Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

When this amendment is disposed of then you can strike?

Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, would you clarify for the House what the rules are under which someone can get an additional amount of time to speak on these amendments? You have to be designated by whom?

The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) is the only one who can give that recognition?

The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey)?

I thank the Chairman.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Kirk

Mr. Chairman, as the designee of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, today the United Nations passed a resolution. This is another fig leaf. It changes nothing. It does not create a timetable, it does not give up any power by the United States. The situation in Iraq with respect to the United Nations is exactly as it was before.

This is like a sense of the congress resolution that went through the United Nations, offering the opportunity for people to contribute money or offering people the opportunity to contribute soldiers. It does not change the fact that this war is in violation of the United Nations charter, and it does not change that situation.

Now, we have created a situation over there where there is no frontline. Another Vietnam person and myself were sitting in the back, and the worst thing about Vietnam was there was no frontline.

You were never sure. You were never safe. You did not know where they were coming from. And we have that situation going on today.

Mr. Chairman, I will enter into the Record an article from The Telegraph, a British newspaper. We would not find it in an American newspaper: ``U.S. Army suicides in Iraq three times the usual rate.'' Our people are killing themselves at three times the rate of any other war we have ever been in.

Now, as a psychiatrist who dealt in Vietnam, I know what some of this is about. I saw this. And if we do not pay attention to this, we simply are ignoring it. We can stand out here and argue about the price of gasoline, whether it is 71 cents or $1.14, or whatever it is in Iraq. That misses the point of what is going on in that country. We are sending troops over there on a regular basis.

Mr. Chairman, I will enter into the Record an article from the Oregon Live which talks about the fact that 700 soldiers from Oregon's second battalion, 162nd Infantry, left their homes on Sunday for training and duty in Iraq. These soldiers have the old-style body armor, not the new Kevlar, but the old stuff; and they have hope, they say, because they are relieving a Florida unit which is fully outfitted in modern armor. The arriving Oregon troops hope they can swap vests with the departing Floridians. When asked about why the Floridians have the vests and the Oregonians do not, they said, oh, it is politics. Look where the money comes from.

Mr. Chairman, we are putting people over there on a daily basis in real trouble. And I know we have had delegations go over there and they ride around in Humvees; they never get out in the street. They are not allowed. They do not allow them to get into danger. We cannot have a Congressman shot in Baghdad or in a Humvee that blows up. What kind of a story would that be in the newspaper? We can believe that no Congressman is going to get anywhere near anything close to being bad.

But our kids are. There is a kid I saw up at Walter Reed Hospital this week. I go up there every week. And this kid's name is PFC Kushnow. He said I could use his name, so I am going to name him. He is from Baltimore. PFC Kushnow said, ``You know what I can't understand? I had to pay $1.75 a minute to make a phone call home to my wife, and you are spending millions of dollars putting in a cell phone system for the Iraqis. What is going on? Doesn't anybody care about me talking to my family?''

This is what is going through the minds of our kids, because they can see. They see it on the ground.

Another kid was riding in a Humvee; he is a civil affairs officer from South Dakota. He was a clerk in a store. He gets called up on National Guard duty. So he goes over there, he is riding out in this car to go and talk about setting up a school. The machine blows up and he has no leg.

Now, this is what we are dealing with here, and it is not going to be dealt with by us talking about this. If the military, if the Defense Department, or the war department, really, if they really cared about these kids, there would not be 44,000 of them over there without the Kevlar vests. They could have done something about it. They refused to do it. They were making 3,000 a month, and now they are making 25,000 a month. Where were they when the war started?

[From the Telegraph, Oct. 14, 2003]

U.S. Army Suicides in Iraq Three Times the Usual Rate

(By Oliver Poole)

Los Angeles.--Suicides among American servicemen in Iraq

are running at up to three times the usual rate, the army has

revealed.

Since the start of the war 11 have been confirmed and a

dozen more deaths are being investigated as suspected

suicides. If all are confirmed it would mean an annualised

rate of 34 per 100,000 servicemen.

Most have happened after May 1 when ``major combat

operations'' were declared over. Since then troops have had

to cope with increasing paramilitary attacks with less

opportunity to defend themselves.

The usual army suicide rate is 10 to 13 per 100,000,

mirroring the figure for the same age group in the general

population.

Officials say the unsettled situation in Iraq, combined

with long deployments away from home and spartan barrack

conditions, can make any symptoms of depression worse.

Accessibility of weapons in a war zone can also quickly

turn a passing thought into action. ``It just takes a second

to put it to your head and pull the trigger,'' said Lt Col

Elspeth Ritchie, a psychiatrist at the army's Uniformed

Services University.

