Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I speak in favor of this bill for the fundamental reason that this protects an extremely successful tenet of the American innovation economy. I look around my district and what I see is a collection of companies, 10, 20, 30 employees doing incredible things and frequently using stock options. These are companies which may be on the cusp of actually developing a cure for diabetes, a company with a couple dozen employees which may develop a cure for stroke, a company with a couple dozen employees that have a solution so you cannot see muzzle fire from our soldiers' rifles. These type of companies use this system to bring in talent, and bringing in talent is absolutely fundamental to the innovation economy of America.

Stock options have been one of the most successful mechanisms to make sure that when someone has a good idea, they can marry it with good brains around them who can come in without a paycheck. Let us preserve and protect the ability to use stock options.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with my colleagues information that raises serious concerns about the development of a free-market system in Russia. Many of my constituents who develop products such as software and biological drugs rely on the enforcement of strong intellectual property rights laws and copyright protection, and therefore have an interest in ensuring that countries such as Russia maintain fair and enforceable laws in this regard. For this reason, there is cause for concern regarding the Russian government placing significant pressure on SPI, the company that produces the Stolichnaya beverage, in an effort to reclaim the intellectual property rights of its brands. Stolichnaya, nicknamed Stoli to many Americans, is one of many brands of production the Russian government is attempting to reclaim from SPI in the wake of the privatization of other beverage companies in the 1990's.

I am concerned about the implications of such actions on international global property rights, Russia's potential WTO and G-8 membership, and the direction of Russian Democracy and rule of law. This case is emblematic of a general situation and is part of a pattern of disrespect for the rule of law that has unnerved foreign investors who are concerned about long-term economic, legal and political stability of Russia. If we are to hope to crack down on the copyright infringements on software produced in the Puget Sound, I believe that proper enforcement of this issue is an important step.

I would like to offer my colleagues some background on SPI and its issues.

SPI is a Dutch-based company that owns the trademark rights to a large number of beverage brands including Russia's most famous brands, Stolichnaya and Moscovskaya as well as Russkaya and Limonnaya. It is my understanding that the SPI Group acquired the rights for these trademarks by means of buying out the minority shareholders of a Russian company, which owned the above-mentioned trademarks worldwide and was privatized between 1990-1992. It also assumed a $50 million debt that was inherited by the previous owner from its state-owned predecessor. SPI has since invested another $100 million to develop into a successful international competitor.

The SPI Group has registered the trademarks for the 43 brands in more than 150 countries. It has a 10-year distribution deal with Allied Domecq in the U.S. as well as a distribution deal with First Drinks in the UK

and Bacardi in Greece. Last year, SPI recorded sales of $680 million. This success, however, has merely brought the company to the forefront of the debate over who owns these trademarks.

It is also my understanding that from 2000 onwards, certain entities within the Russian State have started various actions against SPI to obtain its trademark registrations.

In late 2001, in a case brought by the Russian State Trademark Organization, the Russian courts ruled that the original privatization of the company that owned the brand before SPI was invalid (on a technicality) and returned the rights for 17 brands controlled (now) by the SPI Group to the Russian Ministry of Agriculture.

Since then, SPI, while producing the product in Russia, has been forced to move its bottling plant to Riga in Latvia, after the Russian authorities seized and blocked its exports from the Russian port of Kaliningrad. Various heated legal battles have been fought in a number of Russian and foreign courts as SPI continues to sell Stolichnaya internationally. In Russia, a company resurrected by the Government markets its own Stolichnaya brand after confiscating back the trademark there.

On 4 March 2002, the Leninsk-Kuznetskiy City Court seemingly resolved the dispute by ruling that the Ministry of Agriculture had illegally registered 17 trademarks belonging to SPI, including the Stolichnaya trademark, and ordered that SPI be reinstated as the registered trademark owner.

However, Russian authorities ignored the Leninsk-Kuznetskiy City Court's ruling and employed intimidation and police-state tactics to grab the company's assets and trademark rights for its own purposes. Some examples of these tactics include:

The Government's Federal Security Service, in a letter dated March 5, 2002, ordering Kaliningrad Customs to prohibit bulk export of Stolichnaya produced by SPI in Kaliningrad.

The confiscation of more than 150,000 cases of SPI products seized in Kaliningrad along with related packaging material.

The filing of criminal charges levied against Audrey Skurikhin, president of SPI Spirits-Russia, and its Kaliningrad facility.

As a result of these events, it is my understanding that the Ministry of Agriculture currently produces these products in Russia with virtually identical labeling and uses libel and intimidation to force distributors and customers to stop doing business with SPI. In addition, the Russian Patent Agency gave the rights for the re- nationalized trademarks to the newly incorporated company of the Russian Ministry for Agriculture.

International courts have ruled in favor of SPI. Court rulings in October 2002 in Hamburg, Germany and May 2003 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, rejected the lawsuits brought against SPI, substantiating SPI's claims.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, the SPI case is about something larger and more fundamental for Russia and its relationship with the United States and other nations of the world--adherence to the rule of law and political, social and economic freedom. SPI is an example of the need to uphold the rule of law and ensure a better business environment for Russian business. A stable and democratic Russia, based on a rule of law, is critical to U.S. interests; not only for U.S. firms interested in doing business there, but also for the overall, long-term U.S.- Russia relationship. Many of my constituents depend on adherence to the rule of law and copyright protections to ensure that their products, particularly software and biotechnology, are not stolen. We should not let this SPI case set precedence or be a harbinger for software and other U.S. industries.

Mr. Speaker, we come to the floor this evening in the continued responsibility of keeping a very close eye on this administration's policy in Iraq in the continued series of what we style the Iraq watch.

I will be joined by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) this evening, and hopefully the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland.)

We have been now coming once a week to the floor of the House because we believe that the House has a duty not to sweep under the rug the accumulation of errors, misjudgments and deceptions that have been foisted on the American people by the Bush administration leading to the war in Iraq.

The reason we are here every week is that there is too much tendency to forget the sacrifices that are being made by our men and women in uniform in Iraq; to treat them as sort of background noise; to sort of say, well, the casualties are down to several a week, so we can just sort of forget about Iraq. That is wrong.

We have been here for months blowing the whistle on this administration's repeated failures in Iraq, and we will continue to do so, because this Nation owes it to our men and women in uniform to continue to be vigilant about what this administration is doing and not doing in Iraq.

Perhaps, even more importantly, we owe it to the cause of democracy itself not to allow it to go unnoted when a President of the United States starts a war based on deception of the American people. We are here to say there is perhaps no greater abuse of democracy, no more dangerous event in the great American democratic experiment, than for an American President to foist falsehoods on the American people to start a war, which we believe occurred in this case.

Now, I would like to start our discussion tonight by quickly setting the stage for the history of the Iraq war to date. Unfortunately, this administration has made not 1, not 2, but 10 serious mistakes, deceptions, errors of judgment, negligence, and carelessness that have led to the troubles that our people are facing in Iraq. I would like to run through those very quickly before I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

There are 10 major errors the Bush administration has made in Iraq. Error number 1: This administration told America in no uncertain terms, with no doubt, with no vagueness, with no ambiguity whatsoever, that it was required to start a war in Iraq because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The President said, in a culmination of his multiple statements, and this must not be forgotten; on August 26, 2002, the President said, ``Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.'' And there was not only no weapons of mass destruction, there was plenty of doubt. This President's statement was false, and this was falsehood number 1.

Error number 2: The President told us on repeated occasions, and his administration, that they had clear, convincing and cogent evidence that there was a working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda which led to the attack on September 11. They told us this over and over and over again, and now that the evidence has been made clear from the multiple reports that have come in on a bipartisan basis, this President's statement that Saddam Hussein was associated with the attack on this country, this venal, evil attack on this country was false, and it led to a war. And there is no greater error, breach of democracy than an American President saying that when this was false. And it continues to this day. With all of this mountain of evidence showing the falsehood of this President's statement, the Vice President of the United States has the chutzpa, if one can stretch that word that far, to try to continue to foist this on the American people, and it is falsehood number 2.

