Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 226, I was talking with the Taiwanese Delegation and missed the vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. Speaker, the drum beats of war are growing louder. There is a growing fear here and around the world that the President, either alone or by proxy, will order a military strike against Iran.

The President has escalated the military presence in Iraq at the same time he has escalated the military rhetoric concerning Iran. The President's accusations against Iran are being planted like seeds in fertile ground. Is this how the President cultivates diplomacy, or is he sowing the seeds for another war?

The House must pass legislation that would require a debate and a vote before the President orders U.S. Forces to launch a military strike against Iran. This is the people's House, and the American people have spoken. They don't trust the President, and they are worried about his saber rattling toward Iran.

I think of it this way: If Iraq is a quagmire, and it is, then Iran will be quicksand, with America sinking deeper and deeper into a disastrous foreign policy grounded in brute force and producing brutal consequences: thousands of American soldiers dead, tens of thousands of American soldiers gravely wounded, billions of dollars borrowed and wasted, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed and injured, a raging civil war.

And after all that, the President and the Vice President say a military option is on the table for Iran. To prove it, U.S. warships were ordered into the Gulf 2 weeks ago. It was a show of military might around the date that the Russian military intelligence sources have widely forecast that the U.S. would strike Iran in stories posted online and in newspapers.

The current political regime in Iran is a government I do not endorse or support, but the record must show that the President's policies in Iraq created the problem the President now warns he will fix by military action, if necessary.

After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the President installed Paul Bremer as America's de facto premier of Iraq. Mr. Bremer answered only to the White House and not to the Iraqi people. Bremer dictated a series of policies that dismantled Iraq from the inside out. With the White House calling his every move, Bremer first dismantled the Iraqi civil society, plunging an entire nation into chaos. The Iraqi civilians who ran everything from sewage treatment plants to traffic control to keeping the lights on were summarily fired. The country's infrastructure remains crippled by Bremer's order 4 years later. Bremer also dismissed Iraq's military, and in so doing, he put tens of thousands of demoralized Iraqis on the streets with a gun and a grudge. The vast majority of these people were in the military for the pay and the job, not because they supported Saddam.

With Iraqi civil and military sectors wiped out over 4 years ago, there were no Iraqis left to guard the borders between Iraq and Syria and Iraq and Iran. The borders have been wide open ever since because the appointed proxy government didn't bother to understand the history of the region or a basic national security need to protect a nation's borders.

We know weapons and insurgents have been walking across Iraq's open borders. Almost a year ago, leaders told me in Amman, and these are Iraqi leaders, that the most constructive thing the U.S. could do would be to withdraw from the cities and redeploy to the borders and establish border guards.

Instead of doing something constructive, the President ordered a military escalation in Iraq that is destructive. The Iraqi people want us out of Iraq. The American people want us out of Iraq. But the President drives us deeper and deeper into Iraq and then threatens military action against Iran.

As a lame duck President and as slave to his own failed foreign policy, Congress must ensure that the President cannot unilaterally strike Iran in the remaining months of his failed presidency. Congress must pass legislation that preserves the checks and balances to guarantee that the President must listen to someone other than the Vice President.

America cannot afford to remain on a hair trigger until a new President takes the oath of office in January 2009, but that is exactly what will happen unless Congress steps up to ensure that the President stands down on a military strike against Iran. We must take away his blank check.

Mr. Speaker, I had intended to rise this evening to focus my attention on the suicide bombing last week in Baghdad that killed and wounded several members of the Parliament, including Osama al-Nujafii. He was a member of the Iraq Parliament who participated in a historic live teleconference I hosted last month linking several of my House colleagues with several Iraq Parliamentarians. I wish him and the others wounded in the attack a speedy recovery.

That attack occurred inside the Green Zone, and it confirms that no one is safe in Iraq, no matter how many checkpoints or blast walls or press releases out of the White House. It confirms that the President's military escalation has only escalated the violence and the casualties. It confirms that the President has no control whatsoever on the events on the ground. And it confirms that the American people are right to demand that the President work with the Democratic Congress and establish a firm timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

For now, most Americans are grimly aware of the weekend of bombings and killings across Iraq. But the situation is even worse. The Iraq war will live long after the U.S. forces leave the country.

As a child psychiatrist, I was shocked to learn of a new study looking at the effects this war is having on Iraqi children. I submit the story from USA Today for the Record. It is the first comprehensive look at the impact the war is having on innocent Iraqi children. The Ministry of Health surveyed 2,500 primary school kids in Baghdad, and 70 percent of those young kids displayed symptoms of trauma-related stress. As the USA Today reported, many Iraqi children have been physically wounded, and many are psychologically scarred. They are the uncounted casualties of the Iraq war. Thousands of innocent Iraqi children

are uncounted casualties. But for all these innocent Iraqi children, this war will rage on for them for years to come. They will face a life of anguish, and, in fact, will be the ones who, in the future, are the future violent ones we worry about.

For all these innocent Iraqi children, this war will rage on for years to come. In some cases, these children will face a lifetime of anguish and suffering, and not one of these children is being counted as a casualty.

These children routinely walk through carnage on their way to school, when they go at all.

These children are routinely exposed to random violence and killings that burn images in their minds that will scar them for life.

As a child psychiatrist, I can only echo the conclusions of one Iraqi doctor who was interviewed by USA Today.

``Some of these children are time bombs,'' said Said al-Hashimi, a psychiatrist who teaches at an Iraqi Medical School.

In this excerpt from USA Today, al-Hashimi said he is concerned Iraqi children could become the next generation of fighters and fuel violence for years to come.

Because of what they are living through as youngsters, ``they may think it's better to martyr themselves for religion or country,'' al- Hashimi said.

The only hope for these uncounted casualties is treatment.

But, as the USA Today story points out, there is only one government run psychiatric hospital in Baghdad--a city of 6 million people, or put more accurately, a city of 6 million casualties.

And then there are the uncounted casualties of Iraqi children in Basra, Rumadi, Najaf, Karbala, Mosul, Kirkuk, Fallujah, Baqubah, and all the other places Iraqi children live.

Until the war ends, there is virtually no chance that thousands of innocent Iraqi children will be treated for their war wounds.

We can only estimate how many thousands of Iraqi children need urgent psychological attention. We know they are not going to get it until this war ends.

There is a timetable for doing just that, and the President should stop listening to his discredited Vice President and start listening to reason and reality.

Now, in the face of that, our Speaker has led this Congress to set a time line that the President says, I will ignore. The President said, I will ignore the people, I will ignore the vote of 2006. No matter what the Speaker does, I am going to attack her.

So the Speaker took the Iraq Study Group's book that said we ought to talk to the people in Syria. For those of you who don't know, Syria is right up next to Iraq. And it is on the border. And there are Presidential accusations that people are coming in from Syria into Iraq, creating trouble and killing our troops. This is on its way to being the most deadly month in 5 years.

Now, for the Speaker to take her time and carefully plan and go over and talk to the leadership of Syria about attacks being made on Americans is, in my view, it is part of her legislative responsibility to the people, not only of her district, but the entire country. And for someone to come out here and accuse her of a violation of the Logan Act. Now this is a 200-year-old act that no one has ever been prosecuted under because there are real questions as to whether it prevents Members of the Congress from using their first amendment rights to talk out on behalf of the people that they represent.

In 1980, the State Department maintained that a visit to Cuba by Senators John Sparkman and George McGovern was not inconsistent with the Logan Act. Nothing in the act, they said, ``would appear to restrict Members of Congress from engaging in discussions in pursuance of their legislative duties under the Constitution.''

In 1976 the State Department was asked to weigh in as to whether former President Nixon violated the Logan Act by visiting China. The Department stated that Mr. Nixon's trip was taken entirely in his capacity as a private citizen and that the Department ``was unaware of any basis for believing Mr. Nixon acted with intent prohibited'' by the act. The Department has noted that no one has ever been prosecuted under this act.

This kind of attack on the Speaker will be answered in full again and again. Make no mistake about that.

The article previously referred to follows:

[From USA TODAY]

70% of Iraqi Schoolchildren Show Symptoms of Trauma

(By James Palmer)

Baghdad--About 70% of primary school students in a Baghdad

neighborhood suffer symptoms of trauma-related stress such as

bed-wetting or stuttering, according to a survey by the Iraqi

Ministry of Health.

The survey of about 2,500 youngsters is the most

comprehensive look at how the war is affecting Iraqi

children, said Iraq's national mental health adviser and

author of the study, Mohammed Al-Aboudi.