The army said it would send doctors to Iraq to try to

reduce the problems and improve the identification of

soldiers at risk. It has sent 478 home with mental health

issues.

One of the latest victims was buried yesterday in the

village of East Berlin, Pennsylvania. Corey Small, 20, killed

himself after calling home, in front of other troops waiting

to use the telephone.

There are no official figures for the number of GI suicides

in Vietnam. But when the U.S. pulled out in 1975 it had lost

60,000 troops and according to the Veterans of Foreign Wars,

the American equivalent of the British Legion, 180,000

Vietnam veterans have since committed suicide.

In Britain, more than 260 Falklands veterans have since

committed suicide, greater than the number killed in the

conflict.

Mr. Speaker, I am here to do a public service announcement. I want all of you to get your rubber stamp ready. We are here for 24 hours this week, and next week, when we arrive on Wednesday, within 24 hours we will have given the President $87 billion. That is what he wants in a failed policy. We are going to buy cell phones at $6,000 a copy. The ones we have here cost $1,500. Why are they $6,000 in Iraq? Why are we spending $100 million in a witness protection program or putting in a 911 system or all the foolishness in that bill?

There will be no talk tomorrow about amendments in the Committee on Appropriations. We ought to figure out what the President needs until December and give it to him then, and we will come back when he has a plan.

He announced today they are not going to go for a resolution in the United Nations. We are going it alone, and the American taxpayers are being asked to suck it up again, give him $87 billion, do not ask him what he did with it, just rubber stamp it. That is wrong. Just vote no.

Mr. Speaker, it is my desire not to be repetitive, but the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) really said it all: Medicare is a program that we all agree we ought to fix, we ought to add a prescription drug benefit.

Now Members know that the $400 billion that we have put into it is simply not enough. The plan has a great big doughnut hole in it. Most seniors will pay more than they will ever get out of the program, and when we talk about let us fully fund it so everybody gets what they need, we are told there is not enough money. Then if we look a little further into the bill, we find the medical savings accounts. Now I do not know if Members watching this on their television all understand, $400 billion is what they say, and they have $190-some-odd billion for medical savings accounts. Who gets the benefit

from that? How many people in this society are able to put money aside in anticipation of an illness?

We buy insurance; we cannot save up for it unless you are rich. This is a plan for the rich to shelter some more of their money. That money could much better be used for providing a good pharmaceutical benefit. Now, the motion of the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) simply says let us get rid of one more tax break for the rich which is all the President and the Republican majority seem to be able to come up with. In a time when we are losing jobs everywhere and everything else is going wrong, they can find money to keep putting money out for tax breaks. Let us take that money and put it into a pharmaceutical benefit for seniors.

Why should we put a man out that everybody predicts 30 percent of the seniors who are covered now by their former employment will lose that benefit? Why should 74,000 people in the State of Washington who right now have a benefit lose it so we can give another tax break to the rich? It makes no sense. We should all vote for the motion of the gentlewoman from Illinois because it makes good sense, it is good public policy, and it is humane.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight because I know that we are going to next week be in a session of the ``Rubber Stamp Congress.'' Tomorrow the Committee on Appropriations will meet for several hours, and they will pass out $87 billion worth of borrowed money.

I brought this because in my district one of my constituents started printing up what he calls ``fraudulent event notes.'' This is a $1 billion note in ``deception dollars.''

Now, 87 of those look something like this. That is what we are going to put out tomorrow, $87 billion of hard-earned money, with very little discussion, and the President wants them to run it through this House next week. We will come in on Wednesday. We will fly in on Wednesday afternoon; on Thursday we will have a little debate; and Thursday it will be gone. Two, three hours of debate, $87 billion.

Now, when you think about that, this Rubber Stamp Congress never says no to this President. It is a failed policy, with the same people in charge today that got us in the mess. Oh, they have rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic. Ms. Rice is now in charge. She sort of elbowed Colin Powell off to one side, and Mr. Rumsfeld off to the other side, and she is running in and telling Mr. Bremer what to do, the Viceroy we appointed over there to run this place.

What is missing in all of this is a plan to give the control of Iraq to the Iraqis. They say someday. Five years, we are going to be doing this for 5 years. In one year, we have been in here for $79 billion, and now we are back for $87 billion more, all borrowed.

We cannot touch those tax cuts. Oh, no, we gave that money to the rich people, and, I do not know, they are doing something with it somewhere. They are not making jobs. We have got no jobs in this country. But we are printing money. The presses are running like mad printing this money to send over to Iraq.

Now, what are we going to send it there for? You heard from one of my colleagues a little bit of it. We are going to send over a guard system for public property, $15 million. That is just for training and administration.

We are going to send them 80 pickup trucks at $2.6 million. That is $33,000 apiece. That is a pretty good pickup truck. You can get a pickup truck for under $20,000 right now. But, no, we have to send them the $33,000 brand.