Number 3: The American people were told repeatedly that we would be welcome as liberators in Iraq. We would be welcome with rose petals at our feet. We would be welcome with nothing but clear sailing because the people would see us as liberators. There is no question in the belief that Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant, and there is no question he abused thousands of Iraqis. But this President made a massive misjudgment by listening to Mr. Chalabi, one of the great sycophants in failures of predictions in international history, and the President was suckered and the American people were suckered by this misstatement, and we have paid dearly with our treasure and our lives and the health of our service personnel in Iraq.

Falsehood number 4: This President ignored the clear, professional judgment of people who said we needed to have more boots on the ground to prevent anarchy in Iraq, but this President ignored that advice because he has wanted to fight this fight on the cheap from day 1, and we have suffered as a result. General Shinseki told him that we needed several hundred thousand people in Iraq to quell disturbance after the Iraq war, and he ignored it, and our people paid dearly for error and falsehood number 4.

Number 5: The President said we did not need the United Nations, we could go in there alone, as long as we had the Philippines and a couple of other small island nations. Well, the Philippines have now withdrawn. This President decided to go it alone in Iraq, and our people have suffered dearly. Falsehood number 5.

Falsehood number 6: The President said that by implication, everything would be aboveboard. There would not be any war profiteering in Iraq, people would not make millions of dollars worth of profits in Iraq. Now we see Halliburton, this company so intimately tied with this administration, reaping millions of dollars of taxpayers' money, wrongfully. The GAO has reported on it. This is a scandal, and Harry Truman rooted out world profiteering in World War II. We need to get to the bottom of this war profiteering by Halliburton and the like. Falsehood number 6.

Falsehood number 7, and error number 7: This President and this administration led us down one of the most

embarrassing breaches of American integrity, and that is the horrendous occasions of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, and it happened because people at the top of this administration gave a green light to stretching our well-accepted rules of following the Geneva Convention. The memos are now in and public information that multiple memos were sent saying that we did not have to give the protections of the Geneva Convention to people. This is something we do to protect our own troops so that they will be not abused if they are captive. This is a long held principle of America. But out of hubris, out of outright arrogance, this administration ignored those rules and we have suffered in the eyes of the world grievously. Make no mistake, 99.9 percent of our troops are doing a magnificent job, but this was error number 7.

Error number 8: This President sent American troops into battle without adequate armor. Even today, our troops are driving around thin- skinned Humvees that should have armor, and I believe our people have been injured with shrapnel grievously.

Error number 9, and this is one that is going to haunt us for a long time: The President started and continued a war with absolutely no plan whatsoever in how to pay for it. He has tried to hide the ball over and over again on the costs of this war to the American taxpayer, and he is still doing it. This year, this budget my colleagues in the majority party put out with $25 billion, we know it is going to be $60 billion next year. There is no question about this. Why did they hide this information from the American people? Do they think the American people will be so sleepy they will ignore the fact that another $60 billion will go to Iraq instead of schools and health care in America? Do they think that will be forgotten? I do not think so. This deficit is now in the billions of dollars and it is growing rapidly because the President wants our children to pay for the Iraq war rather than us. And this is that continued attitude of trying to fight this war on the cheap. This President needs to be honest and forthright with the American people about the real costs of this war, which are grievous. Error number 9.

And error number 10: And this one rankles me greatly as a person who has read the casualty reports of what hot steel and shrapnel has done to our troops, sending our troops into combat without flak jackets, and it took us a year-and-a-half to get this administration to get flak jackets. Is that too much to ask of an administration for our troops? Error number 10.

Those are a quick summary of the errors that have been made in Iraq. Today we heard about some new ones. We found out that, in fact, it was Iran that was allowing 10 of the terrorists who injured us so terribly on September 11, they were passing through Iran, not Iraq. The President never leveled with us and told us that. It turns out it was Iran that was trying to buy the Iranian yellow cake, not Iraq. It is not a good enough excuse that they are one letter apart. That is not a good enough excuse for this President.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I think it is important to realize what this President's unilateralism has done to the American taxpayer by putting it in context, vis-a-vis the first Iraq war, because the first President Bush did in fact work with the rest of the world community, and as a result, the rest of the world paid well over the majority. I think it was close to 80, 90 percent of the total cost of the first Iraq war. It was not borne by the American taxpayer.

But the cost of this second President Bush's go-it-alone strategy to the American taxpayer is enormous, because as of May the American taxpayers had spent $174 billion. Now, to put that in perspective, we are going to pass the total inflation-adjusted cost of World War I sometime early next year in the cost of Iraq, which was $199 billion. And, again, the insidious part about this is that the President, because he is unwilling to do what Winston Churchill did, which was to call for blood, toil, sweat and tears, this President just wants to put this war on the credit card, and every single dollar of the Iraq war is going to deficit spending.

We have a $7 trillion debt. This President Bush's budget is out of balance $368 billion a year, and he is adding every single dollar of this going straight on our national debt. And it is our children that are going to suffer as

a result of this. Why? Because the President is unwilling to really face the truth in Iraq. He was unwilling to face the truth about weapons of mass destruction. He was unwilling to face the truth about a purported connection with al Qaeda. He was unwilling to face the truth about how many troops we were going to need. He was unwilling to face the truth about the armor that we needed. He was unwilling to face the truth, you name it, about anything you can think of in Iraq. And this is a continuing sore on our fiscal house as well as the suffering that we have had.

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

The fact of the matter is, and the sad fact is that this administration has taken its eye off the ball of the people who killed almost 3,000 Americans on September 11, al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.

When is the last time you actually heard the President of the United States say the name Osama bin Laden? It is like he is the great forgotten person in this terrible tragedy that we suffered. I remember him and I think that our focus ought to remain on him.

Let me give an anecdote why it is not. We found out the other day in the Committee on Financial Services, the secret of stopping terrorists, you cut off their money. You cut off their money, you kill the beast, in part.

We found out that this administration has more people, more agents of the Treasury Department, this is the agency that is supposed to be in charge of lopping off the conduit of funds to al Qaeda, this administration has more agents chasing American tourists going to Cuba than it does chasing off money that goes to al Qaeda.

That is just one sort of sad indication that this administration has not focused on where the real threat has been which is al Qaeda which is still out there and which is still a meaningful threat.

I bet they have got 80 bean counters that the American taxpayer are funding who work for Halliburton. This administration has no problem dishing out the dough for Halliburton and we cannot get 80 inspectors to track down Osama bin Laden. How is that for a sad commentary on taking your eye off the ball.

Now, I want to suggest how this has happened a little bit, how this emphasis has been misplaced. And it has because of this President's administration's focus on Iraq and their efforts to hoodwink the American people into believing that the real culprit or at least one of the culprits behind September 11 was Saddam Hussein. I want to spend just a moment talking about that because I think one of the single most serious affronts and dangers in a democratic system is for elected officials, particularly in the powerful position of the President, to tell things to the American people which are false that end up starting a war.

We found out that last September a poll of American people said that 65 percent of American people believed that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks on us on September 11, and Saddam Hussein has a list longer than my arm of his depredations against the Iraqi people. But 65 percent of the Americans had been convinced by someone that Iraq was behind the attack on September 11.

Now, who was that someone? Where did the American people get that idea which has turned out to be false and it is pretty clear where they got it. They got it from the President of the United States who was standing right there and tried to convince, and he did by and large, convince the American people of something that is false. The President did not let this slip on one iota. We all make mistakes and misspeak on occasion. This was a concerted, organized and consistent effort to fool the American people into believing that the culprit was Saddam Hussein behind September 11.

Look at some of his quotes. May 1, 2003, the President says, ``The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding.'' Vice President Cheney, September 14, 2003, says, ``If we are 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 the many years but most especially on September 11.''

