Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I come to address the House this evening on an issue that has some similarities to the issue my colleagues, my Democratic colleagues, just addressed on the Federal deficit. The Federal deficit is this long-term, rather insidious challenge to our Nation that sort of is something that can sneak up on us and over the long term can cause us great grief. And the issue that I am compelled to address the House on tonight is a similar issue with even larger global concerns that has the capability of causing major changes to the way we live and our kids live and our grandchildren live, and that is the issue of global climate change, which is being precipitated by our enormous contributions of carbon dioxide and methane into our atmosphere.

And as I come here tonight, this is the first night we have been in session since the election, and a couple things have changed relatively dramatically actually since the election. And one of the things that has changed when it comes to the atmosphere we are going to leave to our kids and our grandkids is that there was a major scientific announcement made last week that basically should send off red lights, alarm bells, and whistles in the United States Congress which indicated that the problem of global warming is much more acute and is happening much more quickly than many of us anticipated. So tonight I would like to address the science that has now become available to this body in the House of Representatives, which I hope that we would act on fairly shortly.

Unfortunately, the U.S. House has been somnambulant when it comes to global warming to date. This Chamber, for all its virtues, basically has not acted at all in the face of what has been very rapidly accumulating scientific evidence about this problem. But after the report came out last week, which I am going to address, there really is no longer any excuse for inaction by the House; and that is why this evening I would like to address the scientific report that became available to us.

Last week, eight nations that have been working for 4 years now to try to get a handle on the scientific information that is now available to us issued a report called the ``Impacts of a Warming Arctic,'' and this was a report issued by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. This is a group that has been working of the best scientists in the United States, nonpartisan, no ax to grind. These people, a diverse group from the National Oceanographic Administration, from the University of Fairbanks have been working in conjunction with seven other nations on this report. Those other countries are Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Canada, and six indigenous groups in Canada.

And this group basically for the last several years has been taking a very acute and sensitive look as to what is going on in the Arctic to determine whether or not there is evidence that can guide us policymakers and whether we should or should not treat global warming as a serious issue. And I have to say that when I read this report, I was blown away. And I was blown away because it is the most concrete, cemented, and alarming report that I have read about an environmental issue in the last 10 years. And this report, which is about 120 pages, one can get online. If I can get the site here, they can read it on line at acia.uaf.edu. That is acia.uaf.edu. They can also get it through the Cambridge University Press at cambridge.org.

Basically what this report concluded is that global warming is, number one, a fact; number two, likely caused by significant human activity; and, third, that the rate of global warming in the Arctic regions surpasses anything that we really would have assessed or predicted even 2 years ago and that that rate has the capacity to cause significant changes not only in the Arctic but where we live in our homes and towns where we expect our grandchildren to have a life like we do.

And what I would like to do is go through this report. And basically this report synthesized scores of scientific assessments that have been done on the Arctic. For reasons that are quite complex, what we have found is that the changes that are happening in global warming are even faster in the Arctic than other places. So I would like to go through some of the findings of this scientific report.

First, the report found that Arctic climate is now warming rapidly and much larger changes are projected. The annual average Arctic temperatures have increased at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world and over the past few decades with some variation. And additional evidence comes from widespread melting of glaciers and sea ice and a shortening of the snow season. We are seeing actual changes in our climactic systems now due to global warming.

This is not a hypothetical. This is not a ``Chicken Little.'' This is not a bunch of theoreticians. What the science has shown is that we are seeing significant changes already. The Arctic is where science looked. There are other changes as well, but they are occurring.

The numbers that this report came up with are really quite startling. They are not talking about one-tenth of a degree or half a degree in changes, changes that we may not notice in our daily lives. What this report concluded was that because of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, Arctic warming is expected to be 4 to 7 degrees centigrade over the next 100 years. That is at least 8 or 9 to 14 or 15 degrees Fahrenheit during our grandchildren's lifetime.

Think about the significant changes in a region of the world where you have 8, 9, 10 to 15 to 17 degree temperature increases. You are talking about major changes in the planet that God created. And whatever our political stripe in this Chamber, I dare say that none of us would believe that there is a moral value to change 8 to 9 to 14 to 15 degree changes in the climatic system designed by the Creator.

That is a moral value that is violated. We now have evidence that is occurring, and we need to act on it, and we need to act on it now. This is the most alarming evidence that we have in humans that I am aware of to date of about how significant this problem is.

So we know we have seen changes in the Arctic, and we now have compelling scientific evidence. And I want to make sure people understand this is not evidence from some pointy-headed group that just has an ax to grind. This is the best scientists in our Federal Government on a nonpartisan basis in alliance with scientists from around the world who are associated with the Arctic.

Now, what this is also showing in the Arctic is that we have had shorter and warmer winters, which perhaps is not rocket science but is true, with substantial decreases in snow and ice cover, and these are expected to continue. We can look forward to unexpected and even larger shifts and fluctuations in climate. The reason for that is we do not fully understand all of the climatic systems to date.

So what we have is finding number one, which is that the Arctic is changing rapidly, and that it is likely over our grandchildren's lifetimes to have increases in the 8 to 16 to 17 degree Fahrenheit realm, huge changes in the biosphere in the Arctic, and we are already seeing changes.

The second finding that this group has found relates perhaps to our lives as we live them here. I live just north of Seattle, and I kind of like it. A lot of people do not like some of the rain in Seattle, but I think it is a great place to live. I have become accustomed to having a spring, when we get it, and having the glaciers and having snow to ski on and having salmon in the rivers.

All of those things are now put into question because of the existence of global warming. That has been suggested by finding number two of this group, that basically found in their conclusion, and I will read from it, ``Arctic warming and its consequences have worldwide implications. Melting of highly reflective Arctic snow and ice reveals darker land and ocean surfaces. It increases the absorption of the sun's heat, further warming the planet.''

Now, maybe this is intuitive, but it bears thinking about it.

One of the things scientists are concerned about is that we are dramatically increasing the percentage of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. As you may know, carbon dioxide traps infrared radiation. The way this works is just like a greenhouse. Light can come through the atmosphere, because when light comes from the sun it comes through an ultraviolet wavelength. But when it bounces back, it bounces back at a different wavelength, at infrared spectrum in the wavelengths.

Carbon dioxide, methane, a few other gasses, are impermeable to infrared radiation. So it traps that radiation in the Earth. That is a really, really good thing. If we did not have some carbon dioxide, we would be a frozen ball in space. It is important to have that as a blanket to a certain degree to keep us warm.

But, unfortunately, those rates of carbon dioxide are up 20 to 30 percent in the industrial period of time and are expected to double, double, the highest carbon dioxide rate in our atmosphere in several millions years in the planet Earth's history, if we do not act.

So the science is compelling that this material traps heat in the Earth.

But the thing that is disturbing to a lot of scientists is that there are also what are called feedback effects. Feedback effects means that when you change the atmosphere you warm the planet due to this trapping mechanism like greenhouse panes in a greenhouse, but you also set up a phenomena called feedback effects.

One of those is, if you melt more ice, you effectively warm the planet through a doubling effect or an increased effect, because ice is more reflective. It reflects back more energy than dark ground or the oceans. So you have this kind of reflective barrier up there in the north and in the Antarctic and the Greenland ice cap, and if you lose that reflective barrier, you absorb more heat and increase the rate of increase in temperature.

That is what we are seeing right now. This report concluded that is likely to happen, and it will have implications not only in the Arctic but where we live down in the 50 States.

It also says that increases in glacial melt and river runoff add more fresh water to the ocean, which will raise the global sea level, possibly slowing the ocean's circulation that brings heat from the tropics to the poles, affecting global and regional climate.

If you go on-line and look at this map, you will see there are significant areas in the United States which could be affected during our grandchildren's lifetime of raising sea levels due to global warming.

I am familiar with a lot of beaches. We like the breaches. Frankly, I do not like them being underwater. But that is the circumstance our kids have to look forward to if we do not act.

It works in two ways: One, warming sea water expands simply because it is a warmer temperature. But we also

have additional volume from additional melt. So we have that phenomena.

But the report also had this disturbing line, and you can read about this in detail, which says that this could possibly slow the ocean's circulation that brings heat from the tropics to the poles. This is something when I went on a tour of some of the regions that could be affected by global warming, some of the countries in Northern Europe are very concerned that because we have more fresh water melt off of the Greenland cap and Arctic, we can reduce the salinity of the North Atlantic, reducing the action of the current which drives the Gulf Stream which really warms Northern Europe. This has the capacity of altering or shutting down that Gulf Stream, because, paradoxically, you could end up with a little ice age in northern Europe due to global warming. It is an interesting phenomena you would not think of intuitively. But this report indicated that is something we need to be concerned about.

The third conclusion, Arctic vegetation zones are very likely to shift, causing wide-ranging impact. What they are finding is that the tree line is moving northward into higher elevations, with the forest replacing an existing fraction of tundra and tundra vegetation moving into polar deserts.

Now, this may sound a little esoteric, but it has meaning to us in the 50 States as we start to see northern movement of these biospheres, if you will, as well. You can basically, this is a little simplistic, but look to the south of you and assume that is what is going to happen. Frankly, that may look okay to me and from Northern California, moving north, but to folks in the south, having a Mexican climate moving north into California and Oregon may not be a prospect folks really look forward to.

The fourth conclusion, animal species diversity and ranges and distribution will change. This is one that those who are fond of polar bears and seals, and I think a lot of folks are, they are threatened. They are threatened because reductions in sea ice will drastically shrink marine habitat for polar bears, ice-inhabiting seals and some sea birds, pushing some species towards extinction.

Whatever you think, I believe that we have an obligation to our grandkids not to leave a planet barren of some of the animals and critters we grew up with. I do not think that is too outrageous a statement.

There was an instruction by the Creator to Noah to bring two of every animal and to keep them alive, and ``to keep them alive'' was the operative word. If that was the instruction to Noah, perhaps we ought to have an instruction to the U.S. Congress to pull our heads out of the sand and do something that does not result in huge extinctions on this planet, which unfortunately is the scientific fact that is now occurring.

This report is just one more factor that ought to lead us to conclude that we need to act to avoid significant extinction so that we cannot say that we are the generation that took away polar bears, seals, Orcas, you name it, from our grandkids, to enjoy in their lifetime. According to this report, that is a risk we should be concerned about.

