Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I want to associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone). This week is one of the most important weeks that I have seen in the 16 years I have been in the Congress because we are dealing with an issue that is about the question of what is in the common good.

We have no problem in this country believing that fire departments and police departments and road systems and schools are issues of the common good. We all pay our taxes. We all get benefits from them, and we have since 1964 had a program in this country called Medicare which was a program in which everybody put their money and people over the age of 65 took out their money to pay for health care benefits when they needed them. Everybody got the same thing everywhere in the whole country.

But there have been people in this Congress who have always thought that the idea of doing something collectively was somehow, I do not know, socialism or something bad. I do not know. They believe that everybody should be individually responsible for themselves, that they should be on their own and that they should deal with these things in a market, like they were buying cars or buying refrigerators or television sets.

So we have a bill before us that is going to undo what we have had in this country for senior citizens for the last 38 years. They have been waiting. They have been trying to do this for 4 or 5 years.

I was on the Medicare commission. One of the Members of the other body and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) of this body and I represented the Democrats on that commission, and we managed to hold off the disaster which is being foisted on the senior citizens and the country itself in the next week.

This attitude about the common good really began to be undermined under Mr. Reagan. It was his campaign slogan in 1980: Are you better off than you were 4 years ago? Not are ``we'' better off than we were 4 years ago, but are ``you.''

This bill is going to say we are going to guarantee a premium support to every senior citizen in this country; we are going to write them a check, $5,900, $6,000, $6,300, whatever; and we are going to say now you, grandma, take that check out and find yourself an insurance company that will take care of what your needs are. You can stay in the program of Medicare as we know it, but since the healthy and the least sick will go out and find these good deals somewhere, who will be left in the regular program? The old and the sick.

The price per person is going to go up, so they are going to raise the premium on anybody who stays in the regular program. Is that thinking about the common good, that we are going to pick on the ones who are the old and the sick, and we are going to let the young and the healthy seniors go off and make a good deal somewhere? No, it is not. It is wrong, it is un-American, and it is undermining the whole concept of Medicare.

The idea that all seniors put their money into the pot, nobody sits around

in this country and says, gee, I hope I get sick so I can use some money out of the pot. There is nobody that crazy in our country. Everybody wants insurance there when they are sick and particularly they want to feel independent, they have taken care of it themselves. It is not their children that have to do it or their grandchildren.

My father died a couple of years ago at 93. My mother is 93, and we four kids in my family have not had to spend anything on our mother's health or our father's health. Like every American, we pay our taxes into the pot, and they have taken out when they needed to; and that has gone on over the entire country.

What they are saying in this bill is send your mother out and let her pick her own plan. That is wrong; and as we watch this debate, understand that is what they are saying to every senior citizen. Here is your money; good luck, Grandma; I hope you find something for yourself.

I hope every Member votes ``no'' on this. We could do better than this.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for putting this special order together.

I think that it is very clear we now know that they wanted to go to war immediately after 9/11 in Iraq. They went to Afghanistan really because that was more obvious to people at that point, but they were clearly planning for a long time and they simply misled us about what was there.

Everybody understands that now. There is no mystery in this country or anywhere else in the world. The question is, What are we going to do now?

I picked up the Sunday morning newspaper and last Thursday I came back to Washington, DC and went out to MCI Center to a hockey game with a bunch of amputees from Walter Reed. The next day I went up there and walked through several of the wards. There are two pictures of the front page of young men who have been severely injured that I know. I have met them. These are young kids who did what their country asked them, and we honored them.

I told them I was there because I wanted to say thank you. But the fact is that that is exactly what happened in Vietnam. Young people went and died doing exactly what they were asked to do. It is the leadership that ought to have to pay the price and they ought to start paying it right now.

We have a President who simply will not get off the fact that he made a mistake. He simply went the wrong place. He should never have stopped the war on terror. He should have finished what was going on in Afghanistan and then perhaps you look later at something, but Afghanistan is as bad or worse than it was when we went in there.

We still have people dying there. One died yesterday from the State of Washington. And we continued to allow our young people, men and women, now to be killed in a war that makes no sense in the way it is being run. And the President will not admit it. The whole world has told him that. They told him on the 25th of February, ten million people marched in the streets this in this country. The President said, It is just a focus group. We are going to war.

Now, my belief is that we have to figure out how we get out and how we, with honor, get out of this thing. It is going to be very difficult to do that.

When they called Bremer back here in the other day, it was simply because they said, gee, it is 1 year to the election. How in the heck are we going to explain this mess at election time? We have got to end it. So we are now, in every decision that will be made, it will be made not about what is good for our troops or what is good for the Reservists or the Guard people or anybody else, but what is seen to be good for the President's reelection campaign.

I am afraid that unless the Congress raises some noise about this, we are going to see more people sacrificed in this process because they will not get the international community in. If the President would say tomorrow, I want Kofi Annan to take over the reconstruction and Kofi Annan to take over the military peacekeeping in the country, we will make a contribution as we have but we are not going to run it, things would begin to change dramatically.

This is viewed as an occupation. The actual choice of where do they go with their headquarters when they came into Baghdad, they went to the palaces that Saddam Hussein had built and they moved in, and they said to the people, this is where we belong; we are running the place. No Iraqi missed the message.

The hardest part about this is that the American people are not being told the truth. If we read the American newspapers, they are told there are only 5,000 in al Qaeda over in Iraq. If we read the European papers, they say 50,000. We do not see any bodies coming back. They have absolutely prohibited the press and the media from going out to Dover when the troops come back or to go to cemeteries when people are being buried. They are simply blinding the American people's eyes. In my view, the American people have to demand that they know what is going on, and I think there is really no excuse for what they have done except that they have to make the political campaign look better.