What do we find the truth is? Our intelligence people knew at that time but was shielded from the American people? The bipartisan committee under the chairmanship of a Republican Governor Keen concluded there was ``no credible evidence of a link between al Qaeda and the attacks against the United States.'' No credible evidence. Not some credible evidence but not much. Not just a scintilla of credible evidence. Not a couple of ounces.

They said no credible evidence, but this President stood right there and started a war based on a falsehood, and he knew he was doing this to the American people and he is responsible for this. He is personally accountable for this and the American people need to hold him accountable for this depredation and affront to democracy as soon as they can.

Mr. Speaker, I will answer that question. The reason we attacked Iraq is that the day after September 11, maybe it was 2 days after, it has been reported that the Secretary of Defense goes in to the President and says now is our chance, now is our chance to go after Iraq. This was like 48 hours after September 11. There was no evidence whatsoever that Iraq was associated with September 11, but this President and his political advisers knew one thing. They knew if they could fool the American people into believing that Saddam Hussein was behind September 11, the neo-cons could con the American people into supporting a war in Iraq, and to some degree, their maliciousness was successful to the detriment of our proud men and women in service who are there tonight in the heat of Iraq, 130 degrees, suffering, dying in the sands of Iraq because an American President's administration was not forthright with the American people and consciously, willfully gave false information to our fellow countrymen.

This is not just a little happenstance. We have a memo from a political operative of the President about how to talk about this. This was a cold-blooded, calculated act, and you talk about having your missed priority and what country you would be involved in.

I have been asked by one of my constituents if I have seen the movie ``Fahrenheit 9/11.'' He said, Jay, is it true, did the President allow the family members of Osama bin Laden, who are Saudi Arabian, to fly out of the country when all the other planes were grounded in the country? Did this administration let his friends from Saudi Arabia fly out of the country without a full and thorough investigation of their relationship? Did that really happen?

The sad fact is, yes, it did, and we have discovered that, in fact, did occur in our Committee on Financial Services hearing, and I pressed for an answer of who made that decision. I never got that answer, who made that decision, and 3 days later, the President is on the south portico of the White House smoking cigars with Prince Bandahar, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, where two-thirds of the terrorists came from that attacked this country, and we let their families fly out without even a decent interrogation of them. Talk about having a mixed- up relationship about who our enemies are and who our friends are.

Well, I am going to close with a couple of comments.

We are here to discuss a basic principle of American democracy, and that is, accountability, that people in public service need to be held accountable, both for their successes and their failures.

There is a group that we should recognize for valor and effectiveness and honor in our government and our government personnel, and that is our Army, navy, air corps, Coast Guard, marines, who are serving in Iraq. Those folks deserve to be held accountable by being praised for their tremendous service to this country in difficult circumstances tonight, and they are still continuing to suffer the pangs of war tonight, and we have come here to make sure that their sacrifice is not forgotten and that we treat them with as great an honor as we can and that we restore our Veterans Administration health care system so that when they come home they are not exposed to the cuts in the veterans health care system that this administration has proposed.

This group of public servants, we cannot forget their contribution. It should never be forgotten, but there is another group of public servants whose massive failures and deceit should not be forgotten either, and that is the Bush administration who has made at least 10 major failure, falsehoods, negligence and carelessness, to the great cost of the American public, and those public servants should not be forgotten in their failure either and should be held accountable, and we will continue to have this discussion until they are.

Would the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) like to close? Do you have any closing comments?

Mr. Chairman, while I was watching the spectacular fireworks July 4 over the Washington Monument, I was reminded that our Revolution and experiment in freedom and liberty is still going on. We are still faced with struggles to protect our basic freedoms. We are still faced with the need to occasionally rein in unchecked authority of the executive branch of government.

We still need to stand up for the proposition that no Chief Executive should be able to throw into a dark, deep cell an American citizen without eventually affording that citizen a trial. That is a basic American proposition.

We still believe that reviewing an incarceration decision by the judicial system is the best way to ensure both security and liberty. And make no mistake, we face real threats to our physical safety, and those miscreants ought to be punished to the full extent of the law.

But we have always founded our democracy on the proposition that detention ultimately must be subject to a hearing and a review, and we should not abandon that principle now out of fear. In the words of Supreme Court Justice Stevens, we ``have created a unique and unprecedented threat to the freedom of every American citizen,'' and that ``unconstrained executive detention for the purpose of investigating and preventing subversive activity is the hallmark of the Star Chamber.''

Freedom is not free. It demands us to stand up against threats to freedom. It calls for us to speak against unchecked executive authority, just like what was done in 1776. And while I disagree with the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman), I am against the right of any President to throw someone in a dark cell and never give him a trial.

Well, I appreciate this, and I would like to contrast the phony, alleged sovereignty in Iraq with the real sovereignty and democracy in the United States; and this is a thought I had while sitting on the West Lawn of the Capitol watching the fireworks that were so spectacular on July 4th over the Washington Monument. And as I was looking at the fireworks, I was

thinking about some of our work on the Iraq Watch, because the thought struck me that the reason we became a democracy, and such a strong one, is we had people who were rebellious and questioning and demanding against their government.

We had a bunch of people in the 18th century who were rebellious to King George, who abused the trust that this monarch had of his people, who was not honest with his people, who was fraudulent with his people, that got his people into difficult positions without their consent. And the thought struck me that that rebellious, demanding, questioning attitude that the patriots had that started this country is the same attitude of folks who are questioning this President who has not told the truth about the American people that started this war; and we ended up a sovereign country because we are demanding.

And I just note that as a theme tonight of our Iraq Watch that we demand the truth from our government, and the truth is that this phony allegation of sovereignty in Iraq is what I might call rose petal number 512, because this entire Iraq policy has not been based on reality. It has been based on a series of rose petals. Number one was we were told by Mr. Wolfowitz, rose petals literally would be strewn at our feet. Rose petal number two is when we were told that when we just caught Uday Hussein, the insurgency would stop. Then we were told when the other Hussein brother was caught, the insurgency would stop.

Rose petal number 300, I think was when they said Saddam was caught, the insurgency would collapse. Rose petal number 412 was when they said all of these people who are doing violent acts in Iraq, they are just a bunch of foreigners, and as soon as we get the foreigners out, it is not the Iraqi people who were upset we were running their country, it is just these people from Syria.

Turned out yesterday we found, like, 5 percent of the people in our custody are outside of Iraq. The problem we have got is some Iraqis we are battling with are another rose petal. And this is the ultimate rose petal that this administration is trying to foist on us, the American people, that unfortunately is not going to work. We lost three Marines today following the ``sovereignty'' rose petal.

The fact is we have got to face reality in Iraq. This administration has never faced reality in Iraq. This administration has consistently given us misinformation; and until this administration changes its attitude, or the people in the White House change, we are going to be in trouble in Iraq.

You know, look at the situation. We keep hearing about, oh, there is nothing but good news in Iraq, about all these rebuilding programs, and we have people who are working very hard, people in the military are working hard. I am sure some of the people at Halliburton are working hard, too. It is too bad they are charging us twice as much for meals as they are supposed to be, but I am sure they are working hard.

But when an assessment was done, I believe by the GAO, they found that less than 2 percent, less than 2 percent of the reconstruction projects that we voted in October to fund have been done; 140 out of 2,300 reconstruction projects have been done. Electricity is still not working in Baghdad as much as it was for the average person before the war.

Yet we continue to get these rose petals that the administration tries to feed us, and it is this type of attitude based on falsehood and mysticism that have got us in this problem.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to ask the question why we are in this fatal, mortal, disastrous situation in Iraq. Why are we in this situation where we are calling up people whose military service was essentially over? Why? We have put two of the training brigades that act as the enemy at various forts around this country, they pose as the enemy, and that is why we have such a well-trained Army. We have three of those Army units, and two of them have now been sent to Iraq to fight the Iraqi insurgents. We are not training our soldiers adequately.

