Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us provides an honest and sensible solution to one of the most complex and volatile problems ever to confront our Nation.

More than 4 years ago, this administration engaged in an unnecessary and illegal invasion of another sovereign country, and that has now been followed by almost 4 years of an increasingly disastrous occupation. All during that time, the Republican Party held the majority in this House, and they conducted no oversight of this activity whatsoever, and the consequences have been disastrous for our Nation.

This bill now provides us with the means and the direction to change these disastrous decisions made by this administration and the failure of oversight of the Republican Party. It enables us to help our troops. It provides them with the equipment that they need to carry out their obligations and responsibilities now theirs. And it provides us with a means to remove ourselves in the appropriate way.

Anyone with any sense is going to vote for this bill.

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of my coming to the floor this evening, along with a number of my friends and colleagues on this side of the aisle, is to mark the fact that tomorrow will be the 4th year that our military forces instigated by the administration have attacked Iraq and engaged in what the administration has called a war in that country. Most people now have come to realize that we are not engaged in a war in Iraq, but we are engaged now in an occupation, the consequences of which are proving to be increasingly disastrous.

At 10:15 p.m. on March 19, 2003, in a televised address to the Nation, President Bush announced the start of what he refers to as ``the war in Iraq.''

The way in which the administration attempted to justify that attack has been a grave consequence for the United States, both internally and around the world. The President, of course, and others in his administration contended that there was a connection between Iraq and the attack that took place in New York and at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, that Iraq was somehow involved in that attack, when all of the evidence and information indicated that that was not the case.

In spite of that, the administration continued to make that allegation. They then went on to say that it was important that the United States invade Iraq for the safety of our country and for the safety of others because Iraq was a country that possessed what they referred to as ``weapons of mass destruction,'' alleging that there was substantial amounts of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.

They then went on to assert that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, and the President of the United States in a 2003 State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress and to the Nation here in this House asserted that the British Government had learned that Iraq had imported enriched uranium from Niger. When he included that sentence in his State of the Union Address, he was very much aware that the intelligence agencies in our country had said that there was no proof that that was the case. In fact, they had examined the documents upon which those assertions were being made, and they found those documents which had been stolen from the Nigerian Embassy in Rome were, in fact, forged.

So what we have here is an unnecessary and unjustified and consequently illegal attack on another country and a subsequent disastrous occupation which has gone on now for 4 years, and we will be beginning the fifth year starting tomorrow.

As a result of this occupation, over 3,200 American servicemen and women have been killed in Iraq since our invasion over 4 years ago. Over 24,000 troops have been wounded in action in Iraq, and the number of Iraqis killed is unknown, but the estimates range as high as 200,000 Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children, who have been killed in that country as a result of the military action.

We are spending now about $275 million per day in Iraq. More than $8 billion every month is being spent in that country. And as the Speaker of the House noted earlier this evening in her speech on the floor, at least $10 billion of that money is completely unaccounted for, and much of the rest has been spent in ways that have not been productive, but have been extraordinarily wasteful.

The President in January called for what he referred to as a surge of nearly 30,000 additional soldiers into Iraq. So far that has amounted to 21,500 additional troops that have gone to Iraq in January, and 4,400 more just two weekends ago.

The circumstances there continue to deteriorate as a result of the corrupt and incompetent way in which this illegal invasion and subsequent occupation have been carried out by this administration.

Roughly half of all of the ground equipment that the U.S. Army owns is now located in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the invasion, the Army has lost nearly 2,000 wheeled vehicles and more than 1,000 armed vehicles. To make matters worse, according to the GAO, the Army has not been keeping accurate track of what they have and what they need to reset the force, and they cannot provide sufficient detail for Congress to provide effective oversight.

Between 75,000 and 100,000 pieces of National Guard equipment worth nearly $2 billion are now located in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is equipment that is needed by the National Guard here in our country to carry out the obligations and responsibilities of the National Guard around the United States. And they are now increasingly being deprived of their ability to carry out their responsibilities and obligations because of the loss of their equipment.