``The fighting is happening in the streets in front of our

houses and schools,'' al-Aboudi said. ``This is very

difficult for the children to adapt to.''

The study is to be released next month. Al-Aboudi discussed

the findings with USA TODAY.

Many Iraqi children have to pass dead bodies on the street

as they walk to school in the morning, according to a

separate report last week by the International Red Cross.

Others have seen relatives killed or have been injured in

mortar or bomb attacks.

``Some of these children are suffering one trauma after

another, and it's severely damaging their development,'' said

Said Al-Hashimi, a psychiatrist who teaches at Mustansiriya

Medical School and runs a private clinic in west Baghdad.

``We're not certain what will become of the next generation,

even if there is peace one day,'' Al-Hashimi said.

The study was conducted last October in the Sha'ab district

of northern Baghdad. The low- to middle-income neighborhood

is inhabited by a mix of Shiites and Sunni Arabs. Al-Aboudi

said he believes the sample was broadly representative of

conditions throughout the capital.

In the study, schoolteachers were asked to determine

whether randomly selected students showed any of 10 symptoms

identified by the World Health Organization as signs of

trauma. Other symptoms included voluntary muteness, declining

performance in school or an increase in aggressive behavior.

The teachers received training from Iraqi psychologists on

how to identify and help students cope with trauma-related

stress, al-Aboudi said.

The study ``shows the impact of the violence and insecurity

on the children and on children's mental health,'' said

Naeema Al-Gasseer, the Iraqi representative of the WHO.

``They have fear every day.''

The Iraqi government is aware of the problem but largely

unequipped to address it, said Ali al-Dabbagh, a government

spokesman. ``Until we have proper security in Baghdad,

there's not much we can do to help these children,'' Al-

Dabbagh said in Washington.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to what I heard out here.

I was sitting in my office listening, and it is interesting to imagine yourself being like the people at home listening on television to the Republicans talk about fiscal responsibility. Now, you have just heard the figures, but I want to bring back some images to your mind because a budget is a statement of your principles and what you care about in society.

I remember when Katrina hit and we were sitting watching television looking at the absolute chaos and failure of the Republicans to deal with a national crisis. Those pictures looked like the Third World. In fact, we were quicker to go out to Indonesia to deal with the effects of tsunami than we were to deal with the problems of people in our own country, in New Orleans.

In large measure, I believe, the election of 2006 was a rejection by the American people of the Republican we-don't-want-government-to-work philosophy. Anybody who appoints a guy who runs cattle shows or horse shows to run the emergency management organization in this country does not care about the security of the American people. Meanwhile, giving tax breaks. Unbelievable. Spending us into a deficit.

I mean, when I came to Congress, all I heard for the first 6 years were Republicans coming out and saying, We have to pass a balanced budget amendment. By God, we have got to balance the budget.

So we did in 1994. We did it, and lo and behold, here comes all this money in and soon we have a balanced budget with a potential surplus. The Republicans win, and I don't know whether they had amnesia or they didn't really mean it in the first place when they talked about a balanced budget. You can choose which of those you want.

Either they were deceiving the people or they just lost their minds when they got in control and spent us into this hole. Now for them to come out and say we are going to balance the budget in 2012, why don't you say you are going to balance the budget in 2049? That is as good a date as any. You don't mean it. You never meant it because when you came in, you made decision after decision after decision that dug the hole deeper. The old aphorism everybody knows in this country: If you are in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging. But the Republicans, session after session, came out here and dug the hole deeper. I don't know what they were looking for. Maybe they were looking for china or gold. I don't know where they were going. But, clearly, the budgeting that has come out of the Republicans was phony from the outset and the people said we don't want any more of that.

The people want a government that works. There is a reason why we have government. We have government to do those things for people that they cannot do for themselves. All of us over here believe in individual responsibility. We think people should be responsible. They should save money. They should get an education. They should raise their children. None of us over here disagree with that individual responsibility.

But there are some things that people cannot do for themselves. They cannot prevent the effects of a hurricane. They look to the government to deal with that. But the Republicans said, No problem. Leave the jobs open. And you could find the same kind of things all through this budget, whether you are looking at the national parks or you are looking at what they have done to the environment.

The President bragged about what a great education Governor he was, and he came in here and told us we are going to have this No Child Left Behind bill. Then he proceeded to underfund it by $17 billion. Now, if you are serious about schools, you put the money in schools. You don't give tax breaks to people making a half million dollars a year. They have got enough to get by. Most all of them can pretty much get by on half a million. But there are schools in this country which are failing for the lack of money to do the things that are necessary for the school system.

And the choice the President made was let's give the tax break. Never mind that silly bill I had about No Child Left Behind. He didn't mean it. You didn't mean it. And that is why we had the election of 2006. And the budget you see out here is the priorities of the Democrats trying to bring some sense back to a government that we want to actually function when the people look to it and need it.

Mr. Speaker, the biggest domestic crisis facing America today is health care. Every 30 seconds, an American files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem. So says a recent study from Harvard University. And that is just one of the chilling new statistics that should compel Congress to act.

Every Band-Aid has been tried and has not solved the problem. Instead, the crisis of health care has been allowed to fester like an open wound. We cannot continue to tinker around the edges.

Today, the health care system is increasingly dysfunctional. America is fast becoming a nation of haves and have-nots, those wealthy enough to afford comprehensive health care coverage and the vast majority of American people struggling to maintain coverage.

It is time to provide universal health care for every American, and the only delivery system that works is a single-payer health care system, which is what I propose in H.R. 1200. We don't need to change the way health care is delivered. We do need to change the way we pay for it.

Today's health care system is pockmarked with inequities, overutilization and uncertainty. We don't get the benefit or the cost- savings of a risk pool that includes every American. Instead, we have wildly different programs, costs and outcomes across this country.

The casualties are mounting and spreading. America's health care crisis is fast becoming America's economic crisis, especially for small business, the backbone of the U.S. economy.

Data compiled by credible organizations reveals the depth of the crisis. We are spending over four times as much on health as we are on national defense, yet 47 million Americans are defenseless because they don't have any health care coverage at all. We are spending over $2 trillion a year on health, an average of $6,280 per person, and it is too much.

A Harvard study found that 68 percent of the people filing for bankruptcy had health insurance, and they also had an average of $12,000 in health-related debt. Unpaid medical expenses play a role in half the bankruptcies in this country.

America is better than that. People don't deserve to fall into financial ruin in the richest nation on Earth because of an illness or an injury.

We tried everything else except the only effective solution, a single-payer system that guarantees every American has a minimum set of health care coverage benefits, decisions made locally in their own town, closest to the patient, in a universal system that covers every American.

We do this for essential programs and services across America, from national defense to local police and fire. It is a tried and true system that protects everyone by involving everyone working together for the common good.

We have to take the pragmatic approach contained in H.R. 1200 for the good of the American people and the U.S. economy. Big business confronted an 8 percent increase in health expenses last year. Small businesses saw expenses rise by more than 10 percent. The average premium for an employer to provide health insurance to cover a family of four was $11,500 a year, and employees typically paid $3,000 of that bill.

These costs are only going to go higher in the current dysfunctional system.

Uncontrolled business expenses like these are unsustainable. At least one respected business consulting group projects that health expenses will overtake profits in many American businesses next year, 2008. This is not something 40 years down the road, it's next year. More Band-Aids won't stop the bleeding. America's health care system is failing the American people and business.

Affordable health care coverage should be a right, not a privilege, in America; but that's not the way it really is. Those who profit most by the inefficient, bloated and broken system in place today will spend millions of dollars on ads trying to scare you into believing that paying them more and more is in your best interest.

Remember Harry and Louise, that baloney in '93? You're going to see it again. Every American deserves affordable health care coverage. H.R. 1200 will do just that. We have waited too long, and we can't wait any longer.

It is time to act and pass H.R. 1200, universal health care coverage for all Americans.

Mr. Speaker, those elected to serve in the people's House sometimes must decide matters of war and peace, in other words, matters of life and death, and nothing is more important.

Today we stand at the crossroads of one such momentous decision, and let

no one doubt that the lives of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians hang in the balance.

This is a vote of conscience and one of the most important votes I will ever cast in the House of Representatives.

I wish we were debating the language of the 1970 McGovern-Hatfield amendment. It called for directing funds only for the safe and orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Indochina. I enter into the Record at this point the Iraq version of the McGovern-Hatfield that I want to offer.

