Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, not only was that well stated, not only was the logistics of the politics well stated, but the sentiments expressed by yourself and by the previous speakers take us then to the question of what are we to do? The difficulty I think that has been faced by those of us who had reservations, if not outright opposition, to the attack on Baghdad, which is what the initial military activity was, because we feared that a war in Iraq would then erupt, one for which we were not prepared, I think the difficulties associated with the thrust of their remarks made to this point is that the American people said, well, where is this opposition, what does it mean, why are we not coming forward with it?

We were drowned, literally, in the rhetorical excesses and visual stimulus of embedded media, following along with and literally with the troops. We were regaled with admonitions to support the troops by virtue of not questioning the policies that sent those troops in in the first place, and not analyzing the context and circumstances under which those troops were placed in harm's way. And I do not think we can avoid that any longer.

How are we to deal with the analysis of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) regarding the circumstances under which we entered and what has taken place? How are we to deal with the questions raised by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) about the deficits, about

the costs that are associated, the literal costs? How are we to deal with the elegant formulation by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) of the juxtaposition between that which is required for us in the United States to deal with our basic needs and that which is required for the Iraqi people under the circumstances over which we now, ostensibly, have control and obligation? What are we to do?

The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) and I, earlier this evening, engaged in a discussion with one another about, well, how should we address this question? And I think, if my colleague will allow me just a moment or two more, I want to posit what I think needs to be done or at least what needs to be done in terms of a dialogue.

We established a governing cabinet which, according to The New York Times yesterday, is the Iraqi Governing Council. It says we have right now, and by we I am talking about the so-called coalition, because that is all it is. There may be some attendance on the periphery, but we have Great Britain, and we have the United States. Great Britain is now going through the throes of its own investigations and self-analysis. Who knows how long the Prime Minister will even be in office, let alone the support there. But it says we now have an Iraqi Governing Council, I am quoting The New York Times from yesterday, ``appointed a 25-member cabinet today to begin taking over day-to-day control of the government. The Iraqi ministers appointed today are to take over important portfolios in foreign affairs, finance, internal security and oil.''

Now, my suggestion is if that is in fact the case, and if one accepts the premise for discussion sake that the motives for going into Iraq were sound, even if the process and the planning was inadequate at best, then this has been achieved. There was an attack on Baghdad. There was an occupation that took place. We now have a 25-member governing council to take over all of these areas. When are we going to bring the troops home?

The same paper announces, the same news media announces yesterday that two U.S. military officers have died, another wounded when their Humvee hit a bomb along a highway in southern Baghdad. The military police brigade was traveling along a main supply route at 3:19 p.m. in the afternoon when their vehicle hit ``an improvised explosive device.''

Mr. Speaker, as we stand here speaking, airplanes are coming in every day and every night discharging the wounded. When we can manage to get people acknowledged in the newspaper or on the television as having been killed in Iraq, and I say when we manage to get them acknowledged because more and more this is fading from the front page, this is fading from the A section of the newspaper. We have to pay attention to ex-steroid users running for governor out in California. We are competing with that right now. The clown show is taking place on C-SPAN II right now. Maybe tonight we can forgive the fact that the media once again are not here to record what might be said or not said here with respect to Iraq and its implications because they are watching the clown show. It is no clown show at Bethesda Naval Hospital. It is no clown show at Walter Reed Hospital, where now the grievously wounded are in the thousands.

I suppose one could make an argument if it was in the dozens that it might be more acceptable. But it is not. We have the spectacle of the President of the United States now backtracking from the show that he put on on the aircraft carrier, that shameless display of arrogance and hubris. Oh, that was the end of major combat operations. So the family to which my colleague referred, are they supposed to take some comfort with the idea that their son died in a minor confrontation, a minor incident? There is nothing minor about the deaths and grievous wounding of American men and women in combat in Iraq.

None. Zero.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to add an addendum to the last point the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) made when he talked about the no-show jobs. The problem we have in the United States now is people are showing up and there are no jobs. They want to have a job.

We have lost two-plus million jobs, manufacturing jobs, in this country. There are plenty of people who want to show up for work, but the work is not there because it is being out sourced overseas. Because we are providing an opportunity for the Vice President's cronies in Halliburton and all these other construction companies to send mercenaries overseas to make the big dollars off of the taxpayer dollar here.

I want to see people at work in the United States. When we have a prosperous United States, we can start worrying about carrying the burden for the rest of the world.

Mr. Speaker, as President Bush is so fond of saying, help is on the way. Let me read from the Wall Street Journal of yesterday:

A consortium of 13 international banks, lead by J.P. Morgan Chase and company, was chosen to lead the newly created Trade Bank of Iraq. I thought it was going to be the United States was going to get some help. No, we have J.P. Morgan and 13 international banks, and they are going to put together something called the Trade Bank of Iraq.

The coalition authority that I just referred to, the 25-member coalition authority which is now in charge of finance, according to the New York Times, in Iraq created the Trade Bank to allow Iraqi ministries to begin making ``big ticket purchases abroad.''

This is all a corporate scam and the country has to wake up to the fact that we are utilizing our young men and women in harm's way in the military uniform of the United States to carry out the corporate interests of this administration, and that Iraq, if not before now, is a quicksand of corporate endeavor on behalf of profit-taking by corporations utilizing the all-volunteer force of the United States, and we have to take seriously whether or not we are going to allow it to continue.

My view is, and I put it forward for consideration, that if we are going to deal with this situation straightforwardly, we have to talk about letting this 25-member authority take over. They say they are in charge of finance, they are in charge of security, they are in charge of trade, they are in charge of banking, in charge of oil, let them be in charge. Bring the American troops on out of there and let that Iraqi authority set the terms and conditions under which the United Nations will come in and help put this together.

I am perfectly willing to vote funds because we caused this problem, funds that will enable the Iraqi people to get back on their feet, provided it is done in an international context at the behest of and request of the Iraqi authority which we supposedly have not only set up but now have in charge of these various ministries.

I do not wish to dispute who is ready and who is not. All we can account for is ourselves. We were not ready, and now these poor people have to bear the brunt of our failure to be ready. I understand that. But the question here that I have raised here is what in fact is the role of the United States and these troops? How do we make it work? Let me put it this way, that is not an argument.

In my dreams I keep thinking Thomas Edward Lawrence, where are you, come back. Lawrence, come back and tell us what it is we are forgetting.

What do we think we can do when people made an argument back in World War I that the Arabs were not ready. This was a Western concept. This is people coming in from the outside telling somebody else that they were not ready. They were not ready to have the French divide up and the English divide up Iraq for their political purposes, but they were certainly ready to do whatever it was that they felt was necessary.

I am sure that the colonial armies under George Washington were not ready. Cornwallis was wandering all over, wandering through Maryland and New Jersey, wandering through upstate New York; and back in England they said, We have got to get out. It does not matter whether they are ready or not. We are going to be adrift with our people being picked off one by one in the American Revolutionary War. We are facing the same kind of situation in terms of the material prospect for the military of the United States in Iraq today. It is not up to us to decide whether or not they are ready.