We are going to send over a communications system of handheld radios, 400 of them, and 200 satellite telephones, for $6 million. How many of your police departments have that kind of equipment? And yet we can send it over to Iraq.

Or we can go and give security for the judges at $200 million. Four hundred judges. We are going to provide security details constantly for $200 million.

These phony dollars that they got us into, they got us into a war on a fraudulent basis. The President stood right here and said things which he now says, ``My, it wasn't true.'' But we are going to pay for it.

We are going to pay for a witness protection program. If any Iraqis come forward, we promise them that we will take them to the United States and set them up someplace in Florida or wherever, I do not know, and spend $100 million on them, like they were crime fighters in the Mafia in the United States.

That is what your money is going for.

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of things in this country that ought to happen before that happens.

We are going to buy them 200 tanker trucks. We are going to buy them 250 natural gas trucks. More of these dollars. They are going out. They are going out to the people, and they are going to be spent over there, and the Iraqis themselves say, ``Give us 10 cents on the dollar, and we can do it ourselves.'' But this is an American occupation headed by Viceroy Bremer, and there is no intention in this list of turning over control to them.

We are going to set them up an army. We have decided they need a 40,000-man army. They had an army before. Where is it? Why do we have to buy new weapons for all of them?

Four hundred thirty-five Members are going to come in here with their rubber stamp, and they are going to say, ``Mr. President, you want it. I close my eyes, it is yours.'' And we are going to send them $87 billion, with no discussion. It is wrong. Keep your eye on them.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this time to offer my congratulations to the 23 million people of Taiwan; it will be celebrating the 92nd anniversary of its National Day on October 10, 2003.

Taiwan is a dynamic democracy, and world economic leader. With a total of more than 95 political parties, every public office is hotly contested through free elections. People enjoy full political freedom, including freedom of press and assembly. Its per capita income ranks among the highest in the world.

The State of Washington, including the Seventh Congressional District, has enjoyed the close commercial, social and cultural ties that link our two nations. Many of our brightest leaders in the state trace their roots to Taiwan, and the Taiwanese American community is integral to our country's rich ethnic diversity.

The annual commemoration of this historic date is a valuable reminder that freedom and justice are paramount goals shared by our countries.

Again, congratulations to Taiwan and its people on their National Day.

Mr. Speaker, as we in the House get ready to rubber- stamp another blank check for the President of the United States for $87 billion, I submit for the Congressional Record an article from the New York Times dated 30 September by Douglas Jehl. This is an article that talks about the company called New Bridge. The principals are Joe Allbaugh, who was Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000; Mr. Ed Rogers and Mr. Lanny Griffith, who were both White House assistants for the older Bush. These people work with Haley Barbour, who is running for the Senate down in the South. These folks have put together a program. Joe Allbaugh was FEMA director. He quit that job and went to work putting together the war-profiteering company they call New Bridge. They are going to go out there, and they are all swarming around. When Bremer was here in town, they had a big party, and they began talking about how they are going to get the contracts from the $87 billion. We are going to fund these war profiteers right out of the White House. They have no shame.

[From the New York Times, Sept. 30, 2003]

Washington Insiders' New Firm Consults on Contracts in Iraq

(By Douglas Jehl)

Washington, Sept. 29.--A group of businessmen linked by

their close ties to President Bush, his family and his

administration have set up a consulting firm to advise

companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those

seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects.

The firm, New Bridge Strategies, is headed by Joe M.

Allbaugh, Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000 and the

director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency until

March. Other directors include Edward M. Rogers Jr., vice

chairman, and Lanny Griffith, lobbyists who were assistants

to the first President George Bush and now have close ties to

the White House.

At a time when the administration seeks Congressional

approval for $20.3 billion to rebuild Iraq, part of an $87

billion package for military and other spending in Iraq and

Afghanistan, the company's Web site,

www.newbridgestrategies.com, says, ``The opportunities

evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature

and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary

skills and experience to be effective both in Washington,

D.C., and on the ground in Iraq.''

The site calls attention to the links between the company's

directors and the two Bush administrations by noting, for

example, that Mr. Allbaugh, the chairman, was ``chief of

staff to then-Gov. Bush of Texas and was the national

campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney 2000 presidential

campaign.''

The president of the company, John Howland, said in a

telephone interview that it did not intend to seek any United

States Government contracts itself, but might be a middleman

to advise other companies that seek taxpayer-financed

business. The main focus, Mr. Howland said, would be to

advise companies that seek opportunities in the private

sector in Iraq, including licenses to market products there.

The existence of the company was first reported in National

Journal, a weekly magazine of Government and politics.