The fifth conclusion, many coastal communities and facilities face increasing exposure to storms. We are already seeing some of our communities in northern Alaska are having to actually move their villages that have been there for centuries away from the encroaching wave action that is occurring. It is predicted that will occur in part because thawing permafrost weakens coastal lands, adding to the vulnerability.

This is a real kind of interesting thing that is going on. If you look at this report, you will see the pictures of the buildings that are collapsing in the Arctic because the permafrost is melting. The permafrost, as the name would suggest, is permanently frozen ground, and people build their buildings on it, they build their roads on it. But that is melting now because of the increasing temperatures. You will see pictures of these cracks running through buildings, cracked roads.

It is interesting, because you know folks who want to drill in the Arctic, in the Wildlife Refuge, something I vigorously oppose, ought to take into consideration that, because of global warming, it is going to be more difficult if that were to happen. Because the days in which you can drive over frozen tundra and not sink up to your hubcaps are being reduced by about 10 days to 2 weeks in the last several decades, and that has created havoc up there in the oil drilling fields, even in Prudo Bay. So we have melting permafrost, something that has been there for eons, now occurring.

In fact, it is interesting, up in the villages up in the northern Alaska area, you have birds that are appearing that the folks up there do not even have words for. They do not have language for them, because they have never seen these birds before, as they are moving north because of this melting that is occurring.

Sixth, reducing the ice is very likely to increase marine transport and access to resources. This is an interesting phenomena. If you want to look at this on the plus side you can say, well, we will be able to have shipping through the Arctic during the summer.

There are some changes that might be useful to our economy, but I question whether we want to radically change the climatic system which we have grown accustomed to during the entire period of human evolution in the hopes that we might have a couple of upsides in that regard. I would suggest that we not.

I have been joined by a great visionary on this issue and others, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind). I yield to him.

I really appreciate two messages the gentleman had. One was why this needs to be a bipartisan effort. This should be a totally bipartisan effort. Now we have a start on that. Senator McCain, if I am allowed to use that name, and another, Senator Lieberman, in the Senate have a bill that will help us put a modest cap on the amount of CO2 we put in the atmosphere. We have a similar bill with some of our Republican colleagues that we have co-sponsored here in the House.

When our grandchildren look back at us when polar bears are extinct and there is no summer ice cap, and Western Nile Virus and malaria have moved south up into the Midwest, and we have lost some of the birds we are used to having around our houses, and your air conditioning billing goes through the roof in Seattle, Washington, and Wisconsin in March or April, they will not look back and say oh those pesky Republicans or pesky Democrats. They will curse us all for being so shortsighted.

So we need to be bipartisan on this.

Second message that I appreciate is one of optimism that we can deal with this problem. That is a fundamental thing that we need to have confidence in ourselves to do that. I think you have to ask yourself, why when the science is so overwhelming, why when the science is just absolutely certain that carbon dioxide has increased by 30 percent in the atmosphere, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever of that and there is no doubt that it acts as a greenhouse gas, and why when you see the summer ice in the Arctic already being decreased by 15 percent by area and almost 40 percent, almost half as thick, we have almost lost half the thickness already in the polar ice cap, when you already see the changes in animal life? We had these squid off the coast of Washington. We have never seen these squid off the coast of Washington. For a hundred years nobody had ever caught a squid. Now they are up there because we have warmer water temperatures.

So after all of these efforts, why do some people sort of want to blind themselves to do this? I think the answer is human nature. If you do not think you can deal with it, you just do not think about it. If you put it in that little box of things, maybe like our own mortality that we cannot do anything about it, you just do not think about it. We need to spread the gospel that we can handle this problem and the reason we can handle this problem is we are the most creative people on Earth. We went to the Moon in 10 years when John F. Kennedy challenged us to do it. We can do the same thing now with the Apollo energy project that we are working on here in the House which will unleash the technological can-do spirit of Americans.

There is no reason the Danish have to be ahead of us. We went together to

Denmark and saw the wind turbines. Denmark will have 50 percent of their energy produced by wind turbines in the next 10 years. There is no reason we cannot do that. There is no reason we cannot be competing with the Germans on solar technology, which has now come down in price 20 percent, every time you increase it by a factor of ten.

We need to make a buck off of global warming and this is one of the great economic opportunities for America because we are the smartest, greatest tinkerers the world has ever seen if we have that challenge.

Many of us think that is simply what we need again is that same type of vision.

We can only do so much with even our existing technology. A report by the U.S. Department of Energy concluded that we could basically reduce our fossil fuel use and have the same economic productivity by 20 percent with existing technology if we just made the right policy decisions. But there is so much excitement for job creation out in the State of Washington right now about the prospects of creating jobs.

Let me give you an example. We just built the largest wind turbine farm in the southeastern corner of the State of Washington; 10,000 homes essentially get their energy from wind turbines. These are jobs, and for rural America I might add. It is not bad getting a lease payment just sitting there putting your feet up on the couch and getting a lease payment from the power company to lease a couple of acres of your farm. That works pretty well.

In southwestern Washington we have one of the largest manufacturers of solar cell panels for North America. It had been previously owned by a German company. We are employing American workers to make solar panels, and those numbers are going up significantly. The reason is that there is a tremendous trend, we can report to Americans, when it comes to new energy sources, and that is they get cheaper every year. And the reason they get cheaper every year is when we make more of them there is a scale of production.

On solar, every time we make 10 times the solar panels that we made before, the price comes down 20 percent. It is a curve. I actually have a graph somewhere that has been a straight line curve for the last 20 years. They used to have the potential to be market-based in a very, very short period of time.

Madam Speaker, the gentleman's pointed out something that is very important.

When you go to the horse races, you want to hit the trifecta. You want to win all three races. It is a big thing, and this certainly is a trifecta of an energy policy because it solves three problems we have. Number 1, it helps us reduce our addiction to Middle Eastern oil; number 2, it helps us reduce global warming; and number 3, it grows jobs in this country. It does not get much better than that, you can solve three problems with one program, which we intend to introduce during the next Congress, early in January or February, we hope on a bipartisan basis.

So we intend to have real concrete legislation. We have the cap on carbon dioxide which is now pending in the Senate. There was a hearing today in the Senate on that. We have a similar bill in the house, and we have a comprehensive energy bill, or the new Apollo energy bill, which will encourage the adoption of these new technologies.

Both of these are important. One, we have to stop treating the atmosphere just like a global junkyard where we can just dump our junk into it willy-nilly. We have got to stop that. We just cannot do that anymore when we have got the arctic ice cap disappearing on us.

Two, we need to inspire these new technological systems that we intend to do, and unfortunately, we are going to give a report card here in a few minutes for Congress. It is kind of an F minus, because at the moment that the arctic ice is melting, at the moment that salinity is changing at the oceans, the moment you have these huge global changes going on, this chamber incredibly has not passed a single energy bill in the last 2 years, and here we are coming down to the last 72 hours of this Congress, with an abject failure to pass an energy bill.

Now, that is something I do not think any of us should be proud of in light particularly of this new scientific report that came out that ought to ring alarm bells. There ought to be like fire bells going off in this building about what is going out there in the globe, and there are a lot of environmental challenges we have.

Mercury in the air. Of course, the administration wanted to allow more mercury in the air or water. We thought that was a bad idea. Soot in the air. The administration wanted to allow more soot in the air. We thought that was a bad idea. Issues about cutting down and clear cutting our national forests, we thought that was a bad idea and the roadless area policy.

There are a lot of things that are contentious about the environment, but this issue I think Americans of all political stripe ought to understand, when you fool with the whole basic climactic system of the globe, which is the only one we have got right now, you are messing around with something, number one, we do not fully understand, and two, we have got nowhere else to go. If the climate system goes south, we just cannot hop off earth to another lifeboat, and that is indeed what is happening right now before our eyes if we will open our eyes and look at this and look at this report. I encourage people to look at this report. It is about 120 pages long but it is pretty interesting.

Madam Speaker, the good news is that our kids' generation gets this. I have got three boys, 27 through 18, and they get this. I think they understand a little bit of the science, but they also see the world changing right in front of them.

This is again not an esoteric issue. The glaciers in Glacier National Park are disappearing. In 75 to 100 years there will not be any glaciers in Glacier National Park. The Committee on Resources will have to change the name to the park formerly known as Glacier because there will not be any glaciers in Glacier National Park. Now, it is just something we kind of grew up with, and we will not all die because the glaciers disappear, but it will be something that is different than what we grew up with. When you take your kids to Glacier National Park, they will have a little sign there, and it will say this used to be called Glacier National Park and it used to have glaciers on it until the Congress in 2004 stuck their heads in the sand and their tail feathers in the air and refused to do anything about global warming. That is what the sign is going to say. Maybe we should put our names on it just so we will be sort of appropriately chastised about doing nothing on this.

But you look at the other things that are going on, these are not just a ascetic issues. There are things important to life.

One of the conclusions of this report is that climate warming would increase forest fires and insect-caused tree death, further reducing this valuable habitat which is already declining due to other human activities. Well, we have seen some of the worst fire years in the last several years due in part to

the horrendous drought we have had in the Western United States, changes that are consistent with global warming. We have had this huge outbreak of insect devastation in our forests in the West and in Alaska, systems that are consistent with trees that are stressed due to change in climate. Now, you cannot pinpoint any single one fire or any single one's day's precipitation pattern to global warming, but these changes are consistent, the scientists are telling us, with what global warming would occur.

You know what, people die fighting forest fires, and I know a family who lost a young man fighting a fire up in north Washington. Those are not esoteric changes to me when I fly over the Cascade Mountains and the Rockies and see these burn patches and insect devastation. Fortunately, it is not that terrible at the moment on the route I fly, but I know how bad it is up in Alaska.

These are real changes that are happening in our lifetime, and I just question whether we are acting as good a stewards from the creators of the earth as we should be given the mind that we are given. Maybe the highest creation in the universe is the human mind. So maybe we ought to use it.

We are suggesting that the U.S. Congress needs to open its eyes and read the science a little bit because right now we are sort of just got the hands over our eyes and we refuse to recognize this report. Now let me give you some other bad news here.

November 24, these eight Nations will meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, and the reason for this meeting is to conclude the formal national report for this arctic assessment. This was done under the auspices of eight national governments that wring the arctic, and the scientists want to include a report that says something that is not rocket science.

They want to put a conclusion on the report that we need to do something about global warming; that we need to reduce or at least put some limit on the carbon dioxide and the gases that are causing the arctic ice to disappear; causing polar bears to possibly go extinct; causing the lack of habitat for a bunch of critters that we like; causing potentially shutting down the gulf stream that warms northern Europe and a little bit New York city I suppose; causing the Greenland ice sheet to be melting now 15 percent. There has been a huge increase in the melt, 15 percent, in the last several years of the Greenland ice cap.