Let me tell what one of the members of the governing council said yesterday. Abdel Aziz Hakim, the brother of Ayatollah Hakim who was killed in the car bomb, a member of the United States appointed governing council to which I have referred this evening told mourners, and I quote, and this is from The Washington Post of yesterday, ``The occupation force is primarily responsible for the pure blood that was spilled in holy Najaf, the blood of Hakim and the faithful group that was present near the mosque. Iraq must not remain occupied and the occupation must leave so we can build Iraq as God wants us to do.''

My point is we are dealing with a situation in which we do not have the prerogative of decisionmaking other than what we do about ourselves and for ourselves. We cannot decide for others. If the argument was, and again I do not want to dispute that because we have Members on this floor who voted for the resolution, who did not vote for the resolution who had different ideas what that resolution meant or did not mean, that is not an issue. I have no intention of pointing fingers and extracting some kind of admissions about what might have been the true faith at the time.

What I am saying is we now face a situation in which we have to make a determination whether our continued presence is a positive or negative force and what should constitute our continued presence.

And the ones who will pay the price of that attitude should it become more pervasive, ``death to America,'' is not going to be us here. They are getting ready to celebrate. Come on. They are closing down the mall tomorrow. For those of you out there tuning in, they are closing down the mall tomorrow because the National Football League is getting underway. The Redskins are going to play. No traffic. People are taking days off. They are taking sick leave, whatever it is. They are closing down the mall, not because of a terrorist threat but because the Washington Redskins are going to start the National Football League and that is what we are going to concentrate on. And what do you think will be on the front page of The Washington Post on Friday morning? Whether or not the Redskins won the game. But will there be a story about two more kids getting wounded or killed over in Baghdad or Tikrit or some other godforsaken place that nobody knows anything about and cannot spell?

Let me tell you what has happened, how much we care about this supporting the troops. If I hear that one more time from these hypocrites. The toughest thing we have ever done since 9/11, which is coming up in a couple of days, the biggest sacrifice we ever made is not the inconvenience of taking off your shoes walking through a testing device at the airport, we postponed the Super Bowl for 1 week. That is the big sacrifice. We are supposedly in a total war. The President tells me that I am in a war, a total war, over maybe 10 years and we are going to go and we are going to conduct this war with every fiber that we have. We are not doing anything of the kind. We are watching the football game on television.

When I see those guys out on the field, I see there is a kid from Ohio State, he cannot decide whether he wants to go to class or not. He does not know whether it is worth it. I do not blame him. They are marketing him over there. They are making a million dollars out of him. We are worried about whether some professional basketball player took advantage of a

young woman and we are going to spend more money and time on that. They are all pretty healthy, it looks to me. Why are they not in uniform over there? Why do we not have a draft if we really mean that this is a war against terror and this is something that we have to fight right through to the end with all the resources of the United States?

That is what I cannot bear. I cannot bear the idea that we sit here, 435 of us that have been designated on the trust and faith of our constituents to try and make good judgments. We do not have a referendum in here in this country. This is not something where we just run out and take a vote on the fashion of the moment. We are supposed to be trying to use what brains that God gave us and what judgment we have been able to accrue over the experiences of our lifetime and, based on the faith and trust of our constituents, render responsible policies and obligations for this country. What I am saying is that these young men and women have volunteered for the armed services of the United States not because we expect them to throw their lives away on the political fashion of the moment, but because we expect to be able to provide them with the necessities of being able to carry through on the strategic interests of this Nation.

I say that the strategic interests of this Nation now requires us to have an exit plan out of Iraq and to turn the question of Iraq and its governance over to the Iraqis as soon as possible so that they can make the necessary arrangements with the United Nations, of which we are a part, in order to aid and assist them.

If we cannot get to the bottom of it in a bipartisan fashion, there is one way for people to make that clear and that is in the voting booth. If we cannot pass it in here, you are going to have to get the people in here who are willing to pass it.

The difficulty I think here is that there has been a tendency, at least to this point, and I detect a change coming here, too, the tendency has been, if not the outright policy, is equate support for the troops with the political policies of those who have sent them over there. That to me is an abomination of the idea of patriotism. Serving as I do on the Committee on Armed Services, I am only too well aware of the caliber of the fighting man and woman in the United States Armed Forces today. The capacity that they have to carry out their mission is extraordinary. The morale that they do have associated with their own perception of what they are capable of, believe me, could not be higher.

The question is, are we up to the task? Are the politicians up to the task of representing that same kind of competency and professionalism, if you will, in providing what that mission should be?

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say, and I want this on the Record, he is the man. He is the man on this. He and I have had these discussions in the past; and if there is anybody who understands the issue, anybody who has been more devoted on this issue, I do not know who it is. I have enormous respect for him not only for the depth of research that he has done on it but the passion he brings to the discussion. And it is something, in the context especially of the tragic circumstances we were just outlining, that definitely needs to be put forward because the financial stability of this country is at stake; and if there is anybody who is a leader in trying to confront that issue in a positive way, it is him.

Mr. Speaker, this is about money, money, piles of money, oodles of money, tons of money. This is what this is about.

You do not have to worry about safety because if you cannot afford the drug in the first place, you are not even going to get it to take it, and if you are a Democrat, a minority Democrat, and you do not vote for this bill, there is not any Democrat in the country that is not going to say you sold out and you rolled over belly up again and you are not standing up for the people of this country.

We deserve to be in the minority if we cannot pass this bill. We are defying everything that makes us Democrats, and if you are a Republican, then they are going to say you are in the pockets of the big pharmaceuticals again and you are just acting like a Republican.

If you are a Republican or Democrat, vote this bill through and save the integrity of this House.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, on rollcall vote No. 408, I am recorded as having voted, ``No''. I would like the Record to show that I, in fact, support the Otter amendment and I intended to vote, ``Yes''. I hope that it is retained in the final version of the Commerce-Justice-State Appropriations Act.

Naturally, you turn to me when you ask for that.

Mr. HOEFFEL. That will show you to come late for Iraq Watch.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I was letting you get warmed up.

Mr. EMANUEL. This was his senior high school thesis.

The question that you pose and was answered rhetorically with another series of questions, really observations by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), I think bear answering. I think there is an answer and it is an unfortunate answer. It has nothing to do with plots and conspiracies, but it has everything to do with a philosophy and an attitude and an ideology which has been expressed again and again by some of the people that have been mentioned here earlier this evening.

If you take a look at the spectrum of essays and books and articles written by those who were now in charge of policy in the administration, Mr. Krystol's book on the mission in Iraq,

our mission in Iraq, Mr. Perle, Mr. Booth, some of the think tanks here in Washington, these nonprofit, untaxable think tanks that operate thanks to the tax loopholes that we have which allow them to operate and comment and infest themselves in halls of government. There are more than one set of interest groups in this town, let me state, and some of them are in charge of this policy.

So the answer, I am sorry to say, in my judgment is this has been a clearly articulated policy of people now associated with the administrations who were determined to start a war in Iraq, to include Syria and Iran, because of the policies that they feel this country should be not only espousing but pursuing in terms of world domination beginning in the Middle East.

So it is clear, even with the publishing of the documentation now over the weekend, that the bombing that took place for perhaps a year or more before the actual launching of the attack on Baghdad was following a pattern to try to knock out selected targets in Iraq before the formal hostilities in terms of an attack actually started.