Mr. Howland said the company was not trying to promote its

political connections. He said that although Mr. Allbaugh,

for example, had spent most of his career ``in the political

arena, there's a lot of cross-pollination between that world

and the one that exists in Iraq today.''

As part of the administration's postwar work in Iraq, the

Government has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in

contracts to American businesses. Those contracts, some

without competitive bidding, have included more than $500

million to support troops and extinguish oil field fires for

Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which

Vice President Dick Cheney led from 1995 until 2000.

Of the $3.9 billion a month that the administration is

spending on military operations in Iraq, up to one-third may

go to contractors who provide food, housing and other

services, some military budget experts said. A spokesman for

the Pentagon said today that the military could not provide

an estimate of the breakdown.

Administration officials, including L. Paul Bremer III, the

top American official in Iraq, have said all future contracts

will be issued only as a result of competitive bidding.

Already, the Web site for the Coalition Provisional

Authority, http://cpa-iraq.org/, lists 36 recent

solicitations, including those for contractors who might

sell new AK-47 assault rifles, nine-millimeter ammunition

and other goods for new army and security forces.

New Bridge Strategies was established in May and recently

began full-fledged operations, including opening an office in

Iraq, its officials said. They added that a decision by the

Governing Council of Iraq to allow foreign companies to

establish 100 percent ownership of businesses in Iraq, an

unusual arrangement in the Mideast, had added to the

attractiveness of the market.

Mr. Howland is a principal of Crest Investment in Houston

and was president of American Rice, once a major exporter to

Iraq. Richard Burt, ambassador to Germany in the Reagan

administration and a former assistant secretary of state, and

Lord Powell, a member of the British House of Lords and an

important military and foreign-policy adviser to Prime

Minister Margaret Thatcher, are among the 10 principals.

Mr. Allbaugh, the chairman, spent most of his career in

Texas politics before Mr. Bush appointed him to head the

federal disaster agency. Mr. Allbaugh, who now heads his own

consulting firm here, did not return calls to his office

today.

Mr. Rogers, the vice chairman who was a deputy assistant to

the first President Bush and an executive assistant to the

White House chief of staff, is also vice chairman of Barbour

Griffith & Rogers, one of the best-connected Republican

lobbying firms in the capital. Mr. Rogers founded it in 1991

with Haley Barbour, who became chairman of the Republican

National Committee and is now running for governor of

Mississippi.

Shortly after leaving the White House, Mr. Rogers was

publicly rebuked by the first President Bush after he signed

a $600,000 contract to represent a Saudi, Sheik Kamal Adham,

who was a main figure under scrutiny in a case that involved

the Bank of Commerce and Credit International. Mr. Rogers

canceled his contract to represent the sheik, former head of

Saudi intelligence.

Mr. Griffith, a director of the new company, is chief

operating officer of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, which he

joined in 1993. He was special assistant for

intergovernmental affairs to the first President Bush and

later worked under him as an assistant secretary of

education.

Until November, Mr. Rogers' wife, Edwina, was associate

director of the National Economic Council at the White House.

Reached by telephone today, Mr. Rogers said he did not want

to speak for the record and referred a reporter to Mr.

Howland.

The company Web site says the company was ``created

specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate

and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle

East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.''

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce that the theater of the absurd is opening a new farce. The plots of the old one, the fox, Mr. Ashcroft, is inspecting the henhouse, looking for someone who broke the law by revealing an alleged CIA employee to the press.

Does anyone believe that they are going to use all the power of the Patriot Act, that they are going to go through the library records, the medical records, the visa records of everybody in the White House to find out who committed this crime? How can this Congress sit here with a straight face and allow that to be the way this issue is revealed? There ought to be an independent counsel. There is no way you can convince the American people that John Ashcroft, whose campaign manager was Karl Rove in the last election he lost, is going to do a real investigation of who broke the law in the White House.

This Congress cannot let that go by because no intelligence agent is going

to be safe in the United States if the fox has his way.

Mr. Speaker, in the next few days, we will hear people say that if you do not support that $87 billion, you are against the troops and you do not care what is happening to our people in Iraq.

The fact is that since this war started, 304 people have died. Mr. Speaker, 167 have died since the President announced that the mission was accomplished. And now they want us to give them a blank check with $87 billion. They will not change one single thing. They will not acknowledge anything with the international community; they will not change anything.

Mr. Speaker, Sergeant Lunsford Brown died on September 20. Captain Brian Faunce died on September 18. Sergeant David Freidrich died on September 20. Sergeant Paul Sturino died on September 22. They continue to die, and the President will not tell us how he is going to get us out of this morass, except give me more money or you are unpatriotic.

Members in this House who want to ask questions are not unpatriotic. The

people who make those kinds of charges ought to stand down here and tell people what they did when their chance came.

