Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman very much. We all intended to come down to the floor tonight and speak about Iraq and the successes that are taking place in that region, having been there myself, planning to go back there in August again…
Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman very much.
We all intended to come down to the floor tonight and speak about Iraq and the successes that are taking place in that region, having been there myself, planning to go back there in August again on behalf of the committee.
But I do think attention needs to be drawn, as my good friend, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) and the chairman have already alluded to, the fact that the information that was provided to most of us today and some last night that Sandy Berger has in fact admitted that he did take information out of a secure area.
It has already been alluded to that we can take notes while we are in an area looking at specific Top Secret information, but we by no means are allowed to take any of that information out, much less the notes that we make to take out, and the facts that are coming to light now that he apparently used his jackets, his pants and possibly his socks. And I would tell my good friend that I understand today that while they all were original documents, there may, in fact, have been three different drafts of a single document that were there. And apparently, Mr. Berger went back and got all three drafts of that particular document. For what reason, I do not know.
I would certainly yield to my good friend.
Exactly, and I think that the additional question that needs to be asked, and apparently now the presumed Democratic nominee, Mr. Kerry has accepted Mr. Berger's resignation as his national security adviser in regards to his political campaign.
Interestingly enough, I think it should have been the reverse. I think that the good Senator probably should have immediately, once he found out what was going on, should in fact asked Mr. Berger to step aside instead of waiting for Mr. Berger to make that decision. Again, I think it shows a lack of leadership on the Senator's side in regards to how he would handle an issue in regards to Top Secret information.
I would be glad to yield to our chairman.
And I appreciate the chairman's remarks, and in
fact, President Bush has been working diligently, as the chairman knows, for months and months trying to rebuild that Intelligence Community that has been decimated so terribly.
Looking for that great peace dividend that was out there and slashing the intelligence budget was a foolish thing to do, and we now see, and in fact people are telling us, that it will take 1, 2, 3, maybe 5 years, in order to rebuild that human intelligence. You do not just rely on all of the whiz-bang things that we have now and the great ways that we have to gather intelligence, but you certainly have to take the opportunity to get the human intelligence.
But what bothers me even more is the fact that it appears that the information that Mr. Berger took out of that Top Secret room in that area where he should not have taken anything out of that room possibly dealt with very credible information in regards to our vulnerability at airports and seaports and what was going on in those general areas; and I think it is very coincidental, at best, that Mr. Kerry, Senator Kerry's advertisements, as he has been running for the Democratic nomination and has in fact been beating on our President time and time again, have in fact been homed in on our vulnerability at our airports and our seaports. And I am just concerned as to what Mr. Berger did with the information once he removed it from that Top Secret classified room and took it supposedly to his home, who may have seen it, who gained from the information that was there; and in fact, is there any type of tie that can be made to the campaign of Mr. Kerry, because it is beginning to appear we have a very convoluted web at this point in regards to some of the issues that the Senator has been raising.
I understand that it was not just papers that were taken, but there possibly were bound books or folders of some type that you, in fact, could not just crunch up as a bunch of papers. You would know, in fact, that you were disposing of them; and you had to do it deliberately, if, in fact, you did dispose of it.
So to say that it was sloppy and inadvertent kind of stretches the imagination. But, of course, a lot of this has been done in this House over recent months, unfortunately; and it is being done out on the campaign trail, so it is certainly to be expected.
I thank the Chairman. I would say that all indications, I think for most Members, they would say that Baghdad is returning to normal. Yes, there still are some problems. We see them on a daily basis, but the fact of the matter is children are attending new schools, new universities, playgrounds are up. Children are actually going there. Their parents feel comfortable to allow them to go. Where the statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down some 15 months ago in Firdos Square, adults are sitting around playing games of bingo.
Now, that sounds pretty silly, but the fact of the matter is if you are comfortable enough to sit on the ground or under the shade of a tree and play bingo, things are getting back to normal.
At the northern end of Iraq in Mosul, security forces are in almost total control up there. It has been divided into sectors. They have been going house to house, neighborhood to neighborhood; and they have got a lot of insurgents out and a lot of weapons caches there in that area to make sure our troops and coalition forces remain safe. We have thwarted hundreds of different types of IED attacks on our troops. On the banks of the Tigress River I would say that nightlife is returning to normal as well.