Why are we in this debacle? I want to suggest it is just a continuation of the movie ``South Pacific.'' Those World War II veterans remember that there was a song called ``Happy Talk,'' happy, happy, happy talk; and that is what this administration has planned a war over was happy talk.

Look at Paul Wolfowitz, the Assistant Secretary of Defense who came to us and told us that the American taxpayers would not have to pay a dollar for this operation. Remember those predictions?

That is right. He said the Iraqi oil is going to pay for all of this. Look what he said the other day when he was asked what happened. He said, ``I think there was probably too great a willingness to believe that once we got to 55 people on the black list, the rest of those killers would stop fighting.''

Talk about rose-colored glasses, where people are committing suicide bombings to think that the next day, they were going to join the chamber of commerce, when we decided there was a new government in town. This was happy talk that is resulting in the deaths of our soldiers today and the incapacitation of the greatest military on Earth.

Just to give an example of how bad it is, I will tell my colleagues, if I were a soldier holding a 50-caliber on the top

of a Humvee, I would be proud of the people I serve with; but I would not be very proud of the civilian folks who have gotten me in this predicament on the streets of Baghdad.

Look at this answer from General Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the civilians of the intelligence community and the lack of intelligence that our soldiers have been given. He was asked recently during Senate testimony whether the Iraqi insurgency was being coordinated from a central hub, and he responded, ``The intelligence community as far as I know will not give you an answer because they can't give me an answer.''

So we have these young men and women posted on streets in Iraq and the civilian folks have not given them intelligence to figure out if this is even a centrally planned insurgency. This is a huge, ineffective, incapable, negligent planning of a war; and we have not even started talking about how we got into the war.

Mr. Speaker, I want to note getting back to the war on terrorism, where is Osama bin Laden? Where is Osama bin Laden? Why is the President not talking about Osama bin Laden, who is free tonight threatening our citizens where they live in our neighborhoods?

We found out last week that this administration is spending five times more money tracking people who travel to Cuba than they are trying to interdict the money going to Osama bin Laden, who is continuing a threat to this country.

This is one example of this administration taking their eye off the ball of the guy who killed almost 3,000 Americans. We are going to continue this discussion.

Mr. Chairman, I am very disappointed in my Republican colleagues on the Committee on Rules who did not allow the House to consider an effort to get refunds from Enron for our consumers. But, nonetheless, I want to rise to defend the Republican Vice President of the United States who this morning is taking some criticism and grief because he used some non-king's English on the floor of the Senate while discussing Halliburton.

I wanted to put that in context, because, you know, that happens to people sometimes when they get angry. For instance, when my consumers open up their power billings in Snohomish County, Washington, and find out they have gone up 52 percent because Enron has stolen millions of dollars from them, sometimes they think, if not say, an expletive.

Sometimes when people find out that millions of dollars were stolen from them, but FERC refused to lift a finger to help them get their money back, sometimes my constituents at least think for a moment of using something that is not in the dictionary.

Sometimes when my constituents find out that this administration refused to lift a finger to help the West Coast as we were going down in flames, sometimes my constituents think about using language that is not acceptable in Sunday school.

And sometimes when my constituents find out that when we went on a bipartisan basis to the vice president of the United States and begged him to help us solve this problem, because 32 percent of all the generating capacity was turned off at the moment that the stoplights were out in California, and he looked at us, and obviously someone was gaming the system, obviously the Enrons of the world were manipulating the system, obviously there were violations of Federal law, he looked at us and said, ``You know what your problem is? You just don't understand economics.''

Well, we do understand economics. We just do not understand Enronomics, and we do not understand how this administration could turn its back on Americans.

We should forgive the Vice President for his momentary lapse, but we should never forgive this administration for failing to stand up to Enron.

Madam Chairman, blaming the Enron scandal on Bill Clinton, with all due respect, give us a break. The only malediction in this country you have not laid at the feet of Bill Clinton is Dick Cheney's vocabulary malfunction on the Senate floor, and I suppose that will be next.

We listen to these tapes, and the Enron traders were scandalous scoundrels who were smart. Do my colleagues know what they said on these tapes? We cannot wait until George Bush is President because maybe then we will have Ken Lay as Secretary of Energy.

They understood whose side their bread was buttered and they got what they wanted. They got an administration that sat on their hands while Enron got into our pockets to the tune of over $8 billion, and they did nothing. And now the Republican Party, and we very much appreciate the gentleman from Ohio's (Mr. Hobson) agreeing to this small little amendment, but you are denying us the ability for this Chamber to do exactly what the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) says we should do: change the law, if that is necessary, to get refunds from Enron. You will not allow this Chamber to vote on that.

The gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) comes here and says, If you do not like the law, change it, but we will not allow a vote to do it.

Let me tell my colleagues why maybe that is necessary. We need one or two things to happen. The fact of the matter is we have written FERC. I have wrote and many other Members have written FERC saying that they have concluded there was a scandal, they have concluded there was theft, they have concluded there was manipulation, but they refuse to give us refunds. And what did Mr. Pat Wood write back and say to me? ``Therefore, FDA Section 206 does not permit retroactive refund relief for rates covering periods prior to the refund effective date established on complaint or the initiation of Commission investigation, even if the Commission determines that such past rates were unjust or unreasonable.''

It does not matter how many of these records we get. Your administration under George Bush and Dick Cheney, friends of Ken Lay, are not going to act. Your administration has said if we get a videotape of Ken Lay using all kinds of expletives to take money out of our pockets, you have decided you are not going to act. And that is wrong.

The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) says we cannot allow an amendment because this is an appropriation bill. My question is I would like to know the date the House of Representatives, which has now spurned two efforts to get relief from Enron, I want to know the date the House of Representatives is going to give Americans an opportunity to vote to get refunds on an Enron amendment.

I am going to ask the gentleman a real question. What date is this House going to vote to do that?

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Madam Chairman, I reclaim my time. The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) is incapable of giving us a date.

I would like to yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), if he would be so kind, if he is comfortable with this, in advising us in what situation he may allow to come to the floor of this House an amendment.

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Madam Chairman, I think I understand the nature of the gentleman's argument. But the problem that we have on this side is that not only have we offered an amendment in the appropriations process to allow refunds for Americans who have been gouged by Enron, but we also offered essentially the same amendment on the energy bill that was clearly germane to the issue, clearly would have been allowable, and under his leadership in the Committee on Rules, it was refused to be allowed under the energy bill.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to yield to the gentleman, at the Chair's discretion.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment at this time.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I intend to withdraw my amendment, but prior to that I would like to enter into a colloquy with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson).

First, I would like to thank the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson) and

the ranking member, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky) for their continued support for funding the cleanup at the Hanford site in Washington. And I want to particularly thank Chairman Hobson for his stalwart work in ending this practice of dumping waste in unlined trenches. He has truly been remarkable, and the people of the State of Washington appreciate his efforts.

The Department of Energy has been seeking legislative authority to reclassify high-level radioactive waste as ``waste incidental to reprocessing.'' This high-level waste contains highly toxic radionuclides stored in underground tanks at sites in the State of Washington, South Carolina, Idaho, and New York. In agreement with these States and with Congress, the Department is required to remove as much of these wastes as is technically feasible.

In order to achieve its target deadline for cleaning up these tanks, the Department now argues that it requires the authority to reclassify some of the waste at the bottom of the tanks as ``incidental waste,'' so that these wastes may be left on site or disposed of in a manner that does not live up to the federal agreement. Such authority is currently disputed by many of the involved States, who argue that the long-term impacts of such an action are unknown and potentially harmful to human health.

Does the gentleman agree that it is the intent of Congress that the Department engage in fair and reasonable negotiations with the States and involved parties?

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman.

And would the gentleman agree that any strategy to resolve the issue should be consistent nationwide?