The Regular Army has lost so much equipment which has not been replaced that they are now using the equipment of the National Guard to replace the equipment that they have lost and which this administration has failed to provide replacements for.

We have a situation that is confronting us now in Iraq which is increasingly damaging, dangerous, and on the verge of being disastrous for our country as well as for others in the Middle East.

We need this Congress to assert its obligations and responsibilities to oversee the activities of this administration, and that is clearly necessary because all through the 4 years during which this illegal invasion took place followed by this occupation, there has not been any significant oversight by this Congress, which, of course, was controlled by the Republican majority for all of that period of time.

Now that we have a Democratic majority in Congress, that oversight is beginning. Appropriate hearings are being conducted both in this House and in the Senate, and more and more information concerning the way in which this operation has been carried out is being made available to the American people, and as a result of that, more and more people across the country are realizing what a disaster this has been. More and more Americans are understanding how they were intentionally and purposefully misled and deceived by this administration in order to carry out this invasion which had absolutely nothing to do with the attack of September 11, and which cannot be justified in any way whatsoever.

This action is unlawful, and appropriate oversight and supervision based upon detailed and focused hearings by this Congress is now absolutely necessary.

We have with us this evening several of my colleagues who are interested in speaking about this issue, and I would now like to recognize my very good friend from Ohio, who will address the House at this time.

Thank you very much. I very much appreciate the statement that was just made by our colleague from Ohio, Marcy Kaptur, the respect that she has given to our military, appropriately so, and her examination of the consequences that we

are confronting now in Iraq as a result of the incompetent way in which this administration has dealt with the political and economic circumstances there in that country.

I would like now to yield time to my friend and colleague from New York, John Hall.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague and friend John Hall from New York for his strong presentation and for joining us this evening in this discussion about this critical issue.

I would now like to recognize my friend and colleague from California, Barbara Lee.

I thank you for your very articulate expression of all of those facts, your leadership here and for joining us this evening.

Mr. Speaker, I would now like to recognize my friend from California (Ms. Woolsey).

I thank you, Lynn Woolsey, for your leadership and the way you have directed your attention to this issue over and over again on the floor of this House so many times, and done it so well.

Mr. Speaker, now I would like to yield time to my dear friend and colleague from California (Ms. Waters).

Ms. Waters, I thank you very much for your dynamic leadership and for joining us this evening and for those remarks.

I yield to my good friend and colleague from New Jersey (Mr. Payne).

I thank my friend Donald Payne from New Jersey for his leadership and for joining us this evening.

Mr. Speaker, the point that we have made here tonight is that perhaps at no time in the history of this country, except for perhaps our own Civil War, have we faced the kind of circumstances that we are presently being confronted with as a result of the way in which this administration incompetently and corruptly has led us into this illegal occupation in Iraq.

We need to correct these circumstances. It is the responsibility of this Congress to do so. We need to hold this administration accountable. It is the responsibility of this Congress to do so. We need to remove our military forces from Iraq in an appropriate and timely way. And it is the responsibility of this Congress to take that kind of leadership.

I thank my friends and colleagues for joining us here on this very important 4-year anniversary of the illegal attack and subsequent occupation of Iraq. We need now to change these circumstances.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote on agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal.

Madam Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Madam Speaker, it is my great pleasure and honor to introduce a dear friend of mine and a very respected member of our community, Johann Christoph Arnold, for his opening prayer as the guest chaplain of the House of Representatives today.

Pastor Johann Christoph Arnold and his wife, Verena, are senior pastors of Church Communities International, an international movement that is dedicated to peace around the world. They work very diligently and very effectively with families, with individuals, with veterans, and a host of other people to bring them the kind of counseling and conciliation they need in many communities.

Pastor Arnold and his wife, Verena, are the parents of eight children and 34 grandchildren. For over 35 years as family counselors, they have advised thousands of couples in our community and in many other places here in the United States and around the world. People have come to expect sound advice from this award-winning author, whose books have sold over 350,000 copies in English and have been translated into 19 other languages.