The science says all of those things are happening so they want to take the radical step of putting in this report, we need to cap or limit the amount of carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere.

So what did this administration do, the President of the United States, in the face of this overwhelming science that is absolutely consensus? There was not a single scientist in this group, anybody from any country, including the United States of America who contested these conclusions. So what does the President of the United States want to do and what has he instructed his negotiators to do I am told? He has instructed them to not allow this report to suggest that we put some limit on carbon dioxide.

Now, if you consider the President of the United States the world's potentially most effective steward of God's creation, does it make sense for him, in the face of science that says God's creation is at risk, to shut his eyes and do absolutely nothing about this problem? I believe that is not consistent with the moral values that this country of any faith shares, and this President has dropped the ball when it comes to this major effort. He has dropped the ball considering one of the greatest risks really that we have had in global environmental history.

He has told, I am told this, and if anyone can show I am wrong I would be happy to be disabused of this notion, but we read that he has told his negotiators not to allow anything in this report that say that humans need to act as good stewards to reduce CO2 and limit CO2. Now, I think that is very, very disturbing, particularly given the fact we have the technology to deal with this issue today, and that we can make a buck on. It is very, very shortsighted, and I hope my colleagues, anyone who might be listening tonight, will chime in with this administration and urge them to take a more responsible pattern.

Now, maybe the President could get away with this 10 years ago, 6 years ago, 3 years ago, or 2 years ago, when science was not so sure; but the verdict is in. The guilt is there. The glove fits. The DNA evidence is there. There is no doubt about this. And once the verdict is in, we need to act.

Well, Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for joining me this evening, and I want to make some concluding remarks basically to summarize what the science shows. And I will not be judgmental; I will just conclude with what the science is tonight as we stand here in 2004, in the concluding days of this Congress.

In those concluding days we now know, according to the best science the country has to offer, that temperatures have increased 3 to 4 degrees Centigrade, which is 6 to 7\1/2\ or 8 degrees already. In the Arctic, they will probably increase in the next century another 8 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Very dramatic global warming.

The glaciers are melting at an increasing rate, contributing fresh water to the North Atlantic. That has the capacity to perhaps shut down the currents that our current climactic situation depends on. There is diminishing lake and river ice. There is retreating and disappearing summer ice, with a 15 to 20 percent decline over the last 30 years. And the actual elimination of the summer ice cap that we have had since humans crawled out of their caves will disappear in this century.

There are rising sea levels that could raise half a meter in this century. There are ocean salinity changes which have already occurred, and those ocean salinity changes have the capacity of shutting down the halcine cycle, which drives the currents we all depend on.

There has been increasing ultraviolet ray exposure to our children, particularly in the Arctic, for at least several decades as a result of this. Exposing them to this ultraviolet radiation can cause an increase in cancer by as much as 30 percent as a result of this phenomena. There is old-growth forest loss, and there are long-term carbon cycle changes which are too esoteric to get into.

But the bottom line is this: the Arctic climactic assessment that our government represents is the best scientific information we can possibly get has given us a wake-up call. It comes late in this congressional session, but it is a wake-up call and should be to the administration and to this Congress, to act, and to act in a way that America historically has acted when we are challenged.

In World War II, when we were challenged, we responded with the greatest burst of technological achievement perhaps in human history in the armament sector. When we were challenged in the space race, President Kennedy challenged us to go to the Moon in 10 years and bring a man home safely, and we did it. That was the second great technological innovation burst. And now we are poised for a third revolutionary burst of new technologies that can lead us out of this potentially very, very, if disastrous is too strong a word, it may be one that our grandchildren will use when they have to deal with a climactic system that is changing before their eyes, the beginning of which we are going to see now.

We are optimistic in the belief we can deal with this problem if people here in Washington, D.C. will accept the science, read it, and act. That is the American way.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 8 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, November 17, 2004, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Chairman, well, I have some bad news. After this 3 miles is done, there is about another 4,000 miles unfortunately that remains at risk.

I would just ask Members to consider what we just did on this floor. We just extended the time a little bit to get this debate right, and I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy in doing that.

Do we know why Americans have accepted the Endangered Species Act? Because they recognize you can take just a bit more time and do it right.

On October 26, when they have this meeting to get this resolved, we hope that is going to happen. We have built bridges, we have built highways, we built the most powerful military machine in world history with the Endangered Species Act. This is not endangering us. We should not go back to the

days of ignoring this problem. Defeat this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I think it is abundantly clear that the Vice President has some explaining to do to the American people about what happened and what his participation was in starting a war based on false information. And there are two people I have met in the last 24 hours who I think are deserving of an explanation. One was a mother whose son-in-law fortunately just got back from serving proudly in the Army in Iraq, and she told me she is just incredibly happy that her son-in-law came back healthy to the arms of his family and his wife, but she is not happy that others have not and that the Federal Government has not been candid about what happened in Iraq that got us into this war with such devastating consequences. That mother-in-law is entitled to an explanation from the Vice President of the United States about why he made repeated statements that are inaccurate that started a war that has cost over 1,000 American lives.

Today, on the plane flying out here from Seattle, which I go home every weekend to Seattle, this morning sitting next to me was a major heading for Iraq to do an inspection tour. And I just tell my colleague that I feel so strongly that he and all of the 100,000-plus troops in Iraq deserve an explanation from their Federal Government of what happened here, and there are three questions I would like the Vice President to answer.

Question number one, why on September 14, 2003, did the Vice President say this: ``If we're successful in Iraq, then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault for many years but most especially on 9/11''? Vice President Cheney went to the American people and told them that Iraq was responsible for the attack on 9/11, and he wanted the Americans to believe that. And there was no evidence to that then, as we have seen the intelligence. There was no evidence at the time we took the vote, and there is no evidence today that that statement was true. And a war was started based on a statement that this Vice President made to Americans. They deserve an explanation why this Vice President sold a bill of goods to the American people, specifically saying that the folks had us under assault but most especially 9/11?

And we know exactly what he was trying to do, which was create an impression that we were going to attack the people who attacked us, which we did in Afghanistan, and that is why we supported it with a huge consensus in this body. The people who attacked us were based in Afghanistan. But why did this Vice President then gild the lilly and stretch the evidence and try to create this misimpression? We deserve an answer to that question in this debate tomorrow night.

Second question for the Vice President: Why on August 26, 2002, did the Vice President say, ``simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction''? We know now, and many of us knew then from reading the intelligence, that there was massive doubt about this issue, that the Vice President again gilded the lilly, tried to say there was no doubt about this issue, and that simply was not an accurate statement, and a war occurred as a result. And the people serving then and our sons and daughters who might have to serve, goodness knows how many years if this administration continues in authority in Iraq, they deserve an answer why the Vice President said that when it was false.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, let me suggest why that is important. It is not a matter of culpability. That is not the issue. But the fact of the matter is if we are going to have a success, we have to have people in the administration, when you have a failed policy, who are willing to evaluate it and change and decide they had said some things that were not true and admit it and change.

But this administration refuses to accept failure. We continue to have simply more of the same, and they want to say, well, we are at least certain, we are at least sure, we are at least resolute.

The best description I had of that is resolution is a good thing, certainty is a good thing, but it is not a good thing to have a firm grip on the wheel if the car is heading over the cliff, and this administration refuses repeatedly to recognize their errors so they can change their policy.

I have a third question the Vice President owes Americans an answer to. Why did the Vice President on March 16, 2003, say, and this is a long quote, but I will get to the summation, ``And we believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons.''

Why did this Vice President want to create this massive cloud of fear in America about reconstituted nuclear weapons, when even the intelligence reports at that time, and they are now in the public domain, did not support that conclusion? I hate to think it was just to sort of support their predetermined effort to start a war, but it is very difficult to reach a different conclusion, when no one else was saying that except the Vice President. And why, if we now find that is inaccurate, why does the Vice President not just come clean and be candid with the American people, so that we can show some willingness to start a new policy in Iraq?

But they keep clinging to these falsehoods, clinging to these misimpressions, clinging to this false information that they have spewed out across America. And they have been successful in fooling some Americans about the connection of Saddam with al Qaeda. Something like 40 percent of Americans believe that, because they want to believe their Vice President.

We all want to believe our Vice President, but the fact of the matter is, as long as they cling to this, it will make it more difficult to be a successful policy in Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further , I just wanted to make one point in response to the statement of our friend the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).

One of the most telling things in the debate of the two presidential candidates last night was where the President said that we had to attack Iraq because the enemy attacked us, and his opponent challenged that and said, ``Well, no, Osama bin Laden attacked us, not Iraq.'' The President said, ``Of course, I know Osama bin Laden attacked us.''

But the problem is this administration and the Vice President has been trying to create a misimpression from day one to tie Saddam Hussein to the attacks of 9/11. I want to respond to the assertion of the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) to the contrary, to read from the Commission report that says, and the language they used was as categoric as you can get, there is ``no credible evidence,'' no credible evidence, ``of a link between Iraq and the al Qaeda attacks against the United States.''

They did not say that the evidence was suspect, they did not say the evidence is de minimis, they did not say the evidence is debatable. They said there is no, zero, zilch, nada, credible evidence of a connection that this Vice President for the last 2 years has been telling about, trying to create the impression that exists.

He needs to get up in that debate tomorrow, and the first thing he needs to say is, ``You know what? We were wrong. Saddam Hussein for all his faults and his terrible heinous, terrible things he did to Iraqis, Iraq did not attack us on 9/11.'' He owes that statement to Americans. I will be surprised

if we hear it, but I think it would be healthy if we did.

Mr. Speaker, have my colleagues ever noticed how reverential, how worshipful people are when they go over to the archives and they file in front of the Constitution? Have my colleagues seen what is in their eyes? Absolute worship of the U.S. Constitution. I think there is one reason for that, because they understand the Constitution does not belong just to us; it belongs to the ages. They realize for that reason they want us to be cautious and conservative about locking into the Constitution something for a fluid America. There are some lessons in history that show that is the right attitude.

In 1912, Jack Johnson, an African American heavyweight boxing champion, had the temerity to marry a white woman. That offended the vast majority of Americans at the time. And as a result, a Congressman came down to this Chamber, and he introduced a constitutional amendment to make it illegal for States to allow an African American to marry a white person. And Congressman Seaborn Anderson Roddenbery stood where I am standing and said in 1912: ``Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant to the very principles of a pure Saxon government.''