Mr. Chairman, finally, does the gentleman agree that the House should strongly encourage the conferees to the defense authorization bill to retain the language in the House Report requiring the Secretary of Energy to engage the National Research Council to study the Department's plans to manage its high-level waste streams instead of providing the Department blanket reclassification authority?

Once again reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for his efforts to move the DOE in the right direction.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Offered By: Mr. Inslee

Amendment No. 7: At the end of the bill, before the short

title, insert the following:

Mr. Speaker, in seeking a just and lasting peace in this region, I will be supporting this resolution, because it does recognize a fundamental change in Israeli policy of now withdrawing from at least a portion of the occupied territories, and we should recognize that although this seems an obvious first step, it is difficult in Israel; and we should recognize that accomplishment.

But there are two points I want to make. First, should these parties negotiate ultimately some residence in Israel of a number of Palestinians that does not threaten the Jewish character of the Israeli state, this Nation should not discourage that decision by these parties.

And, secondly, we should not act as enablers by silence in either party's taking actions that makes peace impossible. We should not enable Palestinians' violence by not being vocal against it, and we should not enable Israeli continued expansion in the West Bank, which is happening today.

I stand in unison with my Israeli friends who are speaking out against the continued expansion in the settlements in the West Bank, because it is an impediment to ultimate settlement.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment addresses the clear American values of making sure that the 700,000 men and women who are so ably performing their duties today as part of our war against terrorism as civilian employees at the Department of Defense retain their American rights of collective bargaining, their American rights of due process, their American rights of an appeal if they have been abused on the job, their American rights to be treated based on merit in the performance of their jobs rather than on politics and patronage.

Our amendment, quite simply, assures that no money will be spent in this bill to deprive them of those statutorily guaranteed rights that we have built up on a bipartisan basis over the last several decades. This will assure that that scaffolding that provides those 700,000 Americans with that protection will not be stripped away.

Why is this important? This issue became paramount to me when I welcomed the USS Vincent back from the Afghan theater. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) and I helicoptered out to it, it was quite an experience as she came back in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, and we talked to the sailors on board.

The sailors told us they had launched and recovered I think over 10,000 sorties and had not lost a pilot, and that the reason they had done that had been because of the exquisitely professional performance of a lot of people who are of those 700,000 civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and particularly those of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. The sailors, the people who were out in harm's way within firing range, told me not to forget the people who were on the defense team in the civilian sector of the Department of Defense.

Unfortunately, unless this amendment passes, those 700,000 patriots stand in the fire line of losing their collective bargaining rights, losing their right to an appeal, losing their right to due process and losing their right to have their performance judged on their merit.

This happened because, unfortunately, during our rush to get the defense authorization bill through, there was a provision in good faith that was inserted that gave largely unfettered discretion to the Department of Defense to go forth and create a new personnel system.

We are always open to reform and new ideas, but, unfortunately, what has transpired at the first cut by the Department of Defense, they have proposed plans that would essentially gut the real basic, fundamental right to collective bargaining in our system, a collective bargaining system that actually has been successful in maintaining the morale of these 700,000 patriots who are instrumental in our defense efforts today.

What we have seen are proposals to essentially gut that by allowing the Department of Defense to unilaterally sort of jam down the throats of those 700,000 people whatever they decide to do without collaboration and without collective bargaining. That would be a mistake. It would be a mistake in not recognizing the American value of collective bargaining, and it would be a mistake to damage the morale of this workforce, and we are urging my colleagues not to allow that.

Secondly, we do not want to allow what I consider to be a real civil right, and that is a right that when you are on the job working for the DOD, if you are going to be sanctioned, if you are going to be fired, if you are going to be sent down to the bilge as punishment, you ought to have some basic due process rights. You ought to have it in writing what you did wrong, you ought to have a right to a written decision on your appeal, even you ought to have a right to have an appeal, if I dare say, where you have a lawyer present when your job is on the line.

Those civil rights are in jeopardy if we do not pass this amendment, and the 700,000 people who care about that know those rights are in jeopardy.

We have already developed a very successful appeals system to handle this issue. Why should we go forth and create a whole new system to be a duplication of our existing system? It is not necessary.

I would like to answer four kind of suggestions why this amendment is necessary. Some of my colleagues have suggested this is not a good idea. They have had four critiques. I would like to answer those during this debate.

First, it has been suggested that the 700,000 employees that are going to be protected by my amendment do not want to be protected by my amendment. Not a well-put argument, when virtually every union that is elected by these employees wholeheartedly supports my amendment, the Association of Government Employees, the Federation of Teachers.

By the way, teachers, it was said they are sort of un-American, they cannot form a union unless my amendment passes. That does not make any sense at all. Teachers ought to be able to form unions. So the employees think this is a good idea.

Second, this will allow consideration of alternatives; it simply will not allow the pulling of the trigger. DOD will be able to aim, they will be able to load up, but they will not be able to pull the trigger on this until we look at this issue.

Mr. Chairman, my point I want to make is this does not stop DOD in their tracks from at least thinking about this issue. They will be allowed to consider this issue, but they will not be able to actually pull the trigger to waive these collective bargaining rights, to waive these appeal rights, to waive these due process rights.

Third: One friend on the other side of the aisle suggested that this amendment is a bad idea, because now we are in the age of faxes and computers and this is a new day and age, so we should give unfettered discretion to the Department of Defense to have a new personnel system without statutory rules.

Well, we can use faxes and computers and e-mail and answering machines, but we need to have a system of law to govern what due process rights the Congress has a role in deciding. These are rights that belong to individuals that are held very dearly by our employees, and we can use computers and faxes, but we need to do in a method that is rules-based.

We got into a little trouble, we got into a little trouble when the Department of Defense decided they could sort of ignore this rules- based Geneva treaty system, because they thought they should just have unilateral discretion in deciding how to handle some of these issues. That was kind of a sort of suggestion that we need rules.

Now, I am not suggesting our employees are going to be tortured, thank goodness that is not going to be the case, but we do need a rules-based employment system, and we cannot allow unilateral decision making by the Department of Defense.

The fourth issue I want to make, this is not going to stop reform. We need to work on it in Congress. I think we have seen the whites of the eyes that this has been a very, very controversial issue that has inflamed the 700,000 people that we need to build morale on.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, we come tonight again, the group that is styled the Iraq Watch, or a group of my colleagues and myself who are committed to continue to bring accountability to this administration's policies in Iraq, to fulfill Congress' oversight responsibility to not allow administration mistakes in Iraq to go unheeded and have no accountability for them; and we are here tonight, and I expect the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) and others will join me in this discussion.

We have been doing this now for several months; and tonight, as on many nights, I have great sadness walking over here to speak this evening. Just as I was leaving my apartment, I saw on the news that we have lost two more great American warriors in the service of their country in Iraq, and I do not know who these gallant Americans were. I do not know where they are from. I do not know what happened to end their lives in Iraq, but I do know this: those two proud and honorable Americans deserved a President of the United States who told the truth to the American people before he started this war that resulted in the tragedy of these two people losing their lives.

I know that this Congress has a solemn obligation to hold this administration accountable if, in fact, it is true that this administration did not tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to the American people before this war started; and tonight, if we seem a bit angry about this situation, it is because on our minds and on our hearts are the death of these two American soldiers and those who have gone before and those who will come after.

Our duty, as we see it tonight, is to discuss the manifold failure of this administration to, one, tell the truth in Iraq; and, two, to pursue a policy that would reduce the danger to our service personnel serving in Iraq, and our discussion will proceed on those lines.

Now, let me start, if I can, on this fundamental question: Did the President of the United States of America fully level with the American people before he started this war? That is the question. If the answer is no, we think that is one of the greatest assaults to democracy that could possibly happen.

There are many things that can go wrong in a democracy, but I would assert that the most serious affront to democratic principles of a representative government is for the elected leadership to start a war based on false information. Nothing, nothing can be a more serious breach of the solemn obligations when one takes the oath of office than to start a war based on falsehood, and we are here tonight to answer the question of whether or not that occurred.

