President requested--the red line down here--fortunately, we were able to get some above that, but it still meant we were $313 billion less than we should have been.

That is what put us into the position we are in today. It was a personnel crisis. So now we are going to have to get the maximum use. We are not going to be able to have mandated deployments and returns and be able to prosecute this or any other war. If we were not in this position, I would still oppose the idea of Congress micromanaging a war. That is what the military chiefs in the field are supposed to do and what they are trained to do.

This shows you why we have the crisis today, and we are trying at the same time to rebuild a military that was torn down during the 1990s, and we should not have found ourselves in this position.

This President has done a lot. We increased the number of Active Duty in the Army and Marine Corps, reducing the stress on the deployable Active-Duty personnel. Help is on the way. The increase would shorten deployment length and give soldiers and marines more dwell time at home, but it is not mandated from us. It is going to come from the resources we are expecting and anticipating we will have.

While many units are close to a 1-to-1 deployment dwell-time schedule, certain units have been extended to 15-month tours. Look, all of us have Reserve units at home and Guard units, and we have our regular services going. We know the deployments are strained. This is why they are strained. We are trying to make up for the losses we sustained back during the 1990s. If we continue to do what we are doing now, the move we are making will allow the Army to ensure that Active- Duty units have at least 12 months at home. We are prepared to do that now. All of the services are rebalancing force structure and cross components to ensure they have the right types of units with the right skills in the greatest demand.

These are some of the actions that have been taken now. If we leave this alone and in the hands of the chiefs, we have right now the great General Petraeus in a position where he is trying to get this thing done. I have to tell you that my 14th trip to the AOR showed me that things are working very well. If you remember what the President said back on January 10, he said we are going to have to win this war from the bottom up, not from the top down. That is what is happening now. These efforts have gotten the clerics in Iraq into a position where they are no longer having anti-American messages, and we are winning this thing from the bottom up. It is brand new.

In all my trips there, I have never seen such a dramatic change as I did prior to this last trip. We actually have people going out now and doing what we do in neighborhood watch programs throughout America. We are now getting the Iraqis to do this. We have Iraqi civilians with spray paint cans painting circles around the undetonated IEDs. We have them doing these things. We have our troops going out, and instead of going back to the green zone, they are living with the Iraqi security forces in their homes. This is what we call the bottom up. It is working. We have monitored the clerics and what they were doing in their mosques in their weekly presentations. Prior to January, 85 percent of the presentations were anti-American. Since April, we have not had anti-American presentations. What is happening right now is the clerics realize we could cut and run on them and then the terrorists could come back in and they will be in control. They don't want that. This is a bottom-up type of support that we have at the present time.

We have to continue this. The President said back on January 10 that we had to do this from the bottom up. That is what we intend to do. How much more time do I have?

I wish we were not in the position we are in. I can remember coming down here, I bet, every other week during the 1990s and talking about what was happening to the military, saying we cannot make these cuts. There it is on the chart, $313 billion below the baseline, just holding what we had together at that time. So now we are paying the price for it. Now we have to get the very most out of the personnel we have. We do have plans to expand that to 92,000 in the next 5 years. We know we are going to do that. Help is on the way.

We cannot all of a sudden pull the rug out from under our troops, which is what we would do now in starting to micromanage this war from the Congress.

Madam President, today I honor a retiring soldier from my home state. Colonel Gary B. Carney demonstrated exceptional meritorious service as Commander of McAlester Army Ammunition Plant, MCAAP, Oklahoma, the largest U.S. government-owned, government-operated explosive ammunition plant. The plant has a storage capacity of more than six million square feet, and stores more than 700,000 tons of ammunition valued at more than $65 billion. He skillfully balanced management of this significant portion of the total defense ammunition stockpile mission with the plant's other mission as the sole Department of Defense source for bomb production.

Colonel Carney effectively managed both manufacturing and depot operations stemming from Operating Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. During his tenure Colonel Carney oversaw an increase in revenue not seen since the Vietnam Era, totaling $228.2M. Also during his tenure the plant shipped 32,680 short tons of munitions, the largest tonnage shipped to date in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Expansion of the public/private partnership program occurred under his leadership as well. The commercial industry partnership business base at MCAAP increased four-fold under Colonel Carney's leadership. Additionally, MCAAP was selected as the integrator for the Excalibur guided projectile in partnership with Raytheon. The Raytheon/MCAAP team fielded the Excalibur, the newest and most accurate projectile, three months ahead of schedule, significantly enhancing our military's warfighting capability.

Under his leadership, MCAAP led the way in Lean Six Sigma, LSS, with actual/cost avoidance savings of $5.319M. LSS training intensified so that 28 employees received green belt training while 18 received black belt training; 29 completed LSS executive training and 22 more completed project sponsor/project selection training. All MCAAP employees received Lean Six Sigma awareness training.

In 2006 MCAAP's ammunition inventory accountability received an overall green rating in 10 out of 10 major functional areas during the Supply Depot Operations review. This rating and rapid turn-around is a marked improvement over previous years. This significant achievement was directly orchestrated by Colonel Carney through his initiative, leadership, tenacity and ability to motivate the work force.

Colonel Carney's business acumen, dedication to duty, vision and ability to inspire and lead people reflect great credit upon himself, the Joint Munitions Command and the U.S. Army. On behalf of the U.S. Senate and a grateful Nation, I would like to wish him congratulations on a job well done.

Mr. President, during the last week that we were not here during the Fourth of July recess, there was a lot of misinformation floating around about things that may or may not be happening concerning the war on terrorism. I would like to make some clarifications, if I could.

I think it is very significant that we understand what is really going on, not what some of the media tell us is going on. I have found through my experience--and I say this: I come to the floor with probably having made more trips to the Iraqi AOR, 14 in total, than any other Member, so I have been there quite a few times. I have watched the changes as the changes have taken place.

Let me share with my colleagues, first of all, a little background. The United States Code defines terrorism as premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. Their goal is to inflict the maximum amount of damage and pain to civilians irrespective of age, race, gender, or religion. It will remain a global threat for the foreseeable future. It is global. I think a lot of people don't realize how global this is but, if we just look at the things that have happened recently, including terrorist attacks in Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania. We remember in those places the Embassies being blown up. The United States, France, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, Indonesia, Great Britain, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Algeria, Yemen, and Tunisia are just a partial list of some of the places where there have been terrorist attacks.