This is a mess. Everywhere in the world we look at the press, any country in the world we see the press. They have all analyzed the President made a big mistake. The French, in fact, were right. If people really want to understand what is going on here, go watch the movie The Battle of Algiers. The French went through exactly the same thing in Algeria. There has not been a country in the 20th century that invaded a sovereign country and came out whole. Everybody loses.

Whether we are talking about Vietnam or we are talking about Algeria or we are talking about Lebanon or we are talking about any of those countries, the people who invaded always back out with their tail between their legs, and that is where we are today. Those kids, we have still got them out on the line; hold on, kid; keep fighting; try and save yourself. The people behind them are making bad decisions, again and again and again. It is a terrifying thing, and I think the American people cannot let them be blinded from it. They have to begin to demand that they see what the truth is.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I came to the floor and told my colleagues about a young man from my district who was killed in Iraq and the conversation I had with his mother. Since then, two more Americans have died in Iraq. Yesterday, I asked Members to be silent and contemplate our lost men and women.

Today, Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to ask the President for a plan for how we are going to get out of Iraq. Whatever threat Mr. Bush may have perceived from Saddam Hussein, whatever warehouses of weapons Mr. Bush believed were waiting to harm the United States, it is over now. We should plan to get out.

We should not spend the lives of young men and young women to privatize Iraq's economy. We should plan to get out. We should not spend the lives of young Americans to build sewers in Iraq. We should not spend the lives of young Americans to make Iraq into our vision of a model state. We should plan to leave. We are symbols. We are targets. We are sitting ducks. Send in the U.N. or some of the Arab states or NATO or whoever wants to go. Pay for it with American taxpayers' money as you sign it today, but stop paying for it with American lives. Plan, Mr. President, to get out.

Mr. Speaker, today the President signed the bill taking $87 billion to deal with Iraq.

I will include for the Record an article from the Everett Herald entitled, ``Parents Who Protested War Mourn Death of Soldier Son.'' This man from my district leaves behind a wife who is pregnant to deliver in 1 month and two small girls.

As we held the memorial service today for the 15 troops that were killed on Sunday in Iraq when one of our Chinook helicopters went down, I could not help thinking about the memorial service that will be held for the person who died last night and the one who died this morning, and there will be more and more. The memorial service for Benjamin Colgan from my district is down the road yet.

This morning I spoke about the President's need to present a plan for stopping the bloodshed. As far as we know, there is no plan. Our experience shows us there was no or little planning about what would happen after the military action stopped. They have never stopped because there was no plan. Now, apparently we are going to sit in Iraq while the President continues to say ``bring 'em on'' until the war on terror is won, until Iraq has free enterprise, until Iraq has good roads, until Iraq loves Americans. Well, it is not going to happen.

The war on terror is much like the war on drugs or the war on poverty, we have to keep at it, but we are not going to defeat the enemy and get a surrender sign on the battleship Missouri. If the President says we are going to keep troops in Iraq until the war on terror is over, then the President is planning to keep troops in Iraq forever.

Maybe the Iraqis are ingrates or foolish, or maybe they are reacting like people have reacted since time immemorial to occupations. Many have lamented the way the President squandered the good will of the nations of the world after September 11. Now, the President is squandering the goodwill of the Iraqi people, most of whom were

happy to have Saddam Hussein removed.

I did not, and I still do not, believe that removing a foreign dictator is sufficient reason for the United States to invade another country. If it were, we would be invading dozens of countries. But the fact is that removal of Saddam Hussein was a gain for the Iraqi people and the United States for a short time had their gratitude. Now, that we have moved from being liberators to occupiers, that gratitude is fast drying up.

Our troops are not safe. Our leaders have gone to such lengths to identify nongovernmental groups like the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders that they are not safe either, and they are leaving. The status quo is not sustainable. We need to plan what will replace the status quo.

What I fear is that in the absence of a plan, we will stumble down the path with a paper Constitution in December and an improvised election which will signal our withdrawal, and will leave Iraq in chaos because we did not bring the United Nations in to set things up.

Mr. Speaker, we need a plan. We need to know what the benchmarks are, what the goals are, what the test is about when we will leave. I think that the President's case for war was shoddy. I think the planning for the postwar period was shoddy or perhaps nonexistent. With body bags arriving in Dover virtually every day, we cannot afford a shoddy, years-long occupation. Americans are targeted in Iraq in a way that United Nations blue helmets would not be, in a way that a force from countries in the region would not be, in a way that we cannot sustain.

We have to plan to get out, sooner rather than later. It is the only chance for Iraq to have a fresh start, and it is the only chance for a lot of young Americans to come back alive. To fail to do this, to lay out the plan, what we are going to do and how we are going to get out so that the whole world can see, is the only hope of getting the Iraqis to stop killing our people. The failure to do that, the stonewalling by our President and taking the money we gave him, $87 billion more to keep on doing what he is doing, we are in for a long siege.

[Published on HeraldNet.com, Nov. 5, 2003]

Parents Who Protested War Mourn Death of Soldier Son

man was becoming skeptical of u.s. situation in iraq

Kent.--As a boy, Benjamin Colgan marched with his parents

in peace protests.

Joseph and Pat Colgan, 62 and 60, respectively, whose

activism dates from the Vietnam War, were surprised when

their son enlisted in the Army. But they continued to support

him, even as they opposed the war in Iraq.