It is a great pleasure and an honor to have Johann Christoph Arnold, his wife, Verena, and other members of

their community here with us this morning; and I thank him very much for his opening prayer.

Madam Speaker, as a veteran of the United States Navy, I am very, very honored to be a Member of this House of Representatives. And today I am very proud and pleased to stand here in support of this very important resolution, which needs to be adopted as the final first step of this Congress in dealing with this unjust, illegal, unnecessary invasion of Iraq and the subsequent disastrous occupation.

In October of 2002, when the resolution authorizing this invasion came to the floor, 133 Members voted against it. 127 Democrats and six Republicans voted against it. Most of us voted against it because we knew that the so-called logic or rationale that had been presented by the administration was untrue, that there was no connection between Iraq and the attack of September 11, that there was no evidence that there were chemical or biological weapons left in Iraq, even though we know that previous administrations of this country had supplied those weapons.

We knew that the rationale presented for the development of a nuclear weapon in Iraq was completely falsified. The documents were forged.

On the 19th of March, this administration carried out an illegal, unnecessary, unjustified invasion of Iraq. We will soon mark the fourth year of that action. In all of that time, this Congress has done nothing significant or substantial to stand in the way of the illegal, unjustified actions of this administration, in spite of the fact that they have caused the death of now more than 3,000 American servicemen and women, more than 23,000 physically injured, unknown numbers psychologically injured, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed.

In spite of all of that, and in spite of the fact that, increasingly, every Member of this Congress has begun to understand with greater and greater clarity, how the information was falsified, how what the Intelligence Committees told the White House, the Department, the State Department, and others in this administration, had been twisted and distorted and turned around purposely and specifically to carry out this disastrous invasion and subsequent occupation, nothing has been done.

The previous leadership of this Congress failed to step forward and take any kind of action against this administration. And we hear people on this side of the aisle, tonight, speaking against this resolution saying it doesn't do anything significant. It doesn't do enough.

Well, let me tell you something. This is the first step of a new majority in this Congress taking the right kind of action on the basis of our obligations and responsibilities under the Constitution to stand up to the actions of this administration and to put this country back on the right track. Not just in the case of what is going on in Iraq, even though that is so terribly disastrous, but the consequences here in our own country, the intimidation of people, the internal spying, the elimination of habeas corpus, all of the impingements on the American Constitution, based upon the culture of fear cultivated purposely by this administration for their own personal and political objectives. No one in the previous leadership, no one in the previous majority, stood up to this administration in any kind of a constructive way.

So, if you want to correct the failures that have existed in this Congress since that resolution came to the floor and since the 19th of March in 2003, when this administration carried out that illegal, unnecessary and unjustified invasion, then you will support this resolution, recognizing that it is the first important step taken by a new majority here in this Congress to deal with the consequences of all of that falsehood.

If you fail to do so, you will continue to leave the door open for further violations of law and constitutional principles by this administration, perhaps next in Iran, because that may be the next illegal step of this administration.

If you want to make up for what you failed to do, if you want to do the right thing for this country, for our people, and for our military personnel, please, support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, our friends on the other side of the aisle have been talking a great deal about the so-called Contract With America. But what our experience has shown over the years is that was not a Contract With America but a contract with and for powerful special interests.

They allowed the drug companies, for example, to write a Medicare bill; and they have allowed the oil companies to determine energy policy in our country. That needs to change.

All day long today they have been talking about how they don't like the idea that the oil companies have to pay their fair share of taxes even while they are making record profits and they have charged record prices at the pump and elsewhere for their product. It makes no sense.

The energy policy that they put in place beginning in 1995, and then made even worse in 2005, caused oil prices to increase dramatically because of their affiliation with the energy companies. We need to change that.