The National Counterterrorism Center reported approximately 14,000 terrorist attacks occurred in various countries during 2006. Over 50 percent of the attacks occurred in Iraq or Afghanistan. Reported incidents decreased for Europe, Eurasia, South Asia, and the Western Hemisphere.

Now, the following terrorist-related attacks occurred within the past 30 days outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. The mentality that somehow it is all happening in Iraq is false. There were some statements made in declaring certain areas in Iraq to potentially be the terrorism capital, but we will talk about that in a minute.

A car bomb exploded outside of the Somalian Prime Minister's residence killing six people. This is all in the last 30 days. A bomb exploded in front of a crowded tea shop in Thailand killing 1 woman and wounding 28 others. That was on June 8. An explosion outside the

Ambassador Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, killed 1 and injured 37. I might add that was a mere 3 days from the time I was actually staying in that hotel. A bomb exploded outside a clothing shop in Istanbul, Turkey, wounding 14 people. A car bomb in a Beirut seaside neighborhood killed 10 people and wounded 11 others. Suicide bombers drove an SUV into the Glasgow airport doors, injuring six people. A suicide bomber drove into a convoy of Spanish tourists, killing nine people and wounding five others. That is just what has been taking place in the last month.

In the United States, President Bush organized and energized the Federal Government to pass the PATRIOT Act which broke down the walls between Federal law enforcement and intelligence communities. It created the Department of Homeland Security, merging 22 different Government organizations. It created the position of Director of National Intelligence to seamlessly integrate operations of intelligence agencies.

We have had this problem for a long time. I recall when I was first elected, when I came from the House to the Senate, and my predecessor was David Boren, who is now the President of Oklahoma University, and the last thing he told me before I was sworn in was one of the biggest problems we have is in coordinating our intelligence communities so that everybody knows what everybody else is doing. We hadn't really done that until 9/11 came along and we started getting serious about it. I am sure President Boren will be very glad to know that this is an important improvement that has been made. We directed the National Security Agency to monitor terrorist communications and established a program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives. I know there is a lot of talk about what is torture and what is not torture. But we do know that HUMINT, human intelligence, is very, very important. It is something we have to consider, the lives of those who would be lost versus the lives of criminals who are being interrogated.

We placed state-of-the-art equipment in major cities in the United States to detect nuclear and radiological weapons and biological agents. We placed advanced screening and equipment and Homeland Security personnel at foreign ports to prescreen cargo headed for the United States.

I think it is very interesting that a lot of people are talking about how much this has cost.

Everything I have read costs something. The question is, How many lives has it saved? That is something very difficult to ascertain. Fighting the terrorists is a coalition of more than 90 nations. It is not just the United States, it is the United States and 90 other nations--a coalition of nations that has sought to synchronize diplomatic, intelligence, law enforcement, economic, financial, and military power to attack terrorism globally. I believe it is working. As the President has recently said, to strike our country, the terrorists only have to be right once. To protect our country, we have to be right 100 percent of the time. As we learned on 9/11, and many times in other countries, it only takes one time for them to be successful. We know that some of the results are significant.

We captured an al-Qaida operative named Ali Saleh al-Marri in the United States, who we believe was targeting water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange, and the U.S. military academies in December 2001. This was the first post-9/11 plot that was thwarted. Al-Marri offered himself as a martyr to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11. He was his No. 1 man. He sent him to the United States after he received training in poisons at an al-Qaida camp.

It is kind of interesting that people say there is no connection between Iraq and al-Qaida when, in fact, we know now and can release information on several training camps that were there. Very likely, he could have been trained in that particular camp.

The British authorities broke up a plot to blow up passenger airplanes flying to America, which could have rivaled 9/11. We know that happened. The plot was foiled in August of 2006. They planned to blow up as many as 12 U.S.-bound passenger jets. They planned to use liquid explosives hidden in carry-on luggage. U.S.-British authorities had a group under surveillance for many months, and many of the suspects were British citizens of Pakistani origin. They thwarted that. That didn't happen. That could have happened and, very likely, would have except for all these efforts of the United States and other countries.

We broke up two other post-9/11 aviation plots--one targeting the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the other targeting the east coast. An al-Qaida leader in Southeast Asia, known as Hambali, recruited Jemaah Islamiyah operatives of Asian origin. The plot was derailed early in 2002 with international cooperation. Library Tower is the tallest building west of the Mississippi, 1,018 feet tall. It is among the 25 tallest buildings in the world. That didn't happen. That was planned. It could have happened. It was stopped by this combined effort.

Four men were indicted in an alleged plot to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport by blowing up a jet fuel supply. They planned to hit the fuel farms and a 40-mile aviation fuel supply pipeline, and they specifically targeted the symbolism of JFK, sought to invoke emotional reaction saying, ``It is like killing the man twice.'' That is their statement. Suspects were tied to extremist groups in South America and the Caribbean, specifically Guyana and Trinidad. One suspect was a former airport cargo worker. They sought massive disruption of the U.S. economy by cutting off this major artery of travel that connects the United States to the rest of the world--over a thousand flights a day, half of which are international, 45 million passengers and 1.5 million tons of cargo a year.

They disrupted a plot by a group of al-Qaida-inspired extremists to kill American soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey, which was the result of a 16-month investigation by the Justice Department and the FBI. Suspects had taken an incriminating video to the store to be transferred to DVD. The video showed calls for jihad and radical and violent ranting in Arabic, including images of the men firing assault weapons.

Terrorists attempted to detonate two car bombs using cell phones in London's West End. That happened over the last recess we had. It heightened public awareness and quick police action prevented detonations of two Mercedes car bombs. This was a concerted effort. We and the Brits were in on that. All others on this team worked very well and very effectively.

Now, in Iraq, we have had success that is critical to our long-term fight against terrorism. Osama bin Laden calls the struggle in Iraq a ``war of destiny.'' Al-Qaida sees victory in Iraq as a religious strategic imperative, a base from which to launch new attacks around the globe.