Some of us served. I was not in Vietnam, but I was in the hospitals dealing with people who came back. Everybody in this body ought to go out to Walter Reed and walk around Unit 56 and look at those amputees and talk to them.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Texas for yielding me time.

I am here to say you do not have to have a drawl to have this problem in your State. There are 50 States where this is a problem. I was walking across to my office building a minute ago, and I met a reporter from a major newspaper here in the East who said to me, ``What is going on in the Medicare conference?'' I said, ``I do not know. They are talking.'' So he said, ``Well, what do you hear?'' I said, ``We do not hear anything on the Democratic side. That is why we are out here every day trying to instruct those people.''

I went to our Democratic House Member who is on that conference committee and said, ``What is going on?'' He said, ``I do not know. They are not having any meetings where they are discussing anything.''

Now, they have been telling us we are going to have this bill. But this morning I was in the gym, and as I came out of the gym, I met one of my Republican colleagues, and I said to him, ``What does this drug thing look like? How does it look like it is coming?'' He said, ``Frankly, I hope it does not pass.'' I said, ``Really? Why?'' He said, ``Well, when they hang that doughnut hole around our neck in the next election, we are going to be dead.''

You just heard my colleague from Arkansas describe the doughnut hole. You have a $3,500 bill, and you get $900 in benefit, and you still have to pay a $35 a month premium. It is a terrible bill, and the House bill is based on the fact that they hope that the insurance companies will put something together.

The reason we need the best of the Senate bill is at least they have a fallback position which would allow the Federal Government to set one up if the private sector cannot.

Now, the other thing my colleague pointed out and that needs to be emphasized, this is so privatized that the House of Representatives said that the United States Government, represented by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, cannot negotiate lower prices on the basis of what is good for the American people. He is absolutely, by law, prohibited from doing what is best for the American people.

What kind of a plan is that? This is throw the folks into the arms of the drug companies. They must have written every blessed word in it, including that line.

They did not want the Secretary of Health and Human Services to sit down on behalf of 40 million people, because they know what happened to them when the Secretary of Veterans Affairs sat down on behalf of the veterans, 5 million of them, and got a huge discount. They are afraid that Mr. Thompson will negotiate something for them.

Now, we will hear, I am sure, something is going to pass this Congress, whether it is any good or not will be for the people to decide, because the Republicans know they cannot go home without something. It better be worth something, or else they are going to pay in the next election, because they have been promising, and they have no excuse. They have the Presidency, they have the Senate, they have the House, and if they cannot put a bill out that does what the people need, they need to pay for it at the ballot box. That is what is being set up.

We are instructing them the way to go if they want to do what is best for the American people. But if they want to do what is best for PhRMA and the drug companies, we will continue down this path, and no one will know, until one day a bill pops out here, 1,000 pages, and we vote on it, with nobody knowing what is in it.

That will be wrong, and the payment will come at the ballot box.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) for yielding me time. And I appreciate his tenacity for bringing this out here for what I think is the 22nd time to make a point. Now, the next few days we are going to work on an $87 billion bill for Iraq. The President has said we have to give him this money. If we do not give it to him, we are not patriotic. Anybody who wants to quibble about it or ask questions or raise any concerns, is clearly not patriotic and not supporting the troops.

Well, let me tell you something, this child tax credit does not go to a family whose father or mother is serving in Iraq today making $29,000. Now, my colleague honestly said, a Congressman gets it, a Congressman gets it, but a sergeant serving in Iraq, getting shot at from every corner, his wife is back home someplace at Ft. Hood or whatever taking care of kids, and they do not get it.

Now, I know there are going to be a lot of people out here puffing out their chest and talking about how much they have cared about the troops and how much they care about winning the war and all the rest, they are going to talk about a bill that will have money in it to build schools in Iraq and to put the electric lights on in Iraq and

fix up the water system and the sewage system. But for kids of the soldiers, there is no money.

Now, if that is considered fair by the Republicans, I certainly hope they can explain it to the troops when they come home, how it was that we could spend billions of dollars fixing up Iraq, but we could not give money to the wife or the stay-at-home person who is taking care of some military kids, some money to provide better day care or better child care for them.

It is so unfair on the face of it, I do not know how you can have the gall to stand up here and say that you care. If you do not care about the kids, what are the fathers over there fighting for, or what are the mothers over from fighting for? They are fighting for their children and their future. And you are saying because you do not make enough money, you are not going to get it. If you make enough, like a Congressman, you make whatever we make, you get it. But if you only make $29,000, I guess you are not worth it or your kids are not worth it.