Proposed McDermott Amendment to H.R. 1591, Modeled on McGovern-Hatfield

After April 30, 2007, funds herein appropriated may be

expended in connection with the activities of American Armed

Forces in or over Iraq, Iran or Syria bordering Iraq only to

accomplish the following objectives:

(1) the orderly termination of military operations and the

safe and systematic withdrawal of remaining armed forces by

December 31, 2007 and

(2) provision of humanitarian and reconstruction assistance

to the people of Iraq.

Madam Speaker, yesterday the White House said that political strategist Karl Rove and former appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court Harriet Miers would be made available to the Senate for an interview regarding the growing U.S. Attorneys scandal. However, the White House refused to allow them to testify under oath or in public.

Is the White House serious? Do they honestly believe this Congress will allow them to get away with this?

It would be one thing if the Bush administration had been completely honest with the Congress over the last month, but every day there are new details that completely contradict what was said the day before.

Last month, Attorney General Gonzales said there was no coordination between the Justice Department and the White House in the firing of the eight U.S. Attorneys. But we now know that Karl Rove and Harriet Miers were involved from the very beginning.

The administration has stalled and deceived at every step during this investigation. With that track record, why should this administration believe the Congress would agree to unacceptable secret testimony without being under oath?

Mr. Speaker, probably I knew Jack better than most in our delegation, because I did serve with him for a long time in the Washington State Legislature. And although

most Members would know me as somewhat liberal and Jack as being somewhat conservative, we were really good friends, because Jack was the kind of person you could sit down and talk to, and no matter what your political views were, he would sit and talk about whatever it was on your mind.

He told me a lot about his decisions to run for both the legislature and for the U.S. Senate, and he told me about how his first campaign worked.

Jack went out and planted a whole field full of pumpkins, and he took an instrument that was like a cookie cutter and had it made in his name, Jack Metcalf. He took all these pumpkins when they were small and scored them on the outside, and as the pumpkins grew, the name ``Metcalf'' appeared on the pumpkins. So by the time of the election, Jack went around and gave a pumpkin to every house in his district.

That is Jack Metcalf. That is the guy that was here, very unassuming, no airs about him whatsoever. He was a solid conservative, don't have any doubt about that, and he stuck to his principles. He was the kind of conservative you could talk to and find out what he thought. He would tell you exactly where he was, and that is where he was. You could try to convince him, and maybe it would work.

I had one experience with Jack which I have to tell about. I was the ways and means chairman of the State senate when Jack was there in the minority, and I had a bill that I needed an extra vote on. I needed somebody in the Republican Party. So I went over and I talked to Jack about it.

He listened to me and acknowledged that maybe that wasn't such a bad idea. But he was really concerned about the economic situation of the United States, and he really thought that we ought to be on the gold standard. So Jack and I had this long discussion about the gold standard, and I said, ``You know, Jack, we ought to have a hearing in the State senate on the gold standard.''

Well, as you might guess, this would have been about 1983, the gold standard wasn't exactly very high on most people's agenda, but we had a hearing, and we listened and we talked and we asked the questions and had a great long discussion about this issue, and a few days later, when I needed a vote, Jack was there.

That is the kind of person he was. He was somebody who would listen to you, he would tell you what he was concerned about; and if you listened to him, you made a friend, and you were able to work with him.

His wife and kids, I know, perhaps tonight are watching. You should have nothing but pride for your father and your husband.

They list all the bills that he got involved in. Jack was a very, very dedicated environmentalist and did many things here. But what will always remain will be he was a guy who came here and said, I believe in term limits; he served 6 years, and he left. No fuss, no muss. He didn't ask anybody. He had made a commitment to his people in 1994 that he would leave, and he did surely as soon as the time came.

So we will miss Jack. He is the kind of person that makes this place a really humane place. Jack I don't think had an enemy in this place, because, as Norm says, even if he was going to say something against you, he would either before or after come and talk to you about it and say, ``I didn't mean that personally, but I just think you are wrong on that matter.'' He had that way, and we would do well to have that spirit come back to this House.

We will miss you, Jack.

Madam Speaker, you don't negotiate with the barrel of a gun, but that seems to be the President's strategy with respect to Iran. That is why the House must legislate to ensure that the President cannot unilaterally start another war in the Middle East, this time with Iran.

The President has lost all credibility, and the world worries that another war will be waged in Iran in the name of regime change. It has been over a quarter of a century since the U.S. tried constructive engagement instead of destructive isolationism in dealing with Iran.

Foreign policy under this President has played a role in pushing Iran's leaders to the fringe. The Iranian President appears intransigent and willing to use strident rhetoric to drive a wedge between the United States and other nations. What is our response? Showdown and confrontation are the diplomatic skills of this White House, a repeat of the spin cycle to foment a march to war against Iraq. Today it is economic sanctions against Iran, but what about tomorrow?

Presidential advisers like the Vice President continue to encourage a policy of aggression. The President says one thing, but the Vice President says all options are on the table. The Secretary of State says one thing, but then we read what is going on behind the scenes from an investigative reporter, Seymour Hersch. The world is weary over the war in Iraq, and the world is worried about the President's intentions regarding Iran.

The other day the Asia Times raised these concerns in the section entitled ``Dispatches From America.'' The Times published an article by Tom Engelhardt called ``A Bombshell That Nobody Heard,'' and I will enter it in the Record. The article considers the troubling information revealed by Seymour Hersch, especially the disclosure of U.S. military planning for a first strike capability targeting Iran, and ready to go on one day's notice.

Despite official denials, we see and hear the Vice President chill the world by saying a military option against Iran has not been ruled out. Having seen it before in this administration, one troubling thought comes to mind: Bullets and bluster are more likely to produce bloodshed than peace.

That is why the House must exert its constitutional duty when it comes to the President's intentions with respect to Iran. We have got to chart a new course in the Middle East, and it has to be based on a commitment to stop the bloodshed, not guarantee the flow of oil. And we cannot hope to achieve peace or stability in Iraq or Iran without addressing the Palestinian-Israeli issue openly, honestly and urgently.

The issues of the Middle East are inextricably interconnected, and no one understands that better than Speaker Pelosi. At a time when the White House prefers to choose sides, our distinguished leader prefers to pursue peace in the Middle East, demanding diplomacy aimed at achieving peace through social and economic justice for all.

It is the kind of vision the whole world has passionately embraced before when the world believed the United States could stand taller than any problem and person in the region.

So one has to wonder, what were they thinking the other day when some Members of AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, rudely booed during a keynote address as the Speaker spoke very plainly on this issue. She said the Iraq war has not made America safer, has not made Israel safer, and has not made peace in the Middle East much easier to achieve.

That is the truth. What is wrong with speaking the truth? Leaders speak the truth because they have a deep and abiding faith in the strength of people everywhere to see the truth for what it is and to use it to lay a foundation to build a better world.

Today, America has a Democratic leader willing to see the world as it is, but unwilling to leave it that way. These are difficult times and we face difficult decisions just ahead. We need a strong commitment to get our soldiers out of Iraq and the strength to prevent another military misadventure in Iran.

The path to peace should be littered with pages and pages of negotiation, not booby trapped by inflammatory rhetoric and people unwilling to listen.

Madam Speaker, I include for the Record the materials referred to earlier

[From the Asia Times: Dispatches From America]

A Bombshell That Nobody Heard

(By Tom Engelhardt)

Let me see if I've got this straight. Perhaps two years

ago, an ``informal'' meeting of ``veterans'' of the 1980s

Iran-Contra scandal--holding positions in the Bush

administration--was convened by Deputy National Security

Adviser Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the ``lessons

learned'' from that labyrinthine, secret and illegal arms-

for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians,

the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others--and

meant to evade the Boland Amendment, a congressionally passed

attempt to outlaw US administration assistance to the anti-

communist Contras.

In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets

concluded, the complex operation had been a success--and

would have worked far better if the Central Intelligence

Agency (CIA) and the military had been kept out of the loop

and the whole thing had been run out of the vice president's

office.

Subsequently, some of those conspirators, once again with

the financial support and help of the Saudis (and probably

the Israelis and the British), began running a similar

operation, aimed at avoiding congressional scrutiny or public

accountability of any sort, out of Vice President Dick

Cheney's office. They dipped into ``black pools of money'',

possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that

have never been accounted for since the US occupation began.

Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently

funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese

government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of

Sunni jihadist groups (``some sympathetic to al-Qaeda'')

whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and

to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist

Muslim Brotherhood.