While I am troubled the war has cost us, I believe it is absolutely necessary for us to be able to have this success. I can recall a year ago standing at this podium in the Senate quoting al-Qaida, saying Ramadi--that province in Iraq was going to become the terrorist capital of Iraq. When I was in Ramadi a matter of days ago, we found that there are new groups of people cooperating now that never cooperated before. I think some of the people in this body who were talking about surrender resolutions and all that--it got their attention. Maybe that performed a useful function because all of a sudden the people woke up. I learned something there too. All these political leaders we hear about, such as Prime Minister Maliki and Defense Minister Jasim and Dr. Rubiya, and some of the rest--I thought they were the ones who were the leaders. I think it is the clerics in the mosques. All of a sudden, they became concerned and, up until that time, we had been monitoring all of the procedures and the performances they have had on a weekly basis in the mosques. Eighty-five percent of them have been, up until December of this last year, anti-American messages. As of April, there haven't been any anti-American messages. That shows that the clerics have gotten involved in this thing. In Tulsa, OK, we have neighborhood watch programs, where people get neighbors to watch and see what is going on. This is happening throughout Iraq, where they are spraying orange spray paint around IEDs that haven't

been detonated so our troops could disarm them. Those things have happened. I think the joint security stations have been very successful in Baghdad. Instead of our troops going out and coming back into the green zone at night, they stay and get to know and develop close, intimate relationships with the Iraqi security forces and their families. That has had a tremendously positive effect.

The future will be difficult in the fight against terrorism. It is not a sprint, it is a marathon. We have to remain vigilant, determined, and strong. I want our troops to come home as badly as anybody. When you think about the consequences of losing this thing, all it would take for these people who are crying out about their feelings and saying let's get out of Iraq, all it would take is one successful terrorist attack similar to those that have been stopped through this joint effort. We would have to pay dearly.

I hope people will sit back and realize we have access to information the general public doesn't have. Sure, the polls show the majority of people would like to have our troops come back. I would, too, but when you ask the questions and give them the alternatives, they would rather win this war than resign from it.

Mr. President, I am pleased to cosponsor, with Senator Coleman, an amendment to prohibit the reimplementation of the Fairness Doctrine.

As we may remember, over the past few weeks, the Fairness Doctrine has received a lot of attention. Some Senators spoke about the need to reinstitute this doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine is a regulation the Federal Communications Commission developed to require FCC-licensed broadcasters to provide contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues. However, the FCC conducted a review of this regulation in 1985, concluding that ``we no longer believe that the Fairness Doctrine serves the public interest.'' In explaining why the FCC reached this conclusion, they wrote:

The interest of the public is fully served by the

multiplicity of voices in the marketplace today and that the

intrusion by Government into the content of programming

unnecessarily restricts the journalistic freedoms of

broadcasters.

The FCC's refusal to enforce the Fairness Doctrine was later upheld in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Why would a regulation that was found to be unnecessary over 20 years ago be controversial today? Well, we found out why. On June 22, the Center for American Progress issued a report called ``The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.'' Keep in mind that the Center for American Progress is a liberal think tank funded by George Soros and led by John Podesta and a lot of former Clinton White House people in it. The report issued was authored, in part, by a former Clinton White House adviser. This report, not surprisingly, found that 91 percent--I believe this to be true--of political talk radio programming was conservative and 9 percent was progressive or liberal. However, what is surprising is the report suggested antifree market and antifree speech recommendations to supposedly provide balance in talk radio programming. There is a very controversial statement I made in the presence of a couple of our fellow Senators not too long ago when they were talking about the fact that there is so much conservative bias in talk radio. I said it is market driven. That is what America is all about. It is market driven. There is no market for the progressive or liberal programming.

I remember when the DOD was trying to feed the American Forces Radio and television services in the Armed Forces Network and have 50 percent of the programming be liberal. We fought that out on the floor of the Senate and we won because freedom of speech is more important. Consequently, we have gone back and let them decide--our troops--as to the programming they want. It is all done in a fair way so our troops at least can hear what they want to hear over talk radio.

This is for those people who think they have balanced political talk radio. This is a report on that subject. As I go through this, first of all, it identifies the problem they consider--conservative bias. That is what the American people want. It says:

If commercial radio broadcasters are unwilling to abide by

these regulatory standards or the FCC is unable to

effectively regulate in the public interest, a spectrum use

fee should be levied on owners to directly support local,

regional, and national broadcasting.

That is this report. In other words, they are saying not only do these people who, because of their popularity, because of the content and the way they deliver it--not only would they lose their programs, but they would also have to give money to support public broadcasting. This is the most outrageous thing I have ever seen.

I don't think this can happen in America. When you get John Podesta and the former Clinton White House team and their minds set to doing something, they are smart people, and I don't take this lightly. I ask as many people as possible to support our efforts to pass legislation to stop any effort to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I think we should call it something else, such as the Government-run broadcasting.

With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. Presdient, I ask unanimous consent that Jeffrey Gonzalez and Mathew Pollard, both of the Senate Budget Committee, be granted floor privileges during consideration of H.R. 1585.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to allow Air Force Fellow Daniel Wolf of my staff floor privileges for the duration of the consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act, S. 1547.

Mr. President, it is my understanding that the unanimous consent request was for the two amendments to be side by side.

At this point, I call up amendment 1666 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, let me first respond to something the chairman of the committee, Senator Boxer, had stated. I believe I agree that our committee should have the jurisdiction. I do agree with her.

There are some other things. In fact, there is an easier way to do it, I would suggest to my chairman. That would be to strike the portion in the bill, the underlying bill, that talks about the President or the administration and merely put in the EPA. If you do that, then, of course, you correct the jurisdictional problems. It is another way of doing it.

My concern is that your amendment does get into some areas I do not find I get quite as excited about as the chairman does, such as having us study land-use patterns, which I do not think is as appropriate for the Federal Government to do as State and local government.

We had this debate in the past. But I would say I would like to accomplish some of the things that the chairman has tried to accomplish with her amendments.

No, it can come off mine.

I appreciate the comments of the chairman. I recognize her concern with MTBE contamination. I understand that. But getting the Administrator authority to use the Clean Air Act to regulate water quality is something I would have to think about a little bit.

Let me go back and talk a little bit about the amendment we are running concurrently with the other amendments. This is amendment 1666. We have a lot of cosponsors to this. I would invite more to come down. I think people would see this is a very rational way to address one of the problems with the mandates that come with this bill.