Now that statement seems a bit unbelievable in 2004, but it was the majority opinion in 1912.

Now, I am not suggesting that these issues are equivalent, but I am suggesting that we ought to be real slow before we put discrimination to prevent States to make their own decisions about employment and retirement benefits for themselves into the Constitution. Where would this country have been if majority sentiment had prevailed in 1912 and discrimination had been put permanently in the United States Constitution?

But there is a more commonsense reason for rejecting this amendment. Anybody who is thinking about voting for this amendment, I would ask you to come down to the well and look at the five words that are carved on the rostrum of the House of Representatives.

There are five words that are carved here, and of all the words that we could have chosen to carve on to the rostrum, do my colleagues know what those five words are? Union, liberty, peace, justice, and the fifth one may surprise some of my colleagues.

The fifth value is tolerance. Tolerance is the value that was selected to put on here, and tolerance is as American as apple pie. Tolerance is carved into the rostrum of the U.S. House of Representatives and intolerance should not be carved into the U.S. Constitution.

Reject this injury to the Constitution. Reject this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, there are two very significant things which happened today regarding global warming. The first is that the U.S. Department of Commerce's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey, announced that they had completed the largest computer simulation of what will happen in global warming and how it will affect hurricanes. They concluded that the seas being warmed by rising atmospheric concentration of gases will result in a typical hurricane intensity increasing about an extra half step on the five- step scale.

This is not good news, Mr. Speaker, particularly since our Nation, under this administration, is not doing anything significant to deal with global warming.

In contrast, interestingly, today, Russia and their parliament indicated that it is likely they will join the Kyoto Protocol to deal with global warming. This is a difficulty for our businesses if this becomes a worldwide regime and we are not part of the international effort.

We hope tonight there will be some discussion of this. And if not, one way or another, this November, Americans will vote for a president who will decide to take some action on global warming.

Madam Speaker, I heard a very disturbing report today. While we are engaging in a very important and legitimate debate about our strategy in Iraq, one thing for sure we ought to be united on, and that is Americans ought to have access to the truth and not to be the subject of spin by their own government and should not have their own government suppressing the truth about Iraq. Things are difficult enough about Iraq without the Federal Government suppressing the truth about Iraq.

Unfortunately, that appears to be what is going on in this administration. Today in the Washington Post an article related that the USAID ordered the restriction of preventing distribution of reports by the contractor Kroll Security International which had previously shown that the number of daily attacks by insurgents in Iraq had increased significantly. In response to the news that these insurgent attacks are increasing, about 5 weeks before this election, this administration decided apparently to suppress that information and the agency ordered that this information no longer be disseminated to the American public.

This is information generated with U.S. American taxpayer dollars that this administration, 5 weeks before the election, does not want the American people to hear about.

The article in The Washington Post says: ``The Kroll reports suggest a broad and intensifying campaign of insurgent violence.'' In response to that bad news, the agency official at USAID sent an e-mail to congressional aides stating, ``This is the last Kroll report to come in. After The Washington Post story, they shut it down in order to regroup. I'll let you know when it restarts.''

There is no excuse for this administration shielding information about Iraq and the fact that we have great difficulties there from the American people. We have a legitimate right to know this information. We have an important debate in our national body politic to figure out the right strategy in Iraq, and it is wrong to suppress this information.

We cannot decide the right decision in Iraq by looking through rose- colored glasses anymore. Hope is not a strategy. Simply saying we are going to have the same old, same old in Iraq and shield and hide the ball from the American people just will not cut it. Tonight it would be nice if the administration and the President admitted that we have some difficulties in Iraq and admitted we need to make some changes in strategy or we are going to have deep trouble.

But this is not the only symptom of an administration that is refusing to face reality in Iraq. In that same story in The Washington Post, I read that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office is now sponsoring a sort of happy talk, good news tour through our bases and that we are using taxpayers' money to bring Iraqis to spread the good news of Iraq to our military bases here in this country. The memo disclosing this tour paid for by taxpayer dollars says it is ``designed to be uplifting accounts with good news messages.'' Rumsfeld's office, which will pay for the tour, recommends that the installations seek local news coverage, noting that ``these events and presentations are positive public relations opportunities.'' We do not need a public relations campaign. We need a campaign for success in bringing our troops home in Iraq. We are not getting that from this administration.

The memo went on to suggest that the commanders at each base ``are in the best position on how to market this voluntary attendance program effectively.'' We do not need a marketing campaign. We need an honest discussion of how to get a strategy to bring our troops home after success. But that is not what we are getting from this administration. Instead of recognizing and coming clean with the American people about their failures to find weapons of mass destruction, their failures to tell the accurate situation about connections with al Qaeda, their failures to have enough troops on the ground, their failures to have enough body armor, they have given us a marketing technique protocol paid for with taxpayer dollars. It is wrong. We need a strategy, not a marketing campaign.

Madam Speaker, I come to the floor tonight and will be joined shortly by my colleagues who have been consistent in manning our stations in the Iraq Watch. Now, for several months, my colleagues and I in the Iraq Watch have been coming to the floor of the House of Representatives to discuss our policy in Iraq and to ask if we are on the right course in Iraq.

I am reminded why we have been doing that when just before I came to the floor in the cloakroom, watching the TV, I saw a tribute to another fallen American hero in Iraq. That is all too regular an occurrence recently and reminds us why we come here for the Iraq Watch, because we are dedicated to the proposition that the men and women who fall in Iraq should not be shuttled off to page 12 and 14 and forgotten by Americans and have this trial and tribulation in Iraq somehow become sort of a back-burner issue.

We who have participated in the Iraq Watch are committed to the proposition that we need to be diligent in asking hard questions of our government as to whether or not our government is doing the right thing or making mistakes in Iraq. This is important to do for a variety of reasons.

The Vice President of the United States has suggested that only Members of Congress should just act as good little Members of Congress and be silent about Iraq and simply defer to the administration. The Vice President has suggested, at least implicitly, that whatever the administration is doing must be right and that all good Americans must fall in line and be silent about the Iraq policy and to do otherwise would give somehow aid and comfort to the enemy.

Let me suggest that that would be the least patriotic thing for Americans to do, from the U.S. Congress all the way down to the voting booth on November 2, because the people in Iraq serving tonight deserve the right American policy. That is only going to happen if Americans stand up on their hind legs and speak their minds about what we should be doing in Iraq.

So we are doing that, and representing my 600,000 constituents, and I know I will not be alone in expressing some sentiments tonight, to suggest that this administration has not made the right decisions in Iraq and, in fact, has repeatedly made the wrong decisions in Iraq that have now been responsible for us being in this terrible situation that we are now in tonight in Iraq.

Before I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), I would suggest in our discussion tonight there will be two parts of our discussion. One, we will ask whether or not this administration has been right or wrong on a variety of decision-making in Iraq. That is the first part of our discussion. The second part of our discussion is what should we do now to get a fresh approach in Iraq to increase our chance of success in bringing our troops home in a reasonable fashion. Those are both important parts of our discussion.

I have some questions that I would like to pose to the administration, but before I do so, I would like to yield to my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), who has been a very stalwart member of the Iraq Watch to start our discussion this evening.

Madam Speaker, I just want to add to the point backup for what you are saying.

I read in the last 3 days two very disturbing things. Number one, for the first time in 15 years, the National Guard has fallen over 5,000 people short in their recruiting, for obvious reasons, that we see the stretch that has resulted in a silent draft already of pulling people back repeatedly, and 50-year-old people who have gone to Iraq once for a year, come back for several months, now have to go back again, leaving their families and careers. Of course, the National Guard is going to fall short.

We already have a silent draft because now the Army's pulling people back who served 4- and 5-year terms already, who never understood that they could realistically thought they would be pulled back, and it is disturbing to show you how bad this is. I think something like 25 percent of those people have not appeared for duty. They are so upset about what has happened. This is a major problem in our military because the President planned so poorly about what was going to be involved in Iraq.

Reclaiming my time, Madam Speaker, I want the gentleman to know that it is not only our sort of hard military assets, when we think of soldiers and tanks and ships that have been pulled away from the real threats that we face, it is our intelligence services. Our intelligence services were pulled off of hunting Osama bin Laden to deal with Iraq.

They actually took the Predator aircraft that was searching for Osama bin Laden up in Afghanistan and moved it to Iraq. And we still have not found Osama bin Laden. We actually diverted intelligence sources that could have been used to find out what Iran is actually doing with their nuclear program, a real threat to this country, a real statement that Iran wants to develop fissionable material. But we moved it to Iraq.

Instead of having intelligence services in North Korea to find out what they are really doing, it is in Iraq. Our intelligence services have been malpositioned as a result of this.

Before we go on into a lot of detail, I would like to suggest ten questions that we in Congress have a duty to ask the administration, and I think the American people have a duty to ask the President of the United States. I think, during the next 5 weeks, this is a very important time to ask these ten questions, and I will posit these ten questions and maybe even hazard an answer about the President's performance in Iraq.

The President's performance is a life or death matter, and we have to ask whether the President's performance has been up to snuff or whether it has been something below expectations and whether it has cut the mustard.

Madam Speaker, this Congress needs to ask an additional question. Do we have the right people making the decisions that have exposed our sons and daughters to this life-and-death situation? It is certainly appropriate to ask at least ten hard questions in that regard to see whether this administration has been right or wrong in Iraq.

So I will ask quickly ten questions and posit an answer, and they all are very simple. Was the President right or wrong on various issues in Iraq? I will ask these ten questions, and then I have pretty clear answers that should be pretty obvious to anyone.

Question number one: Was the President right or wrong when he started a war under the statement clearly made to the American people that there is no doubt, no doubt, he said, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Was he right or was he wrong on this life-or-death question?

The fact simply is, he was wrong. He was wrong not only in hindsight, which is easy, but in foresight, because we now have seen the intelligence, and we know there was lots of doubt. This President says there was no doubt, and he was wrong. Then when he made that statement, and over 1,000 Americans have died as a result of that misstatement. The President was not right. He was wrong.

Question number two: Was the President right or wrong when he led Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to the attack on America on September 11? Was he right or wrong when he led Members to believe that?

Let us go to question number three: Was the President right or wrong when he led the American people to believe that we would be welcomed as liberators, with rose petals aplenty, with joy in the streets for months welcoming us, which would reduce the need for American troops? Was he right or wrong?