I do not know how they explain that. It makes no sense in human terms. It may make some budgetary sense when you drive the country $500 billion in debt in one year, I guess you got to cut somewhere, so let us cut the kids that belong to some sergeant or some lance corporal in the Marines or some chief petty officer in the United States Navy. They do not need it, because we got to buy this other stuff, whatever it is, in Iraq.

That is what is wrong with this bill and has been wrong from the very start. The people at the bottom, who need it most, do not get it. And they knew that when they came out of the Committee on Ways and Means that my distinguished colleague from Washington and I both sit on. They knew it. They knew they were not going to get this money, and they just glossed it over and said, well, we do not have to worry about that. Well, somebody has to worry about the sergeant's kids, and, boy, it better be the United States Congress that does it.

I urge the adoption of the motion.

Mr. Speaker, today in my e-mail I got five separate copies of an article that was put in the Atlanta Journal Constitution by a man named Max Cleland. Max Cleland is a Vietnam vet who lost his legs and one arm. He is a triple amputee, was a United States Senator, and in the last campaign they attacked him for being unpatriotic. Max is a hero in my book. The fact that he would raise questions about what the President of the United States is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan did not make him unpatriotic.

We are going to have a bill out here in a few days for $87 billion, and the same White House is going to attack all of us if we raise any questions. Max's article starts with an erie kind of quote: ``The public has been led into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete.'' These ``things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. We are today not far from a disaster.'' That is a quote from a guy named T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, the Sunday Times of London, August 22, 1920.

The British know what they are into and they know where they have been; and if we take that quote and then ask ourselves what have we been told, we

have been told that the mission has been accomplished. The President went out and said it is all over. There have been 304 people killed in Iraq, 167 of them, more than half, since the mission was accomplished. It was this President on October 14, 2002, who said, ``This is a man,'' meaning Saddam, ``that we know has had connections with al Qaeda. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al Qaeda as a forward army.'' Mr. Rumsfeld followed him right up and said, ``Yes, there is a linkage between al Qaeda and Iraq.'' And Condoleezza Rice, not to be outdone, said, ``There have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of al Qaeda going back for actually quite a long time.''

And then their story started to unravel. On September 16 of this year, almost 11 months later, the President comes out and says, ``I have not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks.'' Condoleezza Rice jumped up again: ``And we never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either . . . direction or control of 9-11. What we've said is that this was someone who supported terrorists, helped them train.'' And Mr. Bush the next day said, ``There is no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties. We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 attacks.''

The American people have been fed a PR campaign of misinformation from the very start. And while that has been going on, and I will have entered into the Record both the speech by Max Cleland and an article from the New York Newsday by Jimmy Breslin dated 23 September, while this has all been going on, our people have been dying.

Some of you have been out to the Vietnam Memorial, and those panels get carved with those names in there. One can go up to Walter Reed Hospital up on Georgia Avenue and see people without arms and legs, just like Senator Cleland. While we keep getting misinformation out of the White House, Ryan Carlock, specialist, 416th Transportation Company, died on September 10; Joe Robsky from Fort Irwin, California, died on September 10; Henry Ybarra from Austin, Texas, died. And they keep dying and they keep dying.

If we ask questions about this $87 billion, it does not make us unpatriotic. It makes us care about these men and women.

[From the New York Newsday, Sept. 23, 2003]

They Lied and Many Soldiers Died

(By Jimmy Breslin)

George Bush won't mention the names below in today's

speech, nor will your gullible news and television people--

the Pekinese of the Press.

Therefore we print promptly and thus prominently the names

of American soldiers killed in Iraq and reported from Sept. 9

to Sept. 19:

Spc. Ryan G. Carlock, 25, 416th Transportation Co., 260

Quartermaster Battalion (Petroleum Support), Hunter Army

Airfield, Ga. Died in attack on truck Sept. 10. Home: Macomb,

Ill.

Staff Sgt. Joe Robsky, 31, 759 Ordnance Co., Fort Irwin,

Calif. Home is a mobile home park trailer in Elizaville, N.W.

Died in Baghdad while trying to defuse a homemade bomb on

Sept. 10. He volunteered for this duty because he didn't want

children killed by land mines.

Sgt. Henry Ybarra III, 32, D Troop, 6th Squadron, 6th

Calvary. Home: Austin, Texas. Died when truck tire exploded,

Sept. 11.

Marine Sgt. Kevin N. Morehead, 33 3rd Battalion, 5th

Special Forces Group. Home: Little Rock, Ark. Died of wounds

received when raiding enemy forces.

Sgt. 1st Class William M. Bennett, 35, 3rd Battalion, 5th

Special Forces Group. Home: Little Rock, Ark. Died of wounds

received when raiding enemy forces.