We seek to ensure the bill does not pick winners and losers in domestic agriculture. Although high corn prices might be good for corn farmers, it is harmful for livestock and poultry industries.

Now, in my State of Oklahoma, I don't have a dog in this fight, or I guess I could say I have all the dogs in this fight, because we are a corn State, we are a very large livestock State. I have heard from a lot of our people there expressing their concerns.

In fact, 15 industry groups have joined together and sent both Senate leaders a letter expressing their concern that the biofuels title in this bill could harm their industries.

I ask unanimous consent at the conclusion of my remarks to have printed in the Record a copy of that letter.

Unfortunately, the collective livestock and grocery producers' concern continues. In fact, the earlier coalition has grown to 18 industry representatives, including cattle, poultry, swine producers, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, even Cargill. In a letter to me, the coalition writes:

We are asking Congress to provide those that utilize and

rely on corn and corn products a reasonable amount of

certainty that adequate supplies are available to all users

of this commodity.

We know right now the price of corn is very high. This obviously has--it does not happen in a vacuum. Too often on the Senate floor we believe things can be done without affecting others. In this case, it is definitely affecting others, as indicated by these communications.

Now, with respect to our amendment, they state:

Your amendment would go a long way in ensuring a safety net

ensuring those of us that utilize corn and corn products will

have enough to go around should a drought or flood occur that

would limit the harvested amount that is available.

Now, our amendment seeks to provide some of the much needed equity in the current system. This amendment simply requires that the USDA provide information on projected corn harvests each year. Well, they do that anyway. This is not going to incur anymore of a hardship on the USDA; they have that capability; they are already doing it.

If the projected harvest is below a certain percentage, then the administrator has the authority to modify the mandate for the next year.

So that if it comes down and we see we are going to have a drought, we are going to have some kind of a problem, we would be able to address that by making a small adjustment to the mandate that is there.

Now, I would expect the ethanol industry to support our amendment, since first they claim there is no food versus feed issue. Second, because they have stated repeatedly that corn farmers can grow much more renewable--Fuels Association President Bob Dineen said--this is the one who is very strong in the ethanol mandate the American farmer absolutely has the ability to grow more corn to provide sufficient quantities of grain and food and feed for fuel usage and we are going to see that that happens.

Well, if that is the case, then there is not a problem. So I am not suggesting or picking any favorites with this amendment. I am saying we ought to be sure in the event that something that can be foreseen, and these droughts can be foreseen--as I say, they are doing it right now. So this amendment supports that concept.

Corn farmers have done a great job in increasing yield per acre in the past and they will continue to do that. Our amendment simply provides, as a collective food industry State, a reasonable amount of certainty and a safety net, so that all the U.S. agriculture is able to prosper.

I know there are others who are on the floor who would disagree with my amendment. I certainly wish to make sure they have time to express themselves. So if the Senator from Iowa is prepared at this point to speak, I would be glad to yield to him.

Exhibit 1

June 20, 2007.

Sen. James Inhofe,

Russell Senate Office Building,

Washington, DC.

Dear Ranking Member Inhofe: We believe in the need to

advance renewable and alternative sources of energy. New fuel

sources offer the potential to eliminate our dependence on

foreign oil while contributing to the long-term stability of

our rural economies. But, as we seek to implement policy that

will move us toward accomplishing this objective, it is

essential that we carefully weigh the impacts of our actions

on other segments of the economy. Additionally, we would hope

that any policy that is agreed upon during this debate would

not overly tax one group in an effort to hopefully achieve

the objective of energy independence.

We are concerned that the very aggressive increase in

biofuels mandates proposed in S. 1419 raises fundamental

questions about the impact that an increased federal

government mandate for corn-based ethanol, in addition to new

state mandates, will have on the livestock, poultry and food

industry's ability to produce competitively available,

affordable food. It is vitally important that we fully

appreciate and understand the implications of quintupling the

Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) mandate, and we would ask that

you use careful consideration and listen to the significant

issues being raised by those in the agriculture and food

products community.

Rapid development of the corn-based ethanol industry is

already having adverse impacts on food supplies and prices, a

major concern for us. Rising food prices, coupled with the

rising energy prices we are seeing throughout the country,

pose a threat to the health of our national economy.

According to a recent report by Merrill Lynch Chief

Investment Strategist Richard Bernstein, within the first

three months of the year, food prices rose at an annualized

rate of 7.3 percent. That is slightly higher than the

anticipated annual rise in healthcare costs over the next

decade, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid

Services' National Health Statistics Group. In addition, the

continued aggressive expansion of corn ethanol production

diminishes the availability of soybeans and other crops. We

need a safety valve that ensures availability and that works.

We are asking Congress to provide those that utilize and

rely on corn and corn products a reasonable amount of

certainty that adequate supplies are available to all users

of this commodity. Your amendment to S. 1419, the Agriculture

Equity Adjustment Provision (#1666) would go a long way in

achieving a safety net ensuring those of us that utilize corn

and corn products will have enough to go around should a

drought or flood occur that would limit the harvested amount

that is available.

We look forward to working with you to achieve a balanced

approach between all competing uses of corn as we go forward

in this energy debate. We need an adequate contingency plan

in place, and this amendment achieves that goal.

Thanks again for your leadership and efforts.

Sincerely,

American Feed Industry Association, American Meat

Institute, Cargill, The Coca Cola Company, ConAgra

Foods, General Mills, Grocery Manufacturers/Food

Products Association, Hormel Foods, National

Cattlemen's Beef Association, National Chicken Council,

National Pork Producers Council, National Restaurant

Association, National Turkey Federation, PepsiCo, Inc.,

Seaboard Corporation, Tyson Foods, United Egg

Association, United Egg Producers.

Mr. President, let me inquire of the time remaining on each side, please?

First, I may be yielding back some time. Let me respond to a couple assertions that have been made.

The Senator from Iowa was talking about in the event that livestock would not be hurt because they would actually end up going up later in the market and that will take care of that problem. I would suggest to you that a lot of individuals don't agree with that. I have a letter I will read a little bit out of. It is signed by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the Chicken Council, the Pork Producers Council, the Restaurant Association, and the Turkey Federation. All of them don't feel this is going to be the market result.