All of this was being done as part of a ``sea change'' in

the Bush administration's Middle East policies aimed at

rallying friendly Sunni regimes against Shi'ite Iran, as well

as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Syrian government--and launching

secret operations to undermine, roll back or destroy all of

the above. Despite the fact that the administration of

President George W. Bush is officia1ly at war with Sunni

extremism in Iraq (and in the more general ``global war on

terror''), despite its support for the largely Shi'ite

government, allied to Iran, that it has brought to power in

Iraq, and despite its dislike for the Sunni-Shiite civil war

in that country, some of its top officia1s may be covertly

encouraging a far greater Sunni-Shi'ite rift in the region.

Imagine. All this and much more was revealed, often in

remarkable detail, just over a week ago in ``The

redirection'', a Seymour Hersh piece in The New Yorker. Other

revelations included news of US military border crossings

into Iran, new preparations that would allow Bush to order a

massive air attack on that land with only 24 hours' notice,

and a brief window this spring when the staggering power of

four US aircraft-carrier battle groups might be available to

Bush in the Persian Gulf.

Hersh, the man who first broke the My Lai story in the

Vietnam era, has never been off his game since. In recent

years, from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal on, he has

consistently released explosive news about the plans and acts

of the Bush administration.

Imagine, in addition, that Hersh went on Democracy Now!,

Fresh Air, Hardball with Chris Matthews and CNN's Late

Edition with Wolf Blitzer and actually elaborated on these

claims and revelations, some of which, on the face of it,

seem like potentially illegal and impeachable offenses, if

they do indeed reach up to the vice president or president.

Now imagine the response: front-page headlines; editorials

nationwide calling for answers, congressional hearings, or

even the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into

some of the claims; a raft of op-ed-page pieces by the

nation's leading columnists asking questions, demanding

answers, reminding us of the history of Iran-Contra; bold

reporters from recently freed media standing up in White

House and Defense Department press briefings to demand more

information on Hersh's various charges; calls in Congress for

hearings and investigations into why the people's

representatives were left so totally out of this loop.

Uh . . .

All I can say is: if any of this happened, I haven't been

able to discover it. As far as I can tell, no one in the

mainstream even blinked on the Iran-Contra angle or the

possibility that a vast, secret Middle Eastern operation is

being run, possibly illegally and based on stolen funds and

Saudi money, out of the US vice president's office.

You can certainly find a few pieces on, or reports about,

``The redirection''--all focused only on the possible buildup

to a war with

Iran--and the odd wire-service mention of it; but nothing

major, nothing earth-shaking or eye-popping; not, in fact, a

single obvious editorial or op-ed piece in the mainstream; no

journalistic questions publicly asked of the administration;

no congressional cries of horror; no calls anywhere for

investigations or hearings on any of Hersh's revelations, not

even an expression of fear somewhere that we might be seeing

Iran-Contra, the sequel, in our own moment.

This, it seems to me, adds up to a remarkable non-response

to claims that, if true, should gravely concern Congress, the

media and the nation.

Let's grant that Hersh's New Yorker pieces generally arrive

unsourced and filled with anonymous officials (``a former

senior intelligence official'', ``a US government consultant

with close ties to Israel''). Nonetheless, Hersh has long

mined his sources in the intelligence community and the

military to striking effect. Undoubtedly, the lack of

sourcing makes it harder for other reporters to follow up,

though when it comes to such papers as the Washington Post

and the New York Times, you would think that they might have

Washington sources of their own to query on Hersh's claims.

And, of course, editorial pages, columnists, op-ed editors,

congressional representatives and reporters at administration

news briefings don't need to do any footwork at all to raise

these subjects. (Consider, for instance, the White House

press briefing last April 10, where a reporter did indeed ask

a question based on an earlier Hersh New Yorker piece.) As

far as I can tell, there haven't even been denunciations of

Hersh's report or suggestions anywhere that it is inaccurate

or off-base. Just the equivalent of a giant, collective shrug

of the U.S. media's rather scrawny shoulders.

Since the response to Hersh's remarkable piece has been so

tepid in places where it should count, let me take up just a

few of the many issues his report raises.

``Meddling'' in Iran

For at least a month, the U.S. press and television news

have been full to the brim with mile-high headlines and top-

of-the-news stories recounting (and, more rarely, disputing)

Bush administration claims of Iranian ``interference'' or

``meddling'' in Iraq (where U.S. military spokesmen regularly

refer to the Iraqi insurgents they are fighting as ``anti-

Iraq forces'').

Since Hersh published ``Plan B'' in The New Yorker in June

2004 in which he claimed that the Israelis were ``running

covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria'',

he has been on the other side of this story.

In ``The coming wars'' in January 2005, he first reported

that the Bush administration, like the Israelis, had been

``conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at

least since'' the summer of 2004. Last April in ``The Iran

plans'', he reported that the administration was eager to put

the ``nuclear option'' on the table in any future air assault

on Iranian nuclear facilities (and that some in the Pentagon,

fiercely opposed, had at least temporarily thwarted planning

for the possible use of nuclear bunker-busters in Iran).

He also reported that U.S. combat units were ``on the

ground'' in Iran, marking targets for any future air attack,

and quoted an unnamed source as claiming that they were also

``working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris,

in the north, the Balochis, in the southeast, and the Kurds,

in the northeast. `The troops are studying the terrain, and

giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and

recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds,' the

consultant said. One goal is to get `eyes on the ground' . .

. The broader aim, the consultant said, is to `encourage

ethnic tensions' and undermine the regime.''

In ``The redirection'', he now claims that in search of

Iranian rollback and possible regime change, ``American

military and special-operations teams have escalated their

activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a

Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior

intelligence official, have also crossed the [Iranian] border

in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.''

In his Democracy Now! radio interview, he added: ``We have

been deeply involved with Azeris and Balochis and Iranian

Kurds in terror activities inside the country . . . and, of

course, the Israelis have been involved in a lot of that

through Kurdistan . . . Iran has been having sort of a series

of back-door fights, the Iranian government, because . . .

they have a significant minority population. Not everybody

there is a Persian. If you add up the Azeris and Balochis and

Kurds, you're really 30-some [%], maybe even 40% of the

country.''

In addition, he reported that ``a special planning group

has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of

Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for

Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the president,

within 24 hours'' and that its ``new assignment'' was to

identify not just nuclear facilities and possible regime-

change targets, but ``targets in Iran that may be involved

in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq''.

Were there nothing else in Hersh's most recent piece, all

of this would still have been significant news--if we didn't

happen to live on a one-way imperial planet in which Iranian

``interference'' in (American) Iraq is an outrage, but secret

U.S. operations in, and military plans to devastate, Iran are

your basic ho-hum issue.

America's mainstream news purveyors don't generally

consider the issue of the United States' ``interference'' in

Iran worthy of a great deal of reporting, nor do U.S. pundits

consider it a topic worthy of speculation or consideration;

nor, in a Congress where leading Democrats have regularly

outflanked the Bush administration in hawkish positions on

Iran, is this likely to be much of an issue.

You can read abroad about rumored U.S. operations out of

Pakistan and Afghanistan aimed at unsettling Iranian

minorities such as the Balochs and about possible operations

to create strife among Arab minorities in southern Iran near

the Iraqi border--the Iranians seem to blame the British,

whose troops are in southern Iraq, for some of this (a charge

vociferously denied by the British Embassy in Tehran)--but

it's not a topic of great interest in the U.S.

In recent months, in fact, several bombs have gone off in

minority regions of Iran. These explosions have been reported

in the U.S., but you would be hard-pressed to find out what

the Iranians had to say about them, and the possibility that

any of these might prove part of a U.S. (or Anglo-American)

covert campaign to destabilize the Iranian fundamentalist

regime basically doesn't concern the news mind, even though

history says it should.

After all, many of the United States' present Middle

Eastern problems can be indirectly traced back to the

successful CIA-British-intelligence plot in 1953 to oust

prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh (who had nationalized the

Iranian oil industry) and install young Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

in power as shah.

After all, in the 1980s, in the anti-Soviet war in

Afghanistan, the CIA (with the eager connivance of the

Pakistanis and the Saudis) helped organize, arm and fund the

Islamic extremists who would some day turn on the U.S. for

terror campaigns on a major scale.