On Monday, their worst fears came true. Colgan, 30, a

second lieutenant, the father of two young daughters with a

third child due next month, died Saturday when a roadside

bomb exploded as he responded to a rocket-propelled grenade

attack in Baghdad, the Defense Department said.

A U.S. flag hung outside the family's home Monday. Funeral

arrangements were pending.

Word came with a knock on the door at the Colgans' home.

``I saw the cross on his lapel pin and I said, `No, not my

son! Not my son!'' his mother said.

``There will be many people experiencing the same thing,''

she added. ``This war, it shouldn't be.''

Benjamin Colgan was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd

Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Armored Division.

His parents were concerned when he gave a dim appraisal of

Baghdad in an e-mail Friday.

``What raised a red flag was when he said, `It's getting

real old and getting real crazy,' '' his father said.

As a young child, he had joined his parents on marches to

protest nuclear weapons at Naval Submarine Base Bangor. Then,

to pay for college, he enlisted in the Army after graduation

from Mount Rainier High School in Des Moines in 1991.

``That was hard, but you support your children,'' his

mother said.

She and her husband joined protest marches again against

the war in Iraq this year.

They tied a yellow ribbon around the maple in their front

yard, a tree they had planted when Benjamin Colgan was born.

On Monday, they replaced it with a black ribbon.

Benjamin Colgan initially planned to become a medic, but

joined the Special Forces and then Delta Force, the

military's most elite and secretive unit.

He left to attend officer candidate school, was assigned to

the 1st Armored Division in Germany after graduation, and

hoped to return to Delta Force after earning his captain's

bars, his father said.

His mother says his death has only strengthened her

position against the war.

``People keep asking, `Are the Iraqis better off?' '' she

said. ``What we have to start asking is, `Are we better off?'

And we're not. We're losing our children.''

Mr. Speaker, it is easy to come into this House and forget what is going on out in the world, but on Friday when I got back to my office, I received a phone call from one of my constituents who had received a notification on Sunday that her son was killed in Iraq. Talking to this woman and understanding how she had felt, she had marched against the war, but her son believed that he was doing the right thing for this country. He believed that what he was doing was important, even though his parents thought that the war was not the right thing to be doing.

I think that as we go forward with a President who refuses to look at how to change the situation over there, we risk more and more of these deaths. We had them on Sunday. We had them on Monday, and I think we ought to take a moment to be silent and contemplate the war dead.

Mr. Speaker, as the President announced that everything is fine in Iraq, the Red Cross is leaving, the Doctors Without Borders is leaving, and the United States continues to break the law. The problem there is we say we want to establish the rule of law, but we break it. The U.S. provisional authority in Iraq is breaking international law from the 1907 Hague Convention and the Geneva Convention.

On September 19, the viceroy, Mr. Bremer, said anybody will now be permitted to have full ownership of a wide range of state-owned Iraq assets. That violates the 1925 constitution which has been in effect and has not been changed by the people which bars private ownership of natural resources or the means of production. It prohibits the foreign ownership of real estate or the establishment of companies in Iraq by non-Arab foreigners.

We cannot bring democracy to a country and fail to bring the rule of law. The United States is talking out of both sides of its mouth.

Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record an article from the New York Times, dated October 29, titled, ``Iraq Business Deals May Be Invalid, Law Experts Warn.''

[From the New York Times, Oct. 29, 2003]

Iraq Business Deals May Be Invalid, Law Experts Warn

(by Thomas Catan)

The US-led provisional authority in Iraq may be breaking

international law by selling state assets, experts have

warned, raising the prospect that contracts signed now by

foreign investors could be scrapped by a future Iraqi

government.

International business people attending a conference in

London this week heard that some orders issued by the US-led

Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) may be in breach of the

1907 Hague Regulations and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

``Is what they are doing legitimate, is it legal?'' asked

Juliet Blanch, a partner at the London-based international

law firm Norton Rose. ``Most [experts] believe that their

actions are not legal'', she said. ``There would be no

requirement for a new government to ratify their [actions].''

International law obliges occupying powers to respect laws

already in force in a country ``unless absolutely prevented''

from doing so.

According to international law experts, that throws doubt

on the legality of the CPA's September 19 order opening the

Iraqi economy to foreign investment. In what amounted to a

blueprint for transforming Iraq into a market economy, Order

39 permitted full foreign ownership of a wide range of state-

owned Iraqi assets, barring natural resources such as oil.

However, such sweeping economic reform may not be legal, as

the UK government was privately warned by its chief law

officer in the first days of the war. In his private advice,

later leaked to the press, Lord Goldsmith wrote that ``the

imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be

authorised by international law.''

The British government will not now comment on the attorney

general's advice, which it maintains was confidential.

Questioned in parliament by Shirley Williams, the Liberal

Democrat leader of the House of Lords, a minister argued that

the government was ``confident that their policies and

actions in Iraq are right and consistent with the UK's

international obligations.''

However, international experts say foreign investors could

face a wide range of legal problems in Iraq. Not least is the

fact that Order 39 is ``strictly contrary to the Iraqi

constitution,'' according to Stephen Nelson, a partner at

Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, speaking before the conference on

Monday.

Indeed, the Iraqi constitution--which cannot legally be

altered without the consent of the Iraqi people--contains a

wide range of other provisions that could be highly

troublesome for foreign investors.

Iraqi law bans private ownership of ``national'' resources

or ``the basic means of production''. It also prohibits

foreign ownership of real estate or the establishment of

companies in Iraq by non-Arab foreigners.