Since the Senator from New Mexico read some excerpts of a letter signed by a large number, we have many more who have signed this letter than the letter which was submitted by the Senator from New Mexico.

One of the paragraphs in here says: We are concerned that the very aggressive increase in biofuels mandates proposed in S. 1419 raises fundamental questions about the impact that an increased Federal Government mandate for corn-based ethanol, in addition to new State mandates, will have on the livestock, poultry, and food industry's ability to produce competitively available, affordable food.

In other words, this is going to affect a lot of people in their estimation in terms of the cost of food, not just livestock, not just the grain concern that is out there.

It continues: It is vitally important that we fully appreciate and understand the implications of quintupling the renewable fuels standard mandate, and we would ask that you use careful consideration and listen to the significant issues being raised by those in the agriculture and food products community.

Let me mention, I know the Senator from South Dakota was not in the Chamber when I made my remarks, but Oklahoma also is a corn State. I really believe the excellent statement that was made by the Senator from South Dakota--who has been a real champion, maybe the No. 1 champion, in this body of corn ethanol--really makes my case for me. If these States are increasing their production the way they are, then there is no problem. Nothing in this amendment is going to affect anything at all. In fact, the only concern we have is in the event there is a year where this is not true.

Let me just go ahead and make sure everyone understands what this amendment does and does not do. Quite often on the floor, we get people opposing something, and then you scratch your head and say: Wait a minute, is that my amendment they are talking about?

The amendment is a modification provision for food and animal feed based on the ratio of cornstalks to projected demand. In the case of a short- or low-corn crop year, there is currently no meaningful safety valve that would address this situation. This amendment would provide a small level of confidence to producers as well as investors that corn would be available to meet the needs of all uses. In other words, if the production is up, there is not a problem. This addresses disasters and worst-case scenarios and assures the renewable fuels standard does not lead to a shortage of corn for human or animal consumption.

It requires the USDA and the EPA to make a midyear-end determination of current weather conditions, followed by an end-of-the-year determination on the stalks-to-use ratio following harvest. If the determination estimates the stalks-to-use ratio is below 10 percent, it would trigger a temporary adjustment in the RFS to account for the

need for increased availability of corn feed. The amendment would not permit the RFS to fall more than 15 percent in any given year.

Now, it has been said--I suspect there is a letter floating around somewhere that says this would be the end of the world and it would completely destroy what they are trying to do. Let me just read the one limitation that is in this amendment. It says:

A requirement under the renewable fuels standard under

section 111(a) shall not be reduced by more than 15 percent

during any calendar year.

That is, if there is some kind of a drought or some kind of a real serious problem--it can be too much water or not enough water--then it would not affect it by more than 15 percent. Well, that is 15 percent. That is not the end of the world. It means 85 percent of these mandates are still going to be there and still be in effect.

So I think it is a very modest approach. The list of people who share this concern is a very long one. I mentioned some of the names--these industries. I will go ahead and read them at this time: American Feed Industry Association, American Meat Institute, Cargill, the Coca-Cola Company, ConAgra Foods, General Mills, Grocery Manufacturers/Food Products Association, Hormel Foods, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the National Chicken Council, National Pork Producers Council, the National Restaurant Association, National Turkey Federation, PepsiCo, Incorporated, Seaboard Corporation, Tyson Foods, United Egg Association, United Egg Producers--and the list goes on and on. So there is this concern out there.

Again, my State is not dissimilar in any way to the State of New Mexico. They are right next door. I would suggest we probably have about the same size corn industry, as well as perhaps our cattle industry is not quite as large as it is in New Mexico, but it certainly is not dissimilar. There is nothing I would do to be damaging to the corn industry because that is a major industry, of course, in my State.

The Food Products Association--let me mention to you how they feel. In a worst-case scenario, if you do not have some kind of a safety valve, it could be damaging. They say: More and more pursuit of corn- based ethanol is resulting in higher food and feed prices. The price of corn has jumped 55 percent since September.

According to USDA's Chief Economist, the consequences of ethanol are the biggest thing going on in agriculture today. An increase in ethanol production is already having a significant impact on food and feed supplies, such as corn, soybeans, and wheat.

The U.S. Labor Department recently reported that February prices for foodstuffs and feedstuffs were 18 percent above year-ago levels. That was in the Wall Street Journal of March of this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, the higher corn prices have raised costs for livestock and poultry which are fed corn and for crops such as soybeans, which farmers are replacing so they can grow more corn. The corn companies are starting to pass those higher prices on to consumers. Wholesale consumer food prices were 6.8 percent above year- ago levels.

So this is not happening in a vacuum. Obviously, the mandates are there for corn ethanol, and they will continue to be there. As we look down the road, Oklahoma has been pretty active in the work they are doing right now on the other types of cellulosic biomass. Right now, one of our companies in Oklahoma has been very active in that. We are leading the field. We have Oklahoma State University and Oklahoma University and the Noble Foundation leading the country in the pursuit of these technologies.

The coal-to-liquid technology is here. We are currently flying B-52s with all eight engines running on this type of a fuel. So we know it is coming. So it is not all just corn ethanol. Again, we are a corn State. We are also a big livestock State. I think this is a middle-of-the-road type of amendment.

Again, you have to respond to these statements that you are going to destroy something, when the limitation by law would be 15 percent of the current mandate in the event of some kind of a disaster. USDA is already making these studies and doing it, and it is not really requiring anything more.

With that, Mr. President, I will retain the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Yes, for a question.

It is my understanding that the time you are taking right now will be taken off of our time equally, and since we are under a UC for a time- certain for a vote, I know that would not be the Senator's intention.

Well, I think that is probably a good idea.

Go ahead.

All right. Mr. President, I say to the Senator, I do not think adequate time has been given to the amendment you want to address, the Boxer amendment, and if you would want some of my time to do that, I would be willing to give it up. I am really prepared to yield back at the appropriate time on this amendment.

Let me make this comment. If people are concerned my amendment is going to be devastating, just keep in mind we have this limitation. There is a very sizable mandate that is out there. The very maximum that would be used would be to reduce that mandate--in a year when a disaster occurs--by only 15 percent. In other words, 85 percent of that mandate would still be in effect. I think that is a very reasonable approach to it.

With that, Mr. President, I will yield the floor.

Mr. President, how much time is remaining on both sides?