As Steve Coll reported in his superb book Ghost Wars, for

instance, ``Under ISI [Pakistan's Inter-Services

Intelligence] direction, the mujahideen received training and

malleable explosives to mount car-bomb and even camel-bomb

attacks in Soviet-occupied cities, usually designed to kill

Soviet soldiers and commanders. [CIA director William] Casey

endorsed these despite the qualms of some CIA career

officers.''

Similarly, in the early 1990s, the Iraq National Accord, an

organization run by the CIA's Iraqi exile of choice, Iyad

Allawi, evidently planted, under the agency's direction, car

bombs and explosive devices in Baghdad (including in a movie

theater) in a fruitless attempt to destabilize Saddam

Hussein's regime. The New York Times reported this on its

front page in June 2004 (to no effect whatsoever), when

Allawi was the prime minister of U.S.-occupied Iraq.

Who knows where the funding, training and equipment for the

bombings in Iran are coming from--but, at a moment when

charges that the Iranians are sending into Iraq advanced

improvised explosive devices, or the means to produce them,

are the rage, it seems a germane subject.

In the U.S., it's a no-brainer that the Iranians have no

right whatsoever to put their people, overtly or covertly,

into neighboring Iraq, a country that, back in the 1980s,

invaded Iran and fought a bitter eight-year war with it,

resulting in perhaps a million casualties; but it's just

normal behavior for the Pentagon to have traveled halfway

across the planet to dominate the Iraqi military, garrison

Iraq with a string of vast permanent bases, build the largest

embassy on the planet in Baghdad's Green Zone, and send

special-operations teams (and undoubtedly CIA teams as well)

across the Iranian border, or to insert them in Iran to do

``reconnaissance'' or even to foment unrest among its

minorities. This is the definition of an imperial world view.

Sleepless nights

Let's leave Iran now and briefly take up a couple of other

matters highlighted in ``The redirection'' that certainly

should have raised the odd red flag and pushed the odd alarm

button in the U.S. far more than his Iranian news (which did

at least get some attention).

Iran-Contra redux: Does it raise no eyebrows that, under

the leadership of Elliott Abrams (who in the Iran-Contra

period pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawfully withholding

information from Congress and was later pardoned), such a

meeting was held? Does no one want to confirm that this

happened? Does no one want to know who attended?

Iran-Contra alumni in the Bush administration at one time

or another included the late president Ronald Reagan's

national security adviser John Poindexter, Otto Reich, John

Negroponte (who, Hersh claims, recently left his post as

director of national intelligence to avoid the 21st-century

version of Iran-Contra--``No way. I'm not going down that

road again, with the NSC [National Security Council] running

operations off the books, with no [presidential] finding''),

Roger Noriega, and Robert Gates.

Did the vice president or president sit in? Was either of

them informed about the ``lessons drawn''? Were the vice

president's right-hand men, I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby and/or

David Addington, in any way involved? Who knows?

In the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan administration drew

together the seediest collection of freelance arms dealers,

intelligence agents, allies and--in the case of ayatollah

Ruhollah Khomeini's Iranian regime--

sworn enemies in what can only be called ``amateur hour'' at

the White House. Now, it looks as if the Bush administration

is heading down a similar path and, given its previous

``amateur hour'' reputation in foreign policy, imagine what

this is likely to mean.

Jihadis as proxies: Using jihadis as U.S. proxies in a

struggle to roll back Iran--with the help of the Saudis--

should have rung a few bells somewhere in U.S. memory as

another been-there, done-that moment. In the 1980s--on the

theory that my enemy's enemy is my friend--the fundamentalist

Catholic CIA director William Casey came to believe that

Islamic fundamentalists could prove tight and trustworthy

allies in rolling back the Soviet Union.

In Afghanistan, as a result, the CIA, backed by the Saudi

royals, who themselves represented an extremist form of Sunni

Islam, regularly favored and funded the most extreme of the

mujahideen ready to fight the Soviets. Who can forget the

results? Today, according to Hersh, the Saudis are reassuring

key figures in the Bush administration that this time they

have the jihadis to whom funds are flowing under control. No

problem. If you believe that, you'll believe anything.

Congress in the dark: Hersh claims that, with the help of

Saudi National Security Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan

(buddy to the Bushes and Cheney's close comrade-in-arms), the

people running the black-ops programs out of Cheney's office

have managed to run circles around any possibility of

congressional oversight, leaving the institution completely

``in the dark'', which is undoubtedly exactly where Congress

wanted to be for the past six years. Is this still true? The

non-reaction to the Hersh piece isn't exactly encouraging.

To summarize, if Hersh is to be believed--and as a major

journalistic figure for the past near-40 years he certainly

deserves to be taken seriously--the Bush administration seems

to be repeating the worst mistakes of the Reagan

administration and of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan,

which led inexorably to the greatest acts of blowback in U.S.

history.

Given what we already know about the Bush administration,

Americans should be up nights worrying about what all this

means now as well as down the line. For Congress, the media

and Americans in general, this report should have been not

just a wake-up call, but a shout for an allnighter with

NoDoz.

In my childhood, one of the Philadelphia papers regularly

ran cartoon ads for itself in which some poor soul in a

perilous situation--say, clinging to the ledge of a tall

building--would be screaming for help, while passers-by were

so engrossed in the paper that they didn't even look up. Now,

we have the opposite situation: a journalist in essence

writing bloody murder in a giant media and governmental

crowd. In this case, no one in the mainstream evidently

cares--not yet, anyway--to pay the slightest attention.

It seems that there's a crime going on and no one gives a

damn.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 5 o'clock and 20 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, March 16, 2007, at noon.

Madam Chairman, I proudly stand today in support of H.R. 800, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would enable workers to finally reclaim their right to freely form a union and bargain with their employers. It is clear that too many American workers today are under the threat of discrimination, harassment, or termination for simply choosing to bargain collectively for better wages, hours, and working conditions. The current system for forming unions and bargaining is broken, and it is our responsibility to fix it.

This bipartisan legislation is an important first step towards leveling the playing field for workers and employers, rebuilding our middle class, improving our economy, and on a larger scale ensuring that more Americans benefit from a growing economy. Today we can set an example for the rest of the world. How can our nation continue to encourage other nations to protect their workers' rights if we do not remedy our own?

Critics of this bill simply want to preserve the status quo. That is not a reasonable solution, and these critics clearly do not have our middle class workers' best interests in mind. Research shows that nearly 60 million would form a union tomorrow if given the chance, and that democratic votes would still take place under the Employee Free Choice Act.

The bill before us has three major components that would help restore middle class workers' rights to designate and certify bargaining representation, to receive mediation and arbitration concerning a first contract, and to enforce stronger penalties for employee violations. I believe this is the first step towards treating the problems of income inequality, and income immobility that currently confront our nation.

Today, the House of Representatives has an opportunity to send hardworking Americans a message. A message that we recognize the fundamental right to organize is essential to maintaining a just economy and a society that values work. Let us send that message loud and clear, by voting in support of H.R. 800.

Mr. Speaker, the American people are concerned and the world is very uneasy. Congress must begin to restore what the President and Vice President have shattered: our credibility in the world.

Headlines in the U.S. and international news media remove all doubt how the U.S. is viewed today in the world. One said: ``Russian official warns U.S. not to attack Iran.''

``Use of force on Iran unacceptable,'' says France.

``Trigger-happy U.S. worries Putin.''

The BBC reports that the U.S. Central Command officials have already chosen an extensive list for missile and bomb attacks inside Iran.

Another in the Asia Times: ``Three reasons why we should attack Iran,'' and all this comes from yesterday's headlines.

The French Foreign Ministry told an Asia news agency that France believes that the use of force to solve the Iranian nuclear issue is both unimaginable and unacceptable; but not in this White House.

When the Vice President announced recently that all options are still on the table, our international credibility took another direct hit. We cannot afford that kind of warmongering rhetoric any more, not in dollars, not in soldiers, not in insecurity, and not in international standing. It sounds like 2002 all over again. Like Yogi Berra said, ``deja vu all over again.''

That is a cause for grave concern on this floor and needs congressional action. We must include language in every military appropriation bill that specifically prohibits the administration from unilaterally waging war in Iran except by a vote of the Congress.

As it stands, the President and the Vice President are using the same speeches from 2002. They are just replacing the name of the country, Iraq, with Iran; but this time, the world has noticed.

The French foreign minister tells his boss before a television audience: ``Predictions that U.S. strikes will be conducted against Iran have become more common, and this causes concern.''