So I think I am forced to conclude, and this is why I think the idea of having an independent investigation committee is so important, I am forced to conclude that there was a pattern already being articulated publicly and in writing to set this Nation on a course of imperial attack beginning with Iraq.

Mr. HOEFFEL. We wanted to hear from the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), but it looks like the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) has 60 seconds here.

Mr. EMANUEL. I wanted to make two closing comments on my side on this point.

One, I think we have a serious problem with North Korea. There is no doubt North Korea is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, and unless America's word and its credibility can be trusted, our ability to muster the international community's outrage and capability to handle this will be questioned. Unfortunately, the President's State of the Union has called the question of our credibility and our ability to muster in the international community when it says this was an immediate threat.

I think the American people, unfortunately, because of this now, are exhausted in dealing with the international crisis which we will have to do.

Secondly, what I want to report and talk about in this group is dealing with the cost. We are paying $1 billion a week for the occupation of Iraq. There was a story two nights ago, four nights ago on the nightly news of how our troops are now organizing soccer teams in Iraq and sports in Iraq for the young.

We have cut programs here dealing with Title IX which is under attack in this country.

Mr. DELAHUNT. I can tell my friend that there are sports programs that are being cut in my district back home in south shore Cape Cod.

Mr. EMANUEL. I would like to say to all of my colleagues that there is not a Member in this body who does not have playgrounds in their district that are badly in need of repair. We are literally for sports teams.

Now, I am for the reconstruction of Iraq. I have no problem. I just find it interesting that our military, who are never going to be involved in a mamsy-pamsy activity of nation building are out organizing soccer leagues and soccer clubs in Iraq, and yet playgrounds in America go dilapidated. Swings do not get fixed. Youth clubs are not organized in the United States. Title IX is under attack here in America. And we are paying a billion dollars a week in Iraq.

I have said this before on the floor. We have a plan for 20,000 units of housing in Iraq. The President's budget has only 5,000 units of affordable housing here in the United States planned. We have 13 million Iraqis; we are thinking about providing universal health care to half the population. We have 45 million Americans without health insurance who work full time in this country.

I have no problem, Americans have been since World War II and prior to that, one of the most generous people in the world, yet, if you offer them a smaller vision here at home for themselves and their children, their generosity will come into question.

Mr. DELAHUNT. I think we all agree with the gentleman, but at the same time you are not factoring in the $250 million a week that we are paying to occupy Afghanistan and provide security and stability here. So would you please aggregate the sum from now on?

Mr. EMANUEL. The aggregate sum would be $4.2 million a month.

Mr. DELAHUNT. This is not for reconstruction efforts.

Mr. EMANUEL. This is just for occupation efforts and our troops overseas. And that totals well over $50 billion a year for our foreign efforts. I want to say this, members of our body, Democrats, have a Rebuild America account for investment in highways, bridges, investments in sewers and water treatment. All that would lead to greater economic development. It costs $50 billion.

Now, I have adequately indicated to the sponsors of that legislation that when we come up to authorizing the supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan, that we should attach the Rebuild America to the Iraqi reconstruction project. If we are going to pay $50 billion for Iraq over a year, I have got $50 billion I think we can find investments here in the United States. And there is not a Member in this body whose district does not need economic investment in the areas of a new road, new mass transit, new water treatment facilities.

Again, the occupation of Iraq is essential now that we are there. But we cannot deinvest and deconstruct America in the word of reconstructing Iraq.

Mr. HOEFFEL. We are also aware of the gentleman's American parity act which we are all cosponsors of.

Madam Speaker, I have mentioned it down here before. I said that we are going to bring the hammer of truth down on the anvil of inquiry, and this is resonating across the country; and we have mentioned here before that in this Iraq Watch that we are doing we have to do it after hours, during Special Orders, because we are not having the opportunity to do this. The press galleries, I will say again, are empty here this evening. We cannot have anybody from these big networks that are trying to make sure that they do not cross the Federal Communications Commission. They all want to be able to consolidate even more, own even more of what message gets out there. The press is not covering the outrage that is taking place across this country with respect to the points that the gentleman from Illinois is raising.

If my colleagues will go to moveon.org, we will find that there are over 300,000 people right now across this country who have indicated that they want an independent commission to look into all the questions, all the inquiry that is being raised in these sessions that we are having in this Iraq Watch, 300,000 people and growing. That does not get the coverage. It is the kind of grassroots movement, the net- roots if you will, that is taking place all across this country, that says we are not going to take it, our democracy is not going to be taken away from us by some self-appointed elitists who have an anti- imperialist attitude about what the United States is going to be or not be and that we are going to be informed about it later and that the sons and daughters of those elitists will never have to pay the price in blood and treasure that it takes to impose that imperialist vision on the world.

I will tell my colleagues that all across this country men and women are realizing they do not have to take it. They can do something about it. They are letting us know about it. Our colleagues have been reading on the floor of this House in some of the shorter special sessions message letters. They are reading communications that are coming in from the moveon.org petition drive from all over the country, in every State, in every nook and corner of this country, people who do not want to be lied to.

You can fool people. There is no doubt you can fool people, but you cannot keep it up and you cannot get away with it forever. People do not mind facing up to hard truths. Like Ronald Reagan said, facts are stubborn things. People do not mind facing up to it. They do not want to be lied to, they do not want to be finessed, they do not want to be fooled, and they do not want to be played with; and we need to bring this truth forward, and that is why we better have this commission or let me tell my colleagues, this administration and the elitists that support it are going to pay a fearful price.

I certainly have.

No question of it.

I do not want to raise a new issue, Madam Speaker, but I do want to reiterate the idea of inquiry and how important that is. Because what we are doing can easily be dismissed by those who want to color it with a brush that has politics all over it, and that is not what this is about. It is not about politics in the sense that we are trying to make some particularly partisan point.

I notice in the photographs coming from the rehabilitation wards right here in Washington, DC that the young men and women who have been grievously wounded are not identified as Republicans and Democrats or supporters of a particular policy or not. These are the people that have had to pay the price for other people's arrogance. These are the people that have had to pay the real price. We are not paying any price here.

We all know that someone else will occupy these slots one day. I learned that the first time I was elected when I went to the office to which I was assigned and I realized they slid the names off the door.

They were not screwed on, painted on; they came right off the door. We occupy that only so long as we have the faith and trust of the people of this country. That is what is at stake here. That is what this inquiry is all about. Is our faith and trust being played fast and loose with? That is the issue that is involved. That is why I want to say that as far as I am concerned, we are going to continue these inquiries. This Iraq Watch I hope perhaps can come out into the country, maybe off the floor of the Congress and perhaps go elsewhere. I would be very pleased to take this inquiry perhaps into a town meeting-kind of context anywhere in the Nation so that we can break out of the stranglehold on opinion that is taking place right now. We cannot trust the national media to do it. They are in the grip of the people who own the networks. We cannot trust them. We have to trust the people out there. And so I hope that perhaps with Iraq Watch, we can go elsewhere and go directly to the people, and we can get streaming on the Internet and follow through and let people judge for themselves on the people's network that is out there.