On my side?

And on the other side?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to include Senator Pryor as a cosponsor of amendment No. 1666.

Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent to add Senator Gregg as a cosponsor.

That is correct.

Mr. President, there have been some misconceptions about this amendment. First, my State of Oklahoma is a corn State. It is a livestock State. If my colleagues will look at the groups of people that have joined in and said we need to have this safety valve, it is virtually everyone: the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the Chicken Council, port producers, Restaurant Association--all of these recognizing that in the event something should happen with a severe drought--and these are easy to predict--we should have some kind of a trigger that would allow the mandate to be reduced.

All this does is simply provide that if the USDA determines because of weather patterns there is going to be a real problem in the crop of corn, the mandated limit can be reduced by as much as 15 percent. In other words, we are still going to have an 85-percent mandate.

I suggest my colleagues look very carefully at this amendment. This is going to offer some assistance in the event of a serious drought or something that will affect the corn crop in America.

I ask my colleagues to support my amendment.

Mr. President, I move to waive the applicable points of order against my amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning business.

Madam President, the other day I saw something--and I should have it with me but I don't now--in the media that was critical of GEN Peter Pace, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When I think of words to describe Peter Pace, the words that come to my mind are always loyalty and honor. Those happen to be the words of the United States Marine Corps. These are their watch words.

Peter Pace is today, and has always been, a true marine--the first marine to serve as both the Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is loyal to this country, its people, and to the men and women who wear the uniform of its Armed Forces.

He served this country with honor as a rifle platoon leader in Vietnam. He has done everything: a marine commander in Somalia, commander of U.S. Marine forces in the Atlantic, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, and then Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

As Chairman, he has led our military during one of the most critical times in history, fighting in wars against terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, engaged throughout the world providing support and aid to our allies and friends.

I have long been, and still am, a real fan of Peter Pace, and I cannot think of one military leader I have known in the 21 years I have served on the House Armed Services and the Senate Armed Services Committees who is a greater American than Peter Pace. Let me just pay this tribute to him today as one great marine and one great American.

(The remarks of Mr. Inhofe pertaining to the introduction of S. 1623 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today I introduce S. 1623. I introduce this bill to prevent the imposition of global taxes on the United States. The current efforts of the United Nations and other international organizations are to develop and advocate a type of tax system that will keep them from having to answer to anybody.

Last year, I introduced legislation, S. 3633, which garnered the support of 31 cosponsors, and I am pleased to reintroduce this bill today with 23 cosponsors.

This bill states if the United Nations or other international organizations continue to pursue global taxation, the United States will withhold 20 percent of the assessed contributions to the regular budget of these organizations. This measure will last until certification is given by the President to the Congress that no international organization has legal taxation authority in the United States, that no taxes or fees have been imposed on the United States, and that no taxes have been proposed by any of these international organizations.

One has to wonder sometimes what has happened to sovereignty in America. There are people in this body who don't think anything is good unless it is somehow proposed by some international organization, and quite often the interests of international organizations are not the same interests of our Nation. Our Government's primary leverage with the United Nations is controlling the flow of our regular contributions. By collecting enormous and global taxes on top of our regular contributions, the United Nations, or any other of these international organizations, would be accountable to no one. The United Nations' abuse of international trust, rampant corruption, and widespread waste are now all well-known. Allowing this clearly dysfunctional institution to extract U.S. dollars is absurd. Permitting this would

condone the U.N.'s long sought-after goal of a U.N.-led global governance--something not in the best interest of the United States.

The United States already pays 27 percent of the U.N. Peacekeeping budget and 22 percent of the regular U.N. dues and special assessments, the majority of which our Government tracks very poorly. To further loosen the reins on the United Nations would be disastrous. We can't allow this to happen.

It is fascinating to watch the various things that are not in the best interests of this country and the fact that we are paying for 25 percent of that. This is a way we would be able to inject into this system something that would be far better and would take care of just the sovereignty of the United States; those things that are in our best interests and not just in the best interests of some international organization.

Mr. President, today I introduce S. 1623. I introduce this bill to prevent the imposition of global taxes on the United States. The current efforts of the United Nations and other international organizations are to develop and advocate a type of tax system that will keep them from having to answer to anybody.

Last year, I introduced legislation, S. 3633, which garnered the support of 31 cosponsors, and I am pleased to reintroduce this bill today with 23 cosponsors.

This bill states if the United Nations or other international organizations continue to pursue global taxation, the United States will withhold 20 percent of the assessed contributions to the regular budget of these organizations. This measure will last until certification is given by the President to the Congress that no international organization has legal taxation authority in the United States, that no taxes or fees have been imposed on the United States, and that no taxes have been proposed by any of these international organizations.

One has to wonder sometimes what has happened to sovereignty in America. There are people in this body who don't think anything is good unless it is somehow proposed by some international organization, and quite often the interests of international organizations are not the same interests of our Nation. Our Government's primary leverage with the United Nations is controlling the flow of our regular contributions. By collecting enormous and global taxes on top of our regular contributions, the United Nations, or any other of these international organizations, would be accountable to no one. The United Nations' abuse of international trust, rampant corruption, and widespread waste are now all well-known. Allowing this clearly dysfunctional institution to extract U.S. dollars is absurd. Permitting this would

condone the U.N.'s long sought-after goal of a U.N.-led global governance--something not in the best interest of the United States.

The United States already pays 27 percent of the U.N. Peacekeeping budget and 22 percent of the regular U.N. dues and special assessments, the majority of which our Government tracks very poorly. To further loosen the reins on the United Nations would be disastrous. We can't allow this to happen.

It is fascinating to watch the various things that are not in the best interests of this country and the fact that we are paying for 25 percent of that. This is a way we would be able to inject into this system something that would be far better and would take care of just the sovereignty of the United States; those things that are in our best interests and not just in the best interests of some international organization.

Madam President, I would inquire as to the time remaining on both sides, please.

Madam President, I would like to go ahead and be recognized for a few minutes, and I would ask that the Chair stop me when there is 5 minutes remaining. I would like to remind the other side that our protocol or system is that the author of the amendment should conclude debate, so I would like to have the last 5 minutes.

First of all, I look at this and I listen to the arguments from the junior Senator from California and I hear the same things over and over again. Last night, we debated this at some length. Every time, she would make a statement, and we would respond to the statement.