In the Baltimore Chronicle, Robert Perry writes: ``A number of U.S. military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have waged an extraordinary behind-the-scenes resistance to what they fear is a secret plan by George Bush to wage war against Iran.''

The BBC reports that two ``triggers,'' or pretexts, for a U.S. attack have already been chosen.

Seymour Hersch writes in The New Yorker that the Pentagon has been ordered by the White House to plan a bombing campaign against Iran ready to go on a day's notice.

Michael Klare writing in the Asia Times says that recent remarks by the President seek to instill the same fear as the run-up to the Iraq war.

Listen to the President's rhetoric: ``stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges.''

Then there was the line by the President the other day: ``We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East.''

And then the President said: ``It is also clear that we face an escalating danger from Shiite extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East.'' He is making a bogey-man out of Iran.

People and nations listen to that inflammatory rhetoric from our President and Vice President and worry about a world careening towards another war. There is no doubt that America needs a thoughtful and coherent foreign policy concerning Iran. We ought to talk to them, for starters.

We don't need to merely change the rhetoric of the White House. We need to change the administration's perilous world view that America can and will just shoot its way to peace anywhere there is a problem in the world.

The first step in restoring America's credibility and global leadership is to let the world know that Congress is a coequal branch of government that will exercise its constitutional duty to ensure that the administration does not run off on its own to go to war.

We have to declare that the days of runaway rhetoric by the administration are over. But let us go beyond that. Let Congress take the administration's threat of war off the table and replace it with America's true belief that we view war as unimaginable and unacceptable.

Three U.S. Reasons To Attack Iran

(By Michael T. Klare)

Some time this spring or summer, barring an unexpected

turnaround by Tehran, US President George W Bush is likely to

go on national television and announce that he has ordered US

ships and aircraft to strike at military targets inside Iran.

We must still sit through several months of soap opera at

the United Nations in New York and assorted foreign capitals

before this comes to pass, and it is always possible that a

diplomatic breakthrough will occur--let it be so!--but I am

convinced that Bush has already decided an attack is his only

option and the rest is a charade he must go through to

satisfy his European allies.

The proof of this, I believe, lies half-hidden in recent

public statements of his, which, if pieced together, provide

a casus belli, or formal list of justifications, for going to

war.

Three of his statements, in particular, contained the

essence of this justification: his January 10 televised

speech on his plan for a troop ``surge'' in Iraq, his State

of the Union address of January 23, and his first televised

press conference of the year on February 14. None of these

was primarily focused on Iran, but Bush used each of them to

warn of the extraordinary dangers that country poses to the

United States and to hint at severe US reprisals if the

Iranians did not desist from ``harming US troops''.

In each, moreover, he laid out various parts of the overall

argument he will certainly use to justify an attack on Iran.

String these together in one place and you can almost

anticipate what Bush's speechwriters will concoct before he

addresses the American people from the Oval Office some time

this year. Think of them as talking points for the next war.

The first of these revealing statements was Bush's January

10 televised address on Iraq. This speech was supposedly

intended to rally public and congressional support behind his

plan to send 21,500 additional US troops into the Iraqi

capital and al-Anbar province, the heartland of the Sunni

Insurgency.

But his presentation that night was so uninspired, so

lacking in conviction, that--according to media commentary

and polling data--few, if any, Americans were persuaded by

his arguments. Only once that evening did Bush visibly come

alive: when he spoke about the threat to Iraq supposedly

posed by Iran.

``Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its

territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face

of extremist challenges,'' he declared, which meant, he

assured his audience, addressing the problem of Iran. That

country, he asserted, ``is providing material support for

attacks on American troops''. (This support was later

identified as advanced improvised explosive devices--IEDs or

roadside bombs--given to anti-American Shi'ite militias.)

Then followed an unambiguous warning: ``We will disrupt the

attacks on our forces . . . And we will seek out and destroy

the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our

enemies in Iraq.''

Consider this Item 1 in his casus belli: because Iran is

aiding and abetting the United States' enemies in Iraq, the

US is justified in attacking Iran as a matter of self-

defense.

Bush put it this way in an interview with Juan Williams of

National Public Radio on January 29: ``If Iran escalates its

military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or

innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly . . . It makes

common sense for the commander-in-chief to say to our troops

and the Iraqi people--and the Iraqi government that we will

help you defend yourself from people that want to sow discord

and harm.''

In his January 10 address, Bush went on to fill in a second

item in any future casus belli: Iran is seeking nuclear

weapons to dominate the Middle East to the detriment of the

United States' friends in the region--a goal that it simply

cannot be allowed to achieve.

In response to such a possibility, Bush declared, ``We're

also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and

protect American interests in the Middle East.'' These

include deploying a second US aircraft-carrier battle group

to the Persian Gulf region, consisting of the USS John C

Stennis and a flotilla of cruisers, destroyers and submarines

(presumably to provide additional air and missile assets

for strikes on Iran), along with additional Patriot anti-

missile batteries (presumably to shoot down any Iranian

missiles that might be fired in retaliation for an air

attack on the country and its nuclear facilities).

``And,'' Bush added, ``we will work with others to prevent

Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the

region.''

Bush added a third item to the casus belli in his State of

the Union address on January 23. After years of describing

Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda as the greatest threats to U.S.

interests in the Middle East, he now introduced a new menace:

the resurgent Shi'ite branch of Islam led by Iran.

Aside from al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists, he

explained, ``It has also become clear that we face an

escalating danger from Shi'ite extremists who are just as

hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the

Middle East.'' Many of these extremists, he noted, ``are

known to take direction from the regime in Iran'', including

the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.

As if to nail down this point, he offered some hair-raising

imagery right out of the Left Behind best-selling book series

so beloved of Christian evangelicals and their

neoconservative allies: ``If American forces step back [from

Iraq] before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be

overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic

battle between Shi'ite extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni

extremists backed by al-Qaeda and supporters of the old

regime. A contagion of violence could spill across the

country, and in time the entire region could be drawn into

the conflict. For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For

the enemy, this is the objective.''

As refined by Bush speechwriters, this, then, is the third

item in his casus belli for attacking Iran: to prevent a

``nightmare scenario'' in which the Shi'ite leaders of Iran

might emerge as the grandmasters of regional instability,

using such proxies as Hezbollah to imperil Israel and pro-

American regimes in Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia--with

potentially catastrophic consequences for the safety of

Middle Eastern oil supplies. You can be sure of what Bush

will say to this in his future address: no U.S. president

would ever allow such a scenario to come to pass.

Many of these themes were reiterated in Bush's White House

Valentine's Day (February 14) press conference. Once again,

Iraq was meant to be the main story, but Iran captured all

the headlines.

Bush's most widely cited comments on Iran focused on claims

of Iranian involvement in the delivery of sophisticated

versions of the roadside IEDs that have been responsible

for many of the U.S. casualties in recent months. Just a

few days earlier, unidentified U.S. military officials in

Baghdad had declared that elements of the Iranian

military--specifically, the Quds Force of the Iranian

Revolutionary Guards--were supplying the deadly devices to

Shi'ite militias in Iraq, and that high-ranking Iranian

government officials were aware of the deliveries.

These claims were contested by other U.S. officials and

members of Congress who expressed doubt about the reliability

of the evidence and the intelligence work behind it, but Bush

evinced no such uncertainty: ``What we do know is that the

Quds Force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to

networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that

the Quds Force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a

known.''

What is not known, he continued, is just how high up in the

Iranian government went the decision-making that led such

IEDs to be delivered to the Shi'ite militias in Iraq. But

that doesn't matter, he explained. ``What matters is, is that

they're there . . . We know they're there, and we're going to

protect our troops.'' As commander-in-chief, he insisted, he

would ``do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in

harm's way''.

He then went on to indicate that ``the biggest problem I

see is the Iranians' desire to have a nuclear weapon''. He

expressed his wish that this problem can be ``dealt with'' in

a peaceful way--by the Iranians voluntarily agreeing to cease

their program to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels. But

he also made it clear that the onus was purely on Tehran to

take the necessary action to avoid unspecified harm: ``I

would like to be at the . . . have been given a chance for us

to explain that we have no desire to harm the Iranian

people.''

No reporters at the press conference asked him to explain

this odd twist of phrase, delivered in the past tense, about

his regret

that he was unable to explain to the Iranian people why he

had meant them no harm--presumably after the fact. However,

if you view this as the Bush version of a Freudian slip, one

obvious conclusion can be drawn: that Bush has already made

the decision to begin the countdown for an attack on Iran,

and only total capitulation by the Iranians could possibly

bring the process to a halt.