There is also the question of what will happen to existing

contracts with foreign companies, signed with the government

of Saddam Hussein.

The CPA has yet to announce what will become of pre-

existing contracts, many of which are held by Russian,

Chinese and French companies.

However, international law experts have said they could be

enforced, raising the possibility that contracts with the

ousted regime might be more enforceable than those signed

with the CPA.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we listened to the President have a press conference. We discovered it is 1984, war is peace, that chaos is democracy, and that everything is fine. Yesterday two more soldiers were killed in Iraq. Nothing has changed in the Department of War. We have the same Secretary, we have the same Assistant Secretary, we have the same people in the White House saying that we are doing just fine. They have not changed anything. They just want more money out of us.

I suggest that we have a moment of silence for those who died yesterday.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, some of these later speakers have talked about religious bigotry, and I think one of the things that if we care about what is going on in Iraq, they will stop the Arab bashing. The President was smart enough when he used the word ``crusade'' to realize that was a serious mistake because it raises issues from thousands of years ago.

On the one hand I agree with condemning Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia for his anti-Semitic remarks, but one has to use the same standard on the general who starts talking about ``our God.'' In Ireland, where my family came from, God was on both sides. I do not know if the Catholics had him or the Protestants had him. Who is right?

When Members inject that into this debate, they simply inflame those people in the Shiite community and the Sunni community who see us as occupiers and destroyers of their religion. That means more people attack our people. That creates al Qaeda volunteers. Those are the people shooting our troops. Stop it.

Mr. Speaker, in order to think about Medicare, you have to think about us all being in the same boat. Right now we made a decision a long time ago that all seniors will be in the same boat, we would get the same benefits, we would have the same amount we would put into it no matter where you lived, or how old you were, or whatever your medical condition was, what color you were, what State you lived in, how much money you had. It did not make any difference; we were all in the boat.

Now the Republicans have said we are going to blow the bottom out of the boat. They have done that with tax cuts, and they set up a situation in 2010 where it is going to be absolute chaos in this body over how we fund anything because of the bottom having been blown out of the boat when we made these tax cuts recently.

Their answer to the seniors of this country is, well, we are going to give you all the same life ring. You can just take this life ring and go out and do the best you can with it.

Now, I sat on the Medicare commission for a year and heard this issue debated. What we have today is a program where all senior citizens get the same guaranteed set of benefits, no matter who you are, where you are, or anything. And what is attempted to be done in this bill is to say that in 2010 we are going to take away those guaranteed benefits and we are just going to give you a life ring of a voucher for $5,500.

Now, I could just take my own example. I am 65. My mother is 93. So you are going to give us each the same life ring? Now, do you think for one moment, any Member of this Congress, do you think that my mother and I could go out and get a benefit package of the same size for the same cost? I mean, who has not bought any insurance? We all know from our government employees insurance thing that you have got to pay more if you are older, if you have got kids, or you have got some pre- existing condition or whatever. Well, to send me and my mother out with the same amount of money is basically what we are going to say to 40 million people on Medicare. You have got to go out there and find an insurance company that wants you.

Now, I do not know how many of you have dealt with somebody who is in their 90s. Some of them are doing pretty well, some are doing a little less well, some are in real trouble. But to say to them that on an individual basis we are going to throw you out of the life boat and here is your life ring and good luck, I hope you make it to good health, it simply does not make any humane sense.

Leaving people, they say, well, we are not going to do that until 2010. What are you worried about? People are going to wake up in 2010 and say what in the world was the legislature, the Congress, thinking in 2003 when they set this mess up? Many of us may not be here. And there will be a whole new bunch here trying to put back together what we destroyed today, what we take away from seniors, which is security of health care.

I have not spent a dime on my mother. Nobody in this room has spent a dime on their parents because the medical plan under Medicare has taken care of them. Now, I paid my taxes, of course, and we all paid our taxes. That is what the lifeboat is all about, is we all pay our taxes and those in it that need it. And what is being proposed in this bill that is now in conference is that in 2010 we take away the lifeboat.

This motion by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) simply says we do not want to take Medicare apart and destroy the life boat in which we all sit. We do not want to put every senior citizen out there on their own. Dealing with insurance companies, my God, we have all dealt with insurance companies. We have dealt with automobile insurance companies and casualty insurance companies and all these insurance companies. You know what they do to you individually. There is no individual market today. If you are under 65 and you try and buy insurance, you have an awful time because of the prices they charge you.

The value of Medicare is that we put everybody together, we share the risk. And most of us hope we never take a dime out of this program. It is an insurance program, surely, but it is also one that we do not want to take advantage of. And to say to people, well, why do you not go buy your own and see if you can make a little money on the side simply makes no sense.

I urge this entire House to vote for the gentleman from Ohio's (Mr. Brown) resolution.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to rule IX, I rise to a question of privileges of the House, offer a resolution, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, October 16, I gave notice of my intention to raise a question of privileges of the House.

Mr. Speaker, the first definition of rule IX(1) is ``affecting the rights of the House collectively, its safety, dignity, and the integrity of its proceedings.'' Rule IX is designed to give Members of the House the means to protect the dignity and integrity of this body, and that is what my resolution seeks to do.

I believe that our rights, our dignity, and our integrity are affected and are harmed when inaccurate statements are made in our Chamber and recorded in our official proceedings without note being taken that they are inaccurate. I believe that the integrity of the Congressional Record is harmed and the dignity of the body issuing the Record is harmed.