Let me just put a chart up here. I think it is important for people to realize there are some choices. We are not willing to add to refinery capacity here in the United States. We have here the refining capacity and the growth of that refining capacity from other countries. We have Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Venezuela. It is bad enough we are dependent upon foreign sources for our ability to run this machine we call America, but these are not the kinds of countries you want to depend on. I am sure Chavez is not real excited about

helping us refine our oil into something that can be used for transportation.

I would like to cover a couple of the things the junior Senator from California has said, and I know what is going to happen: As soon as I do this, she will come back and say the same things over again, because we have heard these same arguments.

First of all, she says it is a disastrous amendment because it is a taxpayer giveaway to the oil companies; we don't have to give away the store to the oil companies. Well, the fact is that no money goes to any oil companies or, in fact, to any corporations in any way whatsoever. The only funding of the bill is financial and technical resources to a State or tribal department of environmental quality or funds to an economically distressed community affected by BRAC.

Let us keep in mind, when we talk about BRAC and Indian tribes, we have a lot of BRAC sites, and I can remember Members standing on the floor saying, during the base realignment and closure process: They are going to be closing some of the military installations in my State. Well, what is a logical thing you can do to replace the economic loss of a closed facility? It is to put--if we can encourage the local community to do it--a refinery there. You don't have to clean it up to the same standards you would have to clean it up otherwise. It is a logical thing. So those people who want coal-to-liquids and commercial- scale cellulosic ethanol facilities can have them.

It does authorize the EPA to initiate a new emissions control demonstration project, but it doesn't offer the oil companies anything.

The lack of sufficient refinery capacity in the United States is why we are experiencing high prices today. I think it is inconceivable that any Member of this body would come in and deny us, the United States, the right to expand our refinery capacity to do something about the supply problem we have and then turn around and say: Well, we don't want to be dependent on foreign countries for our ability to run this machine called America.

In this bill, in the underlying Energy bill, without this amendment, we don't really address the problem today. We talk about the future, and we talk about conservation. This is good, and we want to do this. We talk about standards for automobiles and all that. But people in my State of Oklahoma want to do something about the $3 a gallon for gasoline right now that is there.

With that, I retain the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, it is my understanding there will be equal time taken from each side in this case, so I would invite the majority to come in and make their remarks and would appreciate it; otherwise, I would be denied my opportunity to close debate on my amendment.

In the meantime, I ask unanimous consent that during the quorum call, the time be taken from the other side.

Madam President, I understand what is customary; I am just saying that we are entitled to close debate.

Apparently, the Senator from California is not going to allow me to close debate. So let me just say for a few minutes here that I was going to go through every argument the Senator from California has made.

For example, first of all, I already did the first one where she talks about subsidizing oil companies. No corporation in America is being subsidized by this. She said also, we don't want to become a China, where they do not care about the people and how they suffer. We don't want to go there. Politicians are prone to hyperbole, but the junior Senator from California has reached a new level. Nowhere in this bill or any other I would consider would I seek to make the United States similar to China.

By the way, talking about China, one of the problems we are having right now is that while we do not have the refining capacity, they do. While we are not building generating plants, they are. While we have gone 15 years without adding a new coal-fired generating plant in the United States, China is cranking out one every 3 days.

The argument that was made was American families who want their health protected do not want us to waive every single environmental law that protects the quality of the air they breathe inside their bodies. They also do not want to waive any single environmental law. We are not doing that. We are not waiving any environmental laws with this bill.

Let me tell you something that is serious. I warn people right now, this is going to be considered to be maybe the most significant vote in the 2008 elections. For people to say we do not want America to have refining capacity when we have a bill that will allow them to have the refining capacity and increase the supply--the old theory of supply and demand still works--those people who will vote against this will forfeit your right to complain about the dependency on foreign oil. This is going to be a major, maybe the major campaign issue of the 2008 cycle.

I suggest we spent a lot of time on this bill. We do not have any money going to oil companies. We do allow the EDA to help communities that want to set up refineries in their communities.

Let's keep in mind, this is not just oil refineries. We are talking about oil refineries but also cellulosic biomass refineries, we are talking about coal-to-liquid refineries--all refineries to give us the availability of fuels for the transportation this country needs.

If we do not have that, the price of gas at the pump is going to continue to go up. I suggest this is going to be the critical vote, in terms of energy, for this entire legislative session. It is going to come back to haunt a lot of people in 2008. I know the Democrats are generally much more disciplined than the Republicans are. They will say you have to vote against this amendment, make up things such as you are helping oil companies, which you are not. Whatever the case is, the bottom line is they are going to be taking away our ability to increase the supply of gasoline to run our cars within America. This will be a major issue in the 2008 campaigns. I encourage people to do something about this problem and to vote for the Inhofe amendment expanding our refining capacity.

I yield the floor.

Parliamentary inquiry.

It is my understanding there was a unanimous consent agreement giving us 6 minutes equally divided, myself having the last 3; is that correct?

Mr. President, I understand that we have 3 minutes remaining to close debate on my amendment.

I have a hard time keeping a straight face when the Senator from California suggests I have a socialistic amendment. I would invite anyone who is entertaining any kind of joy in that statement to look at our record over the past many years. It is just humorous.

We have gone through listening to the same thing over and over and over again. We went through this yesterday for hours at a time. The Senator from California talks about subsidizing oil companies. Again, not one cent goes to any oil company. If we want to empower cities and communities to be able to take care of problems, maybe an economic problem that is due to the fact that they had to close a military base during the base realignment and closing process, we should be in a position to help.

I never stated that Senator Feinstein--with endorsing this bill, she will be a good Democrat and oppose it with her junior Senator. I will say this. She said she recognizes we have a serious problem about having a refining capacity in this country, and about--I will just read it to you from her own press release: Today I urged Governor Schwarzenegger to help streamline the refining permit process in an effort to relieve gas prices in the State.

All right. She says we have to relieve gas prices by streamlining the process. That is exactly what happens in this amendment. We want that to happen. For anyone to suggest that there is anything in here that would hurt the environment, here we have the Environmental Council of States--that is all States--saying there is nothing in here that will hurt the environment. It will actually help the environment.