Sgt. Trevor A. Blumberg, 22, 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute

Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne, Fort Bragg, N.C. Home:

Canton, Mich. Died in attack on his vehicle in Baghdad on

Sept. 14.

Staff Sgt. Kevin C. Kimberly, 31, 4th Battalion, 27th Field

Artillery Regiment, North Creek, N.Y. Killed when his vehicle

was hit by rocket-propelled grenade while on patrol in

Baghdad Sept. 15.

Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson, 27, 311 Military Intelligence

Battalion, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky. Home:

Flagstaff, Ariz. Died of wounds on Sept. 15 at Tel Afar.

Spc. James C. Wright, 27 Fourth Infantry Division, Fort

Hood, Texas. Home: Delhi Township, Ohio. Died when vehicle

hit by rocket-propelled grenade during ambush near Tikrit on

Sept. 18.

George Bush told lies and they died.

First, your government lied to ensure Bush's re-election.

Who votes against a president in time of war? And even

better, you get oil with the winning election.

So Bush lied to you. Not misstatements. Lies. He and his

people threw away their honor and consciences to lie to the

people. they had sworn to protect.

The lies of Washington put young men from Seymour, Tenn.,

and Maspeth, Queens and Palos Hills, Ill., into boxes. And

that, dear reader, is quite a lie.

At the start, Bush claimed that Iraq had poison gas and was

making nuclear weapons. Soon, they will poison us all and

blow us up. His proof was documents forged by elementary-

school pupils. Still, Bush used it in his State of the Union

speech. Condoleezza Rice said it was only 23 words in a

speech. What are you so concerned about?

The 23 words were only about nuclear bombs.

Look now at the lie that George Bush carries into the

United Nations today:

We went into Iraq because they were part of the World Trade

Center attack.

That's what they told you, and Americans, who honor their

government, believed what their government told them. And so

did all those young people as they were about to put up their

lives in the desert.

On Oct. 14, 2002, Bush said, ``This is a man [Saddam] that

we know has had connections with al-Qaida. This is a man who,

in my judgment, would like to use al-Qaida as a forward

army.''

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, on Sept. 26, 2002,

``Yes, there is a linkage between al-Qaida and Iraq.''

Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said on

Sept. 25, 2002, ``There have been contacts between senior

Iraqi officials and members of al-Qaida gong back for

actually quite a long time.''

They knew exactly what they were saying and what it would

do. It was using a Big Lie in an age of screens and faxes.

What did you think it was, a government telling you the

truth? Why should they do that?

At summer's end, suspicions rose. It was time to change the

lie before it became a liability. How do you do that? By

using the ultimate con: telling the truth.

Here in the world of professional lying is how you use the

truth to defuse a lie when it becomes dangerous to keep:

Suddenly, Donald Rumsfeld on Sept. 16 announced, ``I've not

seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I

could say that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11

attacks.''

That same day, Condoleezza Rice jumped up and chirped,

``And we have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either .

. . direction or control of 9/11. What we've said is that

this was someone who supported terrorists, helped train

them.''

And then the next day, George Bush said, ``There's no

question that Saddam Hussein has al-Qaida ties. We have no

evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11

attacks.''

So the three now say that they never said that Hussein was

involved in the World Trade Center attack. Look up what we

said. We never said it.

Of course they did. Anybody who thinks they didn't is a

poor fool. Take a half-word out of a sentence, replace it

with a smug smile or chin motion and the meaning is there.

Saddam was in on the Trade Center with bin Laden. Of course

Bush and his people said it. Then go to the whip, go to the

truth.

Only the strong memory is an opponent, and there are few of

them. Otherwise, the only thing that can remind people and

maybe even inflame them are these dead bodies coming back

from Iraq to Heber, Calif. They arrive here in silence. We

have no idea of how many wounded are in government hospitals

with no arms or legs. You never hear Bush talking about them.

He often acts as if subjects like this have nothing to do

with him.

Mr. Speaker, this morning I went out to Walter Reed Hospital again. I went out 2 weeks ago. There are boys still coming home without legs, without eyes, all kinds of casualties. And one cannot help but listen to my colleague from Florida and think how well our troops are doing and what they are doing on behalf of all of us, but to continue to see what is going on at Walter Reed is very sobering.

And everybody who is going to vote for money around here in the next week or so ought to go out to Walter Reed and walk around and talk to some of these people. Talk to the kid I talked to today who was riding in a Humvee that ran over one of these IEDs that implement some kind of explosive device that people just make up by tying a bunch of things together, and he loses a leg and is on a ventilator at Walter Reed. When you see that, you realize that we could do all of these humanitarian projects, and God knows they need them, there is plenty of stuff to do; but until we are able to bring security to that country, we are not going to be really dealing with what affects the Iraqis, nor protects our own people.