I am aware that it is conceivable that Members of this body may, at least in theory, at times make statements on the floor that might be shown to be inaccurate. When this occurs, however, other Members have the opportunity and the responsibility to engage in debate to identify the offending statements. Readers of the Congressional Record, citizens, future historians, have the opportunity to learn from our debate what is and is not accurate.

When the four statements I have identified were made in this Chamber on January 28, there was no such opportunity to engage the person making these statements in debate in order to identify the statements as inaccurate as there is normally in the House. Unless we act today, when future historians go back to examine our proceedings, they will find these four statements presented in the Record unchallenged.

Normally, dubious statements in the Record are not unchallenged. Normally, we collectively take responsibility for the accuracy of the statements made in the Record through our debate and discussion. The statements of January 28 were made outside the normal process Congress uses to identify inaccurate statements. Therefore, the only opportunity Congress has to protect the integrity of its proceedings is to identify in the Record the statements that are inaccurate.

I believe that the integrity of our proceedings, as protected under rule IX, requires the House to consider my resolution. To fail to consider this resolution would leave the implication that these statements were of no consequence, or that this body did not care to identify them as inaccurate. I do not think we can afford to leave that impression in a journal that will be examined in the future as a basis for writing the history of our entrance into the war.

Mr. Speaker, for that reason, I ask that we consider this resolution at this time.

Mr. Speaker, further parliamentary inquiry.

Is the effect of your ruling that whatever the President says must be considered correct since we have no chance to debate him, we have no chance to question him?

So the body does not have a way to deal with the statements made in the State of the Union message? We must accept it, and there it is?

Mr. Speaker, at the conclusion of my remarks, I will be entering into the Record an article entitled, ``Sick, wounded U.S. troops held in squalor.'' This is a story that comes out of UPI. The author is Mark Benjamin, who is a UPI investigator editor, and he reports that 1 month after President Bush greeted the soldiers at Fort Stewart, the home of the famed Third Infantry Division, as heroes on their return from Iraq, approximately 600 sick or injured members of the Army Reserve and National Guard are warehoused in rows of spare, steamy, and dark cement barracks in a sandy field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds or illnesses.

Now, these National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are so substandard and the medical care so poor that many of them believe the Army is trying to push them out with reduced benefits for their ailments. One document showed to this reporter stated that no more doctor appointments are available from October 14 through November 11. These Reserve and National Guard people are on what are called medical hold. If you are wounded and you are badly injured, you are in the hospital. But after you get to a certain point, they can do it on an outpatient basis. So you are put into a medical hold status.

As one member of the Guard said, there are two armies, one is the regular army and the other is the reserve army, and we are second class citizens. We are being ignored. Now, Mr. Speaker, 40 percent of the people now on medical hold are people who served in Iraq. Those who went described clusters of strange ailments, like heart and lung problems, among previously healthy troops. They said the Army has tried to refuse them benefits and claims the injuries and illnesses were due to preexisting conditions prior to military service.

One particular case caught my eye. First Sergeant Gerry Mosley. He crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on March 19 with the 296th Transportation Company, hauling fuel while under fire from the Iraqis as they traveled north alongside combat vehicles. Mosley said he was healthy before the war. He could run 2 miles in 17 minutes. Pretty good. Those are 8\1/2\ minute miles, at 48 years of age. He also developed a series of symptoms: lung problems; shortness of breath; vertigo, that means he was dizzy; migraines; and tinnitus, that is ringing in his ears; and he thinks maybe the anthrax vaccine had something to do with it. He also has a torn shoulder from an injury there.

Mosely said he has never been depressed before, but he found himself looking at shotguns recently and thinking about suicide. Sergeant Mosely is paying $300 a month to get better housing than the cinder block barracks. He has a notice from the base that appears to show that there are no more doctor appointments available for Reservists from October 14 to November 11. He said he had never been treated like this in 30 years in the Army Reserves and his quote was, ``Now I won't go back to war for the Army.''

Mr. Speaker, it is shameful that this kind of article appears in the newspapers in the United States at a time when we are sending people over to a war for very unclear reasons. No one really knows why they are over there. We have called up Reservists for months on end. What started out as 6 months has now been extended to a year.

I recently spoke at the retirement of one my Reservists in the State of Washington up at Everett at the naval base. Before I went up to speak about him, I asked him about their deployment. He told me all about it. And I asked if everybody came back to their job. He said 25 percent of the people in his unit came back to no job. They lost their job while they were gone.

This is an unacceptable situation. Those people who voted and said they care about the troops ought to be asking some very tough questions of the Army.

Mr. Speaker, the article I referred to above is as follows:

[From United Press International, Oct. 17, 2003]

Sick, Wounded U.S. Troops Held in Squalor

(By Mark Benjamin)

Fort Stewart, Ga., Oct. 17 (UPI).--Hundreds of sick and

wounded U.S. soldiers including many who served in the Iraq

war are languishing in hot cement barracks here while they

wait--sometimes for months--to see doctors.

The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living

conditions are so substandard, and the medical care so poor,

that many of them believe the Army is trying push them out

with reduced benefits for their ailments. One document shown

to UPI states that no more doctor appointments are available

from Oct. 14 through Nov. 11--Veterans Day.

``I have loved the Army. I have served the Army faithfully

and I have done everything the Army has asked me to do,''

said Sgt. 1st Class Willie Buckels, a truck master with the

296th Transportation Company. Buckels served in the Army

Reserves for 27 years, including Operation Iraqi Freedom and

the first Gulf War. ``Now my whole idea about the U.S. Army

has changed. I am treated like a third-class citizen.''