Mr. HOEFFEL. I think that is a wonderful suggestion.

Mr. INSLEE. A brief comment. I went and visited with two Marines who had some pretty significant wounds at Bethesda awhile back serving in Iraq. One was crushed by a tank and one was shot. I just think that those gentlemen understood the value of democracy and what we are here today is to say the Congress needs to understand the value of democracy, and democracy does not work where the executive branch of the United States Government does not level with its own people. I have one question for our next week that I hope we would have answered. Why did the White House in the run-up to the war in Iraq not seek CIA approval before the President of the United States went to the Rose Garden and charged that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes as administration officials now say? That is a question every American deserves an answer to, and the best way to do it is through Republicans and Democrats working together; and I hope this commission does that. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) have asked some questions not just for rhetorical effect, but which throw some light on some very interesting aspects of this whole dilemma, which the Secretary of Defense says is over with, which the National Security Adviser says we have to move on from. I am asking why. Who committed these forgeries? I keep hearing about it. I keep asking the questions. We cannot get anybody in front of us to answer the questions. Who committed these forgeries? The word ``forgery,'' the phrase is used all the time; but there does not seem to be the slightest inclination to find out what was at stake. Did they appear by spontaneous combustion? Was this an immaculate conception of forgery? I do not think so. There were reasons for it.

Now we see the aspect of the Sunday talk shows. They are very interesting these days. Turn off the sound and watch the eyes and the expressions of the people who are speaking. Just watch that. Get the body language down, and Members will see the tension that is there because they do not want to answer the question who benefited from having this kind of an observation in that speech by the President. It has nothing to do with 16 words or a single sentence. It has everything to do with the reasons behind that being recommended to the President.

This is not an accusation against the President. We are not going to determine that down here tonight as to what the President did or did not do with respect to that speech. The President is having a difficult enough time as it is other than to say it was somebody else's fault. That is something that we can take up with the President when it comes to election time, but that is not the issue here.

The issue here is who and what was behind the insistence that that sentence and that that observation go into that speech. I think the answer is out there. I think what is involved in that answer has to do with who benefited from it.

The gentleman's analysis brings forward again the question then: Who benefits from this reconstruction in Iraq? While we cannot have schools built in this country, while we cannot have hospitals paid for, when we cannot get health care for our people, who benefits? Who is getting the contracts for this? Who is getting the no- bid contracts? Where is the money coming from? Supposedly from the oil revenues. Oil revenues then will be passing right out of Iraq and down to Texas, to Haliburton Company, to some of the other construction companies that are benefiting from hundreds of millions of dollars that are now being allocated into their pockets directly for this reconstruction, not in the United States but in Iraq.

Again in furtherance of what the gentleman from Illinois has indicated and others here this evening, these are the same questions that many of us asked of President Clinton. This is not something that has suddenly sprung into being. And they were asked in a bipartisan basis, too.

My colleagues will remember that some of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, had these same questions for President Clinton with respect to Kosovo, with respect to the activities that took place in the Balkans. We had these same questions of ourselves as to what was expected of us. I think that as a result, what the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) has indicated is perhaps a start for us in terms of the questions that need to be asked, I think, needs a bit of reiteration.

I find it very strange that when President Carter was in office, people in the media, particularly Nightline, would come on every evening, day 292 of the hostages and the number of hostages that were still in Iran, on day 292, three, four, five, 300, whatever it was. Yet we go now to casualties, deaths, we are not talking about those that are maimed, and this casual dismissal by some of the, I am sorry to say, some of the highest officials in the administration now of, well, this is all over, intelligence changes from day to day. You

never know what it is from day to day, this almost sarcastic dismissal of these questions.

There are young people out at Walter Reed right now who may not have been killed, a casualty in that sense, but they are surely there as casualties, with loss of limbs and a lifetime in front of them of having to deal with the pain and suffering of grievous wounds. Perhaps Nightline might take up this idea. It is day, what number, since the President said that the war was over.

This is not something that we said. This is not something that other people said. This is something the President declared, and some of us have been challenged on our patriotism and challenged on our support for troops because we are not sufficiently quiet, because we do not acknowledge that the so-called ending of the war really ended.

It does not end when somebody dies. It does not end when somebody is grievously wounded. It does not end when a parent or loved one has to try and understand and we have to explain when we go home why the war is over but the killing goes on and the maiming goes on.

So I think we are going to need to have some accounting as to how many days past the end of the war the killing and the maiming goes on and what those numbers are. Because those numbers are real. They are not philosophical abstractions. They are not merely the recitation of numbers from an Office of Management and Budget or a Congressional Budget Office, some entity, some institution that has no reality to the mothers and fathers and the loved ones of those who have to bear the brunt of the policies that we in the government of the United States are bringing forward to the people of the United States as being in the strategic interests of this Nation.

So I think that the questions that are being asked are not just questions about the past and how something happened but to try and understand what took place in the past so that we do not continue to make the same mistakes and the same observations that lead to this kind of grievous result.

Mr. Speaker, on that point in reference to what the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) said and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) observed to kick off this discussion, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr.

Hoeffel) can see, his question was so pertinent that we have not gotten much further in it, and for good reason, because it requires some explication. The problem is here, if we do not do this, is a credibility gap. What will the President be able to say about North Korea? What will he be able to say about the Philippines? What will he be able to say about Colombia? What will he be able to say further about Afghanistan?

Afghanistan seems to have disappeared; yet I know there were two attacks yesterday, one on the American base and one on U.N. personnel. I do not believe anybody was killed, but who knows? Now we are told there are more attacks in Iraq than necessarily are being reported. I suppose that gets quotidian now. If they are on the 11 o'clock news at night, they have got fires to report, they have assaults to report or basketball players or the latest boxer to embarrass himself or something of that nature. They hardly have time to fit in anymore how many people got killed today. It is almost a loss leader in the news.

And so if we do not have some answers here, if the President does not take control and stop being dismissive of these questions as merely revising history or some other sarcastic observation, he is not going to be able nor will the administration be able to convince others who may find it in their interest to join with us in other circumstances. He will not be able to find anyone who is going to be willing to take us at our word. That is why this is so serious. It is way beyond partisan. Other people will occupy these seats down here. Other people will come to occupy our place. We are here only as long as the faith and trust of the people in our constituencies are willing to put us here. No one owns a seat in this Congress. No one owns a seat at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue either. We are only as good as the credibility with our own people before we can hope to influence others.

Mr. Chairman, I know it is the intention of the Chairman and leadership to expedite the casting of votes. I have risen on the floor in the past speaking on behalf of those, particularly in the Longworth Building, to request that we make some attempt either by way of signage, blinking lights sufficient to be able to attract attention. I am not sure of the precise manner, but it is virtually impossible during these months when we are being visited with the number of people that are in the buildings, particularly in Longworth, to make use of those elevators to get here in a timely fashion.

No Member wants to try to tell members of the public to get off elevators or not to come in. They make inquiries and so on, as they should. It is simply unfair to them. We have got to figure out a way to make at least one elevator eligible for exclusive use by the Members during the time in which a vote is taking place.