What this bill does is it takes bad policy and turns it into good policy. It takes policy that is based upon the interest of special interests, the oil companies, and changes it into policy that is based upon the big interests of the American people.

It takes as much as $14 billion over the course of the next 10 years and uses that money to promote energy conservation, alternative energy, to bring our country to a situation of increasing energy independence.

They have been talking a great deal about how we are going to be importing more oil. Well, the fact of the matter is 60 percent of the oil that we use in our country today is imported from outside of the country.

The product that we have in places such as the Gulf of Mexico is a very valuable product. It is owned by the American people. The value of that product is going to go up over time significantly. You just want to make it easier for the oil companies to take it now at a cheap price. We are against that. Pass H.R. 6.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend and colleague from Massachusetts for his initiative on this legislation, because what he is doing is making available to this House the opportunity to correct a very serious problem which has been existing now since 1995.

In 1995, this House and this Congress passed a law which essentially allows the oil companies to take oil and natural gas from the American people out of their public property without paying them the royalties that are owed to them. This ridiculous situation has been going on now for more than 10 years.

We have an amendment that is being offered to this bill which every Member of this House should vote for. If they have any respect for their obligations to the American people, every Member of this House should vote for this amendment, because what this amendment does is this, very simply: It says to the oil companies, if you want new leases so that you may increase your profits by taking a very valuable commodity from public property owned by the American people, if you want to be able to do that, you have to in order to get those new leases renegotiate the old leases that you have on public property so that you will pay back to the taxpayers of America the money that you owe them on this commodity, oil and natural gas.

It is a very simple and very reasonable thing to do. If we fail to do it, what will happen is this. According to the Department of the Interior, the taxpayers of America will lose as much as $60 billion which will go into the pockets of the oil companies who are already realizing record profits. The oil companies have more cash than they know what to do with. And what this Congress has been doing is allowing them to increase their profits by taking a product that is owned by the taxpayers of America, exploiting that situation, increasing their profits, and not paying back the percentage of royalties that is owed to the people of this country. So it is a very simple amendment, and there is absolutely no reason why it should not pass.

This House already passed an amendment just like this. Back in May, Mr. Markey and I offered an amendment to an Interior appropriations bill which would do precisely the same thing. That amendment was adopted by this House by a very substantial margin. The problem is the Interior appropriations bill went over to the other Chamber and since then nothing has happened with the bill, it has just laid there idly. And so the situation now continues to exist.

So what the majority here apparently wants to do is to say that even though the oil companies have leases on 80 percent of the land that is available, of the offshore land that is available, they want to increase that above and continue to take this product and continue to take this commodity from the American people without paying them back the money that is owed to them.

This has got to stop. It has been going on now for more than a decade. The people of this country continue to suffer. And that is one of the reasons why they made the decision on November 7 that they did, because they recognize the suffering that they have been exposed to as a result of the carelessness and exploitation that has been authorized by this Congress.

Pass this amendment, correct the mistake, give the American people the money that is owed to them, and do it in a just way.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Charles H.K. Williamson, a long-time educator and winner of the Carnegie Foundation's 2006 Professor of the Year Award for New York State.

Professor Williamson, during his 16 year tenure in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, has impacted countless individuals, from undergraduates to Ph.D. candidates to fellow professors. As a colleague states, ``Professor Williamson is the most creative and talented educator I have encountered . . . he has no equal on our faculty in integrating research into teaching and teaching into research.''

It seems fitting that Professor Williamson began his teaching career among royalty, tutoring Prince Pavlos of Greece before leaving London to emigrate to Pasadena, California, and Caltech in 1984. In 1990, he found himself an assistant professor at Cornell, apprehensively standing in front of 100 students in a thermodynamics class. ``I remember coming out of that first class on a high,'' he recalls. ``I realized that the students really want to learn and are eager to know that the teacher genuinely wants the same thing.''

From that point on, Professor Williamson has been a trailblazer, pioneering new approaches to lecturing. His classes are unpredictable but always educational, using anything from footlong smoke rings to Beatles albums to jet engines to demonstrate the principles of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics.