Since getting back from Iraq in May, Buckels, 52, has been

trying to get doctors to find out why he has intense pain in

the side of his abdomen since doubling over in pain there.

After waiting since May for a diagnosis, Buckels has

accepted 20 percent of his benefits for bad knees and is

going home to his family in Mississippi. ``They have not

found out what my side is doing yet, but they are still

trying,'' Buckels said.

One month after President Bush greeted soldiers at Fort

Stewart--home of the famed Third Infantry Division--as heroes

on their return from Iraq, approximately 600 sick or injured

members of the Army Reserves and National Guard are

warehoused in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement barracks

in a sandy field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds

or illnesses.

The Reserve and National Guard soldiers are on what the

Army calls ``medical hold,'' while the Army decides how sick

or disabled they are and what benefits--if any--they should

get as a result.

Some of the soldiers said they have waited six hours a day

for an appointment without seeing a doctor. Others described

waiting weeks or months without getting a diagnosis or proper

treatment.

The soldiers said professional active duty personnel are

getting better treatment while troops who serve in the

National Guard or Army reserve are left to wallow in medical

hold.

``It is not an Army of One. It is the Army of two--Army and

Reserves,'' said one soldier who served in Operation Iraqi

Freedom, during which she developed a serious heart condition

and strange skin ailment.

A half-dozen calls by UPI seeking comment from Fort Stewart

public affairs officials and U.S. Forces Command in Atlanta

were not returned.

Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the

personnel now in medical hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those

who went, many described clusters of strange ailments, like

heart and lung problems, among previously healthy troops.

They said the Army has tried to refuse them benefits,

claiming the injuries and illnesses were due to a ``pre-

existing condition,'' prior to military service.

Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows

of rectangular, gray, single-story cinder block barracks

without bathrooms or air conditioning. They are dark and

sweltering in the southern Georgia heat and humidity. Around

60 soldiers cram in the bunk beds in each barrack.

Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches

through the sandy dirt to a communal bathroom, where they

have propped office partitions between otherwise open toilets

for privacy. A row of leaky sinks sits on an opposite wall.

The latrine smells of urine and is full of bugs, because many

windows have no screens. Showering is in a communal, cinder

block room. Soldiers say they have to buy their own toilet

paper.

They said the conditions are fine for training, but not for

sick people.

``I think it is disgusting,'' said one Army Reserve member

who went to Iraq and asked that his name not be used.

That soldier said that after being deployed in March he

suffered onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has

gotten steadily worse. He shakes uncontrollably.

He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease

and it was a pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was

something in the anthrax shots the Army gave him.

``They say I have Parkinson's but it is developing too

rapidly,'' he said. ``I did not have a problem until I got

those shots.''

First Sgt. Gerry Mosley crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on

March 19 with the 296th

Transportation Company, hauling fuel while under fire from

the Iraqis as they traveled north alongside combat vehicles.

Mosley said he was healthy before the war; he could run two

miles in 17 minutes at 48 years old.

But he developed a series of symptoms: lung problems and

shortness of breath; vertigo; migraines; and tinnitus. He

also thinks the anthrax vaccine may have hurt him. Mosley

also has a torn shoulder from an injury there.

Mosley says he has never been depressed before, but found

himself looking at shotguns recently and thought about

suicide.

Mosley is paying $300 a month to get better housing than

the cinder block barracks. He has a notice from the base that

appears to show that no more doctor appointments are

available for reservists from Oct. 14 until Nov. 11. He said

he has never been treated like this in his 30 years in the

Army Reserves.

``Now, I would not go back to war for the Army,'' Mosley

said.

Many soldiers in the hot barracks said regular Army

soldiers get to see doctors, while National Guard and Army

Reserve troops wait.

``The active duty guys that are coming in, they get treated

first and they put us on hold,'' said another soldier who

returned from Iraq six weeks ago with a serious back injury.

He has gotten to see a doctor only two times since he got

back, he said.

Another Army Reservist with the 149th Infantry Battalion

said he has had real trouble seeing doctors about his crushed

foot he suffered in Iraq. ``There are not enough doctors.

They are overcrowded and they can't perform the surgeries

that have to be done,'' that soldier said. ``Look at these

mattresses. It hurts just to sit on them,'' he said,

gesturing to the bunks. ``There are people here who got back

in April but did not get their surgeries until July. It is

putting a lot on these families.''

The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up plans to call up more

reserves.

In an Oct. 9 speech to National Guard and reserve troops in

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Bush said the soldiers had become

part of the backbone of the military.

``Citizen-soldiers are serving in every front on the war on

terror,'' Bush said. ``And you're making your state and your

country proud.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding. It is a pleasure. I am pleased that he would raise this issue. The questioning of Members of Congress because they dispute with the President is not unpatriotic. And those who take that route, I think, are simply not understanding what this country is all about.

This country was formed by dissenters, people who said, We will not be taxed without representation. Now, they were speaking to the King, for heaven's sake, who could cut their head off. All we have to deal with is the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay). And I think Thomas Jefferson's words in 1815 need to be repeated: ``Difference of opinion leads to inquiry and inquiry to truth, and that, I am sure, is the ultimate and sincere object of us both. We both value too much the freedom of opinion, sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition in ourselves.''

For us to be unwilling to have debates out here and categorize people who are talking here as being unpatriotic is absolutely nonsense. What is really fun, though, is to go through the Record and see what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) says. I really had a great time doing this. We have already heard this quote, which I think he was talking about the President in bombing Baghdad when he said ``Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America is diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly. We must stop giving the appearance that our foreign policy is being formulated by the Unibomber.''