Now, I came back from Walter Reed and I sat down in my office and I turned on the television, and there is the President talking at the United Nations. Just like the last talk: We know what is right. You people ought to get behind us. The same tone to the world that we heard before.

The world believes that we all ought to do it together in the United Nations. We ought to make it that way, not the United States charging out and deciding we are going to do it, and you are either for us or against us. That kind of cowboy mentality did not work, and it has created the mess we have today. There was no hint in anything the President said of acknowledging the foolishness of going to Iraq alone. What he wanted them to do was to say, you are right, you did exactly the right thing, and we were really wrong. We should have endorsed what you were doing from the start. But the world is not going to do that.

The President is going to have to change the tone in which he talks, and, Mr. Speaker, I do not know how we get him to do that.

We are going to have an opportunity with a resolution for $87 billion.

Now, Mr. Bremmer was over in the Senate yesterday, and he said, we do not anticipate having to ask for any more. Now, this is the war department of Mr. Rumsfeld that did not anticipate that they would need water purification, did not anticipate the need for generators, did not anticipate anything in the way of reconstruction. That is why we are in the mess we are in today.

Everybody knew we were going to win the war. Our troops are the best in the world, but it is how we put it together afterward that is so missing, and the United States cannot do it by itself. We cannot write all the rules and regulations.

Yesterday, the newspaper carried a story that says Iraq is now for sale. The United States has sort of put this thing through this council they have that will allow companies to come in and buy the companies in Iraq and take over. One Iraqi reacted by saying, well, now it is not going to be just the Americans here. The whole world's going to come and take advantage of us in this process.

This war department headed by Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz, nobody has changed. They are still talking the same way. These are the people who told us that this would all be over in 3 months; that the Iraqi people would run out and throw their arms around our soldiers; that we would use all that oil money; we would rebuild the country with the oil money. None of it was true, and they knew some of it was not true when the President came here before us. We cannot have a war built on a faulty premise.

Now we are going to have this week the opportunity to look at this $87 billion. We can just write another blank check for the President, rubber stamp it, give it to him; or we can require that he negotiate with the United Nations.

Mr. Speaker, I came rushing over here to make a public service announcement. There is a hurricane coming. But the name is not Isabel. The name is George.

Ever since President Bush got elected, this Congress has rubber- stamped every single tax cut he came up with. In fact, I got over here in such a hurry, I forgot my rubber stamp. But the fact is that, at some point, the President has to be brought to reality. I saw the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) out here all exercised over this. This is only $12 billion he is giving away this time. This is chump change. I do not know. I think he has lost his nerve maybe. Because he comes in here one day and asks for $87 billion, and then he says, by the way, let us give away another $12 billion to people. I hope Americans, if they just remember that I gave them all that money and put them $44 trillion in debt in the future, they will reelect me.

You say where do I get that number? Well, the Financial Times, and this is no liberal newspaper I want the Members to understand, they revealed that the Bush administration shelved a report commissioned by the Treasury Department that shows that the U.S. economy faces a future of chronic budget deficits totaling $44 trillion, the study's most comprehensive assessment of how the U.S. Government is at risk at being overwhelmed by the baby boom generation's future health and retirement costs.

This President does not care about anything except if he can trick the people with a tax cut, he thinks he can get elected. They will forget about the mess he has created in Iraq. They will forget about the mess in Afghanistan. I have got $12 billion more for you, folks, that is our President's plan, and they are going to keep trying to give money away. They act like the $480 billion is nothing. They put on another $100 billion this week, 87 for Iraq and $13 billion in this bill. Is there any end? One would say this was somebody who was addicted if one was talking in any other terms. I mean they cannot get off the needle of tax cuts. And if the Congress does not stand up, when are the people going to be taken care of? Is this bill saving our country? Is it going to make more jobs? I think not. There is no plan to spend any money on making jobs, no. This is just give $12 billion more away so that companies will give more to charity because the Government is not doing its job.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor with a heavy heart today. The wards are full at Walter Reed Army Hospital and Bethesda Naval Hospital, full of young men and women who were sent by their country to defend their country, whose minds have to have the question today, why was I sent there?

The President of the United States, Mr. Speaker, and the Prime Minister of Great Britain have lost the confidence of their own people. They misled us over and over and over again. They must come clean and tell the American people the truth. This is so reminiscent of what I went through during the Vietnam years that it is eerie. A government that says, well, things are better today, things are better today, and another boy or another girl gets killed or is sent back to Walter Reed or Bethesda maimed.

The President has got to come forward and tell us the truth about what it is going to cost, where we are going to get the people. They will not talk about a draft, but they have kept those reservists and those National Guard people over there for a year. Those people volunteered to support their country when it needed them.

How long are you going to keep them there, Mr. President?