He was wrong, unfortunately. And he was wrong not just in hindsight but he was wrong in not listening to his own intelligence reports that we now know that he had. A report came out last week about the intelligence report he had at that time that predicted because of the ethnic tensions in Iraq that we would be seen as occupiers from day one. He was wrong.

Question number four: Was the President right or wrong in rejecting the advice from his own military personnel that we would need several hundred thousand troops in Iraq to provide security immediately after the collapse of the Iraqi Army or else loitering would run crazy and anarchy would run through the streets? Was he right or wrong when he sent out his hit men to defame General Shinseki, to say that General Shinseki did not know what he was talking about when he said we would need at least 300,000 or 400,000 troops to do this job?

Madam Speaker, my fifth question: Was the President right or wrong when he said or the assumption was made that not all of our troops needed body armor and we did not need heavy armor in the streets of Baghdad because only the people in the front lines would be targets? He was wrong. Anyone who knows anything about insurgency should have reached that conclusion. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) has done yeomen's service in fighting this administration to get that body armor to our people.

Madam Speaker, the sixth question: Was the President right or wrong when he told Americans that, after the mission was accomplished and the President made his grandiose landing on the aircraft carrier in full regalia with the wonderful flight suit and helmet on, and stood in front of a banner that said ``Mission Accomplished'' and led Americans to believe it was going to be a decreased violent situation, was he right or wrong? And let me suggest that it was 800 lost American heroes ago. He was wrong sadly.

But the problem with this is this is a repeated circumstance with this administration. The administration said that after the Iraqi Army collapsed, things would get better. They got worse. The President said that when we had the turnover, the purported turnover to a provisional Iraqi government, things would get better. They have gotten worse. We are having an accelerated loss of men and women since the turnover.

The President says after the election, things will get better. The President simply has been wrong time and time again with his rose- colored glasses and not facing the truth of the situation in Iraq.

The seventh question: Was the President right or wrong when he decided that the way he was going to do the reconstruction of Iraq was not to hire Iraqis, not to hire Iraqi personnel to do the work, not to hire poor Iraqis which he might get off the street and reduce unemployment, but instead give the contracts to his friends at Halliburton so Halliburton could hire people from the Philippines with our taxpayer money? He was wrong in giving the money to Halliburton and the reason he was wrong is we know that every employed Iraqi is one less potential recruit for the insurgency, and we have been wasting billions of American taxpayer dollars, not using it effectively in the reconstruction of Iraq.

Madam Speaker, my final question, my eighth question is: Was the President right or wrong in saying now that we have done enough, at a proper rate of training the new Iraqi security force, was he right or wrong?

I am going to give Members one tidbit that I read today. Today, a year and a half after the invasion, this administration still has less than 40 percent of the infrastructure for the military necessary to train the Iraqi Army. So here we are with our GIs in harm's way and a year and a half later this administration has less than half of the people they need to do the training of the Iraqi Army, and they expect to have an election in 3 months.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

I think the ninth question dovetails with what you are saying so eloquently that all of us can make mistakes. It is human. And these are difficult situations, obviously. But my ninth question, I think, goes to an issue that exposes why we are in such a difficult situation in Iraq. The ninth question is, Is the President right or wrong when he tells us, or leads us to believe that most of this violence against Americans in Iraq are outside forces of Iraq, sort of these outside terrorists who are coming into Iraq to commit this horrendous violence against us? The reason he has said this, I think, is he wants to believe that because he does not want to believe that the Iraqis themselves do not view us as liberators, because he always believed that apparently we would be greeted as liberators. He apparently cannot get out of that mind-set that some Iraqis view us as occupiers.

So was the President right or wrong when he says that most of the violence against Americans is caused by people from outside of Iraq? The President is wrong. The reason I know that is they finally did an evaluation of the people in custody in our prisons, Abu Ghraib where we obviously had a lack of leadership as far up as the Secretary of Defense; but what they found was of all the people we had in custody, less than 2 percent were from outside of Iraq. Less than one out of 50 of these people that we had in custody were from outside Iraq.

What does that tell you? That is bad news for us, because what it means is that 49 out of 50 of those people are Iraqis who are fighting, who are domestic and who live there. That means that the President's working assumption from day one that we would be seen as liberators simply is not the case, and he refuses to recognize that reality.

Madam Speaker, I really think that is a perceptive comment, what he said, which I agree with, that while Iraq may not have presented a terrorist threat before this invasion, it does now. And I think that is a very perceptive thing to say and I agree.

Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I have heard it said that he is really ``Osama been forgotten,'' and unfortunately that has some truth to it.

Let me ask my tenth question about whether the President has been right or wrong on these critical issues.

Was the President right or wrong when he told us that the American taxpayer would not have to pay for this effort because the Iraqi oil fields would be producing enough to essentially pay for this operation in the reconstruction of Iraq? Something Mr. Wolfowitz told I think every single Member, 435 Members of Congress, looked us in the eye and said not to worry, the Iraqi oil revenues will pay for this; the American taxpayers are not going to have to sacrifice a dime for this operation.

Madam Speaker, I yield to Mr. Delahunt to answer that question, was the President right or wrong in that regard?

Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, let me add insult to injury. The President has essentially wanted to fight this war on the cheap and not pay for it, the first time in American history where a President has done massive tax cuts in the middle of a war. And as a result of that, what this President has done has put the real cost of this war and the reconstruction of Iraq not on our generation. It is all deficit spending. The $200 billion-plus is all deficit spending because the President has not had the gumption to go to the American people and ask them to pay for this war. Winston Churchill said, ``All I have to offer you is blood, sweat, toil, and tears.'' This President has not been willing to level with the American people to really say, I am asking them to buck up for the cost of this. And when one is not willing to be candid with the American people in that regard, how can we continue to maintain support for this operation? This deficit spending is wrong.

I just want to summarize before we go to the future and use our remaining time talking about where we go in the future. I just want to summarize our discussion. We have asked ten questions tonight, the ten critical questions about this President's performance in Iraq, was he right or wrong? Here is the summary of the answers:

He was wrong on WMD. He was wrong about al Qaeda's links. He was wrong about our being greeted as liberators with rose petals. He was wrong about the number of troops that we would need to maintain security in Iraq, despite the advice of his own generals. He was wrong about not saying that we needed body armor for everyone. He was wrong about saying, as soon as mission is accomplished and there is a new government, things would get better. He was wrong about saying it is better to give deals to his friends at Halliburton than it is to Iraqis working to get this work done. He was wrong about saying there would be a decrease in violence. He was wrong about saying that the majority of the people essentially are outside of Iraq. He was wrong about not providing enough trainers early enough to get an army of Iraqis up to face this threat. And, lastly, he

was wrong in not facing the real cost of this operation and wrong in making this all deficit spending.

Those are ten very serious failures of leadership by this American President. And these are not peripheral issues. And it shows a pattern. And one thing the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) said and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) both, these are difficult issues. We can all make mistakes. But this is a pattern of repeated failure that has now resulted in a terrible situation where things are getting worse rather than better in Iraq. There has been one person in the administration who has said that, and that is the Secretary of State. Exactly one person in the administration has recognized how dire this situation is. And now the American people are going to be called to ask, was this good enough performance in difficult situations? And that is a decision they will make in November.

I hope we can turn our discussion for our remaining time now about our suggestions about where we go from here, what we suggest we need to do because we are in this pickle together. Democrats and Republicans, we are all in the lifeboat together. Let me just make one quick suggestion I would make.

I believe it is important for the American President to make very clear to the Iraqi people that we are not going to be in Iraq forever. We are not going to be a permanent presence in Iraq. Unfortunately, he is sending different messages and building 14 permanent military bases in Iraq that obviously are going to be there for decades, the way they are under construction.

We need Iraqis to realize their destiny is in their hands, that they cannot rely on us. They need to get on their own two feet and shoulder these burdens. These groups we are putting in the army have to decide they might have to engage for their own benefit, they cannot rely on us as a crutch forever. We need to make that statement very clear to the Iraqis to encourage them to take responsibility for their own destiny.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) for a suggestion.

Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, the gentleman brings up the issue of our relationship with these contractors.

Let me make a third suggestion, and that is that this administration stop pouring money into Halliburton and start getting it to Iraqis so they can get to work rebuilding their own country.

There is no reason for us to be giving our taxpayer dollars to Halliburton so they can hire Filipinos and take, I don't know what the percentage is, but to skim profits off the top in this cost-plus kind of contract, no-bid contracts. That is wrong to taxpayers. But, more importantly, it is wrong in our effort to stop the insurgency in Iraq.

You have got thousands of idle young men in Iraq with no job, and yet we are paying our taxpayer money to hire Filipinos in Iraq? This makes no sense whatsoever. Whatever relationship the vice president had with Halliburton, it should not be driving bad decision making when it comes to contracting in Iraq. That has got to stop. That is my third suggestion.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, we will note that we will continue our discussion about Iraq in the weeks to come. We owe this obligation to our men and women serving proudly tonight. We will not be intimidated into stopping to ask these hard questions of the Federal Government. Americans deserve these questions to be asked, and they will be answered.

Mr. Chairman, yes, we are one Nation under God, and we are one Nation under the Constitution, until today.

I voted some time ago to keep the words ``under God'' in the Pledge, and I will vote today to keep the Supreme Court in its constitutional business of enforcing the Bill of Rights. The Republican Party today intends to treat the Bill of Rights the way the Soviet Union operated during their long tyranny. Because in the Soviet Union, one could go next to Lenin's grave and see their beautiful bill of rights nicely illuminated, looked fine. But the Soviet Union lacked one thing: they stripped their courts of the ability to enforce their own bill of rights. And today the Republican Party intends to do the same thing in America.

In America we should not abandon what we learned as kids in school, that checks and balances are necessary to our fundamental liberties. And sometimes the Supreme Court gets it wrong, but heaven help the day that one trusts liberty to Congress, where the day that Congress is in session, their life and liberty is in danger. We have got to depend on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield.

Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on what Republican Senator Chuck Hagel said, because I think it is accurate. He said, discussing the situation in Iraq, ``It is beyond pitiful. It is beyond embarrassing. It is now in the zone of dangerous.'' And I want to reiterate that that is not just rhetoric; that is reality.