If I did not know that came from March 11, 1999, and had to do with Kosovo, I would think that one of my colleagues had made that statement about our present President. When it was said on that day, nobody got up and said ``You are unpatriotic, Mr. DeLay. You are unpatriotic.'' We let him say it. He is wrong. History has proven him wrong, but he has a right to say it in this country.

My favorite quote of all the quotes is one that I wish that I had said. I wish that I was as smart as my distinguished colleague from Texas. He said ``I cannot support a failed foreign policy.'' I wish I had said that about 3 days ago. He said it on April 28, 1999. ``History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace.'' I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Delay) for laying that out for me. I agree with him. I agree with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Delay). It is very seldom that I can think of a way to agree with him. ``This administration is just learning that lesson right now.'' You had better believe it. Read a newspaper. Pick it up every day. Kids are dying over there. Go out to Walter Reed and you can see kids without limbs, you can see all kinds of horrible

things that have happened to our troops. It is easy to make war, hard to make the peace, and they are learning over in Iraq day by day that when you treat people that way, hey, they are going to maybe fight back. I do not know why people think that only Americans would fight back. Why would the other side not fight back? It should not be any surprise. But they did not plan for that. They thought these people were going to come out with flowers and put them in the ends of their rifles. What nonsense could have been going on in the Pentagon I have no idea, but it certainly was a failed foreign policy.

``The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions.'' He must have been talking about Mr. Bush. Who else could he mean?

``A month later these questions are still unanswered.'' No, I say to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay, 6 months later these questions are still unanswered. Things that were said here on the floor were inaccurate. We all know it, but the President says nothing.

``There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable.'' One of the amendments out here the other day was let us have a timetable, but the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Delay) said no, we cannot put a timetable on our President, let him kind of fumble around until he figures it out or put the training wheels on his bike or whatever. I do not know. But no timetable was allowed. The amendment was not allowed here to say we had to have a timetable before we gave $87 billion away.

``There is no legitimate definition of victory.'' Boy, that certainly fits this situation. How are we going to declare victory and get out of there?

``There is no contingency plan for mission creep.'' He means Syria and he means Iran, and I do not know where else he means. ``There is no clear funding program.'' Oh, yes, there is. Borrow. Borrow from the Social Security and Medicare funds; put us deeper in debt. That is what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Delay) wants. That is what he came out here and did. He took $87 billion out of thin air and gave it to the President and said, Hey, go over there and do whatever you have to.

``There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military.'' That is exactly what we are hearing. The Reservists are being kept away from their jobs. Everybody is in trouble. The troops are worn out. The equipment is worn out. Things that were supposed to go 80 hours have gone 500 hours, and so things are breaking down. Gee, he was prescient about what Mr. Bush was going to do.

``There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake.'' Well, we are still looking, boy. It must be they are connected to al Qaeda. No, that is not true. It must be because of weapons of mass destruction. No, it is not that. What is it? What was our national interest? Oil, or something else? I do not know.

I can hardly wait for our President to come here next year and stand in the well and tell us what our national interests have been saved from, because it is not clear what happened before.

``There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there is still no plan today.''

I watched with amazement and amusement in a certain sad sort of way when we had this hurricane out here, Isabel, and they had all these generators lined up and all these water purification units lined up. They saw that coming out a week before, and they said, hey, we are going to need electricity, we are going to need water. They planned for 3 years for going into Iraq, at least for a year, fully planning, all the time. From October right after 9/11, they started planning, and they did not think they would need an electrical generator. They did not think they would need purification of water. Did they think they were just going to kind of march in and it would all come back up out of the dust after they had bombed it? They bombed them for how many days, until there was nothing hardly standing, and they could not figure out that if they bomb something, they are going to have to build it back up. They should have had all that planning done. They prepositioned every weapon imaginable to man and woman on the border with Kuwait. It was right there ready to go, but they had nothing behind it in the way of planning for how they were going to deal with the aftermath.

The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Delay) wants to come out here and say we are unpatriotic for raising these questions. This is what he said to President Clinton. It was not unpatriotic, I guess, when the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Delay) does it, but if the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) or I do it or the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson- Lee) or anybody else comes out here and does it, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sandlin), I mean suddenly we are unpatriotic. No way.

I say to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) answer these questions. Answer your own questions. You put those questions to a President. Why do you not put them to your fellow Texan and ask him?

What is the answer? What do I say to these guys? Because they are tearing us apart. We intend to keep it up until we see a way out. There is no plan, there is no timetable, and our troops are dying day by day.

The worst thing about it, you pick up the New York Times today, the young man who was killed yesterday, he is not on page 1, he is not on page 2, or, 3, or 4, or 5, or 6, or 7; he is on page 8. Like, you know, just a kid, right? Those are our young men and women. We asked them to go over there. They ought to be on the front page, every day. They ought to be in the President's mind every day.

I really thank the gentleman for giving us an opportunity to come and raise these questions and make it very clear to the American people.

I wear this little button. I started wearing it. I am not one who goes around, but I got that because I served during the Vietnam War. Now, in the war, I spent 2 years in Long Beach, California, dealing with casualties coming back. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) did not serve. I do not know where he was. I know he loves his country; I would not even question that. But the question ought to be, how do we get out of this, not is somebody patriotic or not.

I thank the gentleman for the opportunity to speak.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of privileges of the House and I offer a resolution, which I will send to the Clerk's desk.