So let me start at the beginning of the Iraq war. The President of the United States asserted that America should start this war in Iraq based on two fundamental pillars, and his entire rationale for this war was based on these two pillars. He was successful in convincing a large majority of the American people that those two pillars were both factual, and those two pillars were these two:

Number one, the President asserted that Iraq possessed wholesale amounts of weapons of mass destruction which presented a threat to the United States of America and our personal and our family's security. He told the American people that time after time after time. This statement was false. This fundamental pillar of this war was false.

This President told us and stood right behind me and told the American people that we had information, the British had information that, in fact, Iraq had obtained yellow cake to extract uranium from it to build a nuclear weapon. That statement was false; and most importantly, the White House knew it was false. The White House had been told it was false. The White House had sent an emissary to Africa to check the accuracy of this statement, and Ambassador Joe Wilson who served proudly, who the first President Bush described as a hero during the first Persian Gulf War, came back and told the White House this statement was false. Two soldiers died today in Iraq based on a falsehood that was given to the American people that the White House knew was false. This pillar did not stand.

The President of the United States told us that Iraq had drones that could fly across the Atlantic, apparently, and spray Americans with biological and chemical weapons, and this scared the living pants off people in America who heard this, as it should have, and as the White House knew that it would. Unfortunately, now that reports are peeled away, we have found out that even our own Air Force told the White House this statement was false; that they were kind of balsam wood things meant to take pictures of troop movements and the like.

So the first pillar upon which the President of the United States sent soldiers to their death was false. So let us examine the second pillar, if I can, for a moment, and then I will yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

The second pillar upon which the President's scaffolding of falsehood was built was a clear assertion that led to a significant majority, seven out of 10 Americans, to believe that Iraq was associated, was behind the attack on this country of September 11, and the President was successful, again, in creating this impression. He was successful in convincing seven out of 10 Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind these heinous, vile, indeed evil, attacks on America of 9/11. But it was not true. It was not true.

Now, we know it was not true because a bipartisan commission has come back and stated categorically there is no credible evidence; and I want to read the quote to make sure I get it right: ``We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.''

Yet, seven out of 10 Americans were convinced by this White House that Saddam Hussein was behind these attacks on America. Where did Americans get that misimpression? Did they get it from Dan Rather? Did they get it from the New York Times? Did they get it from the Shopping Channel? No. They got it from the President of the United States, who led these people to

believe that Iraq was behind this attack and that these folks were in an alliance with Iraq who attacked us.

Let us look at what the President said. The President is saying, well, no, I did not really mean to say that. Golly gee, I did not mean to suggest or lead anybody to believe that Saddam was evil enough to have attacked us actually or that he was an ally. I just sort of suggested they talked to one another at some period of time. Well, look at what the President said in fact.

In fact, the President, while he was on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, declaring the mission accomplished, several hundred dead Americans ago, he said the defeated Hussein was ``an ally of al Qaeda.'' An ally of al Qaeda. Is the President now to have us believe that he said that Saddam was an ally of al Qaeda, but he did not mean to suggest they actually helped each other? Is that what he expects us to believe? That is very difficult to swallow.

The Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that al Qaeda was operating inside of Iraq, inside of Iraq. It turns out we find out ``inside of Iraq'' means they were in the Kurdish-controlled area that was inside our no fly zone. Now, are we supposed to know that?

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

And yet the President of the United States just left out that little fact that they were in the part of Iraq that Saddam did not control when he discussed this issue.

Now, this omission has led many people to be very concerned, even those who have supported President Bush. I note this editorial in the Dallas Morning News of June 22, 2004. This is a newspaper that supported President Bush's election. In fact, they noted that in this editorial, and they have listened to the administration's response to the 9/11 Commission. They have listened to this sort of excuse-making that has come out of the White House to try to excuse this. But look what the Dallas Morning News, a newspaper that has supported President Bush, said.

It said, ``U.S. troops have found no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and the 9/11 panel says there was no working partnership between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. President Bush presented both WMD and the al Qaeda-Hussein link as reasons for striking Iraq before it attacks us.

``The President has a credibility gap here, and he needs to address it right away. Vice President Dick Cheney tried but failed miserably. He said, in effect, `we know more than you and you better trust us.' ''

And then, I might have to subscribe to the Dallas Morning News, because I think in the next paragraph they hit the nail on the head. ``The country did just that when we went to the war in Iraq, but things aren't working as promised. The administration needs to respond with specifics, not like members of a secret society with keys to the kingdom.''

But the unfortunate truth is there really is nothing the administration can now say to excuse the fact that they gave us false information to start the war.

Let me note just one other quote. Vice President Cheney, who is now saying we did not really intend to imply that there was a working relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq, we did not mean to say that, but what did Vice President Cheney say before the war started? He said on Meet the Press that by attacking Iraq, ``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 now for years, but most especially on 9/11.''

Now, obviously the vice president was trying to create an impression that we were going to be striking back at the people who struck us on September 11. That is the obvious implication of his language. I do not think he was simply trying to point out that Iraq is in the Middle East. I do not think it was a geographic lesson he was trying to give us. He was trying to build support for a war that was based on two huge falsehoods, one falsehood about weapons of mass destruction and another about this alleged working relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Now, there are connections between Iraq and al Qaeda. They both have ``Q'' in their names, but the 9/11 Commission concluded there was no working relationship between these two groups.

Let me mention one thing, and I will yield to the gentleman from Ohio. In fact, what the 9/11 Commission, again, a bipartisan commission, chaired by the former New Jersey governor, Republican governor, bipartisan group, what they concluded was that years back, back in 1994, Osama bin Laden had, in fact, asked Iraq for help but had been rejected.

Now, that may be a contact, but it is not a basis for a war, and it is most unfortunate now that even today this White House will not come clean about their manifest falsehoods that they gave us. And until they do, we will be here blowing the whistle on these falsehoods.

Let me suggest, and the gentleman brings up a very important point, it has been called a stop loss order, but it really is a start the draft order. This is a silent draft. These people are being drafted into service they did not sign up for. They signed up for a definite term and they are now being drafted. They happen to be in Iraq right now, but we are already seeing the implications of the policy as the gentleman has addressed. It comes back and again the Dallas Morning News called it the Iraq Trust Gap, this is the President and his neocon colleagues who were telling us that this war would be simple, we would be welcomed with rose petals, our people would be home in a reasonable period of time, it would not stress our military, we only needed 100,000 troops, there would not be massive looting after we had this amount, there would not be casualties after a period of time, the mission was accomplished back in May 2003.

All of these things are appropriately creating a trust gap not only for the President, but for the United States.

I have got to add just one more thing before I go to the gentleman from Massachusetts. Another thing the administration did in not finding Osama bin Laden, in not cutting off the head of al Qaeda, I got a letter today, because I was trying to investigate, I asked the Department of Treasury, is it true that the administration 2 days after September 11, allowed a chartered jet airplane to fly around America picking up Osama bin Laden's relatives and flying them out of the country before they were fully interrogated and debriefed about the potential relationship with Osama and al Qaeda and over 100 Saudi citizens where now we know the attack emanated from? They answered, yes, that is true. Our administration, when no one else could fly in America, people were stranded here, had to drive across America to get home from Washington, D.C., but while you had to drive home from Washington, D.C., the President of the United States, the administration, told all the Saudi Arabians, we will let you fly, without even talking to the CIA or the Department of Treasury to find out if they were associated with this.

They said, indeed, that was true. I asked them, why is that? They frankly could not give me an answer. That is just one problem we have got.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, if I may, I would like to attempt to answer the question why we are in Iraq rather than Iran, and the answer is because we have an administration who is willing to follow their ideology rather than the evidence. They are willing to say things as long as it is consistent with their ideological beliefs even if it is inconsistent with the facts as given to them by our intelligence agents.