The reason I know it is reality is because we just lost a man from Lynwood, Washington, last week, Corporal Steven Rintamaki, 21 years of age, who will never be coming home, killed in action in Iraq while serving proudly and with distinction in Iraq. Yes, indeed, this is in the zone of dangerous. And this country deserves an administration who will be forthright and truthful and is not looking through this situation with rose-colored glasses.

What Chuck Hagel said, that we are now in the zone of dangerous, I think we can say in spades that that is the situation.

I learned something tonight, Mr. Speaker, that is so disturbing I just have to share it. Osama bin Laden, who is still at large somewhere in the world tonight, after the President told us he would get him dead or alive; he is still at large. The al Qaeda network is still functioning and now attacking our troops in Iraq. And we have been very concerned for some time that this administration, in its action in Iraq, has taken its eye off the ball of destroying the al Qaeda network and diverted resources and attention into Iraq, thereby increasing the risk that al Qaeda would remain a threat. And, indeed, Osama bin Laden is alive tonight and is a threat.

I learned something tonight. We knew about the administration moving resources from Afghanistan that could be used in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The Predator aircraft, the drone that moves around, they moved that to Iraq before we got done looking for Osama bin Laden. We know that the administration has more people checking on people going to Cuba as tourists than they do trying to interdict monies going to al Qaeda. We know about those diversions in this prioritization.

But let me tell you about one I learned about tonight. NBC news today reported that the administration three times had the opportunity to take out terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi who, right now, could be associated with some of the beheadings we have seen, actually, his network. Three times the President quashed efforts to take out Zarqawi before the war in Iraq started because they did not want to diminish or undercut their argument of why they needed to go to Iraq.

If the gentleman from Massachusetts will continue to yield.

In June, according to NBC news, in June 2002, the Pentagon drafted plans to attack a camp Zarqawi personally was using with cruise missiles and air strikes. The plan was killed by the White House because they did not want to undercut their argument publicly that we had to go into Iraq.

Again, 4 months later, Zarqawi planned to use ricin, this deadly poison, in terrorist attacks in Europe. The Pentagon drew up a second plan to go after Zarqawi. The White House killed it again because it would interfere with the action, the public message that we had to go to Iraq.

In January 2003, the pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the White House killed it because ``military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was air tight. But the administration feared destroying the terrorist's camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.''

If this is true, this is a gross dereliction of duty. We have now seen multiple instances where this administration has moved forces that could have been used to destroy the people that killed almost 3,000 Americans on September 11 and moved them in this effort to go into Iraq under the pretense that there were weapons of mass destruction and under the pretense that al Qaeda was responsible for September 11, both of which have been shown to be false.

This bears scrutiny and investigation, and it demonstrates why we need a new fresh approach in the war against the fundamental nihilists who are still out there planning to attack this Nation.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

It seems to me we are at a Y in the road; and as Yogi Berra said, when you are at a Y in the road, take it. But this administration is refusing to recognize the need for a change in policy in Iraq. Their message to the American people is more of the same. Same old, same old. We are doing just fine. It is hunky-dory in Iraq. So let us keep doing what we have done here for the last year and a half.

I want to suggest there are four things that need a major change in our Iraq policy or we will face certain failure and more deaths, as my constituent did last week.

Four things: number one, we have got to have a meaningful, timely training program to train the Iraqi forces so that they can take responsibility for their own country, which is the only way this is going to be successful. What do we find this administration has done in regard to retraining the Iraqi Army? We are now a year and a half after the invasion of Iraq, a time period where we knew, if somebody was thinking about it, that we were going to have massive retraining needs to train about 250,000 troops. That was going to take some work to do that. One would think people would figure that out. But it is a year and a half after the invasion of Iraq, and this administration still has less than 40 percent of even the people responsible for

training the Iraqis working for us to get this job done. We only have half the capability, according to an article of September 20; 230 of the 600 we knew were going to be necessary are on the job.

This administration has dropped the ball on a fundamental thing that is required for success in Iraq, which is to train their security forces. And why did they do this? I know why they did it. Because they told us we were going to be greeted with open arms, rose petals, and the Iraqi equivalent of champagne. Why would we have to train all these soldiers and police officers? It was going to be a cake walk.

And we would not have to pay for it either, Mr. Speaker. So here we are a year and a half after the invasion, this administration still has less than half the infrastructure we need to get this job done. So that is number one that needs a significant change in policy.

Second, we need an administration who will say we have got to have elections sooner rather than later. When we had a brief window where we were not getting bombed and RPG'd for about 3 months early in this campaign, we had a chance for elections. But the President sent Mr. Bremer over there, and he put the kibosh on elections. Sistani wanted elections. They would not allow them. And here we are in this pickle.

And this is why this is important. They are telling us, Mr. Allawi is going to tell us tomorrow, that we are going to have great elections on January 31 in Iraq. That is great except for one problem: there are huge swaths of Iraq today, in late September, that are not under the control of the Iraqi government. Fallujah, Ramadi. We heard about a battle a couple of miles south of Baghdad yesterday. How are they going to have elections to get this job done? They are not prepared to get it done, and the only way we are going to do this is to only have about 50 percent of the country voting.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would further yield, those large swaths are called no-go zones. And that means that nobody from the Iraqi government or we go to.

What is happening tonight with those no-go zones? The Iraqi insurgents are planning to kill Marines and building up their capability of doing it, and we are not going after them. I am concerned, I am concerned, that one of the reasons we have adopted these no-go zones is because this administration wants no casualties, which none of us want ever, but he particularly may not want them before November 2. We never want casualties ever, but to allow these insurgents to build their forces which they are later going to throw back in our faces and shoot at our Marines and soldiers is most troublesome.

There is a third thing that needs to change, and I want to note it. We need to get busy allowing the Iraqis to rebuild Iraq. If we listen to what these insurgents are saying, they are angry because they do not have electricity, and they blame us for it. Frankly, I do not think they should be blaming us for it. They should be blaming Saddam Hussein for it. But they do blame us. We need to get a reconstruction program that is working. And the reason it is not working, the reason we have spent less than 10 percent of the money that we voted on a bipartisan basis on a variety of occasions to apply, the reason that money has not been spent, $18 billion have been appropriated, less than $2 billion has been spent. Why have they not spent the money? For this reason: this administration has insisted that instead of hiring Iraqis to do the construction and Iraqi businesses and Iraqi employees, they want to hire their pals at Halliburton; and they insisted that American contractors, many of whom happen to be significantly connected to the administration, do this.

And the Iraqis are the ones who are unemployed. Those are the people we should be hiring to get this job done. Every Iraqi that gets a job is one less Iraqi willing to join the insurgency. But, no, this administration wanted to make sure Halliburton got the money.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I believe the reason that Halliburton is doing that is that they do not want to deal with the difficulty of hiring Iraqis. With all due respect, we have to get the Iraqis involved in their own economy, or they are never going to be on board in a new government. And this administration, in their lust, in their lust, to continue their relationship with Halliburton, has squandered this opportunity to get Iraqis involved in their own reconstruction. And it has hurt us big time in the insurgency that is now raging across wide swaths of Iraq.

No-go zones, Mr. Speaker. And the problem is the no-go zones are not going to be no-go zones permanently. At some point we are going to have to ask American sons and daughters to go into Fallujah, and they are going to be fired at by insurgents. And the problem is those insurgents tonight are building bunkers and recruiting and building taps and they are building car bombs. They think many of them are assembled in Fallujah and driven around the country, and we are not rousting those groups out. And we are going to have to face their guns when they are emboldened and empowered and in a tougher position. That is terrible military doctrine. It is a mistake. And it is going to cost American lives. And I think that it is one of those things that needs change.

If the gentleman will yield, you mentioned a pretty explosive word, which is ``incompetence.'' When we have our sons and daughters at risk for their lives, over 1,000 of whom we have lost now, it is a pretty serious charge to suggest that an administration has been incompetent in the prosecution of this mission.

So I just want to quote a Republican Senator in this regard, or two Republican Senators in regards to points two and three that I talked about in saying that we need a major change in American policy in Iraq.

On point two, the issue of rebuilding Iraq, when Senator Lugar, Republican Senator, was asked----

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Well, Mr. Speaker, let me rephrase. When a prominent Republican individual who served in public office in a post that involves a 6-year term was asked why only $1 billion of $18 billion appropriated last year for Iraqi reconstruction, why less than 10 percent of that had actually invested in Iraq, he said, ``Well, this is the incompetence of the administration.''

``This is the incompetence of the administration.'' That is what this has been. We need someone competent running the operation in Iraq.

Point three, the point we have been saying, that our military people are going to be endangered as a result of not training people and getting into these no-go zones, another prominent Republican, who once recently ran for President and suffered grievously at the hands of a fellow Republican in South Carolina, said ``it was a major error in allowing insurgents to keep control of the City of Fallujah after vowing to oust them.''

The same quote: ``As Napoleon said, if you say you are going to take Vienna, you will take Vienna,'' this unnamed prominent Republican person in a 6-year post said.

The fact of the matter is, these are major policy failures of this administration. It is costing us in lives, and we need a change.

Unfortunately, this administration has one prominent rule in Iraq, and an economic policy, for that matter: Do not bother me with the facts. I told you guys it was going to be roses. I told you we were going to be treated as liberators. Despite the fact we have this horrendous problem in Iraq, we are not going to change our policy one wit.''

We need a fresh policy in Iraq, and, one way or another, we have got to get it.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, there is another aspect of this $87 billion that we need to point out, of whose money the President wanted to spend. He wants to spend our grandchildren's money. Because every single one of those $87 billion he committed to Iraq, which had to be spent in some sense, but instead of us paying for it and dealing with it with taxes, he wanted, and he consciously decided to make it all deficit spending. We had a proposal to pay for it so that our grandchildren would not have that deficit spending obligation on them.

Now, why is this? I think this is symptomatic of why we need a new administration with a fresh policy. Winston Churchill said, all I have to offer you is blood, sweat, toil, and tears. This President said, you can fight this battle on the cheap. It will be sugar candy, roses, and champaign corks all the way. And as a result of that, we got $87 billion deficit spending, 1,000 dead, and a silent draft that is going on now drafting our people to serve longer times than they really did sign up for when they went into the military. That is why everybody in this chamber is hearing stories about 50-year old people who left their career for a year, came back, now have to go back for another year, and goodness knows how many years, because they have not committed the troops that are necessary to get this job done like General Shinseki told them.

This President wanted to fight this war on the cheap. It has cost us in lives, it has cost us in deficit spending, and we need a new policy. We do not say this just to be critical; we say this to get a new policy in Iraq. Unless we get that, we are heading into deep, deep trouble.