Mr. Speaker, this is a resolution correcting the Record of Tuesday, January 28, 2003.

Resolved, That an asterisk be placed in the permanent Record of Tuesday, January 28, 2003, noting that the following statements contained in the State of the Union Address by the President of the United States are inaccurate:

One, ``The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

Two, ``Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.''

Three, ``From intelligence sources, we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspections sites, and monitoring the inspectors themselves.''

Four, ``Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.''.

Mr. Chairman, I am here to vote ``no'' on a blank check for Mr. Bush. This is only the latest funding request. We heard earlier it is going to take another $120 billion. They are already putting the figure out here. They are floating it. Nothing has changed. The same Secretary of War, the same Secretary of State, the same Security Council, the same plan, the same viceroy. It is all the same. The President is still going alone. And as he goes alone, he is excluding the Congress. But now he has put out a PR push, and he is saying if we just had some better stories, why, it would not look so bad over there.

Mr. Chairman, I submit for printing in the Congressional Record the article by Maureen Dowd called ``Bewitched, Bothered, Billy-Goated'' and the article ``War Without End'' from The Guardian of October 13.

[From the New York Times, October 16, 2003]

Bewitched, Bothered, Billy-Goated

(By Maureen Dowd)

Washington--I'm not sure I should use the poor schlub's

name. ESPN has used it, and The Chicago Sun-Times. but given

all the Cubs fans who hurled beer and debris and bleeped

epithets at the guy and screamed, ``Kill him!'' and, ``You

can tell we're better than Boston or he'd be dead already!''

it might be as dangerous to print the name of the accursed

26-year-old who fouled up with that foul ball as it would be

to print the name of a C.I.A. spy.

You had to feel sorry for the terrified persona-non-Cubbie

when his own dad refused to confirm that he was related to

him.

On the cusp of Halloween, we are possessed with curses,

hexes and jinxes. Superstitions about a black cat, a billy

goat, a bambino and now, a Cub fan's mano morto. It is also

the season of the witch in politics. America's First Baseball

Fans, the former and current Presidents Bush, have their own

historical jinx with the land of Nebuchadnezzar: you might

call it the curse of Nebuchabunkport.

As soon as the Bushes think they've got Iraq subdued, it

flares up and foils them--turning victory sour and sending

saintly poll numbers wobbly. Every time the Bushes think

they've licked Saddam--who modeled himself on Nebuchadnezzar,

the dictator who built palaces and stored arms in the Iraqi

desert 2,600 years ago--he comes back to haunt them.

The president has tried to shake off the curse with a P.R.

push to circumvent the national media and get smaller news

outlets to do sunny stories about Iraq.

The P.R. campaign shamelessly included bogus cheerful form

letters sent to newspapers, supposedly written by soldiers in

Iraq. It also entailed sweetening up the official Web site of

the United States Central Command. Until recently, the site

offered a mix of upbeat stories and accounts of casualties

and setbacks. Now it's a litany of smiley postings, like

``Soldiers host orphans in Mosul'' and ``Ninevah Province

schools benefit from seized Iraqi assets.'' You have to go to

a different page for casualty reports.

Mr. Bush said in interviews that he wanted to ``go over the

heads of the filter and speak directly with the people''

because there was a ``sense that people in America aren't

getting the truth.''

He is right that there has been a filter that has made it

hard for Americans--and even Congress--to get the truth on

Iraq, but it isn't the press. It's an administration that

comically thinks when it hauls out Dick Cheney to say in his

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. I think perhaps not for the same reasons that some may; but, from my view, this is simply a fig leaf for those people who were in favor of the war but do not want to pay for it.

The Geneva Convention says that when you occupy a country, you are responsible for putting that country back on its feet.

Now, the idea that we are going to go in there and sock them with how many billions of dollars' worth of debt, I do not know, half the debt? Half of $87 billion? It makes absolutely no sense, especially when we read the papers. If we read the al Ahram Weekly out of Egypt and they talk about the privatization that our viceroy has announced, the viceroy said that every state-owned company will be sold to private investors. This is the equivalent of pillaging. My colleagues know: rape and pillage that comes after war. This is pillage, and the war profiteers are gathering around the White House and around Mr. Bremer waiting to buy these companies on 10 cents on the dollar. And we are going to say to the Iraqi people, wherever this money comes from, you people are going to be responsible for it.

Now, I do not know how many times I have heard people come in here and talk about the Third World and they say, the way we are going to help the Third World is to lift the debt. And here we are sitting right here, looking at it, knowing the oil industry is not functioning; and we are saying, we are going to stick you with the debt. We are going to put this debt on their children. We do not like putting it on our children; I agree with you. That is why I am going to vote ``no.'' But this puts the debt on their children. That is certainly fair, is it not? I mean, these kids over there that we bombed and kept from medical care and everything else with our sanctions, now we are going to give them some debt to worry about for the rest of their lives.

This is simply a bad amendment so that some people can say, well, I voted to make a loan, but the House turned me down, and so I had to go for the full boat out of your pocket to their own taxpayers. I understand why you are a little anxious about going home and defending this bill, since you know there is no plan. I mean, who has decided they are going to privatize Iraq's economy? One man, the viceroy, Mr. Bremer. He got some guy in the council who says the new policy will create a free and market-oriented economy, without any precedent in the Arab world. He claims the reforms would promote economic growth and raise the living standards of all Iraqis.

Every time you privatize, you put people out of work.

We have hundreds of thousands of people out of work in that country, and you are planning to put more out.

This is a bad amendment.