Professor Williamson's unique teaching methods, combined with his love of the subject, touches students in a way that educators seldom do. His student evaluation scores are by far the best in his department and among the highest in the university: His average over 16 years at Cornell is 4.57 out of 5, an unequaled level of consistency and excellence.

In addition to being an entertaining lecturer, Professor Williamson is also a true mentor to students, inspiring and supporting them throughout their education, even attending student sporting events. ``Without the confidence and skills I learned from Professor Williamson, I never would have . . . received a doctorate in plasma physics,'' a former advisee recounts.

Professor Williamson is an inspiration to us all, an individual who truly makes a difference in the lives of those around him. I am honored to congratulate him on receiving the Carnegie Foundation's 2006 Professor of the Year Award.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and memory of an inspiring man and longtime constituent, Professor Arch T. Dotson, who passed away last April at the age of 85. Over the course of his remarkable life, Prof. Dotson (``Arch'') served as teacher, friend, and mentor to all who knew him.

Professor Dotson truly is an exemplar of the American success story. Born the second of three sons to tenant farmers in Kentucky, he graduated from Transylvania University in 1941 and joined the U.S. Air Force as a test pilot throughout World War II. In September of 1945, he decided to go to Harvard University for graduate school. He would recount the story of his experience with the associate dean: ``She looked at my transcript and she looked at me in my full officer's uniform and finally said, `Harvard can afford to take a few chances.' '' Five years later, Arch left Harvard Square with a Ph.D. in government.

His career at Cornell University spanned 50 years, during which he had an immeasurable impact on the campus and its students. In 1969, 18 years after arriving in Ithaca, Prof. Dotson was named Chair of the Department of Government. In 1979 he became founding Director of the Cornell in Washington program, and in 1984 undertook the same role for Cornell Abroad. From 1991 to 1996 he served as Director of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs. During this time, he also consulted internationally, helping India with regional development, assisting with the opening of a College of Public Administration in the Philippines, and working for the United Nations.

Professor Dotson had a tremendous impact on all whose lives he touched. The Cornell in Washington and Cornell Abroad programs are now cornerstones of the Cornell experience, with over 1,000 students participating in them each year. A former student says, ``He deeply loved all of his students . . . he encouraged us to recognize within ourselves the ability to succeed even if the odds seemed stacked against us.'' Dedicated to public service, Arch truly believed that everyone, no matter their roots or circumstances, could make an impact on the world they lived in.

Professor Dotson serves as a model for what we all may aspire to become. I am honored to pay tribute to him today, and send my thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of this inspiring figure.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Oregon for yielding me this time and providing it to us in the context of this debate.

This proposed legislation is contrary to the best interest of Iran and the United States. It is, unfortunately, reminiscent of the State of the Union address which declared Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as part of the Axis of Evil; and we are now very familiar with the consequences of that statement. We have seen a disastrous situation develop in Iraq, and we have also seen the revival of nuclear interest both in North Korea and in Iran.

The attitude of our country toward Iran now for more than 50 years has been overly aggressive and overbearing, and the consequences of it have been very dangerous. We should be acting in a much more mature and responsible way, particularly toward this country. This is a very significant country, not only in the Middle East but in the world generally. The people of this country are good, sound, solid, reasonable people, and we need to be appealing to them on that basis, not on the basis of the language of this resolution, which continues to create this atmosphere of hostility which is, as I have indicated, has been going on now for more than 50 years.

That needs to change. We need to change our attitude, change our approach to this nation. We need to engage them more objectively, more seriously, and in a much more filial way, a much more friendlier way. And if we were to do that, we would find that this country would react and respond to us in a similar fashion.

Unfortunately, this proposed legislation does exactly the opposite. It places us, continues to place us in a difficult and dangerous, antagonistic circumstance between ourselves and this country, and unnecessarily so. So this legislation is contrary to our interests, just as it is contrary to the interests of Iran, and so it should be rejected by this body.