Simply to ring the bells and then expect people to know what that means, let alone to be able to follow up on it during the 15- or 16- or 17-minute period, is impossible.

I guarantee you, you are going to have people, as has happened recently and almost happened again today, that are going to miss votes and be upset about it, unless we are able to figure out some way to figure out the logistics associated with that.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman, most especially because I like to be supportive of him as much as possible.

It is a common mistake, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, both the gentleman from Alaska and myself are shy and retiring types, and so it is often the case that we are mistaken for one another.

I yield to the gentleman, who has been working very hard to resolve this issue and for whom I have great respect as a result.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my friend, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), if he could give an educated, speculative assessment of what would have taken place had this same circumstance occurred today during the Presidency of Mr. Clinton.

Would the gentleman allow me to venture perhaps an educated guess myself on that score? Because they were trying to establish a new doctrine for the United States of preemptive warfare. Not that citations might not have been made with regard to other military actions by the United States in previous times, perhaps up to and even including President Clinton's Presidency, but that there was to be established with this a new paradigm of preemption based on an imperial view of the world that the stamp of the United States must be placed upon the rest of the world.

I would venture to further my question to the gentleman from Illinois, if President Clinton was in office today and this information was revealed today, what do you think the response of some of our colleagues might have been?

I do not think we would be speaking in a Chamber as we are tonight during Special Orders with, again, the press being absent. I will presume perhaps some of them are watching on C-SPAN. We would not have an empty Chamber. On the contrary, there would be a full-blown cry throughout the opposition to Mr. Clinton indicating that he should be brought to account or those around him who are giving advice should be brought to account. And I agree with the gentleman, that would be true.

If the gentleman would yield a moment further in that regard and in that context, I do think that the response to the gentleman's question is that the President, and my point to my colleague is, I wonder if he could corroborate or whether he would agree that the President, at least in my estimation, has said that this is wide open; that this does not have an end; that the calculations will be made on essentially an ad hoc basis; and that there is nothing that he can foresee at this moment that would lead us to the kind of exit strategy conclusions that the gentleman has raised.

May I follow up in that context?

Today, as I am sure my colleagues will acknowledge, and not everyone who is observing us and listening tonight may be aware, we passed a defense appropriations bill from this House. If anything should reflect the concern of the administration with regard to the issues of resolving the consequences of our attack in Iraq, it should be contained in here.

I have, for my colleagues' information, Mr. Speaker, referring to the House Action Reports, a Congressional Quarterly publication, a fact sheet edition published today on defense appropriations. In it, section 3 addresses military personnel. It includes things like a military pay raise and a civilian Defense Department pay raise. Active Duty personnel are listed at 1,388,100 in fiscal year 2004, equal to the President's request of 1,600 less than the current level. On Reserves, the bill sets a ceiling on Reserve personnel for a total of 863,300 in the next fiscal year, equal to the administration's request of 1,258 less than the 2003 level.

Now, think about it. We now have 150,000 plus people committed in Iraq under the circumstances and conditions that have been discussed here tonight, personnel deployed throughout the world, not just in Afghanistan, but the Philippines, Yemen, and dozens of places, now possibly in Liberia, again under circumstances that are not clear as to where we are going, what we are doing, and who we are doing it with.

The President says, ``Bring 'em on,'' but here is the congressional responsibility and obligation as manifested in the appropriations which follow on our authorizing personnel. And what we are saying is, is that the same deployments that have been taking place up until now, which have put such an enormous strain on the Guard and Reserves are going to continue. We are not adding a single person. We are not facing with any respect whatsoever the realities of what these deployments and the obligations attendant upon them will require of us.

That is why we are here in the evening during these Special Orders trying to reach out to the American public to explain that we are not quiescent on this. We are not merely observers. We are trying to participate in a respectful and responsible way as Members of Congress. But we have to rouse the attention of the American people to let them know that we are failing those men and women in the armed services if we think for a moment that we are providing adequate support and foundation for what we expect of them.

If the gentleman would yield in turn, to follow up on my point in regard to our analysis, or rather not so much an analysis, I daresay, but our observation that these offhand remarks, these ad hoc remarks by the President, which take on the weight of policy, such as ``Bring 'em on,'' this kind of childish assessment of what constitutes the ground operations in Iraq, are now followed by an observation of the President that Mr. Taylor, the President in Liberia, has to go.

Now, where he is going and how he is going and under what circumstances is not said. And the questions from the press, the press which is absent, which do not appear, at least as far as I can tell; now, whether or not people in the White House are so covetous of being in the White House that they do not dare ask the question that anybody with any journalistic bent worthy of the name would ask, just who is supposed to replace Mr. Taylor when he does go, wherever you think he should, provided you have got that far?

Mr. Speaker, the reason I raise this issue and the reason I raise it in the present context is if you think we had no planning in Iraq, I can tell you now and tell the American people and tell my colleagues we do not have a clue or an idea of what we will do in Liberia in terms of who will replace Mr. Taylor and who will prevail when he leaves.

Now, are we to send in not tens of thousands of, but perhaps hundreds of, American soldiers into a situation that we do not have the slightest idea, nor has there been any discussion in the Congress about what we are going to do, how, when or why we are going to do it, and what the circumstances will be upon the action taken.

Now, I for one admonish all of us to take into account where we are now in Iraq and remember that we face exactly the same circumstances in terms of lack of forward-planning policy with regard to Liberia, and the consequences could be just as severe. The numbers might be different, but the situation is the same. We have an administration now that thinks that military action in and of itself constitutes political policy. Furthermore, support for the troops is then defined as being support for whatever political agenda they have. Now, that is what we are facing this evening.

No one can say if only for the fact that we appear here on the floor tonight that due warning has not been given to the American public by Members serving in the Congress of the United States that we should have a full debate with respect to what we are going to do in Liberia, most particularly in the wake of what is taking

place in Iraq, and that before any action is taken in Liberia, the will of the Congress has to be determined.

I would hope that we take the most serious and sober view before we commit American troops in furtherance of a political agenda, and that political agenda is made manifest for the world to judge on the basis of action by American troops.

Mr. Speaker, I want to assure our colleagues as well as those who may be observing and listening to us that we do not intend to make this a 1- or 2- or 3-time deal.

This is not two or three Members of Congress off on some individual crusade. We are not here simply to recount those things with which we have a disagreement. What we feel very strongly about is what I believe is the views of the overwhelming majority of the people of the United States and most certainly those who have talked to me about that Members of Congress have not stepped up to the plate with regard to the discussion of these issues in illuminating what is at stake for this country, and that right now some of these corporation-controlled media networks and the organs of the executive government are controlling the message that is out there, and only free men and women, freely elected with the faith and trust of the electorate, the people have put us into these positions of trust here in the people's House.

It is up to us with that kind of an obligation placed upon us by the people to speak out and to speak up, to speak forthrightly, to speak with as much knowledge as we can bring to bear, to exercise such judgment as we are able to bring to bear, and to keep the people of this country informed, and to let them know that we will not be silenced in this, that we are going to be back night after night after night, and that if we cannot get these issues discussed during the regular business of the day, then rest assured we will be here in the Special Orders that are given to us here in the people's House to make certain that the hammer of truth is going to come down on the anvil of inquiry that is required of a free people in a democratic society.