Mr. Speaker, there is a fatal defect in this bill, and that fatal defect is that it would essentially refuse to give American citizens relief if they were injured by a foreign corporation's clear and palpable negligence. The defect in this bill is that, if you live in Seattle, you are hurt in Portland by a failure of a Tokyo corporation, this bill says you cannot bring a claim anywhere in the United States against a Japanese corporation that injured you unless that corporation happens to have a retail outlet in the State where you live or where the accident happened.

And this is a very serious matter. If one lives in Seattle, if they are injured in Portland, and the product that injures them is made in Germany or Japan or England, they are out of luck. They are now shielding out-of-U.S. corporations.

I understand the Republican Party's infatuation with outsourcing, but I do not understand why they would expose Americans and say they cannot bring a claim against somebody that makes a foreign car or foreign construction equipment that injures them.

If my colleagues think I am just sort of blowing smoke here, I want to read from the Congressional Research Service memo on this subject. It says: ``However, if a defendant's principal place of business was not in the United States, then this option,'' meaning suing here, ``could not be exercised in the United States court. Consequently, it would appear that in certain circumstances, the United States citizen or resident injured in this country would not have a judicial forum in the United States in which to seek relief.''

What this bill is, is the Foreign Corporation Protection Act. And for the life of me, I cannot figure out why they would want on the Republican side of the aisle to deny American citizens an avenue in an American court under the American judicial system some right of protection when a foreign corporation hurts them. What is the possible rationale for that?

We need to fix this or reject it.

Mr. Speaker, we do have an honest debate and an honest difference of opinion between the two parties here and it is rather stark.

Democrats believe that if a Japanese car manufactured in Japan, the brakes fail and injured you or your family and it is through negligence of the manufacturer, you ought to be able to have redress in an American court.

The Republicans want to outsource that to the Japanese courts and make you fly to Tokyo to file your lawsuit.

If a German car blows up and burns you and your family to a crisp, Democrats believe you ought to be able to go to the American judicial system and have relief. Republicans believe you should outsource your claims to the German courts. But it gets worse than that.

If a French car fails and injures your family, Democrats believe you should go to an American court and get American justice. Republicans believe you can outsource that even to the French. We do not even have french fries in our cafeteria any more, but you would be happy to send Americans to the French judicial system.

Now, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith) took issue with what I was saying about this claim, and I want to explain to you why this is.

First, I want to tell you that the Congressional Research Service, the bipartisan, nonpartisan referee of these matters, agrees with exactly what I have said when they said, ``Consequently it would appear that in certain circumstances a United States citizen or resident injured in this country would not have a judicial forum in the United States in which to seek relief.''

The jury is closed and out. The verdict is in. Your policies have outsourced a lot of jobs, but we do not understand why you want to outsource judicial activity for American citizens. Now, why is that?

It is because there is an error apparently in drafting. I do not know if you really intended this but this is what you accomplished, and the reason is even though the statute, and excuse me if I am technical for a moment but this is an important issue. It is Americans' judicial rights. Even where the statute suggests on its face that it would allow an American to sue in any one of three places, where you live or where you are hurt or where the principal place of the business is that hurt you, there is a constitutional principle that says if that corporation does not have a minimal contact where you live or where the injury occurs you cannot sue under the United States Constitution in either one of those circumstances.

That is why the Congressional Research Service, the bipartisan or nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, has concluded that the Republican bill wants to outsource our judicial system to the German, French and Japanese judicial systems. That makes no sense whatsoever, and, frankly, I would invite a response to this as to why you would want to do that.

The Japanese, they build some okay cars, not as good as American cars of course, but their judicial system is not one that we should have to be exposed to in America. Americans should have access to the American judicial system. We should pass this substitute.

Mr. Speaker, I have tremendous respect for the chairman but

in this case the Congressional Research Service is right. Here is where they are right. It is a constitutional principle that a court in Washington, for instance, does not have jurisdiction over a Japanese corporation if they do not have minimal contact with Washington; for instance, if they do not have a retail outlet in Washington. So if a Washington resident is injured by a Japanese car, and they have got an enormous retail outlet down in California but their principal place of business, which is the language you chose in this statute, is in Tokyo, you are out of luck as an American. And I am betting on CRS on this one.

Mr. Speaker, we have a delicious debate before us because we Democrats believe if Stanley Tool tries to avoid taxes by moving to Bermuda and their tool blows up and puts out your eye, an American ought to have access to the American judicial system in front of an American jury.

The Republicans want to outsource the job to Bermuda. If a corporation goes to France and a product blows up and hurts you, we Democrats believe Americans ought to have access to the Americans judicial system. The Republicans want to outsource the jury system to Paris. We do not even have French fries in our cafeteria anymore, and the other side is outsourcing our jobs to France. The same applies to Germany and every other country. The other side has outsourced enough jobs; we are not going to allow the outsourcing of our jury system, too. Support this motion.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk tonight about three types of amnesia that I am afraid are infecting the executive branch's policy, and those three symptoms of amnesia are makings us less safe.

This weekend I went to the VFW Post in Redmond, Washington, where a group was holding a car wash to raise money to send incidentals, CDs and telephones and suntan lotion and the like, to our service personnel in Iraq. The thing that was interesting is the people who were there, including the wives and sisters and fathers of the people who are serving in Iraq, and one woman who lost her son in Iraq who came out to the car wash to help her fallen son's former colleagues in Iraq, and what was amazing to me, while these people are pulling together, there is this kind of amnesia developing to forget the loss and casualties we are suffering in Iraq. It is slipping from page 1 to page 3 to page 12 to outside of our consciousness. Frankly, I think the President could do a better job of reminding us of the loss we are suffering in Iraq rather than trying to belittle it or say it is a minimal thing.

I have heard people argue that a thousand people lost in America is not that many. I just challenge for them to say that if they had been to the car wash and talked to the mother that I did. One person who did not have to die in combat is too many.

There was a very startling occurrence that happened yesterday in this regard. Secretary of State Powell said there was no link to 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. Yet the Vice President continues in this effort.

Mr. Speaker, sometimes I think Democrats are a little too critical of President Bush. Now, it is true that he took a huge surplus and turned it into the largest fiscal deficit in American history; that is true. It is true that he promised Americans that he would protect seniors, and the next day gave Americans the largest Medicare premium increase, essentially a tax increase, in American history, of 17 percent. It is true that he has the largest loss of jobs, over 2.5 million jobs, since Herbert Hoover.

But now some Democrats have even criticized the President for refusing to take his physical and thereby squandering $1 million of flight training when he served in the National Guard. I think we need to put that in context. If he continued to fly, he may have crashed the plane.

We need to be a little less critical of this President.

Mr. Speaker, we have come here tonight, my colleagues the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and others who may join us, as a part of our continued obligation under the Iraq Watch to present a discussion and an honest critique of the administration's policy in Iraq. My colleagues and I have been engaged in this series of discussions now for several months, and we have done this for one simple purpose. We do not intend to allow the incredible commitment by

our armed services that are now engaged in Iraq to be forgotten on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Too often, people are sent into combat and then forgotten, and what the Federal Government did or did not do in sending them into combat is given little discussion and little note, but tonight of all nights, we think it is appropriate and vital for this chamber to discuss what this Federal Government did and did not do to lead us into our current predicament in Iraq. It is most appropriate for us to do this because tonight we have the very sad duty to report, as now Americans know, that we have lost 1,000 American lives in Iraq, a war started by a President under the belief and statement that weapons of mass destruction threatened the security of the United States.

Based on that statement made by the President from the chamber standing behind me some time ago, over 1,000 Americans have lost their lives, and those 1,000 Americans are from 49 States and members of every political party. They are short and tall, rural and urban, and they all served under the flag of the United States and did their duty proudly.

We, on a bipartisan basis, honor them because, no matter what they thought of their commander-in-chief's decision to go to war, they gave their highest measure of devotion to their duty, and we honor it, everyone in this chamber.

I would like to also not forget the men and women who tonight are rebuilding their shattered bodies from injuries, over 7,000 people, many of whom suffered very, very difficult injuries who tonight are recovering in our hospitals across America, in the Mideast and in Europe. Anyone who has talked to those soldiers and seen the incredible courage in their eyes when they are sitting there with pins in their legs and arms and missing limbs, and you ask them how they are doing and they say I am doing fine, sir; and you ask them what their plans are, and they say I want to get back to my unit as fast as I can; anyone who has seen those young soldiers would be incredibly proud of our people in Iraq.

But this does not reduce or obligation to hold the Federal Government accountable for its numerous mistakes in Iraq. It heightens that obligation to blow the whistle on the repeated, continued misjudgments, misstatements, incompetence, negligence and carelessness that has led to this situation in Iraq, and tonight we are going to discuss them.

I would like to, if I can, start this discussion with five rosy projections that, unfortunately, we have suffered in Iraq as a result of this administration's rosy projections. I just want to list these quickly.

Rosy projection number 1: This administration, and in the persons of the President, flew out to an aircraft carrier with a jaunty looking flight suit, landed on the deck of the carrier, proclaimed mission accomplished with a giant banner on the superstructure of that carrier. Since the President told us mission accomplished, over 800 Americans have died in Iraq. The President's rosy projections were sadly wrong, and there is an emptiness in households and families across America as a result of that wrong rosy projection.

Number 2: The President told us that as soon as we could stand up a new government, this new government would be embraced with the warmth of the Iraqis, with rose petals not only at our feet but at the new government's feet, and that this bearing up of support for the Iraqis and their new flag would bring peace and milk and honey to Iraq. Since this new government has been ``stood up,'' we have had an increase in the number of Americans killed in Iraq. Another rosy projection by this President that was flat wrong.

Number 3: The President told us by now we would have a secure Iraq, beginning to be capable of having elections. Well, what did we read in the newspapers yesterday? The fact is that huge swaths of Iraq under this administration's policies have been given over to the Taliban and their associates, the militias in Iraq. Fallujah, the place where these folks desecrated the body of four contractors, that our proud marines went in there to do battle, this administration has given up to a militia that essentially is in cahoots with the Taliban and a fundamentalist regime, and we have that now called a ``no-go zone.'' Same in Ramadi, same in Najaf, same in parts of Sadr City. The fact of the matter is the President's policies have ceded huge parts of Iraq to what he says is the enemy. Rosy projection number 3, that we have essentially given up trying to disarm these militias and kicked the can down the road where eventually our military people are going to have to encounter these militias are now arming themselves and building themselves up in these ``no-go zones.'' Rosy projection number 3 that our people are paying for.