The Senator also said the Clean Air Act is going to be damaged, when, in fact, the underlying bill has language that would take the fuels system out from under the EPA and the Clean Air Act and put it in the President's power.

So we have all of these letters. Here is another one from Ceres, a big company in California that is a company that needs to have refining capacity. They do not touch oil. It is all cellulosic bioethanol. They want to have this capacity.

So the environmentalists, many of them are very much for this. It is a very strong bill. It goes right back to the initial argument of supply and demand. We have got some good things in this bill that are coming up. It is not affecting today's supply. All of the production in the world is fine, but we are not going to be able to do anything with that production unless we are able to refine it. That is exactly what we are talking about now.

I honestly believe every argument the Senator from California has put up we have responded to over and over and over again. She keeps coming back with the same argument.

I believe anyone who votes against the Inhofe amendment to the Energy bill should forfeit their right to complain about the dependency on foreign oil between now and the next election. I will say this also. I am glad to say this on the Senate floor because this way you cannot say we did not tell you. This is going to be one of the major issues in the upcoming 2008 election as to whether you want to increase our refining capacity to lower the price of gas in the United States of America. This is a chance to do it. I urge you to support the Inhofe amendment to the Energy bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Cornyn and Senator Hutchinson be added as cosponsors of my amendment.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I have made it a practice for the last--I don't know how long it has been now, 12-plus years in the Senate--that any time I see a major tax increase coming along, at least I want to voice opposition, to get on record against it. That is what we are talking about right now with the renewable portfolio standard that is before us.

I support development of renewable energy resources, as do the citizens of my State of Oklahoma. In fact, in 2006, Oklahoma was ranked sixth in the Nation for wind energy capacity, surpassed only by Texas, Minnesota, Iowa, California, and Washington State. Those are real turbines lighting over 150,000 homes in Oklahoma without an RPS.

Let me emphasize, Oklahomans are developing wind energy without a one-size-fits-all Federal mandate known as an RPS, renewable portfolio standard.

Quite a number of years ago I spent a number of years as mayor of a major American city. Its problems were not the ones you would think, not crime in the streets, not prostitution. It was Federal mandates that were not funded. This is exactly what we are looking at here.

Under this amendment, Oklahomans would pay an additional $6 billion for their electricity. You might ask where would that money go? It would go to perhaps the Federal Government to spend as it pleases, or it would go to other States that are lucky enough to have the particular energy sources that environmental groups decide today they want.

How does this promote clean energy in Oklahoma? It does not. The amendment cherry-picks technologies that have to be blessed by environmental groups but ignores the real clean energy benefits of nuclear power, hydro power, clean coal, and energy efficiency.

A kilowatt saved is a kilowatt earned. You can't get cleaner than energy efficiency, but it doesn't comply with the amendment.

The RPS amendment is nothing more than a tax increase. It is a tax on States that lack enough natural resources to meet the 15-percent mandate. It is a tax on States that do not harness the particular renewable technologies enshrined in this amendment, and it is a tax on States that do not happen to have electricity transmission lines located where the renewable resources are. The States, I believe, know best on how to promote and manage the renewable resources unique to their States without another Federal mandate.

We had this discussion this morning when I had my refinery amendment up. I said there is this mentality in Washington that no decision is a good decision unless that decision is made in Washington, DC. I think that is what we are looking at here. This is an issue that should be left to the States, not enacted in an RPS. The decision should not be preempted, especially not when the cost is $6 billion.

I know a lot of people are thinking, in terms of the things we talk about here in Washington, DC, $6 billion is not an astronomical amount. But take a State with a population of the State of Oklahoma. A $6 billion tax increase is huge, particularly when you do not get anything for it.

I hope we will oppose the amendment of Senator Bingaman on renewable portfolio standards.

Madam President, today I wish to recognize and congratulate students Natalie Haworth and Trenton Knight from Dill City High School in Burns Flat, OK, and Libby Trusty from Verdigris High School in Claremore, OK. These students have been selected to present their award winning National History Day projects in Washington, DC, today. Each project reflects on this year's National History Day theme, ``Triumphs and Tragedies in History.''

Haworth and Knight have been selected to present their history project at the White House Visitor's Center. Trusty has been selected to present her project at the National Archives and Records Administration. Their projects were selected by the National History Day program from hundreds of thousands nationwide.

Haworth's and Knight's project, ``Land Divided--World United,'' is a depiction of the historical creation of the Panama Canal. The exhibit begins with the original vision to construct a channel through Central America and extends all the way to the completion and proposed expansion of the Panama Canal.

Trusty is presenting a U.S. Supreme Court case which addressed the controversial issue of equal educational opportunities available throughout American history. Fisher v. University of Oklahoma Board of Regents was one of the unfamiliar but significant cases that ultimately led to the landmark decision to desegregate schools in America.

I believe it is important for students to be informed and educated about the milestones of American history, because it will strengthen them as our country's future leaders and provide them with the knowledge to continue to lead our Nation as our Founding Fathers intended. History is an integral part of the education of future generations of Americans, and I would like to commend the National History Day program for empowering teachers to improve history education and influencing students to follow these Oklahoma students' exemplary example.

Madam President, I rise today to support a resolution designating June 15, 2007, as ``National Huntington's Disease Awareness Day,'' a devastating disorder that affects an estimated 1 in every 10,000 persons. We need to raise awareness of Huntington's disease, which is a progressive degenerative neurological disease that causes total physical and mental deterioration over a 12-15 year period. Though Huntington's disease typically begins in midlife, between the ages of 30 and 45, onset may occur as early as the age of 2. The average lifespan after onset of Huntington's disease is 10 to 20 years. The younger a person contracts the disease, the more rapid the progression. Additionally, children who develop the juvenile form of the disease rarely live to adulthood, and a child of a Huntington's disease parent has a 50-50 chance of inheriting the Huntington's disease gene.

Since the discovery of the gene that causes Huntington's disease in 1993, the pace of Huntington's disease research has accelerated. Although scientists and researchers are hopeful that breakthroughs are forthcoming, no cures for this disease currently exist.

The need for heightened awareness of Huntington's disease was brought to my attention by constituents who suffer from this disease. For the benefit of these individuals and for the well-being of sufferers in your own State and around the Nation, I ask you to join me in this effort to raise awareness of Huntington's disease.