We are going to return here again. We invite our colleagues to engage in this colloquy. We invite our colleagues to come forward and express their views. We invite our colleagues to come forth and make inquiry of one another so that we can be better informed ourselves, so that we do not have a circumstance that comes to fruition again in this Nation such as we experienced in Vietnam.

If anything motivates me to be down here on this floor, I see parallels. I am not drawing analogies, but I see parallels, distinctly fearful parallels, to what took place in Vietnam in which we were urged to keep quiet, in which we were urged not to say anything for fear it would be called dissent, as if there was already an understanding as to what the correct position should be when it comes to issue of life and death as we face now in Iraq and other places where American troops are deployed.

I believe it is an absolute necessity of democracy that we have the fullest and freest and the deepest and with the widest breadth of discussion that it is possible to have, and that is what we are going to be doing on this floor.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much.

In conjunction with the comments that the gentleman and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) have been making, I want to preface my remarks with the observation that part of the complaint that is being made across the country with respect to this attack on Iraq and the subsequent war which is now unfolding is that where are people speaking out on it?

Well, we are here on Special Orders tonight. I think those who are observing our deliberations here on C-SPAN understand that the House is not formally meeting right now. I would think, I want to make it clear to those folks who are observing and listening to our deliberations here this evening, that we do not have the opportunity during the work day to be able to speak at length and in depth on this issue and the issues surrounding the attack on Iraq. We have the opportunities to ask questions and perhaps a followup or two in committee hearings, when we are able to get them, with respect to the defense budget or as we dealt with just recently having witnesses from the Department of Defense. Those are rather formal occasions, as they should be. Presentation is made by the Department of Defense or by the requisite executive agency, and so occasionally a dialogue back and forth.

If C-SPAN is not there, for all intents and purposes, it does not exist. When we go home to our districts and they say, where are the people who are opposed to this or have differing views or want to establish a different perspective, it is important to understand that the mass media in this country is owned by a small number of conglomerate interests, many of whom are associated with the kind of thing that is taking place just today.

I refer you to the Los Angeles Times, Monday, June 23, the business section: California firms lining up to capitalize on rebuilding of Iraq. Hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars involved in this opportunity. If you think for a moment that the national media is going to be covering the Special Orders, do you think we are going to appear even on ``Nightline,'' which is probably the most objective and the most far-reaching of those who want to get the news out, I think we are dreaming.

Now, I look up right now and the galleries are right in front of us. For those of you who are across the country who are observing us and listening to us tonight, the galleries are empty. I suppose the news organizations might have to pay overtime, I am not sure, but there are no reporters volunteering their time because they are interested in what it is that we have to say.

Now, I have come back from a trip with a congressional delegation, the first congressional delegation to get into Iraq, to go to Bagdad, to go to Kirkuk in the north, a bipartisan delegation; and I am referring to the gentleman from Pennsylvania's (Mr. Hoeffel) admonition and to the gentleman from Massachusetts' (Mr. Delahunt) suggestion about an independent commission to examine these issues, a nonpolitical review, if I remember what you said.

Mr. Speaker, I think that that is what fits into the premise that I am establishing here, that we need to have the press in that gallery paying attention to what is going on here on the floor because this is the only place right now that such a commission is going to take place.

If someone wants to attribute partisan motives to what we are saying down here, they are going to do that anyway. I have to trust, as we all have to trust, that the people will make a decision as to whether what we are saying, why we are saying it, how we are saying it, where we are going, makes sense to them or not on the basis of ideology alone, as opposed to trying to get at what the truth of the situation is with respect to the national security interests of this Nation.

Mr. Speaker, on that point, or on these series of points that are being made, for all intents and purposes, the only opportunity that the American people are going to have to have these questions explicated is on this floor during special orders, and I want to indicate, and I believe the three of us are agreed upon this, we are going to be back. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not the only one that is going to be back.

We are going to be back here on this floor. We are going to be asking the questions. We are going to be making the observations. We are going to be putting forward for the American people the opportunity to hear a perspective that is not necessarily or likely to be enunciated in the press, most particularly in the controlled press. We are not going to see this on the evening news. We are not going to see this in the so- called Sunday talk shows. They have the usual suspects on generally when that comes about.

So what I want to do this evening by way of establishing some of the premise is refer back again to the congressional delegation that we made May 23 through the 27 under the chairmanship of the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), my good friend, our good friend, our able chairman, someone dedicated to the defense of this country by any standard of measure.

Of course, there are differences of opinion that we have in the Committee on Armed Services on which I am happy to be serving as to what the policies might or might not be with respect to the defense of the strategic interests of this Nation, but there is no difference between us on either our desire or our capabilities or our abilities to try to discern what the best course might be. That is precisely why we went. We did not go there to try and get into a contest with anybody on an ideological basis or party basis but rather to try to find out what was taking place.

Maybe tonight will be the first time people will be able to hear anything about what was known as the Organization for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which has now become the Coalition Provisional Authority. These are important because we started out one way with a former general, Jay Garner, who has now been removed all of the sudden within almost days, weeks, in terms of workdays, just days, has been removed, and why? Not because General Garner was thought to be a bad person or an inadequate administrator or did not have the proper motivation or understanding, but because the mission to which he had been assigned and the mission which he expected to carry out, namely, a reconstruction effort, somewhat perhaps akin to the aftermath of a natural disaster, a dam bursting or a hurricane or typhoon or something of that nature, turned out to be a typhoon of entirely a different kind, namely, that there was chaos; that there was an inability to provide even the most elemental of protection for those who would be doing the reconstruction; that there was not an understanding and foundation in the population in which this reconstruction was supposed to take place that this was a mutually agreed-upon activity.

There were forces in the street that were, in fact, trying already to get the United States out of Iraq, and therefore, we had to have the intervention of a very competent and highly professional diplomat, Mr. Bremer, Mr. Paul Bremer, who came in and assumed the authority over what has become the Coalition Provisional Authority. What did he propose?

When we went to Baghdad to talk with him, he had put together what I called an outline. Some people would call this a plan, but I think Mr. Bremer is an honest and forthright person. I was very impressed with his desire to speak directly to us on the questions that we posed and the observations that we made. He did not try to finesse anything. He did not try to make anything into something other than what he thought it was. He gave that clear impression, and I think that was agreed upon by all Members there, Democrats and Republicans, who were there.

He came up with what could best be characterized as an outline, not a plan. A plan is something that we know how to implement, we know who is going to implement it, we know where it is going to be done. We did not know any of these things. We still do not know these things. We are making it up as we go along. This is not an accusation, as the gentleman indicates, against Mr. Bremer. On the contrary he is trying to put something together that was not planned for.

This is one of the key elements that we have to think about here when we are talking about we can have authority as General Shinseki said when he retired as Army Chief of Staff on June

11, you can be assigned command authority but you have to earn leadership.