Further evidence for this conclusion is provided by Bush's

repeated reference to Chapter 7 of the United

Nations Charter. On three separate occasions during the

press conference he praised Russia, China and the

``EU3''--the United Kingdom, France and Germany--for

framing the December 23 UN Security Council resolution

condemning Iran's nuclear activities and imposing economic

sanctions on Iran in the context of Chapter 7--that is, of

``Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of

the Peace and Acts of Aggression''.

This sets the stage for the international community, under

UN leadership, to take such steps as may be deemed necessary

``to maintain or restore international peace and stability'',

ranging from mild economic sanctions to fullscale war (steps

that are described in Articles 39-51). But the December 23

resolution was specifically framed under Article 41, which

entails ``measures not involving the use of armed force'', a

stipulation demanded by China and Russia, which have

categorically ruled out the use of military force to resolve

the nuclear dispute with Iran.

One suspects that Bush has Chapter 7 on the brain, because

he now intends to ask for a new resolution under Article 42,

which allows the use of military force to restore

international peace and stability. But it is nearly

inconceivable that Russia and China will approve such a

resolution. Such approval would also be tantamount to

acknowledging U.S. hegemony worldwide, and this is something

they are simply unwilling to do.

So we can expect several months of fruitless diplomacy at

the United Nations in which the United States may achieve

slightly more severe economic sanctions under Chapter 41 but

not approval for military action under Chapter 42. Bush knows

that this is the inevitable outcome, and so I am convinced

that, in his various speeches and meetings with reporters, he

is already preparing the way for a future address to the

nation.

In it, he will speak somberly of a tireless U.S. effort to

secure a meaningful resolution from the United Nations on

Iran with real teeth in it and his deep disappointment that

no such resolution has been not forthcoming. He will also

point out that, despite the heroic efforts of American

diplomats as well as military commanders in Iraq, Iran

continues to pose a vital and unchecked threat to U.S.

security in Iraq, in the region, and even--via its nuclear

program--in the wider world.

Further diplomacy, he will insist, appears futile and yet

Iran must be stopped. Hence, he will say, ``I have made the

unavoidable decision to eliminate this vital threat through

direct military action,'' and will announce--in language

eerily reminiscent of his address to the nation on March 19,

2003, that a massive air offensive against Iran has already

been under way for several hours.

Madam Speaker, I had not intended to speak, but after listening to these two people talk about what the House is doing, I think we are going to have to have some civics lessons around here for Republicans. They never followed the regular order.

The way things are supposed to happen in the House is you drop in a bill and it goes to committee, and you have hearings, and you have markups, and you work off the floor before you bring things to the floor. When the Republicans were in control, they never had committee hearings, they never had anybody come in, they never had any markups. It was all written in the Speaker's Office and brought to the Rules Committee and put out on the floor without any preparation.

This Congress is preparing issues that will be brought to the floor over the next several months. We are not asleep. We are just doing the regular order, which is going to committee.

In the Ways and Means Committee today we discussed global warming. There wasn't one single hearing in this House on global warming when the Republicans were in session, and yet it is the biggest issue facing this Nation.

Madam Speaker, finally, grudgingly, the administration has agreed to talk to Syria and Iran about the civil war that is raging in Iraq. This should have happened at least 2 years ago, so why now?

Has the President finally concluded what many of us have said for a long time: That you cannot shoot your way to a peace in Iraq? That would be a hopeful sign, but it is doubtful since he continues to escalate the U.S. presence in the middle of a civil war.

The apparent movement towards diplomacy comes at a curious time. The American people told their government last November to get their soldiers out of harm's way when they gave the Democrats a 2-year contract on the majority. And it didn't take long for this House to make a down payment on rebuilding trust with the American people.

Despite repeated Presidential claims that meant nothing, the overwhelming passage of Speaker Pelosi's first step in getting U.S. soldiers out of harm's way was the shot heard round the world.

No one wants to move faster than me in getting the soldiers out of Iraq. But every journey starts with a single step, and we have done it.

The American people and other nations welcomed the Speaker's leadership in getting this country to begin to set a new course in Iraq based on a reality, and not based on the same old rhetoric from the White House. They continue to bluster; so what else is new?

There are serious mainstream Middle East leaders who believe the U.S. policy has more to do with extraction than engagement. By extraction, they don't mean U.S. soldiers being extracted out of harm's way, they are referring to extracting Iraq's oil.

The Asia Times yesterday published two commentaries that are reverberating throughout the Middle East. One is called, ``U.S.'s Iraq Oil Grab is a Done Deal.'' And the other is entitled: ``Big Oil In, Stability Out Under New Iraqi Law.'' I will include the two articles for the Record.

As many articles in recent days have pointed out, the President's representatives in Iraq used intense pressure behind the scenes to get the Iraq government to take the first step in making production-sharing agreements, PSAs, the law of Iraq. There are scenarios in which investment and production will be a benefit to the Iraq people, but the Iraq people have to be solely in charge. As it stands, and as many fear, the

PSA language approved over the weekend could indenture Iraq's oil wealth to U.S. oil interests for decades to come.

As passed by the Iraq parliament, a new centralized government agency in Iraq, closely tied to the U.S., would have ultimate control over who gets access to Iraq's vast oil resources.

The oil industry itself says it costs one single dollar to extract a barrel of oil in Iraq, but that barrel brings $60 today on the world market. How does big oil, closely aligned to the President and Vice President, spell conservation? It is spelled I-R-A-Q.

Here is the U.S.-Iraq equation as seen by people from the Middle East: Billions of barrels of oil, billions of dollars in profits, dozens of U.S. military bases across Iraq, and thousands of U.S. soldiers remaining in Iraq.

The bottom line is this: Is the President hoping Iraq will import democracy, or will it export oil under the thumb of U.S. oil interests?

The production-sharing agreements have not yet been enacted into law. The outcome is still uncertain. But one thing is certain, production- sharing agreements that favor the U.S. means the U.S. will be in Iraq for decades. The President has expressed a new found interest in diplomacy.

Are we going to negotiate with Iran at the same time we push for PSA agreements to become law? A lot of people in the Middle East wonder. The U.S. needs to state its intentions if there is any hope for a diplomatic solution in Iraq.

We not only need to extract U.S. soldiers from Iraq, we also need to extract U.S. oil interests from dictating the oil future for the Iraqi people. The deeper the U.S. goes in influencing the distribution of Iraq oil wealth, the more we inflame the tensions and suspicions about why we invaded Iraq in the first place.

Remember weapons of mass destruction and Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and democracy? Now it becomes clear what it is really all about: Getting control of Iraq oil.

Madam Speaker, we have got to have the President come clean. Perhaps he will do a White House speech on this.

[From the Asia Times, Feb. 27, 2007]

U.S.'s Iraq Oil Grab Is a Done Deal

(By Pepe Escobar)

``By 2010 we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a

day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the

lowest cost, is still where the prize lies.''--U.S. Vice

President Dick Cheney, then Halliburton chief executive

officer, London, autumn 1999.

U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick

Cheney might as well declare the Iraq war over and out. As

far as they--and the humongous energy interests they defend--

are concerned, only now is the mission really accomplished.

More than half a trillion dollars spent and perhaps half a

million Iraqis killed have come down to this.

On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet in

Baghdad approved the draft of the new Iraqi oil law. The

government regards it as ``a major national project''. The

key point of the law is that Iraq's immense oil wealth (115

billion barrels of proven reserves, third in the world after

Saudi Arabia and Iran) will be under the iron rule of a fuzzy

``Federal Oil and Gas Council'' boasting ``a panel of oil

experts from inside and outside Iraq''. That is, nothing less

than predominantly U.S. Big Oil executives.

The law represents no less than institutionalized raping

and pillaging of Iraq's oil wealth. It represents the death

knell of nationalized (from 1972 to 1975) Iraqi resources,

now replaced by production sharing agreements (PSAs)--which

translate into savage privatization and monster profit rates

of up to 75% for (basically U.S.) Big Oil. Sixty-five of

Iraq's roughly 80 oilfields already known will be offered for

Big Oil to exploit. As if this were not enough, the law

reduces in practice the role of Baghdad to a minimum. Oil

wealth, in theory, will be distributed directly to Kurds in

the north, Shi'ites in the south and Sunnis in the center.

For all practical purposes, Iraq will be partitioned into

three statelets. Most of the country's reserves are in the

Shi'ite-dominated south, while the Kurdish north holds the

best prospects for future drilling.