You look in the background of all of these TV scenes that you see of some of the car bombs that are exploded and burning. If you look in the very back, you will see that traffic is moving and progress is still going on. Commerce is taking place. People are walking in the streets.
Certainly the target is coalition forces. And recently we have seen where they have begun to target those members of the coalition that have the smallest numbers of troops because it makes them easy for them to pull out by going in and taking some of their people captive and holding them hostage and threatening to cut their heads off. Of course, the press might show that for maybe 1 or 2 days on television, but they are going to over and over and over again show the fact of our troops and the coalition forces that are being killed.
It goes back, I think, to the old adage, and I hate to be overly descriptive of this but I am a journalism major. And I can tell you that one of the things we learned, if it bleeds, it leads. That is exactly what the press want to do right now is to continue to try to turn the American situation or the American feelings and opinions against what is going on. Our opponents know that. They have been working it.
Saddam Hussein is not a dumb man. He had his people well prepared, and he thought that the American citizens and the coalition forces would be so afraid when these things started that we would pull out, and leave or we would be willing to give in to whatever demands that he may actually put out there. And that, in fact, is not what is happening.
President Bush has been very strong in his resolve. I will never forget, totally different subject, but I had an opportunity to travel to North Korea over a year ago. When we were in North Korea, the North Koreans absolutely could not understand why this American Commander in Chief would not negotiate with them. They were used to dealing with the Clinton administration who would give them whatever they asked for in order to keep the peace.
Now, the things that have been welling up inside and swelling up for so long have come to pass. We have had 9/11. We have had attacks on our soil. President Bush is doing whatever he can to make sure that does not happen in the United States again on our own soil, making sure that we take the war to the terrorists where they live and root them out, and it is not going to happen over night. I mean, Saddam Hussein ruled for over 25 years. Longer than Tojo was in Japan. Longer than Hitler was in power in his time in Germany.
So the fact of the matter is for years Saddam Hussein ruled. He killed the Kurds in the north and those in the south, and we are continuing to try to root out those people in whatever hole they may have climbed into.
Mr. Speaker, I want to say I think a little perspective probably needs to be added to some of the discussions tonight, and I would imagine there is not a person that looks at that hollow Manhattan skyline that does not think of the Twin Towers and where they stood. There are some that remember before the towers were ever built. Certainly, there are those that now know the towers were there and one day something will be built in its place, but I say this just to say that it is far easier to destroy something than it is to rebuild it. And rebuild is, in fact, what America and the coalition forces have been doing in Iraq and in Afghanistan as well, but tonight, we are mostly focused on Iraq.
Our military forces have been engaged in a very complex not only war on terror, but also the process of going through and rebuilding. They have been looking for weapons of mass destruction. We keep hearing people saying that it is a failure because the weapons of mass destruction have not been found.
I am more concerned because of the fact that they have not been found. Where are they? We know that they existed at one point. We know that Saddam Hussein used them on his own people. We have not found them yet. David Kay said, all we are looking for from a biological standpoint is a vial that is about this big and a two-car garage-size building that could hold 500 chemical warheads in a country, as you have already related, the size of California.
We are working on restoring basic public services: electricity, water, sewer. We hear some on the other side say, we went in and we broke it. We did not break it. It was already broken, but what is happening out of all of this is something that I think is truly revolutionary, and that is, the verge of democracy breaking out in an Arab region.
The fact of the matter is, Iraq now has a new government. They are preparing for election, but of course, the press does not want to tell the positive story that is there to be told. They want to continue to focus, as you have already said, on those car crashes in a loop over and over again, those burning cars. They want to focus on those lives that have been lost, and we are all focused on the lives that have been lost.
Not a single Member of this Congress does not mourn the loss of an American military man or woman, nor a Coalition force person; but the fact of the matter is, they are doing again, as the chairman has adequately stated tonight, very, very difficult work in a difficult region and in an area where people want to kill us. We are the enemy to them, and we understand that, and the soldiers that are there and the Marines that are there know they are there to do a job.
A great number of individuals have chosen to travel to Iraq. Some have not been yet, but they want to go to Iraq, and they are working on scheduling trips over there. And when they sit down and they talk with the soldiers, bar none, every one of them will tell them they are there for the right reason. They have, in fact, been welcomed as liberators. They have had the arms
of young Iraqi children, men and women around their neck thanking them, hugging them for what they have done relieving them of the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein; and now we are helping, along with the Coalition forces, to rebuild their country.