The question here that has to be answered by the President, by the Department of Defense, by Mr. Rumsfeld and others is, are they really exercising the kind of leadership that we need in these circumstances? We cannot equate a political policy with patriotism. If you are trying to tell me, and this is where I draw the line here, if you are trying to tell me that I have to agree with somebody else's political policy or have my patriotism questioned or have my capacity to understand what the strategic interests of this Nation are, then you have crossed over the line, and what you are saying in effect is do not examine closely, do not analyze to any great degree the policies that I am putting forward because if you do then I will equate that with somehow being antipatriotic or against our troops.

If we are putting the lives of young men and women and the United States Armed Forces on the line, then we have to have policies that are worthy of the commitment and dedication and professionalism of those young people.

I got into electoral politics because we failed to do that in the Vietnam War because we decided then that we would equate military activity with political policy, and the military activity became the political policy. That is why we got to body counts in Vietnam to try and justify our insistence on being there militarily, and so we have to account for the key tasks to be completed here in the context of does this advance the interests of the United States at this juncture, pending some further inquiry as to how we got there in the first place.

And I will tell you that while these, in and of themselves, these 10 points of Ambassador Bremer to be completed, are worthy in and of themselves, they do not answer the question about what will be the role of the United States over the next 5 to 10 years, at least a decade.

And this is where General Shinseki's words become ringing in terms of his retirement and what he said at that retirement about command authority and earning leadership capacity. He said that there should be no confusion about the argument over what the military should be doing or not doing in this country and what its role is going to be in the post-attack phase in the context of the guerilla war that is now underway in Iraq. There should be no confusion as to the commitment of the United States military to civilian control. To raise these issues as to who was in charge is dysfunctional to the discussion. But he warned us, and these words are going to be prophetic, do not get involved in a 12-division policy with a 10-division army.

And what he was saying here is, were we adequately prepared ahead of time? Did we do the kind of planning that was necessary in order to accomplish this task? And was that mission that was outlined adequately underlined and a foundation established that would enable us to say with authority that the interests of the United States in terms of its strategic position in the world and whether or not we were facing imminent danger was in fact at stake? Absent that, then we are in for serious trouble. Because that means we will be engaged in essentially an ad hoc operation perhaps for over a decade to come in Iraq, and we will pay a fearful price for that in the lives and bloodshed of our American military and upon the taxpayers of this country and upon the credibility of the United States with regard to world opinion.

Whether they were Democrat or Republican.

Well, Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield to me on that point, Ambassador Bremer was very, very direct in his characterization of us being an occupying power. And this was not said with any kind of bravado. It was simply an announcement of the realities that were involved and what his obligations were and what his responsibilities were in Iraq as the director of the coalition provisional authority.

And we ought to get something straight here about this. When we say coalition, we are talking about the United States of America. That is who is in charge here. When the Americans show up, then people mean business. I remember that from the Balkan situation before. And just by way of disclosure, on that I opposed President Clinton on that. So again I point out this has nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans, whether they are in the Presidency or not. This has to do with credibility in terms of whether or not the national interests are involved and to what degree they are involved. As a result, I think that we need to understand very clearly what Ambassador Bremer's dilemma is and what is he to do at this stage when contemplating how to advance civil society.

Now let us talk about the practical consequences of this. There is a reason that young men and women are being killed or wounded almost daily in Iraq today. We have no civil authority in place. When those who criticize those of us who were aware of this attack taking place under the terms and conditions and time that it took place, when they complain about, well, are you now ready to admit that you lost; that somehow we won and you thought we were going to lose. As my colleague from Pennsylvania pointed out, I do not know of anyone, certainly not any responsible person in the Congress, and I cannot think of anybody in the Committee on Armed Services that thought for a moment that the United States military would not succeed. We only have to observe them in action, as we have as recently on this trip at the end of May, to see that the professionalism, the capacity, the capabilities of the United States military is unparalleled.

That is not the question. The question is are the politicians and the politics behind the military activity up to the mark. That is what is at stake here. And that is why we have the situation in which these young people are being shot, are being wounded, are being put in harm's way every day. There is no civil authority there. We are trying to stand up a police force.

Does that sound familiar? It should, because we have been trying to do it since the late 1990s in the Balkans; and we are still, despite much more favorable circumstances in, at best, a very tentative dilemma with respect to whether or not with the NATO troops and United States troops leaving that area, whether or not chaos will descend once again. I will assure my colleagues if we leave any time soon, there will be chaos of a nature that the Secretary of Defense calls untidy.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, that just goes to show that the interests of the United States at that time were deemed to be such that we could have that kind of diplomatic relationships with Saddam Hussein and the government in Iraq. The present Secretary of Defense was part of that, was in Iraq and trying to do business with Saddam Hussein.

The question is what caused that change? Was it really in the interest of the United States in terms of our defense and imminent danger to the United States to attack Iraq? That is a question that needs to be answered because it is going to inform us and instruct us where we are going from here, whether it is Iran, Syria, North Korea, whether it is the kind of policies that are going to come forward on Iraq itself. This is the kind of thing that needs not just an emphasis but needs explanation.

If we are going to have a policy worthy of the legacy of this Nation's triumph of democracy, we cannot simply assert it on behalf of other people, particularly in a place like Iraq which has never known it and whose entire history since World War I has been nothing but a division of the spoils among Western nations.

Mr. Speaker, I simply want to indicate to my colleagues, and I hope that we will have a dialogue in the future, particularly with those who have different views as to where we should be going and what we have accomplished to this point, or what we have failed to accomplish to this point, because it is the only place that the American people are going to get any kind of a dialogue like that. That is what this House is all about. This is the people's House. You cannot appear on this floor except by way of election. You can be appointed to the United States Senate; you cannot be appointed to the House of Representatives. This is the people's House. We come up for election, as my wife says, every other year, not every 2 years. You can have a driver's license longer than you can have a license to be on this floor, and that is as it should be because it was the intention of the Founders of this Nation that the people in this country have the opportunity to decide who will represent them here against the House of Lords on the other side of the building.

I would indicate that I will be coming back to the floor, and I hope to be joined by others because we do not intend to let this issue slide. We do not intend for anybody to get over this or get by it.

Not while we have the opportunity and obligation as Members of the House of Representatives to speak out on behalf of the people of this Nation.

And that they are not under siege.

One closing remark, I do not think the parents and families of the young people who have died make any differentiation between formal and informal. I think those deaths are devastating regardless of the timing associated with it.

Mr. Speaker, I and other Members are as anxious as everyone else in here and leadership on both sides to vote in an expeditious manner; but if that is going to take place, then the leadership has to see to it that we are able to get into these elevators and get downstairs and get over here.

If it says ``Members Only'' during the time that the bells are ringing, then you have got to either put some signage up or get some people into the elevators that see to it that happens. I cannot see trying to kick people off the elevators who are citizens, trying to come see us, who operate in good faith, and we cannot get here to vote.

Now if you are so anxious to get this thing done in 15 minutes or 17 or whatever it is, that is fine. I will do my best, as I am sure everybody else will; but, Mr. Speaker, you have got to see to it then that we are able to get to do this in the manner in which we are supposedly designated to do it.