Mr. Speaker, throughout the course of our history, the most respected and revered Americans have consistently warned us that the greatest threat facing our country was not external but internal. We could not be conquered from abroad, but we do have the capacity to erode what constitutes this country from within. By doing so, we would place ourselves in deep jeopardy; and that is what we see happening here today. We see the erosion of the basic principles of this country, the rule of law based upon our Constitution.

This bill that is before the House now is contrary to the fourth amendment of our Constitution. It provides for illegal surveillance. And when that Constitution was written, it was written based upon the experience of people who saw the effects of these kinds of dictatorial policies in other places around the world. And that is what we are now introducing to our own country.

We have so-called conservative Republicans who are refusing to conserve the basic principles and elements of the Constitution. And the most important part of that document, of course, is the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, and what we are seeing here is the erosion of the fourth amendment.

This bill is contrary to every basic principle of our country. If we pass this legislation, we are opening up new opportunities for an increasingly despotic administration to continue to erode the basic freedoms and liberties of the American people. On that basis alone, this bill should be rejected, and it should be rejected enthusiastically by the vast majority of the Members of this House. If we really understand what we are all about, vote this bill down.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the beginning of the 40th season of ``Bound for Glory.'' This radio show is a weekly live broadcast from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Over the years this nationally acclaimed program has become a distinguished and beloved musical institution in the Ithaca community and beyond. I am very proud of my constituents who have produced this esteemed radio show that has become so widely enjoyed.

From its creation in 1967, ``Bound for Glory'' has been committed to producing outstanding folk music and showcasing a broad range of musicians. ``Bound for Glory'', with its founder and long-time host Phil Shapiro, has produced over 1,200 live folk concerts and is North America's longest running radio show that still features live concerts. In this era where spontaneity is the exception rather than the norm on commercial radio, Bound for Glory provides a welcome reprieve. Today, the show is also broadcast online through the Internet and is accessible far beyond WVBR's FM listeners.

American folk music is in its renaissance due in no small part to programs like ``Bound for Glory''. Society and culture have changed greatly since 1967, but ``Bound for Glory'' has remained a consistent and enduring treasure.

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to recognize ``Bound for Glory'' as it enters its 40th year on the air. I believe that the passion of its listeners, programmers, and guest artists will ensure that this program continues to thrive.

I want to thank my good friend and colleague for setting aside this hour and giving us an opportunity to focus attention on the circumstances in Iraq and the consequences of our response to the attack of September 11, 2001.

This week we marked 5 years, and today 5 years and 3 days, since that attack of September 11, 2001, against the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight Number 93 that, as a result of the heroism of the people on board, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania rather than into this Capitol building on that particular day.

There is no question that people who were responsible for that attack were brutal, devastating, and without conscience. However, the main danger that has been focused on our country came about not as a result of the attack but more as a result of the response of our government to that attack.

We have seen, for example, that shortly after our invasion of Afghanistan to upset the Taliban, which were housing the al Qaeda network, after we had taken the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan and chased the al Qaeda network out of Kabul and Kandahar, how this administration stopped the pursuit of the main perpetrators of that attack, the al Qaeda network and their principal leader, Osama bin Laden. It was a conscious decision

made by this administration not to go after Osama bin Laden and, therefore, not to capture him.

Now, obviously, one has to ask the question: Why? The only sensible answer to that question is this: The administration did not want to capture Osama bin Laden, the brains, the main perpetrator behind that attack. Because if he had been captured, then the argument of the administration that there was a connection between the attack of September 11 and Iraq, and the need to invade Iraq, that argument would essentially have evaporated. If Osama bin Laden had been captured, there would have been no logical rationale for invading Iraq.