The approval of the draft law by the fractious 275-member

Iraqi Parliament, in March, will be a mere formality. Hussain

al-Shahristani, Iraq's oil minister, is beaming. So is dodgy

Barnham Salih: a Kurd, committed cheerleader of the U.S.

invasion and occupation, then deputy prime minister, big PSA

fan, and head of a committee that was debating the law.

But there was not much to be debated. The law was in

essence drafted, behind locked doors, by a U.S. consulting

firm hired by the Bush administration and then carefully

retouched by Big Oil, the International Monetary Fund, former

U.S. deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz' World Bank, and

the United States Agency for International Development. It's

virtually a U.S. law (its original language is English, not

Arabic).

Scandalously, Iraqi public opinion had absolutely no

knowledge of it--not to mention the overwhelming majority of

Parliament members. Were this to be a truly representative

Iraqi government, any change to the legislation concerning

the highly sensitive question of oil wealth would have to be

approved by a popular referendum.

In real life, Iraq's vital national interests are in the

hands of a small bunch of highly impressionable (or downright

corrupt) technocrats. Ministries are no more than

political party feuds; the national interest is never

considered, only private, ethnic and sectarian interests.

Corruption and theft are endemic. Big Oil will profit

handsomely--and long-term, 30 years minimum, with fabulous

rates of return--from a former developing-world stalwart

methodically devastated into failed-state status.

In these past few weeks, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad

has been crucial in mollifying the Kurds. In the end, in

practice, the pro-U.S. Kurds will have all the power to sign

oil contracts with whatever companies they want. Sunnis will

be more dependent on the Oil Ministry in Baghdad. And

Shi'ites will be more or less midway between total

independence in the south and Baghdad's dictum (which they

control anyway). But the crucial point remains: nobody will

sign anything unless the ``advisers'' at the U.S.-manipulated

Federal Oil and Gas Council say so.

Nobody wants to colonial-style PSAs forced down their

throat anymore. According to the International Energy Agency,

PSAs apply to only 12% of global oil reserves, in cases where

costs are very high and nobody knows what will be found

(certainly not the Iraqi case). No big Middle Eastern oil

producer works with PSAs. Russia and Venezuela are

renegotiating all of them. Bolivia nationalized its gas.

Algeria and Indonesia have new rules for future contracts.

But Iraq, of course, is not a sovereign country.

Big Oil is obviously ecstatic--not only ExxonMobil, but

also ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP and Shell (which have

collected invaluable info on two of Iraq's biggest

oilfields), TotalFinaElf, Lukoil from Russia and the Chinese

majors. Iraq has as many as 70 undeveloped fields--``small''

ones hold a minimum of a billion barrels. As desert western

Iraq has not even been exploited, reserves may reach 300

billion barrels--way more than Saudi Arabia. Gargantuan

profits under the PSA arrangement are in a class by

themselves. Iraqi oil costs only US$1 a barrel to extract.

With a barrel worth $60 and up, happy days are here again.

What revenue the regions do get will be distributed to all

18 provinces based on population size--an apparent concession

to the Sunnis, whose central areas have relatively few proven

reserves.

The Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance) certainly has other

ideas--as in future rolling thunder against pipelines,

refineries and Western personnel. Iraq's oil independence

will not go down quietly--at least among Sunnis. On the same

day the oil law was being approved, a powerful bomb at the

Ministry of Municipalities killed at least 12 people and

injured 42, including Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. Mahdi

has always been a feverish supporter of the oil law. He's a

top official of the Shi'ite party, the Supreme Council for

the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SCIRI).

A whole case can be made of SCIRI delivering Iraq's Holy

Grail to Bush/Cheney and Big Oil--in exchange for not being

chased out of power by the Pentagon. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the

SCIRI's leader, is much more of a Bush ally than Maliki, who

is from the Da'wa Party. No wonder SCIRI's Badr Organization

and their death squads were never the target of Washington's

wrath--unlike Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army (Muqtada is

fiercely against the oil law). The SCIRI certainly listened

to the White House, which has always made it very clear: any

more funds to the Iraqi government are tied up with passing

the oil law.

Bush and Cheney got their oily cake--and they will eat it,

too (or be drenched in its glory). Mission accomplished:

permanent, sprawling military bases on the eastern flank of

the Arab nation and control of some of largest, untapped oil

wealth on the planet--a key geostrategic goal of the New

American Century. Now it's time to move east, bomb Iran,

force regime change and--what else?--force PSAs down their

Persian throats.

Mr. Speaker, today a story appeared in the Washington Post entitled ``Pentagon Red Tape Keeps Medical Records From Doctors of the Wounded.''

The Defense Department is refusing to give the records of people wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan to physicians who are taking care of them in the Veterans Department. It is absolutely unbelievable that there could be that kind of bureaucratic snafu.

Now the Defense Department says, We don't have the authority to give the records on the wounded that are leaving us and going to the Veterans Department.

Absolute bureaucratic nonsense. I have introduced H.R. 1128 with Mr. Filner, which gives that authority to the Defense Department. I hope that other Members will sign this bill, and that we will pass it by unanimous consent when we return to the House after the Presidents' Day break.

In the next week, there are going to be people who are injured and transferred to the veterans hospitals who can't get their records transferred. How can a doctor take care of somebody if they don't know what happened to them on the battlefield? This is the kind of thing we have to stop if we support the troops.

[From the Washington Post, Feb. 16, 2007]

Pentagon Red Tape Keeps Medical Records From Doctors of the Wounded

(By Al Kamen)

Department of Veterans Affairs doctors are furious over a

recent decision by the Pentagon to block their access to

medical information needed to treat severely injured troops

arriving at VA hospitals from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The VA physicians handle troops with serious brain injuries

and other major health problems. They rely on digital medical

records that track the care given wounded troops from the

moment of their arrival at a field hospital through their

evacuation to the United States.

About 30 VA doctors in four trauma centers around the

country have treated about 200 severely wounded soldiers and

Marines. The docs had been receiving the complete digital

records from the Pentagon until the end of January, using the

Pentagon's Joint Patient Tracking Application.

But on Jan. 25, when Shane McNamee, a physician in the

Richmond VA Medical Center, tried to get the full records, he

couldn't. He sent an urgent e-mail to VA chief liaison

officer Edward Huycke.

``My JPTA account has been disabled within last few days,''

McNamee wrote. ``I called the hotline and was told that all

VA accounts have been locked. Could not get a good answer

why. Anyhow--I have 4 [Iraq/Afghanistan] service members to

arrive within the next 2 days. This information is terribly

important,'' the doctor wrote.

Thirty-four minutes later Huycke e-mailed back: ``Ok,

Shane. Will get on it. Not sure what's up.''

An hour or so later, a senior VA official forwarded

McNamee's e-mail to Lt. Col. David Parramore at the Pentagon,

saying that McNamee ``needs his access back to JPTA to

provide the best possible treatment for soldiers injured in

[Iraq/Afghanistan] arriving there in a few days. Can you

help?''

Tommy Morris, director of Deployment Health Systems,

responded the next morning to Parramore's inquiry, after

contacting Ellen Embry, deputy assistant secretary of defense

for force health protection. ``I spoke with Embry and no

agreements, no data sharing via access to JPTA.''

The access cutoff came after Morris, in a Jan. 23 e-mail,

instructed a colleague: ``If the VA currently has access I

need a list of persons and I need their accounts shut off

ASAP. It is illegal for them to have access without data use

agreements and access controls in place by federal

regulations and public law.''

There have been meetings between VA and Pentagon officials.

The Pentagon declined to comment yesterday. VA officials

apparently thought it might have been resolved Monday. But an

e-mail Monday from Morris to a co-worker said: ``The

leadership has not authorized the VA accounts to be turned

back on, in case someone approaches you about this.''

Last week, Sens. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) and Larry E.

Craig (Idaho)--the chairman and ranking Republican on the

Veterans' Affairs Committee--wrote David S.C. Chu,

undersecretary of defense for personnel, of their ``deep

concern'' about VA trauma center doctors not having access to

complete records.

``For those servicemembers suffering from a traumatic brain

injury,'' they wrote, ``VA's access to in-theater imaging is

an important and valuable tool for tracking their patient's

progress since being wounded or injured.'' They suggested the

VA doctor be given temporary access to JPTA while the data-

sharing questions are worked out.

They're still awaiting an appropriate response. McNamee is

still waiting for the records.