Let me give an example. The Vice President now for 2 years has just kept spouting this statement that the reason we should invade Iraq is because there was a meeting, one of the reasons, because there was a meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence person in Prague.

Mr. Speaker, so he has been saying this over and over again in city and town and ``Meet the Press'' and who knows where else. And what did the bipartisan commission conclude about this key of his whole argument that Saddam Hussein had a working alliance with al Qaeda? They concluded: ``We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9. Based on the evidence available, including investigations by Czech and U.S. authorities, plus detainee reporting, we do not believe that such a meeting'' occurred.

So despite the best intelligence of the United States of America, the Vice President is willing to continue to spout something that is false, according to our best intelligence, in order to back up this ideological fixation of invading Iraq. That is why we are in this war, because we have an administration willing to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie).

Mr. Speaker, I want to make sure the good gentleman from Hawaii can share some wisdom.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, let me make a suggestion. There might be a reason the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) might have trouble understanding Mr. Wolfowitz.

Or accepting his explanation, is I suspect the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) does not share Mr. Wolfowitz's belief that it does not matter that this war was started, based and started on a falsehood. I suspect the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) agrees with me that when you look in the eyes of a young widow, as I have, who lost their husband as a result of this multitude of falsehoods by this administration, it matters a whole heck of a lot. And this administration is now trying to demean and belittle the fact that they started a war based on falsehood, and they think that Americans are just going to forget it, and somehow we are supposed to forget the incompetence, the rank incompetence, the multitude of tactical, logistical, strategic mistakes they made time after time, of total ignorance about the cultural situation in Iraq, about the looting we knew was going to happen, and somehow we are supposed to forgive and forget that.

Reclaiming my time, I may note that the people who are responsible for the mistake of not putting enough troops in Iraq to quell the looting that was sure to occur, the people who made the mistakes about assessing the threat level posed by Iraq, the people who did not provide body armor to our soldiers when they went to war without adequate flak jackets, the people who sent our soldiers into the streets of Baghdad in canvas-lined Humvees instead of armored personnel carriers, who ignored the fact that we were going to need to protect our soldiers against these improvised explosive devices, the people who have made all of these mistakes are still the people in charge of our policy in Iraq. Not one person in the civilian hierarchy of the Bush administration who is responsible for these massive foul- ups that have cost hundreds of lives has lost their job or a day's vacation as a result of these foul-ups.

Of course, I am referring to the Secretary of Defense, who is the primary architect for this, and Mr. Wolfowitz, who is an architect of this. These are the decisionmakers that should be held accountable for these foul-ups. I hope the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) agrees with me.

Reclaiming my time, there is an element of this expenditure that is grossly wrong, and that is the most polite sense I can say it. The General Accounting Office, the nonpartisan group that basically looks at the financial system of the country, concludes that the United States misspent, meaning this administration, misspent at least $1 billion in Iraq in the Iraq war to date, and that was as of June 16. They made reference to multiple cases of the Halliburton Corporation misspending millions of dollars of taxpayer money.

Let me give you one very small example of how Halliburton Corporation misspent taxpayer money. Halliburton, of course, is the company that got a sole source provider bid; a company that the vice president just recently has been CEO of, they did not send it out to bid to any other corporations, gave a special deal to Halliburton, and look what Halliburton did with your money.

Before the war, a Kuwaiti firm had the contract to provide meals to troops at four bases in Kuwait. Just before the fighting started, and this is from the General Accounting Office, not some leftist group saying this, just before the fighting started, the Pentagon turned the job over to Halliburton subsidiary KBR, Kellogg Brown and Root. As part of the switch, the costs went up from $3 a meal to $5 a meal, for the cost, from $3 to $5.

So, here is just one small example that happened thousands of times where the American taxpayers got gouged $1 billion, much of which went to the Halliburton company on a sole source contract.

If this does not smell like a mackerel in the moonlight, I do not know what does.

Well, yes. In fact, we have spent millions of dollars of taxpayers' money looking for that, but they apparently do not exist.

Now, let me suggest one thing that the President of the United States could have done to help his fellow Americans when we made a decision whether or not to go to war. He could have leveled with the American people. He could have told the American people that to the best of our knowledge there is no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the heinous, evil attack on America of September 11. He has talked to the American people probably six times a day for the last 2 years, and this President has never said that. This is wrong. We intend to maintain accountability for this administration.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues for joining me tonight for the Iraq Watch, which will continue on other nights.

Mr. Speaker, I will give the gentleman a nonanswer answer. The nonanswer is we could pose another question, which is why did the first President Bush not go in and eliminate Saddam Hussein when he had that information as well? And that is an interesting historical issue, but it is one that is not pertinent to why I came here tonight, and I would like to address that issue.

I think the issue is that Congress has a responsibility to fulfill now, which is to hold the administration accountable if, in fact, it created a false impression in the American people. And this is an interesting academic issue, whether it was contacts or collaboration or something more, but the bottom line is the President enjoyed some popular support for this war based on two pillars: the first pillar being his assertion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and that has now by and large been shown to be a falsehood; and the second pillar was that Saddam Hussein was responsible for killing over 2,000 Americans on September 11.

And that was the impression that this President created. In fact, in a poll taken in September, 2003, 69 percent of Americans said they believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the attacks.

Here is the question I have, and then I will answer it: Where did 69 percent of the American people get the impression that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the attacks of September 11? Did they get it from just reading The New York Times? I do not think so. Did they get it just watching Dan Rather? I do not think so. Did they get it from reading the penny press at home? I do not think so. They got it from President George Bush, who did everything possible to create the impression that Iraq was associated with the attack, an ally, in the attack of September 11.

Why do I say that? Because that is the language President Bush used. On May 1, 2003, he said: ``The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding.''

The interesting thing that I challenge anyone to show me, the September 11 Commission reached what appears to me to be a factual conclusion. It appears to me to be the most rational conclusion I think we can make on the evidence we have. They said: ``We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.'' That is what they said. I believe that is most likely to be true.

When did President George Bush ever say we have no credible evidence that al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States? When the President of the United States was urging another war, a preemptive attack on another country, without significant international assistance, and when he would believe that if a misimpression was created by the American public, it could lead to the wrong conclusion, did this President come forward and say the truth, which was there may have been some contacts, some discussions, between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's agents, they were way back in 1994, there was no active collaboration that took place, but I want to make sure the American people understand this one central tenet, because I want to make sure there is no confusion here: As far as we know, Saddam Hussein was not behind the attacks on September 11, and I do not want anybody starting a war based on this false impression.

Did the President of the United States ever level with the American people and say that? No, he did not. This was an impression that he knew he was creating. If the Members would go see the movie the ``Flim- Flam Man,'' starring George C. Scott, it was about a great guy who understood how to create impressions to get people to take action. And there was an impression created that Iraq was responsible for the deaths of over 2,000 Americans. And it is most unfortunate.

The reason we have come here tonight is to talk about the fact that it is unhealthy for a democracy, for a President to create false impressions that end in war, and this President created two massive false impressions. One that this demonic monster, Saddam Hussein, who we all agree on a bipartisan basis is a demonic monster, had weapons of mass destruction and that we were threatened with a mushroom cloud; and the second, he allowed 69 percent of the Americans to believe that Saddam was the one who attacked us, and that is an undemocratic action, and it is wrong, and he ought to be held accountable for it.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a comment. I want to pose a important question to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) if he could help us out.

My comment is on the difference between connection and action and collaboration. I do not think there is any question that there had been some communication between al-Qaeda and some Iraqi officials. I think we all agree on that, and have for a long period of time. The September 11 Commission reported that back in 1994, bin Laden had essentially asked for help from Iraq but Iraq said no deal. We are not going to help you.