If you have elevators that are supposed to be for us during this time, then you are going to have to do things to see we can use them. I am not the only one who was disenabled from voting because I simply could not get down here. I could not get here fast enough because these elevators are stuck, and there are all kinds of people on them asking directions and you cannot get down here. If they are on the seventh floor in Longworth or end of the Cannon building, it is just not easy to do that in the 15 minutes, particularly when you are trying to kick people out of your office or get finished with what you have to get done in order to get over here to vote.

I am just asking on behalf of not just myself but any Member that finds himself or herself in these circumstances. Had I been over here, I am sure I would have voted aye, depending on what the wisdom of my colleagues would have directed me to do in the interest of the national purpose.

Mr. Speaker, it is kind of an amazing thing that all of us are coming down to the floor with 1 minute or 2 minutes to try to summarize our feelings about Patsy. I could not possibly even begin to do that. Forty-three years of my life was involved with Patsy when I was a student and supporter of hers, and then as a colleague. To say that the people coming down to this floor loved Patsy, admired her and respected her, hardly does justice to those words.

There will never, ever be another person on this floor like Patsy Mink. When the history of the House of Representatives is written, she will be in the pantheon of heroes, those who exemplify the People's House. If there was ever anyone who embodied what it was that made this country great, someone who came from immigrant circumstances to the highest echelons of government, and never forgot where she came from and who she was and what and who she represented, it was Patsy Mink.

She was more than a friend and more than a colleague. She was a beacon to all of us who serve here hope to be. We all take our oath of office here to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, and we are only here because of the faith and trust of the people in our districts. Never, ever, has anyone upheld better that faith and trust that our constituents have given to us than Patsy Mink. Patsy, you live with us and you live in this House, the people's House, forever.

Mr. Speaker, I indicated in my previous remarks that we were limited in our opportunities to be able to speak about Patsy and I thought perhaps that it might offer an opportunity had we been able to extend our time, and I want to say how much we appreciate that we have had this opportunity to have a few more minutes to do it.

Not everyone may recognize the side of Patsy that was so familiar to us in Hawaii, because obviously we saw her as the dynamo of legislative activity here in Washington. But I think perhaps not everyone recognized or understood until they came to Hawaii and had the opportunity to see from whence Hawaii Patsy came as to what molded her as a person.

For the young people that are here today observing the remarks here on the floor, they may not fully comprehend what it was to be female and Japanese-American and smart and have to try and come up. We take a lot of these things for granted. She was in fact the pioneer, not just in Hawaii but throughout the Nation, for indicating what could be accomplished with those kinds of strikes against her. She turned that adversity into accomplishment. For that reason, if for that reason alone, she stands as the standard for which every young woman and every young man who comes from humble circumstances can aspire. With Patsy Mink, you had someone who was not just a friend, not someone who was just a standard bearer, but you had someone who set the foundation for all those who came after.

Mr. Speaker, today, Representative Ed Case and I are introducing legislation to authorize certain Bureau of Reclamation activities that will have profound impacts on the future of Hawaii's economy.

The legislation is a companion bill to one introduced in the Senate by Senator Daniel Akaka and Senator Dan Inouye. It will expand the scope of the Bureau of Reclamation water resources study authorized by the 105th Congress as well as authorize three specific projects needed to address Hawaii water needs. This law, the Hawaii Water Resources Act of 2000, included Hawaii in the Bureau's wastewater reclamation program and expanded its drought relief programs to include Hawaii.

Although one of Hawaii's greatest assets is its tropical climate, there are vast areas where little rainfall occurs and conditions are very similar to that of the high arid regions of the mainland U.S. In addition, similar to current conditions in these U.S. areas, drought conditions have been occurring in most recent years.

The most recent projection of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply indicates that the island of Oahu will exhaust the fresh water supplies of the island by the year 2018. Seventy-two percent of Hawaii's population lives on Oahu, so it is easy to imagine the cataclysmic consequences of ignoring the dire warnings that are being sounded. There are numerous efforts underway at both the State and local levels to begin addressing problems, such as substituting recycled water for potable water when appropriate, improving storage to preserve surface water, and implementing conservation technologies.

Enactment of the legislation will help lead us to long-term solutions. There are, however, several projects ready for implementation that would begin to mitigate current and future conditions. Three of them would be authorized

under the bill. Briefly, a desalinization facility would be built on Oahu, capable of producing 5 million gallons of potable water a day. Secondly, on the leeward side of the Big Island of Hawaii, a facility is to be built creating subsurface wetlands and an open surface wetland to treat effluent and generate useable water. The third project, in Lahaina, Maui, is to expand the existing recycled water distribution system so that numerous commercial users can substitute readily available recycled water appropriately where currently potable water is used.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to help find solutions to water development, conservation, reuse and recycling in Hawaii.

Mr. Chairman, there is a bit of acrimony here, and I think we ought to reduce it. People have different views on this. I regret that my good friend from Washington says that we are not wanting to take up the question of the MTOPS and that that is an inadequate measure. I have here before me the GAO report on ``Export Controls: More Thorough Analysis Needed to Justify Changes in High Performance Computer Controls,'' in which it states quite specifically that the inadequacies of the report, that is to say, the President's report on this issue is compounded by the continued use of the flawed measured MTOPS. That is not what we are talking about.

We are talking about whether or not this amendment would get done what the advocates say it will do. It will not. What it does is say give the President the opportunity to come up with a system. The reason this should be defeated is that those who wish to have a different kind of measure, those who wish to be able to sell these computers or its components in some other form need to come up with the alternative proposal and have it vetted through the Committee on Armed Services and other relevant committees, and then we will take it up and vote on it. This should be defeated because it is not ready to be passed.

Mr. Chairman, aloha. I delighted to see you today.

Mr. Chairman, as the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Force, I have the distinct pleasure of working with my good friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon). I do not believe I see him on the floor at the moment. I see other good friends from the committee.

I wanted to express my personal appreciation to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon). His impressive familiarity with the details of the numerous programs under our subcommittee purview is one of the major reasons we are considering a defense authorization that correctly addresses the hardware needs of the military.

Our subcommittee held many in-depth, rigorous oversight hearings on a variety of programs, and I think our adherence to a sound process in this arena has served our committee, the Congress, and the Department of Defense very well.

While we dealt with significant programs in all services, this bill explicitly recognizes the importance of a strong Army. The Army has had an uphill fight inside the Pentagon the last few years, and I think the recent war showed how capable they really are.

I am especially pleased that our bill does no harm to the future Stryker Brigades and that the committee was able to come to an agreement about fencing off funding for the remaining brigades. We have struck a blow in a couple of cases for better program management. I am glad to see that the F-22 cut its cost. We fenced further money until its software works the way as it is promised.

The Army's future combat system may be a good thing. It is hard to tell because its budget structure makes it hard to evaluate. We changed that structure so that everybody can see whether the future combat system will work.

We are working on some very advanced systems in all the services. I believe we have struck the right balance between future forces and our legacy systems. In funding modernization of our heavy forces, this bill ensures that we do not sacrifice the real combat capability today for the promise of capability in the future.

I would like to conclude and I would be remiss, Mr. Chairman, if I did not acknowledge the hard work and long hours put in by our committee staff on all levels.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to close by again thanking the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) and all the members of the various subcommittee with whom I have had the pleasure of working on this bill.