Your point, of course, is a very good one. And what caused that, caused the people of the world, who had been united with us after the attack of September 11, 2001, but became disunited from us, became questioning of our attitudes and actions, all of that came about as a result of the falsification of information by this administration to the Congress of the United States and the people of the United States alleging that there was a connection between Iraq and Saddam Hussein to the attack of September 11, 2001, and subsequently alleging that Saddam Hussein had so-called weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons, and a nuclear weapons program, when all of the major intelligence given to the administration said that there was no evidence of so-called weapons of mass destruction.

And it was clear that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. If anything, the two were enemies, not united in any way. They are antagonists, and certainly, then, no connection between al Qaeda and Iraq. And the world saw the falsification of that information and they began to back away from us. And eventually so many people and so many countries around the world turned their backs on the United States because of the falsification of information by this administration and the perils that they saw our country engaged in in the Middle East, and to some extent here at home.

So we have a responsibility. And I think that that responsibility falls mainly on the Democratic Party. Because, as you pointed out in your remarks just a few minutes ago, we have here, in effect, a rubber stamp Congress, a monolithic government here in Washington, a Congress that has abandoned its responsibilities under the Constitution to ensure that the administration is behaving in a lawful way; to be certain that the administration is adhering to the provisions of our law and the provisions of our constitution.

In fact, we see clearly that this administration is violating the law and violating the Constitution, but the Republican majority in this House has done absolutely nothing about it. So the opportunity that you present here tonight by reserving this hour is an important one, and there are other people who will come and speak about this issue also in very important ways.

Everything we do has got to be focused on the illegality of these actions and the way in which they are to be corrected so that we can begin to reensure the security of the United States and begin to reestablish our position in the world of admiration and respect from other people around the world. We have a big job to do and we must engage ourselves in that job very pointedly and aggressively, and I thank you for reserving this time.

Mr. Speaker, I am very much opposed to this rule. This is an issue that deserves a lot more attention than is allowed under this rule. It is a closed rule, has no opportunity for amendments.

Let me just cite one example of the language in this resolution which needs much more attention than is provided under this rule and frankly within the resolution itself.

In the resolution, it says that the United States today is safer than it was on September 11, 2001. I disagree with that, and I think a great many people disagree with it because all of the evidence points in the other direction. We are not safer today than we were.

Why are we not safer? Primarily because the administration and the leadership in this Congress corrupted the attack against the United States on September 11, 2001, and behaved in ways that have made the Nation less safe.

Instead of focusing on the perpetrators of the attack of September 11, 2001, the al Qaeda network and the leader, Osama bin Laden, the administration and the Defense Department backed off. They let him escape and he is free today.

The fact of the matter is 19 members of al Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. There was a handful of them in addition to those 19. Now that number has grown enormously. There are far more members of al Qaeda and associate terrorist networks spread all over the Middle East, and they are engaged in activities which constitute a threat to our country and many others.

Subsequently, the attack against Iraq was a totally corrupt response to the attack of September 11, 2001. Iraq had nothing to do with that attack, nothing whatsoever.

The President in his speech to the country the other night said the regime of Saddam Hussein represented a great threat. That is not the case. All of the intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein represented no threat whatsoever to the United States, just as all the intelligence now makes it very clear that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein or Iraq and the attack of September 11 against the United States, and there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

So, instead of attacking the people who attacked us, the administration, with the consent of this Congress, attack another country that had nothing to do with it. The fact of the matter is the world and our country today are far less safe as a result of the way in which the administration and the leaders of this Congress behaved.

We need to live up to our obligations here in the Congress. We need to conduct an investigation as to why the administration behaved the way it did. Why did it not pursue the people who attacked us, why did it let Osama bin Laden go free, why did we attack Iraq which had nothing to do with this, why did the President of the United States say that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when all of the intelligence indicated that there was no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction, no chemical or biological weapons left and no nuclear weapons program?

So the fact of the matter is that this resolution does not focus on the issue the way it ought to be focused upon, and this rule does not provide us the opportunity to expand the resolution, to offer amendments, to engage in the kind of debate that this issue needs so that the people of this country can understand exactly what has been happening to them.