Number four: The President told us that Iraq would pay for this. You recall the projection by Mr. Wolfowitz who came here and said that Iraqi oil was going to pay for this. Sad joke on the American taxpayers. We are now over $200 billion into it with hundreds of billions of dollars to come, with no projection of how long it will be. Wildly optimistic, and in fact, we find out that the money we have appropriated cannot even be spent because of the lack of planning for the post-conventional war situation in Iraq. Because of this administration's lack of having a plan for the peace, only 2 percent of the money we have appropriated has actually been spent in Iraq of the $18 billion. They will get around to spending it, and U.S. taxpayers will pay through the nose for it, but the fact that this administration had such a rosy projection is going to cost us over hundreds of billions of dollars to the American taxpayer. Rosy projection that was wrong, number 4.

Number 5: The President implicitly told us that there would not be war profiteering and gouging in Iraq in these hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, but in fact, we found that Halliburton, this corporation with incredible ties to this administration, has already been subject to millions of dollars of cost overruns which they cannot account for, that the Pentagon is now trying to get our money back for. In fact, they have talked about withholding 15 percent of further payments to Halliburton as a result of this lack of credibility to American taxpayer dollars. Rosy projection number 5.

So we would like to say that this President's projections have been accurate, but the sad fact is we stand here tonight with 1,000 Americans who have given their lives in Iraq. We have a continued tale of failed administration policies in Iraq, and this Nation deserves accountability for the people who have made these decisions in Iraq, which have cost us so dearly in life and treasure.

In fact, when you look at this entire administration, which has bungled this operation so badly, you cannot find a person who has essentially been held accountable for their multiple failures. There has not been essentially a person who has lost a vacation day or had their little perks taken away or their corner office.

This administration has a response to the American people when they are criticized. They simply say you are not an American if you criticize this administration. We are here to say it is not only a duty to criticize, a right to criticize this administration, it is a duty, and we are fulfilling it.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, I was just going to offer an answer on how long it was until they got body armor. It was too long. And it is unfortunate that the same people that made that mistake are still running the show in Iraq and not one of them has been held accountable for this foul-up, and we are demanding accountability.

Mr. Speaker, I will now yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. Speaker, I want to note one other thing that the administration needs to take responsibility about. The President during his speech during the Republican convention, which was quite a show, and some of us found Zell Miller mildly entertaining, there was a lot of discussion about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and there was one thing that I really respected about President Roosevelt, and that is on December 8, 1941, after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt did not suggest we bomb China, he focused on the group that attacked and killed thousands of Americans, which was the Japanese.

This President has not followed Franklin Delano Roosevelt's pattern. Roosevelt said, let us attack the enemy that has attacked us, which in our case was al Qaeda, a fundamentalist Islamic movement that this President has spent the last 2 years trying to confuse the American people, with some success, in confusing al Qaeda with Iraq, and he has done the equivalent of invading China after September 11, and we have suffered accordingly.

It is very important for us not to allow the power of propaganda to overwhelm the power of reason, and we cannot allow, with 1,000 Americans dead in Iraq, America to forget that this President had tried to whitewash the situation by calling the war in Iraq as the war on terror when there is no credible evidence of connection of Iraq with September 11, and the President and Vice President know it, and they keep saying it anyway.

The independent 9/11 Commission reached that conclusion despite the fact that the President and Vice President did everything they could to thwart the creation of the 9/11 Commission and now accept its recommendations enthusiastically.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) who has led the discussion on this subject.

The point the gentleman has made is the cost that we have suffered in addition to this horrendous loss of life is that the real war on terrorism has been injured by the war in Iraq, and I want to talk about some of the ways that has happened.

Symptom number one of a failed war on terrorism: you do not finish the job against the enemy that attacked you, and we have not finished the job in Afghanistan which is the source of the attack of September 11. September 11 came from a group trained in the camps of Afghanistan; and we appropriately, on a bipartisan basis, started a war in Afghanistan because it was necessary, but now it is, in a way, abandoned by this administration because this administration has not given what we need in Afghanistan to finish the job, to build up a meaningful stable government in Afghanistan. The very place that attacked us has been put on the back burner.

Senator Graham the other day disclosed that a year before the Iraq war started, General Franks or one of the generals told him that they had started to move Predators that were being used in the hunt for Osama bin Laden to get ready for the attack on Iraq. So we took our resources against, if I can use the 1941 example, out of the war on Japan and attacked Beijing.

I would like to add, Osama bin Laden is not only free physically, he is free apparently from the interest of the President of the United States who has not mentioned his name, as far as I can tell, for about a year. The man that he promised us he would get dead or alive, this President does not even allow his name to pass his lips because it may distract some of the attention from Iraq. That is way too free for my tastes.

I want to mention one other thing about why we have not been as successful with al Qaeda as we should have been. Obviously, cutting off the money of al Qaeda is extremely important. If you can kill the money trail, you can dry up some of their attacks on us. We found out we have more inspectors and investigators with the Department of the Treasury tracking American tourists who go to Cuba than we do tracking the money going to al Qaeda. We are spending over $200 billion a year in Iraq, but we cannot fund enough people to find Osama bin Laden and really cut off his money. We are more interested in Cuba and Iraq. That is a distortion.

One other thing I want to mention. We have a tremendous threat in this country, and the President is right about one thing, that there is a real threat against this country. One of those threats is there are 20,000, in a sense, loose nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union that are not in secure locations tonight, that some terrorists could get ahold of. But what have we done to try to increase our rate of locking up that fissionable material so al Qaeda cannot get ahold of it since September 11? What has this administration done? Essentially nothing to improve our efforts to try to lock up that fissionable material. They have not increased their appropriation, as far as I know, a dime to get rid of this material that al Qaeda, we know, is interested in using to attack us. Why not? They are spending $200 billion in Iraq to chase weapons of mass destruction that there were zero weapons of mass destruction, zero nuclear weapons in Iraq. We know there are 20,000 nuclear weapons that are running around the former Soviet Union, some of which were locked up in a chicken shed with a little lock on it you could break with bicycle lock busters, literally; and this administration will not put more money into that effort to lock up those loose nukes. This is a misprioritization.

I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. Speaker, I would point out since the Republicans wanted to show respect for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Roosevelt in the throes of World War II did not say, let us all enjoy a tax cut. He said, let us tighten our belts, grow victory gardens, buy Liberty Bonds, and get this job done. But this President is not willing to ask Americans to make those sacrifices for reasons that we have to ask ourselves why, but he will not do it.

And when we talk about the people whose lives are on the line in Iraq, there is a draft already going on in that country. There is a silent draft, and that silent draft is if one was in military service at any time in the last 2 years or 20 years by the sum of what they count, they are potentially going to haul them back in and send them to Baghdad, and that is what they are doing. There is a silent draft going on right now, and it is unfair to the families who had their lives disrupted, who thought their military service was over. And thousands of Americans are getting dragged off of their jobs and away from their families this month because of the poor planning that went on.

I want to mention, just talking about the future if I can, as Laurel and Hardy said, you know, this is a fine mess that we are in. But the question is, what do we do now? Because we are in it, and we are in it together. Republicans are in it, Democrats are in it, urban and rural, we are all in this mess together, so what are we going to do?

Let me suggest that there are some things we need when it comes to a leader of America right now to find a way to solve the problem in Iraq. I would suggest there are three things we need in a leader right now, in a President right now.

Number one, we need a President who can have the respect and good working relationship with the rest of the world, to try to get the rest of the world to pitch in and help in Iraq. We need someone who has not burned his bridges with friends or potential allies, someone who has not offended the rest of the world, someone who has not ended up getting a 90 percent disapproval rating with some of our purported allies on our policy in Iraq, someone who can really lead a world alliance. We have to ask whether we have a President who is capable of that right now.

The second thing we need is we need a President who is willing to fire the boobs and incompetents who have made ridiculous decisions that have cost thousands of American lives and injuries. We need somebody who is

willing to clear the decks of the individuals who ought to be held accountable for the lack of body armor, the lack of armor, the poor planning, the decision now to let these militias go out and breed where our people are going to suffer eventually when we have to face them. These people need to go. We need a President who is not great friends with these people and who will not fire them. I have to seriously question whether we have a leader right now in the White House who is capable of that.

The third thing we need is we need a President who is basically willing to take a fresh approach in Iraq. We need a new strategy in Iraq. We need someone who is truly willing to break with the past, try new approaches, talk to different people, hire different staff, get new intelligence and get new strategies in Iraq.

Unfortunately, this President has a quality of refusing to change, no matter what the evidence is. The evidence be darned, he is going to continue the route he chose.

That is not good enough right now for America. We need better and we need a fresh approach. This country needs to ask whether we have a leader in the White House who is capable of adopting a fresh approach in Iraq. That is a serious question Americans will be asking this November, and I hope it is something they chew on.

I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel).

Mr. Speaker, I thought I heard everything here, but citing the Dred Scott decision in support of this amendment is like citing the Ku Klux Klan in support of civil rights legislation. This amendment is a Soviet style attack on American freedom, and the reason requires a little look at history.

The former Soviet Union had a Constitution, like we do. The former Soviet Union had a Bill of Rights, like we do; very similar to our Bill of Rights. But the former Soviet Union had another little trick. Their little trick was that the executive and legislative branches prohibited the judicial system of the former Soviet Union from enforcing their Bill of Rights, and what did they get? Tyranny.

The instructive lesson of the Soviet Union is that we should not go down the path of getting rid of, yes, frustrating, nonunderstandable courts that sometimes do not agree with Congress. But I guess the authors of this amendment feel that they are smarter than Thomas Jefferson and smarter than any court that ever lived.

This is not the only right that is going to be on the chopping block. Once we do away with the independence of the American judicial system, which has never been done in American history, ever; this Chamber has never, ever cut the knees out of the American Bill of Rights in American history, and this is not like the first time we have a controversial issue that may end up in the courts. Civil rights was controversial. Gun rights are controversial. It may be controversial if this Congress passes a gun rights bill like the Brady Bill and then it goes to the U.S. judicial system to see if it is constitutional, that is controversial. But where will this stop?

I may ask the drafters, why did you stop here? Why, if you believe the PATRIOT Act is constitutional, why do you not just do away with the Supreme Court and not let them review that as well?

This is a first step to tyranny. It ought to be rejected.