And from that, the September 11 Commission concluded, a bipartisan commission concluded there had been no collaboration and there had been no active work between the two. In fact, the two highest bin Laden associates we have in custody have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

I think an accurate picture that has been stated is that there were some contacts and that bin Laden had asked for help and Iraq had refused to give him help. And yet the President started this war. Now, the question I have is what was the President trying to do in this conversation with the American people? It appears to me that he was trying to create an impression in the American people that Iraq was behind the attack of September 11. Let me give you just one quote that fits into that impression. On September 14, 2003, Vice President Cheney said ``If we are 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 have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.''

That is just one of hundreds of statements made by this administration that to me was responsible for creating an impression in at least 69 percent of the American people that Iraq was behind it and that this was pay-back time. In fact, I remember seeing a tank as it entered Baghdad with it was lettered on the side ``pay back time.'' And I can understand why soldiers felt that way if the President of the United States was creating an impression that Iraq was responsible for September 11.

It was not an impression that led this country to war that bin Laden had asked for help, but Iraq had said no, that is not the salient feature that led to this war. What led to this war was the President succeeding in creating an impression in America that Iraq was behind this venous and evil attack against us on September 11.

So the question to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) if I can ask him, just kind of two questions, does he share my view that probably a majority of Americans had the impression as the result of its Federal Government's dissemination of information, the administration, that Iraq was behind in some fashion, or associated with the attack on September 11?

And if that is true, does he think the President of the United States did enough to be candid with the American people to tell the American people that no, we do not have any evidence of collaboration resulting in the attack of September 11. Sincere question.

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

Mr. Chairman, we appreciate my friend from Arizona's impassioned interest in trying to improve the performance of our fuel reduction program to reduce the fuel loading on our forests. But the question I have is, where were the Republicans an hour ago when we wanted to add money to the account on the Hooley amendment that would have added millions of dollars to get this job done and they defeated this amendment?

The reason this job is not getting done is very simple. You have refused to appropriate the necessary money to get the job done. And instead of appropriating the dollars, you want to appropriate rhetoric attacking science. Where were you an hour ago when we tried to put more money in this account?

I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

I wish more of the gentleman's friends would have followed his admonition.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the facts as I know them is that the Republican Party is in the majority in the House of Representatives. I regret that situation, but it is a fact. And the majority party refused to put more money in the fuels reduction account to get this job done 60 minutes ago, and now you are on the floor of the House trying to have some rhetorical argument that the reason this job is not getting done is because the law simply requires that we listen to science. But you do not want to listen to science. You want to listen to some other force of nature.

Let me suggest that one of the problems of the pickle we have gotten into in our forests with this dense situation in underbrush is because the Federal Government ignored science for decades, and now today you want to perpetuate the history of the Federal Government of ignoring sound science. You want to continue a situation that you started with 2 years ago of doing in our water and allowing arsenic in our water, doing in our air where you want to allow mercury in our air, you want to now have lawless logging. You want to have logging that is not constrained by science or law.

Let me suggest to my colleagues that the conservative approach on this issue is the approach that demands accountability of our government. The conservative approach demands that government respond to citizens by following the law. The conservative approach distrusts government; and when we have some innate suspicion of government, we make bureaucracies follow the law. But unless you pass this amendment, you are giving carte blanche to bureaucrats to ignore the science when it comes to conservation science, to ignore the science when it comes to ecosystems, to ignore the science when it is the right time to do underbrush thinning and when it is the right place to do underbrush thinning, and you want to give carte blanche to the bureaucrats.

This whole national forest management plan came out of the idea of reform, to reform bureaucracies so they will not ignore taxpayers. We stand for taxpayers who say that taxpayers who pay their money are entitled to make sure the bureaucracies follow the law and the science. But you want to shortcut the science. Science is not good enough for you. Science is not good enough on arsenic. Science is not good enough on mercury, and science is not good enough in logging our national forests.

We just have a simple proposition on this side of the aisle: follow the science and follow the law. That is why 325 scientists of the Society for Conservation Biology wrote a letter that urged the Forest Service, and by extension Congress, to not gut the National Forest Management Act, which you are gutting today. And we are simply here to say let us make sure that science rules in our forests. Let us make sure that the law rules on forests. Let us pass the Udall amendment.

Mr. Speaker, this rule is not just ineffective. It is not just inefficient. It is not just unfair. It perpetuates one of the largest frauds on consumers in American history. It aids and abets the rip-off by Enron of over $1 billion of American consumers of electricity in the West Coast of the United States in the last 4 years.

This rule does nothing about that. This rule allows Enron to keep their billion dollars they took away from our people, and this is clear. We have heard the tapes. We have heard the Enron traders saying let us jam a million dollars here to the grandmothers of California. Let us rip off the Washington ratepayers for $500,000. Let us stick Snohomish County for $152 million. Let us let California burn, baby, burn. And your rule does nothing about that. This rule is in bed with Enron. It aids and abets Enron. It is written for and by Enron, and it should be rejected.

Now, we have offered an amendment that will allow ratepayers relief, give ratepayers in Snohomish County that $122 million back, give ratepayers in California over hundreds of millions of dollars in relief back, and the Republican Party said, no, we are on the side of Enron.

Now, why did they do that? Well, this administration has not lifted a finger to help the ratepayers of the West Coast, not a finger. They have got all the efficiency of the Keystone cops and the aggressiveness of Barney Fife when it comes to enforcing the laws of this country.

In fact, when we met with the Vice President during the height of the energy crisis in 2000, we explained to the Vice President that Enron had turned off a third of the generating capacity in the West Coast and driven the prices sky high. And you know what he did? He looked at us, Members of Congress, and he said, ``You know what your problem is? You just do not understand economics.''

Well, we do understand economics. We just do not understand Enronomics. We do not understand why the majority party will not allow us to do anything to get relief back from the customers who are gouged by Enron. Why will not they allow this Chamber even the right to vote on the measure to recover some sense of justice? Why do they lay down with Enron? Why do they get in bed with Ken Lay? Why are you motivated to do that? We cannot understand it.

What I know is the people of my district deserve relief. They deserve a refund. The Snohomish County ratepayers deserve that $122 million back. So I want to ask my friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings), a friendly question, if I can. Today the gentleman is denying us the opportunity to get relief for ratepayers of the State of Washington and Enron.

When will the Republican Party bring to the floor of this House a measure to allow us to get refunds from Enron of the millions of dollars they stole from Washington and Oregon and California?

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Reclaiming my time, if the gentleman will just kindly answer my gentlemanly question. When will you bring a bill to the House to allow a refund by Enron? Just give me an answer.

Mr. Speaker, this bill, this alleged energy bill, reminds me a little bit of a reverse Energizer bunny because it just keeps not going, not going and not going. One of the reasons it does not go anywhere is it perpetuates the fraud on the American people that the Enron Corporation put over on the West Coast. It does not have one single dime of refunds for the people of California for the billions of dollars that were stolen from them by the Enron Corporation. It does not have the $122 million that the people of Snohomish County, Washington have coming to them. It does not have the over $1 billion that the people of Washington have coming to them.

What does it take for my Republican friends to join us to finally get refunds for the American people? We have heard these tapes of the Enron traders talk about jamming Grandma Millie, stealing millions of dollars, saying ``burn, baby, burn'' when the West Coast had brownouts. And the Republicans gave us nothing, not a dollar in refunds. What does it take? We have got the equivalent of fingerprints, DNA, videotape and confessions from Enron and yet this bill does not do a single thing to get refunds for the consumers of the West Coast of the United States.

Goodness knows we have tried. We asked the Vice President of the United States 2 years ago to help us. We told the Vice President of the United States that while there were brownouts in California, while stoplights were not working, 32 percent of all the generating capacity was turned off. What he said was, ``The problem with you is you just don't understand economics.'' Well, we do understand economics. We just do not understand Enronomics. The majority party unfortunately is forcing down the throats of consumers in this country Enronomics. They are allowing Enron to continue to pillage and burn the West Coast. We deserve refunds. Reject this bill and get a bill that will stand up to Enron.