Mr. Speaker, I want to express my appreciation to my dear friend and colleague, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, for providing us with this opportunity to speak.

Five years and 2 days after the brutal and vicious attack of September 11, 2001, it is impossible to contemplate this resolution without being aware, fully aware, of the way in which our government has failed.

Less than 4 months after that attack, I was in Afghanistan, thanks to the initiative and leadership of my friend and colleague, Representative Jim Kolbe from Arizona, who organized that mission. We met with President Karzai, among others, and with the new leaders of the country at that time. And when we asked him what was the most important thing that we could do to help his country now after the Taliban had been chased out and Osama bin Laden was on the run, he said, ``Security. Help us with security. Make sure we are secure. We will be able to take care of everything else.''

We have failed. Afghanistan is not secure under this government that we allowed to be put in there. It is not secure. The Taliban is reemerging. The warlords are back. More and more heroin is being produced in that country. The situation is becoming increasingly chaotic and increasingly dangerous. And that is just one example of the failure of this government.

While we were there, decisions were being made by the administration not to pursue Osama bin Laden, not to capture Osama bin Laden, and the likelihood motivating that decision was that if he were to be captured then that would have made it extremely difficult for the administration to attempt to justify their intention of attacking Iraq, which they intended to do at that moment and even earlier.

The situation in Iraq now has deteriorated seriously. We are confronting there a civil war. In spite of the fact that this Congress has appropriated more than $300 billion for the rebuilding of that country, that rebuilding has not occurred. Most of the electricity is not back on, most of the basic infrastructure is not in place, and the security situation there continues to deteriorate. There is no plan by the Pentagon or by this administration for dealing with the circumstances there. Once again the hallmark of this government is failure.

We are also now confronting difficulties in other situations because of this, because of the lack of leadership and because of the failure. North Korea has resumed its nuclear program. They may have as many as five or six nuclear warheads produced already. The world is a much more dangerous place as a result of the failure of this government.

Iran is now resuming its nuclear operations, and they will be in a position to produce nuclear weapons within the next several years, perhaps within the next 5 years, or maybe sooner. The world is a much more dangerous place than it was.

This administration and this Congress have failed miserably to protect the people of this country, to make us safer and to make the world a safer place. In fact, the situation is precisely opposite. The circumstances continue to deteriorate, day in and day out. And there is no plan. They have no plan for improving the situation, no plan for making things better, no plan for withdrawing our forces, no plan for strengthening the government in Iraq as they go deeper and deeper into civil war.

This Congress has failed miserably. It has failed miserably initially because it has failed to confront the administration in the deceptive way in which they justify the attack against Iraq, when Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the attack of September 11; how they focused attention away from the perpetrators of that attack, the al Qaeda network and Osama bin Laden, for the personal and political reasons of the administration and focused them on Iraq.

There was no justification for that. And the responsibility of this House of Representatives to ensure that this House is not misled by an administration has been put aside. There has been no investigation of the way in which the administration misled the Congress. There has been no investigation of the way in which the administration presented the so-called intelligence to the Congress which was completely falsified. And when they presented it, they knew it was falsified. This House of Representatives has failed the people of our country.

Under the Constitution, we have an obligation to oversee the executive branch, to make certain that the executive branch is behaving in a lawful way, to make certain that the executive branch is organized and conducting itself in accordance with the law and that it is not violating the law by deceiving the Congress and the American people, which it has done. And the consequences of that deception is now being felt by everyone in this country, and the consequences will become deeper and deeper over time because there is no plan by this administration to alter the circumstances and to improve them.

So as we deal with this resolution, we ought to recognize how we ought to be dealing with our obligations and responsibilities as the legislative branch of this government, the branch that has the responsibility to make the law and to oversee the operation of those laws and how that operation has been mishandled by this House. It must stop. It has to end.

We have to stand up to our obligations and responsibilities under the Constitution and under the law, and our failure to do so places the people of this country in increasing jeopardy more and more every day.